I’m stood in a queue on the Champs-Elysées waiting for a
film. The line is snaking all the way down the road further than we can see
without moving and losing our space in the queue. Can you guess the gender of
most of the members of this line? Well, if you can’t then I had better tell
you. It was mostly groups of women aged 18-30. What were we all going to see? The
50 Shades of Grey film.
As someone who hasn’t read the books I was intrigued to see
whether all that I had heard was true. Would it really be sex scenes every five
minutes? Was it poorly written? Would I be hooked by the characters and the
plot? I can answer that briefly. No, Yes, No. There was not as much sex as anticipated.
Obviously there was a bit and I wouldn’t advise small children to go and watch
it but it was by no means all the time as I had imagined it might be. The dialogue
is shocking. My lasting impression is that I would love to go through it with a
red pen and re-write at least 50% of the interactions between the characters. The
jittery, forced words said by people who are meant to be in love with each
other just didn’t feel natural but in fairness the actors did do the best with
what they were given. I’m by no means hooked by the franchise but it does throw
up interesting questions for me.
From what I’ve read around the subject it is clear to see
that there are scenes of abuse throughout the books, something we don’t see in
the film. The representation of women in the film/books also makes my skin
crawl slightly. As someone who has been brought up to know that women are not
commodities and can do anything they want to it makes me uncomfortable to see
the main female character treated like an object when people applaud the series
for liberating women’s sexual freedom. It feels like this is some kind of
oxymoron to me.
If you like the books and the film then that is absolutely
your right. But just take a moment and think about them. Would you like to be
in a relationship that is so volatile? I certainly wouldn’t. On this the most “romantic”
of days I think a point of reflection about what women expect from society is
important. Don’t just brush this off as “only a film” because that is like
saying The Communist Manifesto and The Satanic Verses were “just books”. Any form
of literature is propaganda whether it is mummy porn or political ideologies
and it is our right to criticise either in a fair and balanced matter.
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