I got into yet another discussion last night on the Fifty Shades books. It started with a coworker being slightly judgmental about people giving books to their kids (at 17-18, which is a parenting judgment call, not ours as booksellers) and then about women in general reading the books. He didn't see how women could want equality in the modern world and them embrace submission on any level. After a short discussion, he did allow that he guessed the point was, in part, that the women had the choice to submit, which made it better.
Which brings us to Fifty Shades. Spoiler Alert: stop reading this blog if you plan to read the books and care deeply about the plot. Or, skip the read if you care more about women and having functioning brain cells. It's pretty awful on a literary level, at any rate.
OK, still with me? Good, then. Now, the problem with Fifty Shades - other than it reading like a bored 50something English housewife's fantasy fanfic of the life of a 20something Seattle college student - is that it's not just bad writing but bad BDSM. This is not the story of a woman who's outwardly strong yet craves submission to escape, or a girl who wants to be owned, or (heaven forbid!) a man who serves willingly at a master's or mistress's feet. This is the story of a young woman who wants no part of submission or the lifestyle, yet chooses to live it and be subjugated to a man's will in most aspects of her lifestyle down to her living situation and the car she drives just to please him and adapt to his admitted controlling nature. The relationship of Anastasia and Christian is closer to abusive than D/s on many levels.
And this novel is what is introducing newcomers to the lifestyle in droves and inspiring a whole generation of BDSM-themed novels. It has achieved cult status and spawned lines of board games, lingerie, and sex toys. There's a movie in the works, though issues with the cast have created delays. All this is just to say that if you're going to play around with something you read in a novel, please do your research. There are a lot of great (nonfiction) books and websites out there on the subject of safety, so play safely, OK?
And if you haven't read it, skip Fifty Shades and read something else on the subject. Even if the classics suffer from the same problems with respect to feminism, they aren't sins against literature.
Which brings us to Fifty Shades. Spoiler Alert: stop reading this blog if you plan to read the books and care deeply about the plot. Or, skip the read if you care more about women and having functioning brain cells. It's pretty awful on a literary level, at any rate.
OK, still with me? Good, then. Now, the problem with Fifty Shades - other than it reading like a bored 50something English housewife's fantasy fanfic of the life of a 20something Seattle college student - is that it's not just bad writing but bad BDSM. This is not the story of a woman who's outwardly strong yet craves submission to escape, or a girl who wants to be owned, or (heaven forbid!) a man who serves willingly at a master's or mistress's feet. This is the story of a young woman who wants no part of submission or the lifestyle, yet chooses to live it and be subjugated to a man's will in most aspects of her lifestyle down to her living situation and the car she drives just to please him and adapt to his admitted controlling nature. The relationship of Anastasia and Christian is closer to abusive than D/s on many levels.
And this novel is what is introducing newcomers to the lifestyle in droves and inspiring a whole generation of BDSM-themed novels. It has achieved cult status and spawned lines of board games, lingerie, and sex toys. There's a movie in the works, though issues with the cast have created delays. All this is just to say that if you're going to play around with something you read in a novel, please do your research. There are a lot of great (nonfiction) books and websites out there on the subject of safety, so play safely, OK?
And if you haven't read it, skip Fifty Shades and read something else on the subject. Even if the classics suffer from the same problems with respect to feminism, they aren't sins against literature.
posted from Bloggeroid
No comments:
Post a Comment