Fifty Shades of Crap

I was in hospital, attached to a morphine drip and feeling very sorry for myself when I first encountered the cultish phenomenon that is Fifty Shades of Grey, a trilogy of books by British author E. L. James. A cousin of mine decided I needed some “light and trashy” reading to make me forget the pain I was in, pun intended. And so I started the first book and could only get through the first five chapters; not because I was ill, but because the book was making me even more so. 

For me it was trashy airport reading, the kind of Mills and Boon type of books that you would read on a flight from Durban to Joburg and finish the whole book on the fifty minute flight. But like the salacious content from authors like Jackie Collins and India’s Shoba De, there seems to be a market for it and a huge one at that. So much so that there are three books in this anthology and it even spawned a film that to date has grossed just under half a billion American dollars at the box office. 

So for those living under a rock, the film, based on the books, stars Jamie Dornan as Seattle billionaire Christian Grey and Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele, a college student, and follows their sometimes violent sexual relationship and explores the dark side of bondage and sadomasochism. The film has led to some protests from women’s rights campaigners that say it glamorises domestic violence. And a United States grassroots movement is urging people to donate $50 to women's shelters rather than see Fifty Shades of Grey as the controversial film sparks global debate about domestic abuse.

According to an article I read by Reuters, “Through its depiction of explicit sexual practices including domination and submission, activists have accused the first film in author E.L James' Fifty Shades trilogy of blurring the lines between healthy and harmful sex.” 

A University of Chicago student who claims he and another female student were re-enacting scenes from Fifty Shades of Grey now faces a sexual assault charge in Cook County, Illinois in the US. According to Fox 4 News, Mohammad Hossain says the sex was consensual, but police say during their interview with him, he told them he knew he was “doing something wrong.”

19 year old Hossain allegedly told the girl to remove her clothing and then bound her hands above her head to the bed with a belt and used another belt to bind her legs. Then, he’s accused of stuffing a necktie into her mouth and using a knit cap to cover her eyes. And prosecutors claim he began striking her with a belt and continued after she started crying and shaking her head and telling him to stop. 

And the fact is: all this is depicted in the film. 

So psychologists are all abuzz about the lines of consent when it comes to the practices that Fifty Shades of Grey speak of. Kathryn Casey from Forbes says: “It’s true that the physical pain Anastasia endures in the books is by her own consent, so much so that before he spanks her for the first time Grey hands her a contract. Will she agree to being tied up, to being whipped, to being caned? And those other possibilities, including the use of clamps in places we won’t discuss. You get the picture. This is presented as a negotiation, and Ana exercises her prerogatives, crossing out some activities she deems as nonnegotiable. One of the questions on the contract: “How much pain is the Submissive (Ana) willing to experience?” This is to be judged on a scale from one to five.”

Casey continues: “There are two assumptions running through that first book. One is that Grey’s obsession with violence isn’t really his fault. He’s a man flawed by his past, someone who has been abused as a child who has latched onto BDSM (an acronym for bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism) as a way to channel his confusion and anger. The second is that Ana, a virgin until she meets Grey, will find a way to change him.

But whatever we may think of the books and the film, they are so successful, that Forbes says they’ve spawned an increase in sex toy sales, and some hardware store owners are having a tough time keeping cotton rope (used by Christian Grey to tie up Anastasia in the book) on the shelves. 

So what’s made Fifty Shades of Grey so appealing?

A psychology article I read says the appeal is not that it was a well-written novel or a literary masterpiece, but that it opened the door to aspects of sexuality that are probably widely practiced and interesting to people because they are out of the mainstream. What the book does say for sure is that there are women who want to explore sexual themes that aren’t mainstream and that the books are giving those women who are curious an avenue to do that.

What do you think? Is Fifty Shades of Grey about abuse or a part of acceptable human sexuality. 

You can email Terence Pillay on [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and engage with him there.