On the way home from seeing Fifty Shades for GNO, or more specifically, mom's night out, we started asking ourselves, why?
Why do we like this story? And not just us, why do so many women feel drawn to Ana and Christian's love story? Why, like Twilight before it, are forty-ish women flocking to this story like a siren call? Could it be that we are sex-starved and desperate? Nope. Not our group. Sex-crazed perverts? Closer, but no. That doesn't feel right either. Uninformed about violence against women and unwittingly glorifying abusive relationships, as Twitter will undoubtedly claim?
No. That's not it. I follow Femen and support Pussy Riot's cause. I am notorious for posting what my friend's husband calls "bra burning" messages on Facebook. While I am not raising a daughter, the rest of my friends are. And they do so conscientiously.
So what made us leave our families to trek to the theater en masse to see a bondage flick?
That's the million dollar question.
The answer is, I'm not sure there is an answer. Not just one, anyway. Maybe there are fifty reasons why.
One reason is curiosity. Some women, and some men, might be curious about the lifestyle, or nontraditional sexual relationships in general. Maybe, like Ana, we are curious as to why someone would choose to be a Dominant, or a Submissive.
Maybe. Or maybe it's not so much about the unfamiliar. Maybe it's about how rampant violence against women is. And that women aged between twenty and twenty-four years old are at the greatest risk of becoming victims. Maybe it has to do with our knowledge that romantic relationships are a dangerous place for women. That domestic violence is the most common cause of injury to women between the ages of eighteen and forty-four.
The CDC reports that twenty percent of women will be victims of sexual violence by a lover, and thirty-six percent report being a victims of sexual assault, rape, or stalking. This means all of us know someone who has been victimized.
Recently, there has been an influx of female leads in dystopic fiction. It is becoming commonplace to see a woman running for her life through the woods onscreen, not as the victim of a killer, but as a victim of society. This seems relevant here. While on one hand we are taking our children to see women take on the world, we are taking ourselves to see a young woman be willingly brutalized. For love, no less. Talk about your mixed messages. We would have to be blind to not see the issues many groups are taking with this film.
That said, I don't think this film is speaking to the domestic violence that is undeniable, but more the gray areas. The sixty-four percent of women, not the victims of attack, but subject to horror stories and media images, leaving them wondering just how safe they are.
Our fascination with Mr. Grey is that he gives us things life doesn't. Like safe words. We have no such thing in real life. Ana intentionally ires Christian. This is not the behavior of a woman in fear. She stands her ground and says how she feels. She has no fear that he will hurt her out of anger.
How many of us can say the same, unequivocally? Without reservation? Knowing the statistics?
We watch Ana get tied up and struck, yet she is in no real danger. She can leave anytime.
This is not to say they have a healthy relationship; he follows her on vacation. While our current selves are thinking, red flag, our younger selves are remembering the times we sacrificed pieces of our privacy, our dreams, our independence, for love. Our age has made us wiser, more cautious, but we remember too clearly the overwhelming need to please our lover, to do whatever he asks, to be whatever he wants, and that feeling is fifty shades of f***ed up, as Christian says.
In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster claims that anything in literature can be about sex except sex; sex is always about power. Mr. Grey is asking permission to have power in their relationship, but he is at her mercy. Too many women feel powerless in their relationships. While many abused women stay in their relationship at their peril to help their love through his or her illness, Ana leaves when she feels her happiness is compromised. Despite her love and compassion for Grey, she feels no obligation to him.
This movie is pure fantasy. We wish we could surrender control and still feel perfectly safe.
