Richard McCulloch (Regent’s University
London)
After several
weeks of critical derision, rowdy cinemagoers, and one bizarrely controversial
fancy-dress costume, Fifty Shades of Grey now appears to have stepped into an elevator
and walked out of our lives; at least until the sequel. Many people, I’m sure, will
be relieved to see the back of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of E.L. James’s phenomenally
successful erotic novel, but I am not one of them. I saw the film the weekend
it opened, and have been arguing about it with my students, friends and
colleagues ever since.
Yes, it
is rife with contradictions. Its tone, for instance, appears playfully ironic
one moment, deadly serious the next, while its gender politics seem to tread a
peculiar line between misogyny and female empowerment. But it is precisely
these contradictions that I think make the film so interesting and effective.
I cannot
remember the last time I went to the cinema and left with such an overwhelming need to talk about what I had just
experienced. I had absolutely no idea whether I had enjoyed myself or not, nor
could I say how I felt about either of the protagonists, yet these ambiguities fascinated
me.
Having
now watched it for a second time, what I want to do in this article is to
address some of the prevailing complaints directed at it by professional
critics, and offer up a defence of sorts. It is not exactly a masterpiece, but I
think Fifty Shades is far more
sophisticated than has so far been acknowledged, and it certainly deserves
better than to simply be laughed at and discarded. What many people have
dismissed as a trashy mess – a tame, vanilla porno with unrealistic characters
– I see as an entirely self-conscious romance, whose only major ‘failing’ is that
it does too good a job of aligning us with its protagonist.
COUNTER-ARGUMENT:
Ana’s reaction to the sex is far more important than the sex itself
When
they weren’t competing with each other to see who could come up with the best headline
(‘Porn again, Christian,’ ‘Making a bad fist of it,’ etc.), most critics spent
their reviews of Fifty Shades explaining
how dull they found it. The bulk of this criticism, however, had little to do
with pacing or the romantic drama at the centre of the plot, and instead focused
on the film’s sex scenes. Reviews were
littered with lines such as:
‘Anyone hoping the movie would really push
the S&M envelope may find Christian’s tastefully shot toy room a little…
vanilla’ (New
York Daily News)
Clearly,
critics not only wanted but also expected
some kind of sexual ‘excess’, and became frustrated when the film apparently
refused to give it to them (ahem). What these complaints demonstrate is a
struggle over the film’s genre; Fifty
Shades is implicitly being
categorised as erotica/pornography above all else – sexually explicit material whose
primary goal is to arouse its audience. One reviewer even went as far as
calling it ‘the movie that promised to be the most titillating
motion picture ever made.’
But where
on earth has this generic expectation come from? It seems to me that this criticism
has much more to do with the hype surrounding Fifty Shades (both novel and adaptation) than the movie itself.
Its
marketing campaign undoubtedly has a lot to answer for here, with posters and
trailers continually teasing prospective audiences about Mr. Grey’s ‘very
singular’ sexual predilections. Promotional materials often chose to hide parts
of Christian (Jamie Dornan) from the audience, depicting him from behind,
through enigmatic close ups, or with his face partially obscured (Figure 1).
- Figure
1. Fifty Shades of Grey poster (2015)
Similarly,
trailers gestured towards steamy sexual encounters without really revealing
very much. Perhaps, then, some critics took those gestures as ‘promises’ of what
the film would surely deliver – the equivalent of a TV episode delaying viewers’
gratification by demanding they ‘tune in next week’ for narrative closure.
I
actually agree that the film is not especially risqué, but mainstream Hollywood
has historically shown little interest in on-screen depictions of sexual
dominance and submission. Why should we expect Fifty Shades to be any different?
While critics
overwhelmingly bought into the idea that the film was trying and failing to be
sexy, I would argue that those scenes were never intended to be focal points. Instead, they seem to function more as
character identification devices than isolated moments of spectacle. In fact,
there is ample evidence for this across various promotional materials. For
instance, in spite of all the whips, restraining devices, and orgasmic writhing
that the trailer fleetingly shows us, its clearest emphasis is on reaction
shots of Ana (Dakota Johnson) (Figure 2).
These
shots position her as audience surrogate, and suggest that her response to (and curiosity towards) BDSM is far more important
than the sex itself. Significantly, the first
full-length trailer
for the movie ended with Ana’s coquettish request for Christian to ‘enlighten’
her, while posters generally led with the tagline, ‘Curious?’ In one sense,
then, the film adopts a strangely paradoxical attitude towards its own sexual
content: BDSM is presented as both non-normative and a central selling point – elusive yet alluring. And crucially,
this is just as true for Ana as it is for the mainstream viewer, both of whom experience
the sex scenes as ‘educational’ rather than titillating. They might be fun, but
ultimately they are just brief forays into implicitly unfamiliar territory.
CRITICISM
#2: It’s sexist
COUNTER-ARGUMENT:
Christian is sexist, but the film is not
At one
point in the movie, Christian explains his fondness for dominance/submission by
telling Ana, ‘By giving up control, I felt free. From responsibility. From
making decisions. I felt safe. You will too, you’ll see.’ On first viewing, I
read this as blatant ideological conservatism – a barely-concealed dismissal of
feminism, empowerment and individual agency: Be a dear and stop dreaming of
freedom – if you do everything I want you to do, we all win! Similar concerns
were echoed in a large number of reviews and think pieces, with writers
variously proclaiming ‘misogyny never looked so mesmerising,’ or arguing that the film ‘idealises
male power and emotional abuse as something seductive and sexy.’
My
second viewing, however, made me realise that Fifty Shades’ ‘problematic’ moments are never actually presented as
the ‘correct’ choice for Ana. Again, what many writers see as grounds for
criticism, I see as psychological realism; Fifty
Shades does such an effective job of aligning us with Ana’s emotions that
we come out of it feeling just as conflicted, frustrated and unsatisfied as she
does.
In the
opening half-hour, for example, both Ana and the film are detached, cynical and
playful, especially in their attitude towards Christian. When interviewing him
near the beginning, she deviates from her roommate’s mostly deferential questions,
calling him ‘lucky’ and a ‘control freak’. Importantly, her refusal to take
Christian at face value is one of the things he seems to like most about her,
as well as being one of the film’s central pleasures.
Ana also
jokes that he would make ‘the complete serial killer,’ and in one of the film’s
funniest scenes, drunkenly berates him for being ‘so bossy.’ Her subsequent
impersonation of him undermines his hyper-masculinity (she adopts an
exaggeratedly gruff voice) and his indecisiveness (‘Ana, let’s go for coffee!
No! Stay away from me Ana, I don’t want you! Get away! Come here, come here! GO
AWAY!’) Moreover, some of Christian’s most frequently-maligned lines of
dialogue (‘If you were mine you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week’) are
met with incredulity from Ana, who delivers a brilliantly deadpan ‘What?!’ on several
occasions. Moments like these consistently construct Christian as a ridiculous,
unbelievable character, whose desire to control Ana deserves to be laughed at
or criticised, not celebrated.
It is no
coincidence that the film’s detached, playful tone gradually disappears at the
same time that Ana herself begins to take Christian more seriously. Their
ensuing romance is characterised by an increasingly uncomfortable tension between their competing desires. Ana is clearly
attracted to him and intrigued by the BDSM, but yearns for a fairly
conventional romance that never fully arrives (‘Why do I have to sleep in [a
different room]? We slept in the same bed last night, like normal people!’). Christian, on the other hand, only seems interested
in their sexual relationship, and repeatedly shows that he is unwilling to
cross the line into romance.
Because
the film encourages such tight identification with Ana, the failure of the
couple’s relationship is placed entirely at the feet of Christian and his
refusal to compromise on his own desires. The tension between the two
characters is manifested in the battle between her desire for ‘conventional’
romance and his desire for ‘unconventional’ sex.
The
contract they negotiate throughout the film is thus very much a tangible
reminder of Christian’s inflexibility, yet along the way there are plenty of
hints that perhaps he isn’t really as stubborn as he appears: he insists, ‘I
don’t do the girlfriend thing,’ but then sends her first editions of a
selection of novels by her favourite author; he refuses to touch Ana until he
has her written consent, but then declares, ‘Fuck the paperwork,’ and kisses
her passionately in the hotel elevator; the first time the couple have sex is
extremely conventional – nothing non-normative, a nice clean bedroom, and far
closer to Ana’s idea of perfection than to his; and he sleeps in the same bed
as her twice in the opening 45 minutes, something he claims he ‘never’ does.
In
short, Christian seems to want Ana far more than he wants to stick to his own ‘rules’,
which are held up as preposterous and antithetical to the film’s narrative. In
order for the narrative to conclude as it ‘should’ (i.e. with the union of the
final couple), it is him that needs
to change, not her.
Yes,
siding with Ana means that we want her to end up in a happy relationship with a
ridiculous, controlling man, but this is not the same as saying that Fifty Shades of Grey endorses an abusive
relationship. On the contrary, like Ana, we find Christian’s domineering
behaviour both laughable and impractical. The closer their relationship veers
towards the dominance/submission that Christian desires, the less happy Ana is,
and it is absolutely significant that her final words to him are ‘STOP!’ and
‘NO!’
CRITICISM
#3: It’s unrealistic
COUNTER-ARGUMENT:
The film is consciously exposing the gap between the ‘fantasy’ and ‘reality’ of
romance
When reviewing
a new release that also happens to be a widespread cultural phenomenon, it is
easy enough to get swayed by the power of consensus. Reading several reviews in
preparation for writing this blog, however, I was struck by how few critics
seemed willing to take Fifty Shades
seriously. The Daily Mail’s Jan Moir’s review is typical in this regard,
describing the film as…
‘A tale of two lovers exploring a
relationship that takes in the wilder shores of bondage, submission, dominance
and terrible dialogue. “Laters, baby!” cries hero Christian Grey, as he leaves
his lover, Anastasia Steele […] “That was nice,” she says, after taking a bit
of a thrashing from Grey. Nice? You’d think he just gave her a half-hearted
peppermint foot rub.’
Philippa Hawker of the Sydney Morning Herald spoke in correspondingly negative terms,
insisting that ‘no one can make the trademark phrase “laters, baby” sound
anything other than ludicrous.’
It
absolutely baffles me that anyone could criticise the film’s dialogue in this
way, quite simply because it completely ignores the way in which the lines are
delivered, and the context in which they appear. ‘Laters, baby’ is said first
by Christian’s adopted brother to Ana’s roommate. When Christian then repeats
it to Ana shortly afterwards, he does so with a knowing smirk on his face, highlighting
its ‘corniness’ and turning it into an inside joke. In this moment, even
Christian is capable of drawing attention to his own artificiality. Equally,
the use of the word ‘nice’ to describe their sexual relationship is explicitly marked
as incongruous by Christian, who says, ‘it’s been nice knowing me?! Let me remind you how nice it was!’
In a
wonderful article for Slate, Amanda Hess goes as far as reading the film
as ‘a kind of fan-fic of Fifty Shades the
book.’ She argues that, between Sam Taylor-Johnson’s direction and Kelly
Marcel’s screenplay, the source novel’s dialogue is laced with irony, which in turn
makes its ‘bad’ qualities more palatable. While I am not
entirely convinced that the film deems itself ‘superior’ to the book
(fanfiction is not always resistant, for example), Hess persuasively
demonstrates just how important tone is to understanding and appreciating the
events on screen. Taylor-Johnson seems to want us to laugh at the silliness of
love while simultaneously being swept up by it.
But Fifty Shades of Grey knows exactly what
it is doing, and is extremely self-conscious and upfront about just how
fantastical its romance narrative is. The clearest example of this is when the
couple spends the night together for the first time, following Ana’s drunken
night out in a bar. She awakens to find painkillers and fruit juice at her
bedside, along with notes reading ‘Eat me’ and ‘Drink me’, respectively. These overt
references to Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland mark the couple’s relationship as dreamlike and fantastical from
the start.
The
movie’s soundtrack plays a central role in heightening this sense of fantasy,
with lyrics often referring to escapist pleasures:
·
The
opening montage unfolds over Annie Lennox’s cover of ‘I Put a Spell On You’,
acknowledging romance’s potential to mislead and distort our perception of
reality
·
Their
first formal ‘date’, in which Christian whisks her away in his private
helicopter, is accompanied by Ellie Goulding’s ‘Love Me Like You Do’. She sings,
‘I’ll let you set the pace / ‘Cause I’m not thinking straight / My head
spinning around I can’t see clear no more / What are you waiting for? / Love me
like you do.’ These words explicitly draw attention to Ana’s state of mind and
the astonishing (albeit pleasing) unreality of this as a romantic experience,
while the final two lines hint at her willingness to buy into the fantasy that
Christian represents
·
The
other song at the centre of the film (and its marketing) is a slowed-down,
sexed-up version of Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love’. Again, this is a song that, as
its title implies, is very much about the potential for love to alter our sense
of normality (‘Such a funny thing for me to try to explain / How I’m feeling
and my pride is the one to blame / ‘Cause I know I don’t understand / Just how
your love can do what no one else can’)
If the
film is signposting its own fantastical elements so consistently, there seems
little value in dismissing its dialogue, characters, gender politics and/or sex
scenes as ‘unrealistic’, let alone ‘harmful’. Taylor-Johnson’s goal is to not
to see things objectively, but through Ana’s eyes, simultaneously finding Christian
attractive and infuriating. The sex is an interesting distraction, but is
certainly not the focal point of the film’s drama. By the half-way point, it is
abundantly clear that Ana is less keen on an odyssey of sexual discovery than
on a relatively ‘normal’ relationship. Her frustration and upset stems from her
realisation that the relationship she yearns for is nothing but a fantasy, and
impossible in practice.
CONCLUSION:
Fifty Shades and women’s cinema
The
reference point I keep coming back to in relation to all of this is Paul
Verhoeven’s infamous Showgirls
(1995). Roundly dismissed as trash? Check. Implausible characters, dialogue and
acting? Check. Sexual content that ‘fails’ to titillate? Check. Yet Showgirls has enjoyed a modicum of
critical re-evaluation since its release, with a growing number of people entertaining
the idea that its ‘unpleasantness’ is actually intentional satire, not incompetence
(Hunter, 2000; Mizuta Lippit et al., 2003; Nayman, 2014).
Also
like Showgirls, Fifty Shades of Grey already has all the trappings of a stone cold
cult classic – a chaotic production process (James and Taylor-Johnson argued extensively), critical derision, passionate
fans, wildly divergent interpretations, and cultural notoriety. Yet the
criticism surrounding the film has been so vehemently gendered that anyone who
actually likes it has to either call it a ‘guilty pleasure’ or keep schtum. It
is significant that, when I first told my students how great I thought it was,
the reaction was overwhelming laughter, followed by disbelief. It is also
significant that I knew such a reaction was likely.
The idea
that movies aimed at women are inherently less valuable than those aimed at men
is as pervasive as it is ridiculous, making it difficult to avoid being taken
in by the cultural narrative of critical haughtiness. Debates around both novel and
film have, for example, been characterised by a sneering condemnation of female
sexuality (particularly regarding older women and ‘mommy porn’), and
accompanied by a succession of news stories about unruly women behaving
hysterically. One widely-publicised report even described how a woman watching Fifty Shades in Milton Keynes literally lost control of all her bodily functions, causing the cinema to be
evacuated.
Of
course, when you read past the headlines, it becomes clear that this admittedly
unfortunate incident had more to do with the lady in question being heavily
drunk than the film she happened to be watching at the time. But it’s not a
story if it’s reported like that, is it?
Like
Christian Grey himself, critics have remained fixated on Fifty Shades’ sex while refusing to take its romance seriously.
Pejorative references to Mills & Boon novels, daytime soap operas, and
uncritical female audiences position the film as ‘lowbrow’, and romantic love
stories as intrinsically worthless. Needless to say, there is a great deal of
hypocrisy in criticising something for being anti-feminist while simultaneously
deriding a genre traditionally associated with female audiences.
Significantly
for this website, Fifty Shades of Grey’s
opening weekend in North America broke box office records for a female
director.
Not only that, but this cultural phenomenon has been built on a rare degree of
female authorship. Between Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels on which E.L. James’s based her fanfiction and
subsequent novel, Kelly Marcel’s screenplay, Taylor-Johnson’s direction, and a
widely-praised performance by Dakota Johnson, this is by some distance one of
the most prominent examples of women’s cinema to come out of a major Hollywood
studio in recent years.
Irrespective
of all the hype, critical backlash and commercial success, however, Fifty Shades is also a really sophisticated
piece of filmmaking. I admit I went in expecting a load of trashy nonsense that
I could laugh at. What I didn’t expect was a film that was in on the joke, but
also smart enough to slowly reel me into the narrative without having realised
it. I left the cinema despising Christian Grey but somehow also annoyed that he
and Ana do not end up with each other, and it took me a good 24 hours of
introspection and discussion with others before I managed to come to terms with
that contradiction.
After
Ana first meets the much-hyped but mysterious Christian, she tells her
roommate, ‘He was very smart and intense […] I can understand the fascination.’
I’m saying the same about the film as a whole. If you stayed away because of
the bad reviews, or if you saw it once and hated it, I urge you: cast aside
your preconceptions and try again. I can’t promise you won’t end up like Ana –
frustrated and yelling for it to stop – but find out for yourself what makes it
tick rather than just believing all the rumours you’ve heard.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hunter, I.Q., ‘Beaver Las Vegas!
A Fan-Boy’s Defence of Showgirls’. In
Xavier Mendik and Graeme Harper (eds.) Unruly
Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics (Guildford: FAB Press, 2000):
189-201.
Mizuta Lippit, Akira, et al.,
‘Roundtable: Showgirls’, Film Quarterly, 56.3 (Spring 2003):
32-46;
Nayman, Adam, It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls (Toronto: ECW
Press, 2014).
