FIFTY SHADES OF MORAL AMBIGUITY

And now, an unlikely segue from the sublime world of particle physics to the absolutely ridiculous world of trash fiction:

Fifty Shades of Grey.

I confess, I read this book. A friend gave it to me (in a brown paper bag) and I had heard of this publishing phenomenon which has sold tens of millions of copies and which is reported to have changed women’s lives. It’s erotica, which is what you call porn when it is written by a woman? And yep, there are lots of sexy bits in it.

The Plot: Innocent college graduate meets rich, young, handsome but kinky businessman who has a Dark Secret; he’s into BDSM and wants to dominate her. She is in thrall to him, up to a point. It seems he was neglected and abused by his drug-addicted mother and then was adopted age 4 by decent folks. Then he was seduced age 15 by an older woman who introduced him to all this stuff. Sorry if that’s spoiled it for you, but really, I have saved you time as well as the effort of ploughing through some of the worst writing I have seen outside Mills and Boon.

Yeah, yeah, very sexy stuff, but she goes on and on about ‘her subconscious’ always sneering at her and berating her (lovey, that’s not what a subconscious is, but never mind) and her ‘inner goddess’ cheering her on whenever she does something sexy, and I cannot begin to tell you how annoying this narrative device is.  And how many times can we read how attractive this man is, in how many ways, and yada yada yada. Frankly, it all gets boring.

And as I read, I kept thinking of a book I read in the 70’s called ‘The Story of O’ which was, even when translated from the French, infinitely better written and far more disturbing. Same sort of topic but, even though I know nothing about BDSM, it felt much more real and was far more confronting than this Fifty Shades thing. It was also written by a woman, it was also supposed to be fantasy, but it raised questions about power and its abuse, among other things. But 50 Shades is selling itself as a romance novel. It seems to me that Christian Grey is to Doms what Edward Cullen is to vampires. And it turns out that author E L James started her illustrious literary career on a Twilight fan site, imagining steamy scenes between Edward and Bella. As if the original story isn’t bad enough.

‘Twilight’ is another hugely successful series,written by a Mormon housewife on her kitchen table, after the kids were in bed, and it has been made into movies which have girls and women swooning. Also appallingly written; I read the first book and saw the first movie (on a plane,in my defence) and What Crap. I don’t mind a proper vampire, like Anne Rice’s Lestat, (although she does go on a bit), or the original and best, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Truly, if you want to read about vampires, read that, and marvel at how the book has stood the test of time, even if it is written in an old-fashioned epistolary style. It is still terrifying. So give me a vamp that is so evil that it deserves a stake through the heart, one that fries in agony and burns to ashes in the sunlight, not a pretty one that plays baseball in thunderstorms and sparkles in the sun, like Edward Cullen. A My Little Pony vampire, who loves and protects a mortal girl. And a fairy-tale handsome Prince Dominant, who doesn’t want to hurt his Submissive too much. 

Give me a clear line between good and evil. Give me a Van Helsing, hunting down the evil Count. Tell me about BDSM, but show it for what it really is. Getting your kicks by inflicting pain on others, or by having pain inflicted on you, is not a fun, light-hearted romantic lifestyle. It is actually a sick perversion.

In 50 Shades, we have sex and danger, how exciting! But not too much danger. Safe danger. How sad that there are all these women who consider these books to be ‘life-changing’. I say ‘Feh!’ to the whole genre, but if you want to read about it, maybe read the classics. At least don’t try to sanitize these awful, horrible subjects, these perversions, and turn them into something gently titillating and suitable for general consumption.

In the interests of research, I decided that I would really go to the source, and I read Justine, by the Marquis de Sade. It took me a couple of hours, and I felt like I needed a shower and a dip in the mikvah afterwards. Truly, such utter filth and depravity, with the evil characters spouting de Sade’s philosophy and worldview; hard to know what was worse, the deeds described or the thinking behind them. But he does show that if you have a godless and nihilistic outlook on life, that eventually hedonism can only take you so far before you seek out more and more and worse and worse until the sadist becomes so numbed that only foul murder remains as a thrill. And there is this nasty running joke about how Justine, by clinging to her virtue and optimism and religion, basically staggers from one situation to another far worse one, again and again; and when she is finally rescued by her long-lost sister (a successful courtesan), and is finally happy, she is struck and killed by lightning. So the wicked prosper and the virtuous suffer, and there is no G-d, and it’s all a hideous cruel joke; why bother being good or merciful, says de Sade.

To think that it was this unspeakable man who spawned these depraved writings and philosophy, which have then been diluted and tempered and filtered over the years to become the core of a best-selling romance story; this is particularly repugnant.

So I read 50 Shades, and it did NOT change my life. Except to make me despair of the human condition.