This weekend, the new film "Fifty Shades of Grey" is expected to dominate the box office with an estimated $60 million dollars in ticket sales. But it's not box office domination that's got most of us talking—it's another kind of domination.
Credited with bringing sexual domination and submission to the masses, the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" has also been cited as the reason behind increased sales of sex toys, and an explosion of BDSM (bondage and domination, sadism and masochism) titles on the paperback shelves. Writer E. L. James is now the single highest income-grossing author in the world.
The movie may very well continue this trend, but what messages does the film send in the process?
Cindy Gallop is the creator of the website “Make Love Not Porn" and the author of “Make Love, Not Porn: Technology's Hardcore Impact on Human Behavior.” She says the film and book have changed our conversations and perceptions about sex in America. But she argues that “Fifty Shades of Grey” also gets a lot wrong.
“I’m very conflicted about ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’” says Gallop. “There are three reasons I hate it and there are three reasons I love it.”
Gallop says she hates “Fifty Shades of Grey”—both the book and the film—because the novel was badly written and the movie was not particularly riveting. Additionally, she views the franchise as an overdone “Cinderella” story—only this time the prince and princess don leather and chains. Finally, she says the work of fiction also has “all the hallmarks of a thoroughly abusive relationship.”
“The reasons I love it, first it de-kinkifies sex that many more people would be thoroughly enjoying if society hadn’t told them, ‘It’s kinky, you can’t do that,’” she says. “It has obviously galvanized, and the movie will galvanize, a number of relationships and marriages. The third reason I love it is that it socializes sex—it brings it out in the open and it makes it socially acceptable and shareable. Those are three very good things.”
Like erotic literature from the Victorian Era, “Fifty Shades of Grey” focuses on male domination of women, but it has also made people more honest and open about sexuality. In some ways, however, Gallop believes the franchise does not go far enough.
“Call me old fashioned, but I would’ve liked a whole lot more sex in it and I would’ve liked a whole lot more of Jamie Dornan naked,” she says. “I think that was a real missed opportunity because the movie world as a whole has gone backwards. If ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ had been made in the ‘70s, we would’ve seen some really interesting and authentic depictions of dominant-submissive sex. And we also would’ve seen a whole lot more of Jamie Dornan full frontal, versus restricting that, as Hollywood does, to the woman.”
Gallop says the film needed more edge—and just not graphic sex or nudity. She argues that “Fifty Shades of Grey” missed an opportunity to explore sexuality as “fundamental human driver,” and the ways real world sex can be messy, conflicted, ridiculous, wonderful, and beautiful.
“‘Fifty Shades’ glosses over all of that in a way that actually isn’t doing justice to the really interesting things about BDSM as a medium for sexual exploration and releasing all sorts of things that people don’t examine within themselves,” she says. “Unfortunately the movie is very superficial when it comes to that.”
For those that argue that complex explorations of sex don’t belong in high-budget, mass-marketed Hollywood films, or on billboards placed along America’s interstate roadways, Gallop says that those that are uncomfortable merely need to sit down at their computers.
“Go to Google and enter the word ‘porn’ into the search box as millions of kids do everyday,” she says. “Take a look at the 10 sites that come up on the first page of Google. Go to each of those sites, take a long, hard look at those homepages and then tell me we shouldn’t be having these conversations. I’m all for anything that forces more open, healthy discussion around sex in the real world.”