Plenty of people have written about the movie.
They've critiqued the action, the relationship it portrays, the acting, the technical screw-ups in the kinky scenes... That has been done to hell and back and I'm not going to flog a dead horse.
Instead, I'm going to talk about Fantasy Vs Reality and why it matters, here, in the aftermath of my Fifty Shades viewing experience.
People like to poo-poo the effects that Fifty Shades of Grey can have on the Vanilla community.
"It's just fiction!" they exclaim.
"You wouldn't watch a movie about the Roman Empire and think that was real, would you?" They ask, rhetorically.
"People know what's real and not real." They say.
That's the defense for everything that's wrong about this movie and the books.
Those are (kind of) fair enough arguments and protestations. When people know better, when they're educated on a topic, it's easy to look at a book and be secure in the knowledge that hey! This is fiction! I shouldn't base my expectations of Romans on a book or a movie.
Now, pretend that you're watching any popular movie about Romans. Let's say it has Russell Crowe in it.
Ooo. There's Russell Crowe on a pretty white horse... Looks good, right?
Now, Find the historical inaccuracy.
If you're like me, constantly picking up bits of useless knowledge, you've seen it already and you're probably snickering to yourself over such an obvious blunder.
But if you don't know, how are you supposed to see what's wrong with the image I've presented you with?
If you don't know that a fictional portrayal is inaccurate, how are you supposed to know that there's something wrong with it?
Fifty Shades of Grey is like that image of Russell Crowe.
I know that image is inaccurate because I'm a history buff. (it's the stirrups that are totally wrong)
We know that Fifty Shades is inaccurate because we do kink.
Your average vanilla person whose only experience of kink has probably been through stereotypical portrayals of BDSM in the media... How are they supposed to know what they don't know? Yeah, it's fiction, but what parts are accurate and what parts are not? In an incredibly popular book and movie where they stereotypes are so widely accepted that they might as well represent "reality"... How does someone without a kinky background cherry pick the truth from the stereotype?
They can't and it's foolish to think that they can.
Fifty Shades of Grey presents it's audience with a Vanilla's caricature of who we are and what we do.
It says to that audience that Dominants are abusive, self-serving, narcissistic asswads with mommy issues, abuse issues, and god only knows what other sorts of mental health issues.
It says that submissives are inept, spineless wimps who are a danger to themselves because they're so painfully clueless.
It says pretty much every single nasty stereotype that people have spent years trying to eradicate in the Kinkyverse and feeds that to a mostly vanilla audience as the truth- And they're allowing themselves to be spoon fed that drivel. Paying for the privilege, even.
sigh
All during that movie as I listened to the audience around us snicker, gasp, and then mutter angrily at scenes where the Uber Most Domly Dom in the World did shit that even they found beyond the pale... As I winced, and flailed angrily, and tried to keep my mutterings quiet, I kept looking at Cookie, wondering.
I wondered what the people around us would see if they knew he was a Dominant. I wondered what his family would see and our friends who didn't know any better would see, and later when we discussed the movie and how we felt about it my heart hurt for him as he said, "I'd be afraid to come out of the closet now."
Poo-poo, it's just ten words. No big deal. It's not really fear...
Think about it...
He's not really afraid that family and friends would think less of him, is he?
He is.
Before this, All of my ranting was based on hypotheticals. It was based on a book and even my own willingness to think less of the potential outcome- How much harm could a one hundred and twenty-five minute movie really do? What can't I easily combat with logic and reason? What can't I fix with enough time and enough words?
The broader implications of the blurring of Fiction and Fact and the general population's inability to differentiate between the two because they lack the knowledge to do so means that in one fell swoop, E.L. James has turned good men into monsters, and monsters into dominants in the eyes of millions.
But worst of all- She's taught my Cookie that this is how the world sees him- As a monster of some sort, a broken man, an abuser, as someone who needs to be fixed.
And I hate her for that.
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