That book

[liv]

So everybody's talking about Fifty shades of Grey. Lots of journalists are saying amazingly stupid things about it. OMG women are buying and reading books which have explicit sex scenes, OMG the sky is falling! If this is when you get the memo that women are interested in sex, you've been living way too far under a rock to call yourself a journalist.

And there's a fair amount of snark about how badly it's written. Everything from detailed fiskings of every scene, to an image macro that's doing the rounds showing the shelf of a book shop with Fifty shades covered over by a typed notice saying "Please don't spend money on this, you can find better smut on the internet for free!" Some of this I'm sure is justified, some of it is snobbery because the snarker is far too cool and far too elite to read anything, you know, popular. And some of it is sexism, because it's marketed at women and it's based on Twilight which was marketed at teenage girls. Because erotica aimed at middle-aged men is by default assumed to be high quality literature and erotica aimed at middle-aged women is by default assumed to be trashy "Mummy porn".

There's a slightly more interesting conversation going on about what this means for publishing, since it's essentially a self-published fanfic that has gone absolutely viral and become a commercial success, but I don't know very much about that topic. Plenty out there if you're interested. I've seen rather a cute argument that it's the modern day equivalent of Pamela.

It seems very likely that the relationship portrayed in Fifty Shades is, in fact, abusive, but lots and lots and lots of fiction in all media portrays as romantic relationships that would be abusive if they really happened. I think part of the problem here is that Fifty Shades is essentially using fanfic-derived conventions to portray, for example, what one might categorize as dubcon, but people are used to Hollywood conventions and romance novel conventions and litfic conventions for portraying power imbalances in a sexy way. In those cases, people accept the convention as a convention and don't get too upset about the realism (unless it's really egregious in promoting abusive, rapey dynamics as "romance"), but in the case of Fifty shades, people who don't come from that context are taking things too literally and not spotting cues that it's supposed to be a fantasy, not an instruction manual.

Then there's the backlash from people who actually know something about contemporary women and are aware of, often members of, alternative sexuality communities, from fanfic to BDSM. They are angry because Fifty shades and the bad reporting about the phenomenon are making their communities look bad. In reference to the "better smut online for free" type of comment, I think there's an access issue here. Fanfic on the internet might be free of financial cost, and some of it is of stunningly high quality. But it requires a whole stacking set of literacies that not everybody possesses. If you want to read Fifty shades, you have to have £5.99 in disposable money. OK, not everybody has that, but a higher proportion of people do than have internet access at home, the ability to switch off or get round filters and censorship, the knowledge that fanfic exists and the ability to search for it, a fairly complex understanding of the conventions and shorthands that fanfic has developed, probably some means of downloading and reading e-texts portably, the knowledge of and ability to use tools and community networks to find the high quality stuff among the completely unfiltered mountain of crap that is the internet. None of that is "free" if you're starting from outside that community.

As for the "negative portrayal of BDSM" side, part of the motivation for posting this was that I happened to find this counterpoint. elialshadowpine points out that Fifty shades completely fails to match the kink community's image of itself, which is all about good communication and respect for boundaries and consent and negotiation and being a lovely supportive community for people with minority sexualities. But in some ways Christian is a realistic portrayal of an abuser who uses BDSM as a cover for his abusive behaviour. Anyway, worth reading her post, though it's a pretty harsh, frank discussion of sexual abuse, so only if you feel strong enough.

And the other motivation was that skibbley linked to a really interestingly balanced post about the book. I'm not totally convinced by this "sex critical" thing; I basically fall on the sex positive side of the debate, and I'm not sure that trying to make a compromise with the kind of radicals who hate sex workers and want to police sexuality from the left is really the best idea. But I like the example this blogger provides of approaching Fifty shades in a sex critical way, noting that there are some good, potentially liberating things about the book and its popularity, but not glossing over the aspects that are problematic.

Also jack wrote a comment on the book-as-phenomenon which I also think is well-balanced and interesting. Not as scholarly as the Rewriting the Rules post, more of a personal response. But while I'm collecting links, I shall link to my husband being clever and interesting.

Comments

[liv]

I agree with this rant, in fact I think last time we had this conversation I was kind of on the opposite side of the argument, claiming that some things are at least morally dubious to portray in fiction at all even if sometimes the thing portrayed happens in real life. And you're right about extra-textual cues, definitely.

I don't know elialshadowpine at all, but what I took away from her post was not: abusive doms exist IRL, therefore it's totally fine for Fifty shades to portray one. Rather, I think her point is that the BDSM community is being a bit utopian or overly self-righteous in claiming that Fifty shades is totally unrealistic. I read her as being highly critical of the book, but at the same critical of BDSM culture for pretending that they always live up to their stated ideals.

[ptc24]

Real life/fiction: I've certainly heard it said that on a purely aesthetic level, things that are jarringly unrealistic can't be justified by "but this actually happened in real life".

[liv]

That's true; I mean, with a big enough population, truly stupendous coincidences are going to happen some of the time. But if you resolve your plot through a really unlikely coincidence, readers are going to find it unsatisfying, even if that rare conjunction of circumstances did happen in reality.

There's a difference with portrayals of minority groups, though. It's a given that any group or subculture is going to have some bad people in it. But if you make the villain of your book a member of a minority, you're somewhat open to accusations that you think all people from that minority background are evil. There are definitely ways round this, and there are also some readers who are just going to be upset at any negative portrayal of someone from their culture no matter how sensitively written.

To take a hopefully non-controversial example: Dickens caught a lot of flak for the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist, because he seemed to imply that Jews are sneaky criminals. I was never bothered by Fagin, because when I read OT I assumed he was just Fagin, I didn't get the impression that his criminality or his other obnoxious mannerisms was particularly connected to his being Jewish. But then Dickens went and wrote Our mutual friend which has Riah as a minor character, a Jewish moneylender who is totally noble and admirable. And to me, Riah seemed a whole lot more like a stereotype than Fagin, partly because Dickens gives him a bunch of soliloquies about how it's mean to discriminate against Jews, so it's a lot more like he's supposed to be representative.

But in these examples, the problem isn't realism or lack of it. The people who thought Fagin was offensive weren't claiming that no Jews ever commit crimes. And I think the same with Fifty shades of Grey; the problem isn't whether Christian is realistic, obviously some people behave controllingly and abusively in their relationships. The problem is whether it implies a) that all people who like kinky sex are abusive in similar ways to Christian or b) that being abusive and controlling is romantic and desirable. From what I've read it seems likely that both a and b are true, but in any case it's not a realism issue.

[atreic]

I really like the quote 'using co-incidences to get your characters into difficult situations can be good writing, using co-incidence to get them out is just laziness'

Having made it through 2/3 books now, I think (a) is mildly true - in that it succumbs hugely to the 'he only wants to beat women because of his Tragic Childhood trope - although I think it does quite well at the portrayal of _Ana_ as discovering she likes some kinky fuckery and isn't abusive. The book is deeply inconsistent on (b). I think by the end of book 2 / start of book 3 there is a pretty consistent theme of 'Christian does something abusive and controlling and Ana says 'oh, come on, this is mad and just you being fucked up again', and is genuinely annoyed by it, not pleased by it'. But there are definitely lots of points in the books where he does something controlling and she does find it sexy and hot.

[Oh, I just realised my LJ filters were out of date, and you weren't on the one where I wibbled about this. Fixed now, if you're interested]

[liv]

Thank you, I'm really interested in both this comment and the post you filtered me in to. What you're describing here does fit with other impressions I've formed of the book, so it's good to have some views from someone who's actually read it!

I really think a lot of the problem is that people are reading it who aren't familiar with fanfic. I don't always love the fanfic way of writing about kink, but I know enough to recognize that it's a genre with its own conventions. So I can suspend not my disbelief, but my general ethical sense of how I think relationships should be, in order to find it hot. The first time I read fanfic that described itself as "kinky" I found it totally gross and fucked up and horrible, so I definitely recognize that reaction in some of the pontificating journalists and bloggers!

BTW marina thinks that a lot Christian's Tragic Childhood and abusive controlling stuff and Ana's reaction to it is based not on Twilight so much as Secretary. I've always been reluctant to watch Secretary because the synopsis makes it sound like something I'd be really uncomfortable with, but marina's review is making me reconsider. I think I'd rather watch that, and continue reading things like kink_bingo, than read 50 shades of Grey, but I wish people wouldn't be so prudish / snobbish about it!

[atreic]

I think you're right, it's a genre with its own conventions, and we should understand and accommodate that when judging it. But those conventions aren't written in the laws of the universe for fan fic writers to follow - they are coming from the brains of intelligent writers, mostly women, who can chose to lazily propagate tropes or think how to write hot erotica that is less problematic.

I watched Secretary about 5 years ago, hoped to find it hot, was a bit underwhelmed, and have now mostly forgotten it. We probably have the DVD somewhere if you want to borrow (although 'somewhere' might be Inverness :-) )

[jack]

You're right, I think I got that idea from you.

Yeah, I think I reacted wrongly to what they were saying: I assumed that they were reacting to the same criticisms as I'd seen, and I assumed that the critcisms I'd seen really meant "don't portray our culture as if it's ALL like that" even if it came off a bit like "don't portray our culture as if it's like that when it isn't ever". And I reacted as if that's what they meant. But both of those assumptions are likey to be wrong.

[liv]

*hug* It's not so much that your assumptions are wrong, it's that there are several different conversations going on all cross-referencing eachother. I'm reasonably convinced that Fifty shades does in fact portray BDSM unfairly, and I can completely understand why many kinksters are protesting about that.

But there's a second level of problematic dynamics that can arise, where if a particular subculture is ostracised and stereotyped, people from that culture start seeing things as a kind of "us against the world" situation. They're not entirely wrong to do so, but there can be bad consequences, namely that if abuse happens within the subculture, which will happen eventually because some people are evil, the subculture then deliberately protects the abusers. And if anyone should possibly suggest that some abuse might be going on, the immediate defence is to react as if any possible suggestion of any problems is just stereotyping of the culture by outsiders and should be ignored or denied. That in fact makes the subculture into a fertile ground for predators, because they know their social group will turn a blind eye. I think elialshadowpine is trying to draw attention to this second kind of problem within the BDSM culture. Not to accept the stereotype that all dominant men are actually abusers.