Mommy Porn: The Filthy Shades of Grey

Will Fifty Shades of Grey simply be a long awaited ‘romance’ film, or an excuse to openly play porn at the local cinema?

E.L. James’  Fifty Shades of Grey recently broke sales records, with millions of copies sold worldwide. The erotic book (nicknamed “mommy porn”) has dominated the Amazon Bestsellers list for weeks on end, with the trilogy taking up places 1-3 and the box set sitting nicely in 4th. So what is Fifty Shades of Grey and what makes it so popular?

The book originated as Twilight fan-fiction (originally Master of the Universe) and was an online hit. As a result, the lead male character Christian Grey is a creepier version of Edward Cullen and our “heroine” Anastasia Steele is a more pathetic version of Bella Swan (believe me, it’s possible), with little to no self respect. The prose is repetitive and poorly written, with a distinct lack of plot development. Edward, I mean, Christian, always walks in “that way” or he looks at Ana “in that way”, while Ana is forever biting her lip and tucking her hair behind her ear. It’s all very dramatic. In fact, while reading Fifty Shades, you could skip chunk of the middle of the novel and quite easily pick up the “story” again many chapters later. Apparently the middle section is just sex.

But the real problem I have with this book (apart from the fact I spent money on it) is the message it conveys about women and relationships. Ana is a virgin at the start of the novel, and instead of her losing her virginity in a loving relationship, or at least with someone she’s been seeing a while, it is treated simply as a “situation” Christian has to “take care” of. Further, Ana is made to sign contracts and agree to terms left, right and centre in order to continue having sex with Christian. There are punishments for not following his ‘rules’, and quite frankly the whole thing is unhealthy. As a woman, I can understand why many women out there might love the mystery and the excitement of it all…  but ultimately I don’t see how they want a Christian Grey character in their own lives when he basically abuses Ana, both mentally and physically. If this were real life, with a real person you knew, you’d be calling the police on account of the domestic abuse. But, because it’s a novel and because he’s just ‘so sexy’ this is not the case, and so this disturbing, damaging cycle carries on throughout the novel (and I imagine the entire trilogy, although I’ve only read the first book).

As for the book’s popularity, I would imagine that the majority of copies being sold at this stage are due to people’s curiosity, both fuelled by word-of-mouth and media attention. In fact, the only reason I read the book was because I’d heard rumblings of it long before it became the phenomenon it is at the moment. As far as I was concerned, it was a re-hashed version of Twilight and that perhaps Christian would have some dark secret, like killing a man, which allowed him to get to the top and own a business empire. At the time, I didn’t know the book was erotica (nobody mentioned it in the ever trusty Amazon reviews at the time). Now, of course, we all do, and given the buzz about the book, it’s only natural for people to see what all the fuss is about. I’m no prude, but some of the scenes outlined in the book are disturbing and, as I have said, verging on abuse. I don’t understand how all of this can be found appealing or sexy in any way, and it says a lot about society today if this is our idea of “romance” or sex appeal. It disgusts me that this is what we’ve become. Especially given the fact that I could almost guarantee if a book similar to this specifically aimed at men, other than “Top Shelf” magazines of course, took off like this, with men reading it openly on the train, the bus, in Starbucks, they’d all be branded sexist and sick and women everywhere would rally the troops to jump upon their mighty soapboxes to apprehend them for being so chauvinistic.  The double standards here are unbelievable.

So the question is this: would you be happy if your husband, boyfriend, son or brother were reading something like this? Or is it a question of “Would you be happy if they were reading this as openly as women are Fifty Shades of Grey?”

With the rumours of a film version circulating the Internet, it’s only a matter of time before Christian and Ana are gracing our cinema screens, which raises another question: will this simply be a long awaited ‘romance’ film, or an excuse to openly play porn at the local cinema?