Oh Fifty Shades of Gray.
I've called it out on this blog, but I have to return to it. People have wildly differing opinions on it. Feminists have railed against it, decrying it's perpetuation of toxic ideas. Or, in the less educated hot takes, implying that this property is actually the source of said toxic ideas. That is, of course, nonsense. After all, Fifty Shades of Gray began it's life as Twilight fanfiction. Twilight's views of gender and sexuality are decidedly not innovative, though they may have seemed new to some audiences. In point of fact though, they owe much to Stephanie Meyer's Mormon background.
The Mormon church explicitly sets up men as divine, while women are base. It doesn't simply ignore the entitlement that young men learn from patriarchal society, it actively feeds their egos. When a Mormon man is done with his mortal life, he ascends to divinity (if he has completed the necessary rituals while he is alive). A woman though, just like goes to heaven or hell same as us normies.
Seen through this lens, Edward's behavior towards Bella is perfectly justified. Indeed, Edward becomes a sort of twisted bodhisatva: someone who has met all the criteria for ascension, but who prefers to stay on earth to help uplift another.
This is obviously problematic. Indeed, it's great that the conversation around Twilight and Fifty Shades has illuminated the more subtle but equally problematic narratives often seen in other romance novels. But, Fifty Shades of Gray lacks this context. The story thus reads as truly bizarre. And this is precisely why many in the BDSM community liked it, at least at first. It's so over the top that it's hard to take seriously. It reads like the erotic stories we write for ourselves: deliberately using tropes in hamfisted ways, and breaking the expected sequence of cause and effect. But when presented within the community, one of two unstated assumptions is always in play.
One possibility is that this story is intended as the script for a scene. In a BDSM scene, the audience does not have to see all the participants consent in order to know that they did. We don't have to get outraged by how the people who are playing the characters are being treated. A sub might act shocked and horrified by the Dom's actions, but we know that this is fake. They knew what would happen, and have agreed to have it happen. In these kinds of stories, there is no discussion of consent. The characters do not consent, but the players did.
A second possibility, is that the plot represents a dream. The dreaming character is an author avatar, or is the author themselves. These types of stories typically do include a discussion of consent. Indeed, often the giving up of power is the central point: the fantasy IS the giving of consent itself. And this is the type that Fifty Shades of Gray falls into. The signing of the contract is a central point in the first book and movie, the climax. It is clearly what the author's fantasy revolves around. This is a difference between Fifty Shades and Twilight, where Bella doesn't decide between Edward and Jacob so much as realize that she is Edward's wife.
Read through that lens, all of the problems with Fifty Shades of Gray disappear. Indeed, it becomes a sensitive and cathartic glimpse into the mind of a young woman. We have female protagonists, but very few stories take us into the minds of young women. Very few stories discuss the things they want, or examine why they want them. Fifty Shades of Gray would help us examine and understand why women fall for toxic men, without simply dismissing them as stupid. Anastasia is not an especially stupid woman, but she gets pulled into Christian's mind games easily. How? because of her low self-esteem and her anxiety. The world is large and overwhelming, and she has very little faith in her ability to navigate it.
Too often, when we rail against domestic abuse we end up reinforcing the shame that survivors feel. We accidentally imply that their abuse was somehow their fault: that they were too stupid to see it coming, or too weak-willed to stop it. Or even worse, we end up talking about the abused as if they were an object: feeding back into the ideologies that caused the abuse in the first place. Just because someone cannot stop their abuse does not mean they lack agency, nor does it mean they are stupid, nor is it a failure of will. Surviving in the face of abuse is something people should be commended for. Indeed, we do understand this idea when we're talking about slaves or prisoners.
At least, we do if we are not fascists. One of the key signs of Donald Trump's fascism, and one of the things that a large number of people hated him for: was his remarks regarding John McCain. In particular, saying "I like people who don't get captured". As if it was somehow McCain's fault that he was captured and put in a POW camp. True that he technically had a way out: he could have killed himself. True that he didn't try to escape. But, the fact of the matter is that it wasn't his fault he was captured. No, obviously it is the opposing army which captured him. The only person in your own army that it would be appropriate to point fingers at is McCain's commander. But, that person was long dead before Trump made these remarks.
Similarly, we don't say that slaves should have killed themselves rather than be captured. We don't pretend that they are only abused because they don't stand up. We understand in fact that although many of them chose not to run away, this is not because they genuinely like being slaves. It is because they are choosing security over freedom. We understand that citizens of a dictatorship do not necessarily agree with their regime, even if they do not protest frequently or attempt to escape. We understand that many of them feel tied to obligations and secure in their position, and that attempting protest or escape would put their lives in danger.
Yet somehow this concept is hard to grasp when it comes to survivors of domestic abuse. We often act as though they should get away from their abuser at the first sign of something going wrong: and that if they don't, that means they "wanted it". We often think that staying means consenting. Sometimes, victims enable their abusers: such as a woman who buys alcohol, and then gets beaten by her husband when he is drunk. We judge these people and imply that they brought their abuse on themselves: ignoring the fact that most men do not become violent when they are drunk. The problem is not that she bought him alcohol, but that he has issues with repressed anger. We forget that leaving your partner can mean risking your life. Not least because a person with a mental illness may become more violent and less inhibited if you attempt to leave, than if you stay and comply.
Sociopaths have become serial killers after losing a partner, killing proxies for the ex-partner in an attempt to either intimidate their ex into coming back or to simply work up the courage to actually kill their ex-partner. Sometimes they actually do manage to get their ex, though often they get caught before they have that change. Still, people die when men like Christian Gray get jilted. So, making the choice to leave him especially if you realize exactly what sort of person he is: that's not an easy thing to do. It would be completely understandable for a woman to decide that her personal freedom isn't worth the risk. Telling her that she's stupid or weak for making that choice, is bad.
But okay, I mentioned fixing Fifty Shades of Gray in the title. How do we both get rid of the fact that the story romanticizes abuse, and also not add to the shame that survivors feel. After all, plenty of real life men like Christian Gray exist. Real men do these things, and real women fall for them. And it's great to have a story that shows us exactly how young women are manipulated into these situations, and exactly why it's so hard to get out. We'd just like it if the story didn't make out that any of this was okay. We'd also really like it if this story didn't make out that this is what BDSM is like.
I've actually already given the answer. We make it a dream. We add five seconds to the end of the movie showing Ana, actually a 16yr old, waking up from a dream. This makes the entire plot into a teenager's fantasy. It confronts us as the viewer with the fact that real girls have dreams like this. This is what they want, because it's what they've been told to want. They feel overwhelmed by their forays into the adult world, and want to give up control to someone else. They're still too young and naive to appreciate the value of privacy.
We can have a BDSM site open on Ana's laptop. She has only just found out about the subculture, and this is only her imagination of what it's like. She hasn't quite gotten the whole consent thing yet, that's why Christian in her dream has sex with her twice before she signs the consent form. And the reason she secretly liked being called Anastasia? it's not really her name, but she has always wished it was after seeing the Disney movie when she was little. She's always hoped she was secretly a princess, or something like it. We can put a poster from that movie on her wall, and a Princess costume on a hook in her closet. Five seconds, no dialogue. Ana gets up, stretches and exits the room. Fade to black, the end. It was all just her wet dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment