A
Cultural Criticism of Fifty Shades of
Grey
When Fifty Shades of Grey was released, it
took the world by storm. It is one of
the fastest and bestselling books of all time.
Author E.L. James began the book as a work of Twilight fanfiction, another hugely popular series of books. What Twilight
did not have, however, was a BDSM element.
BDSM is a blanket term for bondage/discipline, domination/submission,
and sadism/masochism. In Fifty Shades of Grey, we follow the
story of Anastasia Steele, a shy, awkward, college student working in a
hardware store. She is asked by her much
more confident roommate to conduct an interview for the school newspaper, who
is sick. When Anastasia, or Ana, goes to
the interview, she is met with Christian Grey, a self-made billionaire, who
because of his wealth and power, tries to stay out of the media as much as
possible. Christian, immediately
infatuated with Ana, pursues her relentlessly, ultimately confiding in Ana
that, “the only sort of relationship [he is] interested in,” is one where he is
dominant in every way, and she will be his submissive (James, 103). Ana signs a non-disclosure agreement, and
they begin a tumultuous relationship that spans the course of three books,
ultimately ending in them getting married and having two children, leaving the
BDSM out of their lives.
When
you remove Christian’s need for dominance in every aspect of Ana’s life, what
you really have in Fifty Shades of Grey,
is the very conventional love story that we have all read at one point or
another in our lives: two people meet, fall in love, and save each other from
themselves. The BDSM element, as well as
issues of low self-esteem, childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and
abandonment, take Fifty Shades of Grey
from being just another Disney fairy tale to being one of the most controversial
books of late. Regardless of how you
might feel about these books, I will argue that the conversations stimulated by
them contribute positively to our current views on sexuality and traditional
gender roles in our society.
I think you have a strong and interesting claim. Will you also talk about what cultural factors may have influenced the writing of the book ? That may be interesting to do concurrently, but it may be more than whats needed. Lastly, the thesis may come off stronger if you have partition statement.
ReplyDeleteI know that my thesis is really weak. I'm hoping that you guys will help me tomorrow! The problem with talking about the author is that she is famously hesitant to do any type of interview. I am going to talk about the claim that women have been 'burdened' with equality and that we are now fascinated by male dominance. (gag)
ReplyDeleteIm just curious, do you think her overall purpose of writing those three books was to illustrate that marriage is the best course ?
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I don't think much of her in general. I don't think that she had a real end game at all. She insists that the books are "a love story" and not about sex. It all started as Twilight fanfiction, so my best guess would be that the most she was hoping to get out of it was to be popular within that fandom. Although, maybe that's genius. Advertise something catering to a fandom...
ReplyDeleteHmm..that would've been really clever on her part...
ReplyDeleteOh my, I love this! I agree with Marcus, a partition would be highly beneficial. I think you are going to have a lot to talk about when it comes to the cultural aspect of these books because it is so heavily swayed either for or against the novel. Once you add all that in I think your paper will be great! I am so jealous!
ReplyDelete