YouTube law states that you can't do a video
about "Fifty Shades of Grey" without wearing fuzzy pink handcuffs or some other non-threatening bachelorette party-level signifier of kink that inadvertently captures the dissonance between
the intensity of the marketing around "Fifty Shades of Grey" as some really taboo-pushing kink
and the actual product. Anyway, here's a lukewarm defense of the first movie All right, history lesson:
"Master of the Universe" is a 2009 to 2011 serial "Twilight" fan fiction written by Erika Mitchell under the pen name "Snowqueens Icedragon" and collected into two volumes. In this alternate universe,
Bella Swan is a university student who falls into the orbit of vampy (but not actually a vampire) billionaire Edward Cullen after interviewing him for the school paper. The relationship rapidly and clumsily escalates, with Edward stalking Bella, kidnapping her, revealing his deep dark secret that he's really into some spanky stuff, then they go back and forth with Bella being alternately scared and intrigued, and repeat for about 700 pages, with a couple of stalker subplots and a helicopter crash sprinkled into the back half, and that gets you to the end of Part 1, where Edward asks Bella to marry him, the final chapter ending on a cliffhanger where an unnamed character swears his revenge on the Cullens as he watches them from across the lake. In Part 2, Bella and Edward get married and accidentally pregnant, Edward's sister Alice is kidnapped by Bella's former boss (one of the stalkers from the previous volume), Bella pays the ransom and shoots the guy in the leg, Edward is like, "Fine, whatever," their kid is born, the end, I guess...
Happily ever after... They move into a really, really big house,
but keep the downtown condo as a dedicated sex den. On a structural level, "Master of the Universe" is an alternate universe, all human, retelling of "Twilight", so it doesn't claim to take place in a contiguous universe with the original novels, and the supernatural elements have been removed, while the story itself remains largely the same,
just adapted for the new gimmick. In this case Bella being a university student, and Edward being a billionaire who likes to beat brunette girls that look like his birth mother. [READING FROM EXCERPT]
"I'm a sadist, Bella. I like to whip little brown-haired girls like you because you all look like the crack whore - my birth mother." Still, it follows Twilight's plot across the broad strokes: Bella is pushed into a scenario where she meets Edward, they have some back-and-forth, Edward saves Bella from an accident, they start a relationship after
Edward reveals his dark secret, there's a dinner with Edward's family, and the whole thing culminates in a moment where Edward goes too far with his dark secret. As a serial fanfiction, "Master of the Universe" was published first in pieces on fanfiction.net, and starting in early 2010, Mitchell began parallel publishing raunchier versions on her personal site, FiftyShades.com. Within the scope of fanfiction.net the story was a genuine hit, attracting an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 readers at a very high level of engagement, with people collectively leaving thousands of comments and reviews, in addition to talking about it on forums and sharing it on their blogs. This engagement was further lubricated by Mitchell's aggressive publication speed and her accessibility; chapters were often coming out every two days for several weeks at a stretch, pushing the story to the front page of recently updated stories, and "Icy", as she was called within the community, was quick to pick fights with negative reviews and heap praise on positive ones. This type of spiraling engagement
forms a feedback loop where readers see this story with thousands of comments amid stories with dozens, and feel compelled to be in the know;
to find out what this thing is that everyone is talking about. The novel "Fifty Shades of Grey", written by Erika Mitchell under the pen name E.L. James, was published in May 2011 by the Writer's Coffee Shop, an Australian boutique publisher focused on turning
fan fiction into commercial literature. It is a lightly edited version of roughly the first half of "Master of the Universe: Part 1" where the names have been changed. Edward Cullen is now Christian Grey, and Bella Swan is now Anastasia Steele. When I say 'lightly edited', I do mean lightly, for example: Christian now spends $43 at Ana's store, rather than the $53 Edward spent at Bella's, and these ellipses are now commas. Yes, yes, there's more changes than that; if you want to go by absolute number, there's a lot of changes, thousands even, once you include punctuation, but it's an understatement to even say that the core of the two is the same. The two texts, side-by-side, read almost the same, with really only a minor pass for rewording. The plot and general structure remains untouched. Due to Mitchell's existing passionate fan base and landing right at the time when e-readers were really breaking into the mainstream, the e-book of "Fifty Shades" was released to strong initial sales; sending it to the top of the best sellers lists, and priming a similar feedback loop,
where more and more people pick it up and start talking about it in order to be in the know
about the thing that everyone is talking about. The feedback loop was further compounded by
the remainder of "Master of the Universe" being published in September 2011 and January 2012 as "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed", with both books seeing similarly strong sales in addition to engagement, both positive and negative, on the social cataloging site Goodreads. With multiple erotica books from the same series on the best sellers list, media quickly picked up on it as a curiosity, further boosting its profile. By the end of 2011, the "Fifty Shades" books had sold around 250,000 copies and drawn the attention of major publishers. After a short bidding war, Vintage - an imprint of Random House, now Penguin Random House - acquired the publication rights in March 2012, releasing the entire trilogy as mass-market paperbacks in April 2012, flooding bookstores around the globe, and cementing "Fifty Shades" as a genuine cultural phenomenon. In May 2013, Universal and Focus Features acquired the film rights for approximately $5 million US, and production began on the big-screen adaptation of the trilogy, to be directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson starring Dakota Johnson as Ana and Jamie Dornan as Christian, with the first film slated for release
Valentine's Day weekend 2015. Now the books are... well... they're pretty bad, but I want to cut a fine line here. There's a lot of criticism that has come at "Fifty Shades" from a lot of different angles; some valid and some distinctly less valid. So for example:
the prose and the dialogue are pretty abysmal. This is valid criticism. The serial nature of the original publication is something that was never worked out in the editing process, so plot threads will abruptly end, the story will get side-tracked in a random aside for several chapters at a time that will ultimately be dropped and forgotten, things are rarely foreshadowed, and at least one character that is integral to the plot, Linc, is only mentioned in passing like... four times in the entire series,
and never actually shows up. It needs to be acknowledged, as with its origin as an alternate universe retelling of "Twilight", and having seen so few alterations during editing, "Fifty Shades" falls into some serious gray areas of plagiarism. [DIALOGUE FROM TWILIGHT]
"Beautiful? This is the skin of a killer, Bella." I mean "Fifty Shades" has aped "Twilight"
all the way down to the cover design, and shortly after Stephenie Meyer scuttled plans for "Midnight Sun", a version of "Twilight" told from Edward's point of view, Mitchell announced her plans to retell "Fifty Shades" from Christian's point of view. While Meyer has refrained from litigating anything about the relationship between "Twilight" and "Fifty Shades", Mitchell's lawyers have not been so magnanimous and kind, cracking down heavily on derivative works that capitalize on the popularity of "Fifty Shades", describing them as "parasitic". This is itself an extension of Mitchell's willingness to pick fights with critics, down to starting petty arguments with people on Twitter. The story also, via Bella's/Ana's running internal commentary, perpetuates dominant cultural narratives that pressure women to take responsibility for the abuse that their intimate partners inflict on them, and much of the interaction between the leads is more than a little hazy in the area of consent in a way that many critics find to be not merely controversial, but disingenuous and even dangerous. Now, without getting too deep into the weeds I want to acknowledge that fantasy fiction,
erotic fiction, playing with ideas and scenarios that blur the lines of consent or even step right over them, aren't strictly illegitimate as subject matter. Most of our fiction involves scenarios that we would never want to actually experience, whether that be getting caught in a gunfight, or trapped at a cabin in the woods with a killer, and the idea that some people find non-consensual sexual scenarios thrilling is maybe not as weird as it's often painted. Christine Love's visual novel "Ladykiller in a Bind" is a text that delves quite far into scenarios of dubious consent for the purpose of both titillating
and challenging the audience. It is an experience that can get rough at times, pun intended. Playing through one scenario left me with a lingering sense of betrayal that took several days to fully process. The game opens, however, with a reminder that fiction is a means for people to explore ideas and scenarios in ways that are safe, or at least safer. In a video game, you effectively have
the ultimate safe word. You can exit the program at any time and
it will stop instantly. It's like the fuzzy pink handcuffs;
they're not real, they're just toys. They look and behave close enough to real handcuffs, but the key is just for show. It's actually less convenient than just using the lever. In most situations, someone wearing them
can pretty effortlessly get themselves out. They are a form of performative fiction;
they are the illusion of danger. They are a safer way to explore the sensation of restraint, of loss of control. But that isn't to say that they are truly safe. You can still wear them too tight,
you can still ignore warning signs, and you can still end up in an awful position that does lasting damage. Similarly, fiction provides us a way to explore ideas and scenarios that would be hazardous, traumatizing, or both, in real life. Fiction is a way to practice intense emotional states, but that doesn't make fiction harmless. It still impacts us,
and indeed impacting us is the entire point. This is why critics argue that the subject of fictional non-consent can still be handled more or less ethically, an issue that comes down to framing, something that "Fifty Shades" routinely fails at, and fails hard. It's not merely that "Master of the Universe" and "Fifty Shades" wander into areas of dubious consent; It's that Erika Mitchell as a writer doesn't seem to be entirely aware that that is the territory that she's in. In a synergy of failings, Mitchell has responded aggressively to critics raising this point, including one delightful incident where she angrily tweeted at a rape survivor criticizing the way Christian treats Ana "No rape in 50 Shades",
with the attached gif "#READ THE BOOK". Critics within the BDSM and kink communities have additionally focused on the book's bad and unhealthy representation of kink dynamics, and the way that it presents kink as something that people get into only because they have serious unresolved issues with past abuse. These two veins of criticism merge into the synthesis criticism that "Fifty Shades of Grey" does not depict either a healthy or unhealthy kink lifestyle, but routine domestic abuse being masked as "kink" with critics pointing to the many ways that Christian works to undermine Ana's mental well-being, her sense of stability, and her ability to consent. He negotiates their sex contract while plying her with alcohol, isolates her physically and emotionally from friends and family, belittles her interests, mocks her sexual inexperience, regularly leaves her in tears, makes her financially dependent on his approval, and constantly reminds her of both his vast wealth and his willingness to use it to monitor and pursue her. In a 2012 interview with "Books In Review",
Mitchell responded to such criticism with this: So it is fair to say that Mitchell herself does not see the parallels, believes that she has crafted a fair, if fantasized version, of a kink lifestyle, and has been openly resentful of critics who insist otherwise. However, even with all these criticisms, it needs to be acknowledged that a huge chunk of the backlash to "Fifty Shades" stemmed from and manifested as rampant misogyny and an assault on the public visibility of female sexuality and sexual agency, with many, many people using legitimate criticism as a springboard to mock "mommy porn" and the very idea of women finding anything erotic if it didn't conform to strict male-centric ideas of feminine sexuality. In this context, it's not even weird to consider that a certain component of "Fifty Shades"'s success can be attributed to a collective political act of defiance: women publicly embracing the book, not for its quality or even because it suited their tastes, but because of what its success represents in a culture that generally sees pornography for women as both setup and punchline. So, before we start really digging into the meat of "Fifty Shades"'s failings, I do want to take a moment to talk about what resonated with audiences. The books aren't good, but it's disingenuous to insist that no one could then engage with them authentically. It has clearly struck a chord with its core audience, and developed a loyal fan base that likes it for what it is: in whole or in part. The first unavoidable connection is as fan fiction, which is where the earliest fans came on board They weren't reading an original construct,
but an explicit derivative One of the advantages, and indeed one of the foundational appeals of fan fiction, is the ability to shortcut to "the good stuff", because so much about the characters and the world is able to be presupposed This also (as a side note), often leaves fan fiction with thumb prints all over it, as the opening chapters of an alternate universe story are going to be largely devoted to getting the audience caught up on the deviations from the core they are already familiar with This is why Fifty Shades, for example, calls explicit attention to Ana getting drunk for the first time It's an explicit deviation in Bella's character
as written in Twilight But there's this appeal to seeing characters that the audience has already formed a parasocial bond with in synthesized scenarios and novel circumstances This isn't even all that odd *outside* the realm
of fan fiction DC Comics over the years has imagined Batman as a vampire, as a pirate, as a medieval knight, and as an 18th century detective chasing Jack the Ripper - just to name a few of the literally dozens of alternate universe Batmen that are out there... At a certain point, characters cease to require their context to be whole, and in fact become their own context, and subsequently the fun comes from taking them and moving them around; playing with them in a variety of different styles and scenarios... In this way, fan fiction is the literary evolution of childhood play: taking disparate toys and bringing them together; an almost instinctive exercise in creative synthesis It is not a mystery that fanfiction appeals to so many, because it is naturally what stories pursue: the meeting point between the familiar and the unexpected. Moving beyond the fanfiction, many fans enjoy indulging in economic fantasies; the thrill of absurd wealth and privilege: the story about an ordinary girl plucked out of obscurity by an incomprehensibly rich dude who is able to give her virtually anything that she wants. Indeed, elements that many critics have found odd,
or infuriating, are to the invested reader, part of the appeal Ana rejects Christian's gifts,
which he then imposes on her This allows the reader to indulge the dual fantasy of maintaining a sense of social propriety (the self-perception of being the person who is humble, down-to-earth, and proper), while still enjoying all the material benefits of dating a man with more money than an individual could ever spend Also, we shouldn't leave it merely implied:
many people enjoy the pornography They find the sexual dynamics and writing authentically erotic. That may seem unbelievable because the writing is so often just painful, but what do we benefit critically for pretending that no one could sincerely enjoy the material? Conversely, simply because people enjoy it authentically, doesn't mean that criticism of the material (either in terms of technique or subject matter) become invalid. Critical readings of Fifty Shades that document patterns of abuse: how Christian isn't merely dominant, domineering, or even just an asshole - but works to
tear down Ana, coerce her, intentionally confound her ability to consent, and isolate her socially: These are still valid and important readings, even if there's an audience that finds it sexually stimulating So with all that in mind What's wrong with Fifty Shades of Grey? Well, a lot.. A big thing that I want to talk about, because it's going to be the most relevant later, is the legacy of serialization This is an issue that compounds as the books go on but it's significant pretty much right out of the gate. In particular, the serial fanfiction method tends towards a sort of public performance A writer might publish a short dead end chapter, purely because they haven't posted anything in a few weeks and their fans are wondering if the fic is dead Ideas might catch the author's attention but after a few weeks they decide it just isn't going the direction they or the audience want and so the plot thread is abandoned. Because the nature of serial fiction is to always keep pushing forward, and edits are only made chapter-by-chapter, these problems then persist into further derivatives. For Fifty Shades of Grey in specific, these mostly manifest as a lot of cyclical repeating scenes in the middle of the book, petty arguments and conflicts that happen often enough that it's hard to remember which specific one was in which specific chapter, and numerous side stories that last a chapter or two before abruptly ending. Now ideally, these are exactly the kind of issues that an editor would address in adapting a fan fiction from forum thread to published novel and this is as good a time as any to mention that Erica Mitchell is, by all accounts, absolutely awful to work with. Reportedly, the first editor she was assigned at the Writers' Coffee Shop, tasked with turning Master of the Universe into Fifty Shades was removed from the project after Mitchell complained that she was trying to make too many changes to the structure of the books That kind of behavior is going to come up again when we're talking about the movies and she's spending an hour on set
screaming at the director over changes to dialogue Speaking of the dialogue. It's, uh... ...it's not good I'm going to lump Ana's internal monologue in with this, because the words characters say aloud and the things Ana thinks to herself Tend to play off each other in... ...the worst way. [NARRATOR reads text] Mitchell also has an awkward habit of juxtaposing erotic imagery with infantilizing internal commentary from Anastasia Ana is seemingly perpetually confused by the world around her and naive to the point of farce, a thread that persists all the way
to the very end of the trilogy. Lastly, Mitchell doesn't have a deft touch when it comes to managing the sexual danger Again, because she is, or at least publicly performs, being completely unaware and in denial that her writing steers into areas of dubious consent There are many, many moments where Ana is legitimately afraid of what Christian might do to her. to quote romance author Jenny Trout on the issue: [reads quote] This is for many readers a source of much of their frustration The book doesn't manage to balance sexy danger, but it also refuses to embrace the danger danger that it creates There is a potentially legitimately decent erotic thriller or even erotic horror somewhere inside the subject matter but Erika Mitchell seems convinced that living in constant fear of your sexual partner's temper is just what a kinky sex life looks like And...yeah: I think that's enough context to start talking about the movie "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a 2015 film written by Kelly Marcel and directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson Based on the 2011 novel of the same name In this project, the two women were given the task of wrangling a trashy BDSM erotica novel, full of clumsy plot, abusive threadbare characters, and awful dialogue into a sellable movie So I'm gonna start this off with the admission
that I...actually kind of like the first Fifty Shades movie not because it's any good, but because there's a certain Creative Verve to it Like the filmmakers were actually trying
really hard to capitalize creatively on this momentary zeitgeist, rather than simply cashing in and riding the money train through three basically guaranteed jobs There's a dynamic around the first film that I found compelling particularly how it was cast in many circles as 'the worst film of the year', when really it was just fairly middling... As someone who has read the source material I was largely entertained by mentally cataloging all the points where the film had managed to improve on the source material Coming frustratingly close to making it actually kind of good (or at least trashy fun) If I took bits and pieces,
and only showed you the best clips I could probably put together a convincing argument that this is actually a really good film Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel both publicly clashed with Mitchell over the course of the project and in both cases the conflict revolved principally around changes to the source material This is ironic because the source material is easily the worst thing about the movie. This is also the thing where... well... I mean
- the whole thing was ultimately doomed In the deal with Universal and Focus, Mitchell retained a massive amount of creative control with something nearly approaching total veto power over any creative decision ...and well, if her books are any indication creativity isn't her strong suit... Still, the film diverges subtly,
but substantially from the book The middle of the story has been cleaned up
and more or less sorted out Scenes have been merged, deleted, had their locations changed - lots of small adaptational stuff... A huge change - Ana's inner monologue has been dropped entirely While she is still the point of view character, with the camera rarely cutting away to scenes that she's not in, she is no longer the narrator This has substantial and far-reaching impacts on both the general tone and reading of the story, but particularly on Ana's character NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]: "Double crap! Me and my 2 left feet..." [movie dialogue - Christian]:
"Miss Kavanagh?" NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]: "Holy cow! He's so young!" [movie dialogue - Christian]:
"You alright?" NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]:
"If this guy's over 30, then I'm a monkey's uncle ..." [movie dialogue - Christian]: "Christian Grey" NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]:
"Holy crap! What the hell is he doing here?" NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]:
"Looking all outdoorsy with his tousled hair and in his cream chunky knit sweater, jeans, and walking boots..." [movie dialogue - Christian]:
"I thought it was you." [movie dialogue - Christian]:
"What a pleasant surprise, Miss Steele" [movie dialogue - Ana]:
"...just Ana" [movie dialogue - Christian]:
"I'm not gonna touch you.
Not until I have your written consent." NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]: "What does that mean?!" NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]: Does he white slave small children to some godforsaken part of the planet? Is he part of some underworld crime syndicate?" NARRATION [Ana's inner monologue from the book]:
"It would explain why he's so rich. Is he deeply religious? Is he impotent? Surely not. He could prove that to me right now..." Ana is generally made more competent and proactive, simply by excluding all the times in the book where something will happen and her inner monologue will comment on how she doesn't understand what's going on or what people are talking about Movie!Ana is a lot more confident, funnier, emotionally aware, and less of a swooning catastrophe And the movie cuts out the dozen or so times that small interactions with Christian leave her a sobbing wreck She also doesn't complain endlessly in her head about her friends and is quicker to put her foot down when Christian gets out of line It is left to the audience to extrapolate from Dakota Johnson's acting exactly how comfortable and safe they think Ana is in any given scene As a further consequence of moving the point of view out of Ana's head it dramatically alters the abusive elements of the book, and this in turn ties into changes to Christian who, as a character, has been softened to be a bit more natural and less volatile. He doesn't scream at people. He doesn't berate Ana constantly for her eating habits. He doesn't talk constantly about wanting to possess her. He's just a...bad, kind of...needy boyfriend. That's still not good, but it means there's at least something likable about the Movie!Christian, where Book!Christian is cruel, capricious,
and constantly on the edge of violence [reading from the novel] And this is a good point to mention that it's kind of okay if Christian is a garbage person; . Like, from a narrative standpoint: it's not bad that Christian is bad - that he's a bad person or a bad boyfriend It's a story; it's drama - we want conflict We want some volatility and excitement, and even a level of emotional intensity that would be exhausting in real life, but is fun to pretend with for a few hours Him being a bad boyfriend, a poor communicator, emotionally distant; these give the characters things to conflict over, things for them to clash against - generating tension, drama, and story. To take an example from later in the film: Christian spanks Ana in a way that the film plays as playful There's a lot of good tension in the scene with Ana's conflicting desires. And yeah: Dakota Johnson has played the scene as Ana realizing that she kinda likes it And then Christian up and leaves and Ana, being abandoned,
starts to break down from the intensity of it. This is actually really good drama It's presented as not any one thing but the aggregate combination of the intensity and Christian's emotional unavailability It is left to the viewer to decide just how far they think Ana thinks Christian has gone... What has been removed are the pages of internal monologue where Ana feels like she's been assaulted, but rationalizes it away because of how much she loves Christian [reading aloud from the novel] This is how Book!Ana consistently
frames the encounter She doesn't process it as play, but as abuse. And Christian dismisses her concerns out of hand... [reading aloud from the novel] Again, this isn't (from a story perspective)
strictly bad in isolation It is a source of conflict But the real world implications are troubling and the conflict is never confronted or properly resolved Christian just tells Ana to get over it; that if she really loved him, she'd be a good submissive and just deal with it And that friction never becomes part of
Book!Ana's motivations Moving on: the entire opening of the film is a great case study in the difference in skill and craft between the original and the filmmakers The opening montage is actually really good. Lots of good leading lines. Lots of well juxtaposed shots and parallels It sets the color palette, the musical tone, the visual pace. It's really solid filmmaking fundamentals This shot of Ana looking up at Grey House; where it's all slanted because it's putting her off-kilter Is great judicious use of a Dutch angle, that also helps fit a very tall building into a narrow frame Using visuals to contrast Ana and Christian is a much better introduction to the two characters than they get in the book where they don't...even...really...have one? because they're clearly Bella and Edward
(who you already know, because you - dear fanfiction reader - have read all of Twilight...twice) [dialogue from the novel - Christian]
"First: I don't make love. I f@ck. Hard." A significant alteration to the interview, is injecting a bit of awareness of the lameness of the interview as written in the book Where Ana asks a series of banal and low-key insulting questions that Christian just answers one-after-the-other There's a bit of verbal sparring, but it's overwhelmingly the kind of utilitarian information-dump that serves to get the fanfiction reader up to speed on the new rules of the story's universe The filmmakers wisely discard most of this and plant two moments in to acknowledge that the interview... [laughingly] kinda sucks [movie dialogue - Ana]
(awkwardly) "Uh. You are very young to have amassed such an empire; to what do..." [movie dialogue - Christian]
(breaks in; bored) "To what do I owe my success? [movie dialogue - Ana]
(chagrined) "...Yep." But then unfortunately, the source material
comes *crashing* back in... [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Are you gay?" Alright, okay. Okay. Let's pause for a bit... So, this is as good a time as any to mention the shades of homophobia and misogyny that lay over Master of the Universe
and all subsequent derivatives... In the books, given that the reader
is privy to all of Ana's thoughts, it becomes obvious - almost comical - how almost every man and woman that Ana comes across is evaluated as a possible sexual competitor Particularly relevant to this scene: Christian staffs his office exclusively with hot blonde women in tight skirts and blazers, and Ana starts to refer to them throughout the books as "the Stepford blondes" Ana's blonde roommate, Kate, also falls into a relationship with a billionaire; starting a fling with Christian's brother Elliot that also evolves over the course of the books into marriage and babies, but Kate is subject to endless internal criticism for doing...well, pretty much exactly what Ana is doing [reading from the novel] ...Then there's the gay thing. [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Are you gay?" There's a character (a masseuse), dropped from the movies, that the books go to comical lengths to point out that he's gay Totally gay. Super gay. Definitely gay. And thus allowed to be around Ana when Christian isn't there... then of course there's this; which somehow made it all the way through the adaptation process including the even stranger companion line from later, where Ana spreads the rumor to undercut two of her classmates that she overhears talking about how cute her secret boyfriend is [movie dialogue - classmate 1]
"He is *so* hot." [movie dialogue - classmate 2]
"Oh gosh! He so is." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"I heard he's gay." I'm actually at a complete loss as to why that's there... However, bad is this question may be; it does lead into a great example of how much better the film is than the novel In the book, Ana and Christian are sitting on a large couch for the entire interview they just sit down and talk and talk, and eventually the time for the interview runs out when one of the blondes comes in and tells him his next meeting is almost ready to start, but Christian cancels it. The lead-in to Christian canceling the meeting is Ana telling Christian that Kate is sick. [reading aloud from the novel] In contrast, here's how the movie handles the same transition point in the conversation [movie dialogue - Christian]
"What about you?" [movie dialogue - Christian]
"Why don't you ask me something
that *you* want to know." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Earlier, you said that there are some people who know you well..." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Why do I get the feeling that that is not true?" [movie dialogue - Blonde #2]
"Mr. Grey," your next meeting is in the conference room..." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"Cancel it, please. We're not finished here." [movie dialogue - Blonde #2]
"Yes, sir." So first of all, we're working with visual levels: Christian spends most of the scenes standing over Ana; a straightforward power position. But with the turning point, he moves to the chair; brings himself down to Ana's level So we have some visual power play Second, rather than leading into Christian canceling the meeting with a banal point about Kate being sick It's a pointed question from Ana that is actually disarming this question, paraphrased: "Why do I get the feeling no one knows the real you?", piques his interest; it creates an honest-to-god emotional exchange Christian invites Ana to test him; even disarms himself a little as part of his game, and she cuts right through his facade [movie dialogue - Ana]
"I just wonder if perhaps your heart might be a bit
bigger than you want to let on?" But this question also makes Ana into a far more emotionally intelligent character than she is in the novels Movie!Anastasia sees right through most of Christian's games Where the novel version of this exchange is predatory, (Christian manipulating the largely oblivious Ana) the film version has Christian attempting to toy with Ana and being caught off guard by her response This is part of a pattern in the film where Ana has been injected with a lot of much-needed narrative agency [movie dialogue - Ana]
"He asked me to go for coffee afterwards." This one line, for example, actually represents a huge change to Ana's character versus the novels. The scene is from chapter 3 of the book and in the book, the whole process of
negotiating going for coffee, takes *a page and a half* of arguing the logistics of who is going to drive José and his assistant home, because Ana doesn't actually want to go? or she's not sure if she wants to? and maybe she wants to? but she kind of doesn't? [reading aloud from the novel] [movie dialogue - Ana]
"He asked me to go for coffee afterwards." The filmmakers have put in effort
to create *actual* escalation this small change: having Ana *actually*
want to go for coffee at least kinda makes things look like some hot-and-cold romantic tension. The thing with the books, is that Ana constantly
(and I do mean do mean CONSTANTLY) mentally beats the crap out of herself for the idea of liking Christian and having any sort of sexual ideas. She is perpetually on the verge
of a COMPLETE meltdown Like, at the end of the coffee scene, which the filmmakers have mercifully reworked into something resembling human dialog, Ana is almost hit by a cyclist,
but is pulled out of the way by Christian and then they look into each other's eyes, and he tells her she should 'stay away' from him because they're no good for each other In the film, that's it. Ana looks a bit sad because, I mean: she's just being pretty clearly rejected, but she walks away and goes about her life and we skip to later in an otherwise normal week... In the book, she goes into the parking garage and has a complete sobbing meltdown that leaves her curled up in the fetal position on the concrete [reading aloud from the novel] Adding this stability to the character, leads to some of the film's best moments and some legitimately fun and funny lines Like: Ana and her friends go out drinking to celebrate the end of their exams, and while standing in line for the washroom, Ana drunk-dials Christian. While on the phone, she quite accurately mocks Christian's behavior up to that point [movie dialogue - Christian]
"Listen to me: I want you to go home right now." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"You're so bossy!" [movie dialogue - Ana]
(imitating Christian) "Ana, let's go for a coffee.
(deep, sultry voice) Ana, let's go for coffee." [movie dialogue - Ana]
(imitating Christian) "No. Stay away from me, Ana.
I don't want you." [movie dialogue - Ana]
(imitating Christian) Get away.
Come here! Come here! Go away." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"I said, tell me where you are." It's great. That's hilarious. This of course works, because Movie!Ana is actually able to more or less accurately read his emotional state where Book!Ana is confused by everything... Now up to this point,
(we're about 22 minutes into the movie), the filmmakers have done an admirable job of massaging the story into something with actual pacing and maybe a little less nonsense, within the constraint of not being allowed to alter any plot points Unfortunately, this scene is when they run up against that as an inescapable problem it's the big jump in the plot that
needed the most work to smooth it over and they weren't allowed to touch it... So, going off the broad template for these types of stories we have our hot-and-cold intro, where the two characters circle each other for a bit Then the first big break, where they fall apart, and then something that brings them crashing back into each other Gwen Hayes, in her book, "Romancing the Beat:
how to write kissing books" calls this moment "adhesion", because it doesn't just bring the characters back together, but is the point that they get *stuck*. That last point can be really hard to come up with in a satisfying way Especially when the characters are, as is the case here, from two radically different worlds that don't really intersect. How do you get the billionaire and the University student back together? How do you get them to stay together? It's challenging... So, being in a situation where they were forbidden from changing the plot point, the filmmakers had a choice: Do we keep the detail about Christian hacking her phone or not? [reading aloud from the novel] Yeah, maybe a good skip there... The scene still has problems: like Elliot
just sort of being invented out of nowhere, Christian and Elliot being inside the bar already,
stuff like that... A lot changes very quickly... This is somewhat mitigated in the movie, because the cut from standing in line for the washroom, to leaving the bar, is a bit more ambiguous (where the book follows Ana through every step in between) and I'm pretty sure Christian and Elliot get to the bar faster than they should have been able to get to the hotel's parking garage... And since we're at the bar, Okay: we should talk about José. So the problem with José, is a problem that goes back to the very beginning and I'm not talking about the low-key racism, the "Dios mios", or the fact that José tries to molest Ana though, you know: make note of all of those... No, what we're talking about is the narrative utility of José and how he fits (or more often fails to fit) into the story. Here's what José does in the books: He's Ana and Kate's friend, though he's an engineering major and not an English major He does photography, though mostly of architecture but gets press-ganged into doing Christian's head shots for Kate's article, because her normal photographer isn't available. After exams are done, he goes out drinking with Kate and Ana, tries to get Ana super drunk, then gropes her in the parking lot before Christian intervenes Marcell and Taylor Johnson had the right idea that at this point, José's narrative utility (if not his friendship with Ana) is done. And he more or less disappears for the rest of the movie... In the book, he continues to float around in the background and Ana's like: 'oh, what's a little attempted date-rape between friends?' 'Just don't do it again!' and he's always sort of there, as though he's going to form part of a love triangle that never happens, because he's Jacob Black; and you can't just cut him out of your fanfiction or Team Jacob will revolt. It's a little weird... [movie dialogue - Christian]
"It's just behind this door." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"What is?" [movie dialogue - Christian]
"My play room." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Like your Xbox and stuff?" The dialogue in the playroom is lifted straight out of the book, so of course it's all...awful." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"I'm a dominant." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"What does that mean?" [movie dialogue - Christian]
"It means I want you to willingly
surrender yourself to me." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Whyyyy would I do that?" [movie dialogue - Christian]
"To please me." All the scenes in the playroom are the scenes that, according to Sam Taylor-Johnson, Mitchell was most protective of. Christian does an awful job at
pitching the whole situation, which kiiiiiinda makes sense given what his actual damage is, but the problem is that we're not going to learn that he's actually really bad at the whole Dom thing until really far into the next movie Like, okay: it isn't actually acknowledged until ...842 pages into the series [reading aloud from the novel] Even then, that subject is going to be more or less compartmentalized to a single scene It's an element that's never confronted,
so much as sidestepped, by having the characters never actually engage in any meaningful S/D interactions beyond Ana's lightweight brat routine, the outcome of which is mostly light bondage and a bit of spanking... It's also undercut by the whole thing where Christian insists that he doesn't do dates, has never slept in the same bed as someone else, doesn't do romance and flowers and lovemaking, but he does: he took her out for coffee... That's a date. At least they follow up this first playroom scene with another substantial change for the better, when Ana tells Christian that she's still a virgin [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Because I have...I haven't..." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"You're still a virgin?" Now, this plot point is retained from the book and it still feels kind of fetishistic and is a bit off-putting for that, but how its responded to is substantially better. In the book, Christian stalks around the room, running his hands through his hair, yelling and growling, and castigating Ana. [reading aloud from the novel] Marcel and Taylor-Johnson on the other hand,
lay on the mushy romance [movie dialogue - Christian]
"Where have you been?" [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Waiting." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"Men must throw themselves at you." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Never one I've wanted." This does, however, just further detail that basic flaw in the telling of Christian's character Christian has spent multiple scenes telling Ana all about how he doesn't do romance, doesn't do flowers, doesn't do dates... [movie dialogue - Christian]
"First, I don't make love." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"I f@ck. Hard." But at a pin drop, he just decides some old-fashioned lovemaking is in order, so... Yeah... I try not to get in the habit of suggesting fixes, but it's really hard not to do that here Just have Ana be the one to escalate once they start kissing. I mean, that's the whole conflict here, isn't it? Ana's moony-eyed romance vs
Christian's business-like dominance? Maybe have a bit more push and pull with that; he gets her to try out some spanky stuff and she finds out she likes it, he opens up a bit to flowers and romance and finds out it's not so bad either... That kinda is the big emotional arc here... And it is *eventually* acknowledged when Christian agrees to a regular date night once a week (that, for the record, never happens) But maybe introduce that idea a bit earlier than, I don't know, 260 pages into the book ? But that's really an unfair comparison, because again, in the book version of this scene, Christian is stalking the room and yelling at Ana, and talks at length about how he's just having sex with her to rectify her virginity Which he sees as a problem...sooooooooo...yeah. [movie dialogue - Christian]
"I've never taken anyone in the helicopter." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"I've never had sex in my own bed." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"I've never slept next to anyone." When they're walking out in the woods on the way back to Portland, this happens again where Christian tells Ana (and us) all the things he's done with Ana, that he's never done with anyone else Like taking them in the helicopter, having sex in his sleeping bed instead of his designated sex bed, having sex that was outside the frame of a submission and domination relationship... But the impact of that is undercut by the fact that there hasn't really been any conflict there There's no friction for Christian. He's not unsure of himself. He's not lost. He enjoys it well enough,
so it's not a character growth moment. Really, he's just describing the fact that yesterday he experienced an incredibly banal first... [mock alternate dialogue - Christian]
"Ana, before yesterday, I'd never had Boo Berry before. We always got Corn Pops..." [mock alternate dialogue - Christian]
"And when you put rooster sauce on the eggs; I'd never done that before either. They were ok..." So what this scene ends up doing, which I think almost works if you put this first film in a bottle, is it emphasizes that Christian's reticence to compromise is pretty unreasonable It still doesn't do that well, but it does do it. This is an important contrast to Ana, who has stepped far more dramatically outside her comfort zone and found that she is, for the most part, overwhelmed by the scope and intensity of what Christian is asking, far more than any small part. And again, it needs to be highlighted that Christian really isn't presented as breaking through any significant hurdles There is no conflict leading up to Christian asking Ana out for coffee There's no panic attack about wanting to take a romantic interest flying in his helicopter. It's effortless. There's a lot of nuanced argument over the idea of 'show don't tell'; like we can come up with all kinds of examples where just telling the audience what's going on is actually pretty effective, and then we could get into further debate over whether or not those examples are still supported, or themselves support visual or environmental evidence that shows the thing we're being told, and thus it's all a combination of showing and telling... But this right here Christian Grey just *saying* it's a big deal that he's never had in his sleeping bed instead of his sex bed This right here is the poster child for the kind of limp storytelling that leads to getting your writing back from the editor with 'show don't tell' written in big red letters in the margin. We are told that this is a conflict; that this is all outside Christian's comfort zone but that conflict is supported by absolutely nothing else As a result, this point ends up falling into a hazy space where it's not a satisfying parallel between the two characters because the stakes are so disproportionate, but it's also not just cute banter, because there's clearly supposed to be weight to it in the cinematic language. This is the culmination of a scene where Christian tells Ana the first inkling of his dark past and admits that he's still friends with the woman who raped him when he was a teenager The characters are framed at a path's dead end on the edge of dark water Ana is trapped visually in the noisy chaotic half of the frame, with Christian acting as the barrier between a cage and freedom. The soundtrack is tense, kind of sinister; Visually, the color palette of the scene gets colder as the scene progresses; When they walk down the path, the highlights are warm at the docks, they're neutral and when we come in for the close-up,
they're cool and muted The scene is emotionally and literally getting darker. But for what? This is the kind of moment that encapsulates why this movie stuck with me in the way it did. Moments of talented, subtle filmmaking, in the service of material that just does it no justice. The biggest example of this is the negotiation. Earlier, we discussed how the middle of the book is a mess. Lots of disjointed chapters, repeated scenes, fragmented developments, and awful stuff. This is where they managed to sort most of that out. The scene is an amalgamation of mostly chapters 13 and 15: two of the worst in the book. I say 'worst', because they are a couple of the scenes where we get the clearest example of Christian just absolutely disregarding Ana's agency, comfort, and explicit wishes. In the first, a dinner meeting: Ana explicitly asks that they stay in public for the conversation and Christian immediately moves her to a private dining room. [reading aloud from the novel] In the second, the actual meat and potatoes negotiation: Christian keeps pressing Ana to drink more despite nna being a lightweight. [reading aloud from the novel] [distorted voice] Mmmm...Yeah! Anyway, the filmmakers have pulled all of the negotiations stuff together into a single scene that really gives us an idea of what things maybe could have looked like in an alternate universe where Mitchell had less control over the project. It's witty. It's sassy. It's fun. There's a cute power play between the characters... This is part of the overall trend of imbuing Movie!Ana with more agency and awareness She isn't getting under his skin by accident.
She's deliberately flirting... [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Find 'anal fisting'." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"I'm all ears..." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Strike it out." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Strike out vaginal fisting too" [movie dialogue - Christian]
"You sure?" [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Yeah." It also ties into the changes to Christian. Ana isn't afraid of what he's going to do;
how he's going to respond She's not worried that she's making him angry It creates a much needed dramatic moment where it looks like things might actually work out; that they'll be able to reach a proper compromise before everything starts to fall apart again. This is the midpoint: the false high; and for the most part this scene works in its own little bubble I mean, out of the bubble, it's a complete waste because despite the fact that they have this whole negotiation Where Ana gets basically
all the concessions that she wants and then in the next scene at her graduation,
she tells Christian 'yes', she still doesn't physically sign the contract, and it becomes something that they argue about on-and-off for the rest of the book / movie because both do a really poor job at distinguishing between kinky sex (which is what they still do), and the full on 24/7 total package Dom/Sub lifestyle that Christian wants. And this is where the movie actually stumbles... Counter-intuitively: getting less coherent by being better. Like, okay: it still doesn't make sense in the book what the actual stakes are, because the two of them are just endlessly arguing about nothing But that kind of gets worse in the movie because the movie versions of the characters are at least nominally capable of having an honest and open conversation about their relationship So changing it, to be a scene where Ana is sober and professional and gets Christian to make numerous compromises, but never addresses the punishment angle, Actually makes less sense, than a scene where Christian gets Ana drunk and steamrolls her opinions with a few minor concessions. But still: the lighting works, the timing works, the acting works, Danny Elfman's score is at its most...Danny Elfman Eroticism is used to build the characters and tell the story, which is not what can be said for about 90% of the sex in both the book and the movie. I think the scenes in Fifty Shades are well shot. They're well lit. They're well scored. And they managed to convey an engaging level of eroticism so they're at least trashy fun... But there's a deeper problem where they fail to work as scenes. Almost all of them can be cut from the film and leave little impact with their absence. This actually makes a lot of sense, if we go all the way back and review the origins of the text. Master of the Universe, as you'll recall, was originally published on fanfiction.net which has a prohibition on sexually explicit content. How effective that prohibition has historically been is up for debate... But regardless, Erika Mitchell worked around it by posting saucy versions of the story there and more explicit versions to her personal website so if it seems like the characters do all their relevant character talking and then stop to have sex that these sex scenes are a post hoc addition to the actual story, It's because they are. This is all just a roundabout way of getting around to talking about the end of the film So, when the film was in production: the second and third films had not technically been greenlit yet There were contracts securing principal creatives in the event of the second and third films being made But Fifty Shades of Grey went into production with the possibility that it would be the only adaptation actually made I know it seems silly to think that Paramount would only make one of the books into a movie in a post Harry Potter / Hunger Games world But also consider that while Fifty Shades' rise to fame had been swift, there was always the possibility that it would fade just as quickly If you buy the film rights in 2013 for a book that had only really been out for a year and a half How sure are you that audiences will still
be around in 4? 5 years? By the time Darker and Freed were greenlit, Grey was already deep into post-production I bring it up, because it places unique creative pressure on the director and screenwriter who now need to try and craft a movie that will work both as a potential standalone film, and as the first act of a three-part series With that as foreplay, let's talk about the final scene in the playroom: the belt whipping scene [sound of belt hitting]
[Ana huffs out a pained breath] Alright, so something vague has gone wrong with Christian's vague business stuff. In the book, I think it's that one of Christian's cargo boats with relief aid food bound for Africa is sunk by... pirates? or something? And he's sunk into a deep funk over this Ana tries to sex him back to happiness, by letting him tie her up and blindfold her but it doesn't work, because it's not extreme enough So he's sitting up late at night playing sad piano. The two of them have a very confusing argument about the contract that Ana has agreed to, but not signed, that ultimately kind of revolves around the fact that Ana really just doesn't like the idea of punishment. This is actually where a lot of kink and BDSM enthusiasts take the most umbrage because of the specific dominant/submissive interaction of rules and punishments and rewards is where Erika Mitchell basically says that if people enjoy *those* kinds of games, it's because they're emotionally damaged [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Why?" [movie dialogue - Christian]
"It's the way I am." Either way, the conversation gets more confusing when Christian insists that the contract is still in force in spirit, even though she didn't sign it, and if she acts out there will be punishment. And so Ana says,
'okay fine - show me how bad it can get' And Christian brings her into the playroom and tells her he's going to whip her with a belt 6 times. Now, I want to reiterate something I said earlier. From a story standpoint, it's okay if Christian is a bit of a bastard, because it gives the characters something to conflict over Just...[sound of frustration] ...something needs to come of it One of the things that Sam Taylor-Johnson wanted to do with this scene, was have Ana use her safe word 'red' while Christian keeps going. And that... is actually a brilliant change, or it would have been if it had happened. It properly centers the conflict around Christian's actual character flaws It calls attention to his selfishness. Makes his disregard for Anastasia's well-being explicit and gives Ana a very, very good reason to leave the relationship IMMEDIATELY. It is an overt betrayal of her trust It says that Christian thinks he's in control, but ultimately lacks the self-control to restrain himself It points out that his love of rules is ultimately a shallow facade to justify his very mundane abuse That right there *shows us* the thing that Mitchell is going to try to *tell us* in the next book. [reading aloud from the novel] It would have been a great change and Erica Mitchell lost her mind. Reports from set are that this dialogue change triggered an hour-long shouting match in front of cast and crew until ultimately Mitchell got her way. The scene as included in the movie plays out pretty much exactly the same as it does in the book; where Ana takes the whipping and then freaks out because she can't quite process that Christian likes the S & M parts of BDSM Anyway, Sam Taylor-Johnson and Kelly Marcel are far better storytellers than Erica Mitchell and they understand Mitchell's story better than she does as evidenced by the closing moments of the film, where Ana goes to leave, Cristian moves to intercept her, and she tells him "no" [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Stop. No!" Of course that would play a million times better if the story had actually been about boundaries But as it is, it still plays as part of an artistically strong final scene culminating in the fantastic final shot of the theatrical edition [movie dialogue - Christian]
"Ana" [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Christian" The Unrated Edition adds a sad montage that is weaker as a standalone film, but ties into Fifty Shades Darker a bit more naturally Again, that challenge of making a film that will work as both. It's kind of the bottom line here: the film is surprisingly well made, with a deliberate artfulness for a movie that still, ultimately - isn't very good Its watchable, and it has its distinct highlights and craft and skill There are scenes and moments that are good, even great, but the whole is still less than the sum of its parts undercut by fundamentally flawed source material and with all that: conclusion of video blahdey, blah closing statements... We're going to keep going with this. That's right. We're not done! We've got two more of these suckers to get through and it's all downhill from here Oh, yeah! Just you wait: some stuff to look forward to when we talk about Darker: Sam Taylor-Johnson and Kelly Marcel getting fired! For, you know trying to make the movie better.. The serial thickness ramping up to high gear. The budget cuts. The helicopter crash. The stalkers. [movie dialogue - Ana]
"Why do you have my bank account details?" [movie dialogue]
"Online hits don't automatically translate to print sales." [movie dialogue - Ana]
Well... But they could." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"The right term is a sadist... I get off on punishing women; women who look like..." [movie dialogue - Ana]
"...like you mother." [movie dialogue]
"Our reporter, Rachel Taylor. Rachel..."
"Thank you John. I'm speaking to you live from the private helicopter terminal..." [movie dialogue]
"They'll find him. He'll be ok." [movie dialogue - newscast]
"...have been found safe and well and are at this moment on their way back to see a..." [movie dialogue - Christian]
"What the hell are y'all doing here?" Oh boy! ♪
Oh shit, it is an hour long? I guess this is why Dan hasn't posted in a many months
I really like his videos. I kinda wondered what happened because it's been a while since the last one
Could anyone elaborate more on what he means by the word "framing"? Obviously, Dan isn't against depicting any unhealthy dynamic at all even if it's for the sake of titillating the audience. Is he reffering to how the author discusses the topic outside of the book? (Not acknowledging its abuse and rape etc.)
It sort of sounded like he was arguing that representing kink as something people get into only because of past trauma was harmful but maybe that's unrelated to the topic of framing.
Is the argument that the fiction itself frames the relationship as nothing more than being kinky and that's where the harm comes from?
Because if so couldn't you also argue novels like Lolita or Fightclub where characters mischaracterize harmful dynamics and behaviour as something to be romanticized are harmful? Sure you could argue that the intent is different. In those books, the audience is intended by the authors to recognize on their own what's problematic about the characters whereas with Fifty Shades the author didn't seem to have that goal in mind. Regardless though all three books present how harm results from the actions done and audiences for all three books have some portion that takes a problematic message away from the work and some that don't. Maybe it has more to do with how it's written idk. Sorry if I really misunderstood some basic part of the video. It was really well made in how it handled the nuance of the topic and the acknowledgement of how a lot of the criticism levied against the book came from of misogyny and not genuine concern was a thoughtful inclusion.
Also hearing Mike Rugnetta read cheesy fanfiction is something I didn't know I needed in my life.
Fifty shades of Grey is not a bad movie. It's a great adaptation of an awful book. Blame the book, not the movie.