50 STATES OF PREY
50 STATES OF PREY
There was a line that was like a snake that went around the theater. There were middle aged men and older women standing in line waiting for the moment when they could purchase advanced tickets to see Fifty Shades of Grey.
I felt like telling those in line that if they waited long enough the film just might wind up being a very bad equal to the Rocky Horror Picture Show where people can yell at the screen and throw hot dogs at the protagonists.
I am sure it wouldn’t have won me any friends by saying the obvious and it probably would equally stir anger if I expressed how this film demonstrates how low Hollywood will go to demean the relationship between a man and a woman.
Moreover to demonstrate how sexual health and wellbeing can be whittled down to predator seeking out and raping its prey.
I have heard enough from friends and others about the movie and the story to realize that in the midst of human trafficking stories, satanic abuse, and sexually abusive behaviors by the elite that this film seems like it is a release valve that has been put into play in order to set a low standard for sexualized films that act as if they are merely a media sexual psy-op.
There have been other films in the past that have standardized and have permitted torture. Movies like The Passion of the Christ, Saw and Hostile have been made and submitted to the public as psychological trauma exercises. The thought of one being centered around the Crucifixion of Christ makes it even more diabolical.
It comes as a surprise to most people that when Mel Gibson first asked people to play in his Christian snuff piece that he hired unknowns to play the parts in the film. At least that is the Hollywood story. Out of the 66 cast members of The Passion, there were 33 that appeared in porn or horror films.
The reason there was a series of torture porn films was because it was Hollywood’s response to terror. However the films that were produced far exceeded any known watched act of terror seen on television and if anything the progress of the torture porn genre has given way to the videos we see on you tube of beheadings and human emollition we see provided by ISIS. If anything the torturous horrors have become real life acts and it is frightening.
In 1961 Albert Bandura did a classic study on what he called social learning theory (i.e. we learn to do what we see done) most often referred to by those in psychology as the "Bobo Doll Study."
He showed some children a film of a grownup beating up a Bobo doll, one of those life -sized punching bags that looks like a clown and has sand in the bottom so you can't knock it over.
The Bobo doll was in a room with other toys in it. The grown-up kept beating the Bobo doll for a good 15 minutes.
Another group of children didn't see the Bobo video.
The children were then allowed to go into the room individually. The children who hadn't seen the grownup beating up Bobo weren't particularly interested in Bobo, but the children who had seen Bobo get beaten up started beating Bobo up in exactly the same way as the grownup they'd seen.
People have argued for years that what we see on television and in film doesn't change our behavior. Bandura proved that it does 50 years ago. And any parent can tell you that "do as I say, not as I do" is a nice concept, but "monkey see, monkey do" is more realistic.
With the advent of the film Fifty Shades of Grey, the public is opening itself up to something that they feel is safe “porn” or what has been coined “mommy porn” to take the heat off of the fact that the blockbuster fan fiction and the new film do not open up discussions about pedophile sex or even deviant predator sex.
The story is fairly simple. Anastasia Steele, a middle-class senior at Washington State University Vancouver, meets Christian Grey, an incredibly handsome, debonair 27-year-old multi-millionaire CEO. They fall in love, hard and fast. Theirs is a romance full of drama and passion, and they end up living the conventional American fantasy: love, marriage, and a kid.
What’s not so conventional is their sex. Early on in the first book, Ana discovers that Christian has a “dark secret”: He’s obsessed with BDSM -- a condensed abbreviation for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.
The frightening thing is that the powerful Christian Grey fits all of the criteria for a sexual predator and coerces consent for his sexual appetites which sends a very troubling signal.
The truth is one on five women be raped within their lifetime, according to the CDC; where nearly 40 percent of those rapes will happen to women aged 18 to 24; and where troubling evidence of casual attitudes toward rape -- such as in 2010 when a number of Ivy League-educated men thought it was okay to chant “no means yes, yes means anal” on their campus is not uncommon.
Images of Ana being beaten by Christian become the new normal for what’s considered erotic and it is a sad display of what can be seen as satanic ritual abuse being embraced by the average woman who sees it as a harmless fantasy.
It gives us a reason to worry when something as poorly written as Fifty Shade of Grey can be eaten up and swallowed as healthy sex fantasy when the lead character Christian Grey demands that his newly found sexual partner rubs her body down with baby oil, tells her to wear pigtails, telling her she is a child, how naive she is, how innocent she is. Grey is a groomer and a controller because he tells her when to sleep, how to eat, dress and act. Even though the character in the book and film are 21, emotionally we learn that she is an innocent littler girl.
Many suspect that Fifty Shades of Grey is just a creepy collection of sexual abuse disguised as a BDSM fantasy. The lie that it enforces is that women’s sexuality and romantic desires can all be wrapped up in pretty bondage ribbons and secured with handcuffs and chains. The other lie is that there is fantasy in all women to have the men in their lives be more sexually and emotionally assertive.
The truth is that the film illustrates how easy it is for a powerful man to groom and eventually rape a subordinate, something that women have fought against for so long.
It also enforces the nice guys finish last myth where men who see themselves as endearing and accommodating have to take a back seat to controlling and manipulative men that abuse the women they associate with.
These are the very things we have overcome and yet we are seeing a resurgence in these negative and shallow stereotypes?
It is important to emphasize that sexual predators, groomers and controllers are cons. 50 Shades of Grey is the story of a powerful conman that grooms an emotionally inept woman into giving in to his sick fantasies of deviant and fetishistic sexual appetites.
Fifty Shades of Grey tends to normalize abnormal sexual situations.
It is also important to shine some light on all of the gray and that is if the main character of the story was not such a mysterious wealthy man, we would probably see him differently. What I mean is strip away this cliché and what you have is a typical sexual deviant with an appetite for finding women that they can groom and later abuse.
Money and power makes Christian Grey more attractive and is a cover for is sexual proclivities. It is all nicely disguised in the straight traditional versions of femininity and masculinity.
Fifty Shades of Grey is far from the first book series to include either explicit sex or BDSM. The late 18th- early 19th-century novels of the Marquis de Sade (the namesake of the word "sadism") depicted explicit, violent sex scenes.
In 1870, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (the namesake of "masochism") wrote about a dominant/submissive relationship in his novel, Venus in Furs.
The Story of O, a French erotic novel published in 1954, depicts a young girl who enters into a submissive sexual relationship with a domineering film director. It was later made into a movie, just like Fifty Shades of Grey.
And in the world of romance novels, the author Anne Rice wrote her three Sleeping Beauty books under a pseudonym in the early 1980s, about an imaginary medieval world where the main character, Beauty, is trained as a submissive sex slave.
The Fifty Shades of Grey fantasy world overlooks some very important truths.
One particular truth is that even though two adults give consent for their sexual romps, it isn’t always enough to encourage emotionally healthy sexual encounters. If consent is given for a sexual encounter that winds up being a dangerous sex game does this constitute assault? If a young woman or man is too shy to say no out loud, but doesn’t really want to hook up with someone, does that constitute sexual assault?
Even though Ana told Christian she wanted to have sex with him, was she really interested in giving in to the world of BDSM or did she do it out of fear or out of some kind of misplaced love?
Is it healthy to realize that the main sexual dynamic between the characters in Fifty Shades of Grey is that when Christian has Anastasia in her most compromising positions; he finds intense pleasure in her pain?
Why are middle aged women drawn to this? How is this seen as love or even sexual attraction when it is nothing more than a predator having its way with its prey?
This is not an easy question, but the answer offered by Fifty Shades of Grey is insufficient. It's one thing to explore power dynamics; it's another to use power to manipulate and control your partner. At several points in the story, it's unclear what Ana really wants from sex. But perhaps that's the most complicated aspect of all: How do people know what they want, really?
I would think they would want better.
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