I’m fascinated by the question of why some things become popular and seemingly equal things go flat. Honestly, nobody has the answer to that question, because if they did, every book would become a best seller, and every movie would win the Oscars. Still, I like to puzzle things out.
With all the press about the movie, 50 Shades of Grey, (my favorites are this and this), I decided to reread the books last weekend. The second read was worse that the first time, because I gotten over the shock of riding crops and other painful devices, and all I was left was bad prose. And really troubling gender relations (ugh, he makes her change her name) and distasteful materialism (ugh, he buys her cars).
Ultimately, this is a fantasy-fulfillment book. And it’s more than just sex. The heroine gets a Bill Gates-rich husband, several custom designed homes, fast cars, a new wardrobe, an intact extended family, a staff, a prestigious, but undemanding career, and the ability to never be hungry. Is this what women really want?
Apt. 11d 
As other people have said, do guys really want to be shot at or to kill people?
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Those are two very different questions.
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I love romance fiction, and I like a lot of fanfic, but this…. I just do not get it.
And I think that basically, there are two types of people. People who like to think about what they read/watch/etc., and those that just don’t care the same way. It’s like the difference between people who like Parks and Recreation and those who like Two and a Half Men. For a lot of people, the pleasure comes in thinking about what stories they’re consuming, and for others, the pleasure is in not thinking, just taking in the very thinnest surface layer.
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It isn’t fantasy fulfillment. It is just fantasy. It is something some women want to think about for a while, but it doesn’t mean they actually want it. And yeah, it is crap. I admire your ability to make it through them all even once, let alone twice. I gave up early on the first one.
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I wrote a comment, but I must have taken longer than 10 minutes…wouldn’t post. So here’s a quicker, less brilliant one.
I don’t get it either. Yet, I read all three books. I really disliked them – the writing, the misogyny, the grammar, everything. But I read them. Not sure why.
I refuse to see the movie. My daughter made me watch the Kristof “A Path Appears” series with her this weekend instead. In that context, it just made the 50 shades stuff all the more “ick” I’m reading his books now (Path Appears and Half the Sky) to redeem myself from the ick. Good Stuff.
My favorite review: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/pain-gain
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I really wish they could have gotten Sarah Silverman to play the psyche. That’s a movie I would have seen.
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Dudes, if the commenting problem persists, LMK. I’ll get back on the phone with tech support.
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Another lost comment. This one is an experiment.
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I read a few pages and then just couldn’t. Too stupid, not my kind of smut.
When the book was doing well, the theory I read everywhere was that mostly middle-aged women with kindles were discovering the joy of erotica and didn’t know where to find anything better. Maybe so. I’d like to know more about the demographics of who is seeing it – age, education level, red state or blue. But I’m not sure anything can explain it to my satisfaction other than people are weird and dumber than you realize.
I think Wendy may have the right of it and her comment reminds me of a professor I had who said, your daydreams aren’t worth writing down, they’ll make a potboiler at best, it’s your actual dreams (the subconscious at work while you sleep kind of dreams) that make literature.
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Middle aged women with kindles are too stupid to use the search function? Cause that is all that’s needed to find something better.
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I’m going with the people discovering erotica, and especially the more out there stuff on their kindle. But I worry that it’s not just ‘middle aged women” but also younger women, and potentially younger girls.
I also gave up sometime into the first part of the first book and I am amazed that you were able to read them twice. With all the hype, I bought the first one (yes, on my kindle), but then threw it away because i thought it was so bad (I once wanted to do that with a library book on vampire groupies that I borrowed out of the library, but I resisted, but, a book I bought, and, especially an electronic one, I realized I could throw away without concerns about the morality of book “burning”).
Did anyone else read the NY Times article by Emily Bazelon about Ellie Clougherty an intern from Stanford and Joe Lonsdale, who was a internet millionaire mentor in a class she took, and the relationship they developed? There’s no evidence in the article about the intimate life, as written in 50 shades (though there are oblique references), but the power dynamics/rich man fantasies seem to parallel the book in a number of troubling ways. Making the connection in my mind makes me worry that some young people are imagining such relationships to be typical, rather than atypical (and by that, I mean the intimate life in 50 shades).
The rich man fantasy is in a lot of romance fantasy, not to mention fairy tales, though social convention required that fantasy to remain more innocent (i.e. not a quid pro quo, though in real life I’ve always suspected that there’s a quid pro quo to any seriously unequal relationship).
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Laura — my first request timed out, but the I was able to post by pasting the comment (which I’d saved) into the box after reloading the page. Better than what used to happen, but still not working perfectly.
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test
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test test test
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more tests, more tests, this is silly, not a good use of my time, blah blah blah, i need a drink, 30 minutes until the kids come home…
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Testy?
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kklsldfkj;alskdf alsj lsdkjf alkjfd
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mjbbm kj jh kj what am i going to make for dinner? I am so sick of cooking dinner. can’t we just eat granola bars and fruit loops. i also sick of cold weather, long tech support phone calls, and after school activities. had a nice lunch in little korea yesterday. had to leave early because ian’s art club was suddenly canceled. which freaked him out. picked him up in tears from school at 3:30. test test test
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kljh lkjh kjh kljh kjh lkjh kljh kjh lkjh had a minor meltdown, because the one day i go into the city to have a nice lunch, the school calls me with this art club emergency. had to throw money on the table and run out. can’t leave the house ever. have a big meeting in the city next week. hope the school doesn’t screw me up
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slkdjf aa;lskdj ;lskdjf al;sdkjf ;lsdkjf a;lsdkjf ;alskdjf a;lskj i’m just rambling, rambling. let’s see if this works. nobody knows what’s going on. i’m going on vacation in five weeks to florida. need some sun now. we want to go to london in the summer. it depends on finances. really want to get the hell out of here.
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London, w00t!
German schools, even elementary schools, will cancel full hours of instruction and just expect parents to be home so the kids can come late or return early. When I’m Kaiser, a whole bunch of education is going to change on the very first day.
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The Kaiser will make things roll.
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Kaisers can be rather crusty.
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I was waiting for that.
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If you get a timed out error, hit the back and then the forward keys on your browser. That’s the short term solution. I’m waiting for a geek to get back to me to fix this. They said 24 hours.
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It’s the #1 movie as of Monday, so there will be a sequel. (Haven’t watched the movie, don’t plan to, but I do recommend the YouTube Lego version of the trailer.)
Past a certain point of buzz, I figure people will buy stuff in order to appear “in the know” to others.
As for young women, I haven’t gotten through the first book in either trilogy, but for my money, I think Twilight was worse. In Twilight, the love interest literally kills the heroine, right? And is in many ways the epitome of the stalkerish, controlling boyfriend.
Who’s more controlling, the vampire from Twilight or the helicopter owner from 50 Shades?
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Aren’t they the same thing? That is 50 Shades is just Twilight fanfic with the names changed and “vampire” replaced with “billionaire.”
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was going to say the same thing – atrocious prose, helpless heroines who get everything they could want by languishing helplessly, abusive powerful boyfriends.. looked like the same book to me too. I read nearly thirty pages of Twilight before abandoning, never attempted 50 shades. The Mills & Boon romances I remember from thirty years ago had heroines with more agency than these.
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I agree about the buzz/tipping point, and I think that there can be a chaotic route to that tipping point (in the traditional mathematical sense, where small perturbations in the system can result in large variations in end points). I feel like the rapid/concurrent communication via the internet plays a role, but I think I don’t know enough about buzz in the old days to really compare. I feel like school playgrounds played a role in the old days (say, for things like the lemon twist) but that the school “playground” is broader these days with online communication among the young trendsetters, including the young kids/tweens/teens.
Yes, Twilight was truly creepy. I discouraged my kid read it when everyone was talking about it, when she was, I think really too young, at 8. I told her I didn’t think she would like it, and she believed me enough not to read it and then she out grew the idea of reading it. I don’t think she has read it now.
But, I think 50 shades has similar themes, and am not sure that the literal death (but fantasy, in which one continues to live after dying) is worse than the details of the 50 shades relationship (though the loss of one’s immortal soul would be pretty bad, if I believed one had one).
Also, I think what I find more troublesome about 50 shades v Twilight is that Twilight is not possible (i.e. vampires, who turn you into immortals too), while one can play out the relationship in 50 shades (and, skimming the complaint in the Clougherty/Lonsdale case — which made me sad, I worry that they did, though it’s also possible that it is fantasy or miscommunication).
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There’s also buzz/tipping point as permission — if there’s an audience for written porn out there that’s inhibited about going out and actually finding something to their specific tastes, once this thing turned into enough of a phenomenon that reading it didn’t make you a pervert, it might easily have attracted a whole lot of the inhibited audience even if the specifics weren’t all that appealing. That was clearer in my head than on the screen, but I think it makes sense.
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My favorite comments about this movie are that the heroine is lazy. i guess my fantasy is for everything to be given to me on a platter too! http://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8051291/fifty-shades-of-grey
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Ok, members of the Greater Levendee Co-prosperity Sphere, go t Craigslist and spend an hour with Casual Encounters w4m and m4w. Yikes! There’s clearly a LOT of interest in practices I didn’t even KNOW about, much less want to take part. So, given that, probably not so surprising that the book did well.
Two other surprising successes, at least for me: Dilbert and Harry Potter. I mean, I work in an office, I suppose it should have occurred to me that a comic strip (not Dagwood) focused on workplace events would do well. And, Potter. I still think Stalky and Company sort of covered that ground. Thinly characterized, emotions not realistic, and BANG worldwide best seller.
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