‘An impressionable young lady with learning difficulties and social anxiety becomes increasingly more alienated from her friends and family as she is stalked by a controlling psychopath bent on trapping her in an abusive relationship.’
It sounds like a hell of a film pitch doesn’t it? Something that Kubrick, Hitchcock or Scorsese would turn into a masterpiece psychological thriller called ‘Lady In Grey’ or some such. It’s only when you add the line ‘… and insert his fist into her bottom up to the elbow’ that the palette becomes somewhat spoiled, much like adding a fish puree chaser to a shot of fine tequila. This is in fact a summary of E. L. James’ Fifty Shades Of Grey, bestselling novel and soon-to-be movie, and like the aforementioned night-ending drink, one which leaves a pungent smell of fish. And yes, I am talking about middle-aged menopause.
It’s not to say that I don’t think an adaptation could be done. In fact it has been successfully recreated on screen multiple times, which I watched on an anonymous web browser in the children’s section of my local library. I just don’t think it should.
For a start, like an old woman with an off-brand hair dye, the roots are painfully obvious. James’ book is a bastardisation of a bastardisation. It’s the King Joffrey of novels. It began life as Twilight fanfic ‘Masters Of The Universe’, which I can only hope was a bizarre He-Man crossover, before graduating into the sensual ‘erotic romance’ of today. Whether Skeletor and Edward Cullen ever got it on we shall never know, for the final product was sadly devoid of homoerotic barbarians, though has a Latino sex pest to compensate. From teenage fantasy then to mums fancy teenagers, Fifty Shades Of Grey evolved. It updated its subject matter and its audience appeal, drawing in women from all demographics and making them moister than the Little Mermaid’s labia flaps. And on this basis, a film was commissioned.
What holds true to the source material, and which will be the first stumbling block a film adaptation faces, is that the main character is as interesting as a bucket of damp coins. In the book this isn’t really a problem; Anastasia Steele (the most porn name I’ve ever seen) is a clone of Bella, who herself is a deliberately blank insert. She’s a ‘Your Face Here’ cut-out image of a fat lady on a beach, into which any woman can insert her face to better immerse herself in the story without pesky hindrances like personality or opinions. The ‘Self-Insert’ is an established trope that spans books, comics and video games, and while there’s nothing wrong with it in of itself, when the plot’s emotional fulcrum weighs heavily on what may as well be a bag of flour with a winky face drawn on it, the story is going to flounder, Anastasia umm-ing and aaah-ing her way through everything. And I do mean everything. This is a woman who has so little constitution that she is impressed by a table. Subjugation by a dominant man is ultimately meaningless when you can be cowed by a box of cereal.
Speaking of the dominant man, alongside this character with no distinguishing characteristics comes a character with no redeeming ones. Jamie Dornan should not play Christian Grey. I mean no slur on his acting; I’m sure he can portray a wide range of accurate emotions. It’s just that Grey can’t feel them. In the books, Mr. Grey never smiles or shows compassion. He is a character who once read about love and decided that ownership was the next best thing. It is not informative of character, nor can it be informative of relationships. It is a cash grab, a Romance without a trace of romance, a steamy narrative of sexual fantasy softened to make more palatable. It is art house sensibilities without the art house pretence, as gratuitous as Lars von Trier’s Nymph()maniac but without purporting to metaphor. Successful novel adaptations use the visual medium to recapture and recount certain universal themes. Fifty Shades Of Grey will only use it to detract from the imagination and show lots of close-ups of writhing, perspiring flesh. After all, it’s much easier to self-stimulate when you don’t have to worry about all those difficult words.
The only tie to this film’s release date on Valentine’s Day is the fact that it’s an abusive love story. A man pesters a woman to sign a contract with physical harm the terms of service. They never build a loving relationship; empowerment by paperwork, it’s the story of a fuckwit being ensnared by a predator. A hardcore smut piece shamelessly rebranded as romance by way of careful occlusion of any camera angle that presents it as such. This is its ‘redeeming factor’, but instead serves to turn the whole sordid affair into a confusing yet slightly insidious, big-budget, softcore, damp-bowl-of-cereal affair, like an oversized dildo hollowed out and repackaged at Toys ‘R’ Us as a princess’ tower. So this Valentine’s Day save yourself the price of a cinema ticket and instead badger your loved ones to put fishhooks through their nipples.
JL
Film Fubb 
Reblogged this on kghotra01.
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