Fifty Shades of Grey and Fandom; a study of popularity
Fifty Shades of Grey author EL James is planning to publish a writing guide
A person at litreactor wrote an article lamenting this fact but also questioned whether it should be more telling that a book that's largely thought to have be poor quality nonetheless sold 70 million copies worldwide. The question was whether the world is changing and ( Read more... )
A person at litreactor wrote an article lamenting this fact but also questioned whether it should be more telling that a book that's largely thought to have be poor quality nonetheless sold 70 million copies worldwide. The question was whether the world is changing and ( Read more... )
Just had some thoughts about EL James writing skills, though. Even though I never bothered to look into her background, my theory is that EL James might have wanted to write the book as it is and not because she wasn't able to do a better job. I've only read the first 50 Shades and I've also only read the first Twilight book (not of fan of either book), but I have to say the style used in both is extremely similar. My first thought when reading Twilight actually was "Omg, for a best seller this book has the worst writing style I've ever read." When I told friends what I thought of Meyers writing style in Twilight, they actually told me, it's intended to be like that bc the whole book was supposed to feel like a teenage girl's diary. Still don't know if that's true, but I have to admit there might be a possibility. And since it's no secret that 50 Shades started as a fan fiction, the style might have been intended, too.
(Why people want to read teenage girls' crappy written diaries is still a mystery to me though.)
On the other hand, somebody who's just good at adapting other's writing in style *and* contents should rather not publish a writing guide (imho). Another reason I'm not convinced of EL James' talent is that I recently got to read a really old Anne Rice book (written as A.N. Roquelaure) named "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" (Book 1 of a trilogy). It's a BDSM "fairy tale" from 1983 and I was surprised how similar the BDSM scenes of 50 Shades and Sleeping Beauty were at the beginning (never finsihed Sleeping Beauty...). I don't know anything about BDSM (except what's depicted in various yaoi manga, lol), so I don't know if that's just how the genre always has to start, but it made 50 Shades look even more like "just remix of other popular books" instead of being proof of genuine creative imagination. I'm not against fan fiction, I also read alot when I was younger, but for a commercially successful book I think there should be more own ideas than obviously reused ones from others.
And yes, I also think a lot of the popularity stems from the BDSM theme - a genre that still hadn't had that much display to the public yet. According to the wiki article about Sleeping Beauty, the trilogy was extremely popular when it was published, too, while back then BDSM was maybe even less known than today. There are just not that many sex-related ideas left to shock the audience.
... On a side note, I didn't like the first Sleeping Beauty book either. Maybe it's just the BDSM genre, but the whole domination/submission and humiliation is just not my taste °XD
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But on the other hand, if she wrote it that way for the fanfic, that makes total sense, but if I were ever to convert a fanfic into an original story, I would try to change the voice as well if I had emulated the original voice of the original author.
I have to admit that I haven't read Twilight (I seriously couldn't make it past the first page despite trying twice) and I've only read and heard excerpts and disconnected chapters of 50 Shades. However, for both, I've read multiple extensive summaries and reviews that detail what's happening chapter by chapter and provide excerpts, but just don't make me read it lol Because, like Twilight, I have a hard time reading the actual text. Although I have to admit that I could read 50 Shades before I could read Twilight.
That's interesting about Sleeping Beauty-- I'd never heard of that. wtf, did she just read that book and figure that was all that was needed for the sex scenes? Or are the similarities more indicative of a relatively common type of fantasy straight women might be harboring...?
I read that the 50 Shades thing is terribly, horribly off from rl BDSM, and that real practitioners aren't cool with that, because the popularity of 50 Shades gives way too many people way the wrong impression, and it could lead to people getting hurt. Although weirdly, the rules of conduct or questionnaire or whatever they did at one point, which was weirdly detailed and long, is actually almost word for word from a rl BDSM site. However, the person who noted that also noted how frustrating it was that one thing was right but misused in the story, and that everything else was so off, because it implied that some amount of research was done but mostly no proper research was done at all.
I'm with you, though. tbh, BDSM is not to my taste. I recognize that it's something that really works for the people who practice it and I see nothing wrong with practitioners etc etc but for me, personally, I don't really have any interest in reading about it or watching movies or anything, because the power differential part of it makes me too uncomfortable. I can't help feeling like a person is being used and abused, even though I know they aren't at all if it's fully consensual.
But that's why I don't like power differentials in general, I guess. I'm also not a fan of slave stories in general... because with BDSM and slave stories and all those topics, if it's done well and done accurately, I just feel uncomfortable the whole time. And if it's done poorly, it just annoys me that people can't take the time to properly research things. Sometimes there are things that are done so well I can like it despite being on a topic that isn't my taste, though, but that's few and far between, and 50 Shades definitely does not fall into that category lol
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