Fifty Shades of (insert clever adjective here): Say Arrgh, Baby
PSA- I don't have a problem with people saying, "I am not reading Fifty Shades because from what I've heard, I would not enjoy it." That's fine. Heck, if you want to get into a discussion, feel free to reference what you've heard and where you heard it and how you're reacting to it. Just don't stick your nose up in the air and tell me that you hate the book when you haven't read it. Oh I know, it's cool to hate it and all and I'm sure that your mom thinks you're the coolest but all I see is a person with a closed mind and no sense. Bear in mind, you can't make change unless you're able to engage with people and announcing that something they might like sucks just because you say it does is not going to convince them of anything other than that they don't want to talk to you right now.
Almost an entire chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey is devoted to the contract between Anastasia and Christian. The contract is extensively quoted prior to being printed almost in full and is extensively quoted yet again later in the book. In my opinion, that contract is really the author's promise to the reader. She's letting you know what you won't see in the story and suggesting a few things that might turn up later. The interesting thing about writing fanfic is that you have direct communication with the readers as you're writing it. Even if your story is completed prior to posting, you'll get strong feedback about what the readers like and what they don't and it will change the story. Fifty Shades started as a fanfic and it engages the reader like a fanfic. This isn't a novel where you've purchased the book and now you might as well read the damn thing. The readers can walk away at any time, after any chapter hence the author needs to continually remind them of why they should stick around and on the flip side, that they don't have to worry about reading anything that will make them uncomfortable. There won't be threesomes or bisexuality or homosexuality in this book. There won't be blood or electric shocks or bodily fluids. Basically, there won't be anything that the average person wouldn't at least consider trying, even if they ultimately opt out of acting on those thoughts.
I love the immediacy of the Kindle. I can get my hands on books the second I want to read them and I can access them on my phone when I have a free minute or two. The downside is that I cannot flip through the Kindle the way I do with a physical book. I can't go back and forth between passages easily. This makes going over repeated ideas, situations and thematic elements a pain in my lily white ass. This being the case, I will rely mostly on memory because there's really nothing here that I feel any desire to reread.
So, you know how Fifty Shades is supposed to be this erotic novel with all this sex in it? It really isn't. Oh, the characters have sex a lot but this is not erotica. Nearly every sex scene follows the same pattern. Christian tells Ana that they are going to have sex. Ana gets all tingly in her "belly" which leaves me wondering if Christian turns her stomach or maybe this is her fight or flight instinct kicking in because I generally don't equate being sick to my stomach with sexy times. Then Christian tells Ana how wet she is and pats himself on the back for being such a turn on. Then they have sex, usually in either the missionary position or doggy style and Ana crows about how awesome it is that she gets to have sex with such a hottie. They both climax and then Christian says that he doesn't go in for cuddling, but he cuddles anyway.
At no point do we have a scene where Ana gazes at Christian and describes him in detail for the reader. Nor does she dwell on the sensations that she experiences. She says "Oh my!" a bunch of times and "Oh shit!" once or twice and, my personal favorite "Aaargh!" She never once says "Oh God" during sex, nor are there any umms or oohs or ahs. If sex is like wine, then this book is grape-flavored candy.
Truth be told, it all reads like a sqeamish female author rewriting sex scenes that she found posted on free online erotica sites... and were written by dudes (which happens all the time in fanfic, by the way.) Ana quite literally doesn't understand her own body because her perspective is 100% male gaze from her breast fixation right down to her vague to non-existent descriptions of Christian. For example, Ana doesn't feel sensations in her boobs, she describes physical changes as if she took time out to look down and see how things are doing. Her sex organs appear to be located rather further outside her body than is usual for women, and are made of sterner stuff than most, so that things like rough surfaces and irritating substances don't affect her at all. At first it just pulled me out of the narrative because stinging and burning sensations are not my thing, then I reread it and realized that the scenes would make perfect sense if Christian was the one doing the narrating... except for all the "down there" and "oh my."
Come to think of it, I've read better descriptions of sex in YA. The YA heroines at least seemed to have some sort of clue about the location of their tingles and twinges. Even if they didn't describe it all in detail, they at least had the geography right and a clear idea about the nature of the experience. Ana isn't so much innocent as willfully clueless. She doesn't explore her feelings. She ignores them. She feels explosions but doesn't think about them. She says that she is hot for Christian, but her actions suggest that she is more interested in being perceived as the kind of person Christian would have sex with and that's what is getting her off.
If you can't tell, my problem with talking about this book is that nothing in it feels important. I feel like I am digging in the wrong place, so to speak. Just as Christian's appeal for Ana has nothing to do with the person, so the appeal of Fifty Shades has nothing to do with the book. This could be literally any Twilight fanfic with sex in it, and it would have done just as well. There are hundreds of books that cover all the exact same territory (yes, including the food obsession) and do it better and in more explicit detail but they don't have the same massive success. So why these books? These books tipped and I'll get into that in another post.
Almost an entire chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey is devoted to the contract between Anastasia and Christian. The contract is extensively quoted prior to being printed almost in full and is extensively quoted yet again later in the book. In my opinion, that contract is really the author's promise to the reader. She's letting you know what you won't see in the story and suggesting a few things that might turn up later. The interesting thing about writing fanfic is that you have direct communication with the readers as you're writing it. Even if your story is completed prior to posting, you'll get strong feedback about what the readers like and what they don't and it will change the story. Fifty Shades started as a fanfic and it engages the reader like a fanfic. This isn't a novel where you've purchased the book and now you might as well read the damn thing. The readers can walk away at any time, after any chapter hence the author needs to continually remind them of why they should stick around and on the flip side, that they don't have to worry about reading anything that will make them uncomfortable. There won't be threesomes or bisexuality or homosexuality in this book. There won't be blood or electric shocks or bodily fluids. Basically, there won't be anything that the average person wouldn't at least consider trying, even if they ultimately opt out of acting on those thoughts.
I love the immediacy of the Kindle. I can get my hands on books the second I want to read them and I can access them on my phone when I have a free minute or two. The downside is that I cannot flip through the Kindle the way I do with a physical book. I can't go back and forth between passages easily. This makes going over repeated ideas, situations and thematic elements a pain in my lily white ass. This being the case, I will rely mostly on memory because there's really nothing here that I feel any desire to reread.
So, you know how Fifty Shades is supposed to be this erotic novel with all this sex in it? It really isn't. Oh, the characters have sex a lot but this is not erotica. Nearly every sex scene follows the same pattern. Christian tells Ana that they are going to have sex. Ana gets all tingly in her "belly" which leaves me wondering if Christian turns her stomach or maybe this is her fight or flight instinct kicking in because I generally don't equate being sick to my stomach with sexy times. Then Christian tells Ana how wet she is and pats himself on the back for being such a turn on. Then they have sex, usually in either the missionary position or doggy style and Ana crows about how awesome it is that she gets to have sex with such a hottie. They both climax and then Christian says that he doesn't go in for cuddling, but he cuddles anyway.
At no point do we have a scene where Ana gazes at Christian and describes him in detail for the reader. Nor does she dwell on the sensations that she experiences. She says "Oh my!" a bunch of times and "Oh shit!" once or twice and, my personal favorite "Aaargh!" She never once says "Oh God" during sex, nor are there any umms or oohs or ahs. If sex is like wine, then this book is grape-flavored candy.
Truth be told, it all reads like a sqeamish female author rewriting sex scenes that she found posted on free online erotica sites... and were written by dudes (which happens all the time in fanfic, by the way.) Ana quite literally doesn't understand her own body because her perspective is 100% male gaze from her breast fixation right down to her vague to non-existent descriptions of Christian. For example, Ana doesn't feel sensations in her boobs, she describes physical changes as if she took time out to look down and see how things are doing. Her sex organs appear to be located rather further outside her body than is usual for women, and are made of sterner stuff than most, so that things like rough surfaces and irritating substances don't affect her at all. At first it just pulled me out of the narrative because stinging and burning sensations are not my thing, then I reread it and realized that the scenes would make perfect sense if Christian was the one doing the narrating... except for all the "down there" and "oh my."
Come to think of it, I've read better descriptions of sex in YA. The YA heroines at least seemed to have some sort of clue about the location of their tingles and twinges. Even if they didn't describe it all in detail, they at least had the geography right and a clear idea about the nature of the experience. Ana isn't so much innocent as willfully clueless. She doesn't explore her feelings. She ignores them. She feels explosions but doesn't think about them. She says that she is hot for Christian, but her actions suggest that she is more interested in being perceived as the kind of person Christian would have sex with and that's what is getting her off.
If you can't tell, my problem with talking about this book is that nothing in it feels important. I feel like I am digging in the wrong place, so to speak. Just as Christian's appeal for Ana has nothing to do with the person, so the appeal of Fifty Shades has nothing to do with the book. This could be literally any Twilight fanfic with sex in it, and it would have done just as well. There are hundreds of books that cover all the exact same territory (yes, including the food obsession) and do it better and in more explicit detail but they don't have the same massive success. So why these books? These books tipped and I'll get into that in another post.