This novel and the upcoming movie are not very intriguing in and of themselves. After all, men have porn, so it's only natural that women would have porn as well. Perhaps the only noteworthy aspect of such porn is the different preferences men and women display: whereas men fantasize about random, casual sex with a variety of different women, women fantasize about searching for and captivating a single man who incorporates the chest-thumping swagger of the primitive "alpha" along with the wealth and provisions of the civilized "beta." Both fantasies are incredibly shallow but entirely understandable given men's and women's natures.
What makes Fifty Shades something more than just another piece of fictional trash is the public's reaction to it and the historical context in which it occurs.
For one thing, we find the double standard by which female porn is praised and encouraged whereas male porn is shamed and condemned. Fifty Shades has been heralded as a groundbreaking phenomenon that liberates women from taboos and allows them to explore their repressed desires, the overt suggestion being that women indeed should act like this and "find their Mr. Grey." Now, imagine if a major studio produced a movie about a man who expatriates to Thailand and sleeps with a different young woman every night, discovering the sheer joy he's been missing out on during his boring life of responsible drudgery to support the women and children around him (either in his house or, thanks to modern governmental policies, around the entire country). Would such a film be celebrated? Would it spawn an entire line of merchandise praising men's desire for sexual variety? Would it be the subject of continuous and serious discussion on television talk shows? Would it motivate anyone to lament that men's desires have been ignored for too long? I don't think so. A man who loses himself in porn is viewed as pathetic and irresponsible. Personally, I view women who lose themselves in porn the exact same way, and it's rather funny to notice how unpopular my evenhanded approach is.
The blockbuster popularity of Fifty Shades tells us something even more important: feminism was a lie, or more to the point, a shit test. For you sad sacks who actually believed women wanted equality and who treated them as equals, the joke's on you. You now have irrefutable proof that the vast majority of women prefer to be objects rather than subjects; that they think less of you for your having thought more of them; and that they look either up to you or down on you. Practically every generation of men from the dawn of time up until the Baby Boomers knew this, and it's amazing that so many men forgot it so quickly. It dovetails with the emergence of pop culture and the destruction of actual culture, but you can thank Fifty Shades for a much-needed smack in the face.
As for feminism, it will continue despite Fifty Shades because there will always be a contingent of women who cannot directly manipulate men into provisioning them, so they must commandeer government machinery to obtain such provision by force. And feminism remains popular even among those women who clearly do not live a feminist lifestyle, since the welfare state gives them the provisioning of a civilized "beta" without their having to stoop to sharing a bed with one.
Some have expressed concern about the abusive relationship portrayed in Fifty Shades, but there is nothing unusual or surprising about this aspect of the fantasy. Consider Ray Rice, the NFL football player who was caught on camera knocking out his fiancée. Many people have reacted with confusion that she decided to go ahead and marry him. What they fail to appreciate is that she has a man who 1) is prone to act violently, and 2) whose violence she can trigger. He might own her physically, but she owns him mentally and emotionally, which is far greater and more intoxicating. A worse offense than abuse in her eyes -- one that surely would have motivated her to leave -- is if he didn't let her push his buttons. Violence and outbursts show that he "cares."
I watch all of this with amused detachment. Many men are retreating into video games and Internet porn, while many women are retreating into trashy novels and films, and society keeps sliding back into entropy. I and the rest of us who retain our sanity are the beneficiaries of the Chinese proverb, "may you live in interesting times."
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