Fifty Shades of Hypocrisy
First things, I have read all three of the Fifty Shades books cover-to-cover unlike 90% of the other so-called critics who have negatively reviewed them. You know the ones I’m talking about… the haters… the people who don’t like anything in the romance genre to begin with but absolutely lose their minds over subject matter that could be considered taboo.
And let’s face it, BDSM is a very taboo subject. I have to hand it to E.L. James for braving such a controversial hook. Every book needs one and she went all out on hers.
As far as the notion that Fifty Shades of Grey is about the sexual exploitation and abuse of young women… SPOILER ALERT… No, it isn’t. It’s about a young woman who falls for an emotionally damaged man (who happens to be into some pretty kinky sex) and wants to bring him “out of the darkness” and into “the light”. But she finds that she isn’t the right woman for him and in her own strength, she leaves him. Christian even tells her that she is the bravest woman that he’s every known. Anyone who sees something different didn’t read the book.
And now for the movie… I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see it for the same reason that I didn’t want to see the Harry Potter and Twilight adaptations. I was sure it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. And I was right because you can never put every emotion, every nuance, every subplot into a movie (Harry Potter gave it a good try though). I’m always irritated when I see the story deviate from the original book.
But having said all that, Fifty Shades of Grey incorporates more levity and more humor than the books did and does so in a way that left me satisfactorily entertained. My husband hadn’t read the books but said he enjoyed the movie as well, and not just because he got to see Dakota Johnson’s boobies.
With all the hullaballoo going on about this flick, I was expecting to see all the explicit scenes that were in the book. I mean, my goodness, the way some people were reacting I expected to walk out red-faced and scandalized beyond recovery.
Not so.
Fifty Shades of Grey is tame in comparison to some “critically” acclaimed films I’ve seen in the past. Hell, most HBO series programs have more sexually explicit graphic sex than this movie (True Blood, The Sopranos). Honestly, I feel a little gypped. This movie is supposed to appeal to housewives between the ages of 30-45 but I saw less of Jamie Dornan and too much of Dakota Johnson (the aforementioned boobies). There wasn’t even full frontal of either.
I’m not sure if the naysayers were just going off of the synopsis, were uncomfortable with the subject matter or just wanted to continue the negative flow from the book reviews. Either way, all of this boycotting nonsense makes me want to laugh. I mean, honestly, if we are going to get our self-righteous hypocritical panties in a bunch, shouldn’t it be over something “critically” acclaimed?
Below are examples of movies that, in my opinion, should’ve been worthy of morally high-grounded boycotts and other such book burning nonsense:
American Beauty is a HORRIBLE movie. Do you remember this trash? I remember leaving the theater thinking to myself, “what the hell was that?” It’s about a sexually frustrated suburban father (Kevin Spacey) who has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend. That’s right, the main “hero” is basically a pedophile. I guess we were supposed to feel sorry for him because his wife (Annette Benning) is an uptight suburbanite real estate agent and hasn’t exactly been fulfilling her wifely duty…mainly because she’s having an affair with another realtor, which we get to see that nauseating scene in all its adulterous glory. Oh, and by the way, because Spacey’s character is so frustrated with life we, the audience, get to see him masturbating in the shower AND when he’s in bed dreaming about his daughter’s BFF (Mena Suvari) while laying next to his wife, who catches him at it.
Talk about uncomfortably red-faced and scandalized.
America Beauty progresses with Spacey’s character buying pot from his neighbor’s son (Wes Bentley), who is gay. Oh, and the gay son is mistakenly shot by his father (Chris Cooper) who was aiming for Spacey because he thought he was having a homosexual affair with his son.
This piece of crap WON all five Oscars it was nominated for at the 72nd annual Academy Awards ceremony - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
Call me crazy, but I don’t remember any boycotts for this pile of elephant dung.
The Wolf of Wall Street was nominated for five oscars, including one for best picture.The film was also nominated for best supporting actor (Jonah Hill), best actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), best original screenplay (Terence Winter) and best director (Martin Scorsese). It could be considered wholesome only if you are a drug-addled money launderer who is also addicted to pornography. There were too many sexually uncomfortable scenes in this film to count but I’ll try to describe a few of them for you; Jordan (DiCaprio) cheats on his first wife after he learns how to scam people out of their money on junk bonds. He leaves her for a trophy-type slut who visits a party/orgy he and his friends are having. After they get married, they catch their butler having a homosexual orgy at their penthouse (yes, we even get to see the sausage-fest, as my son called it), he punks her into exposing her private parts to a security camera that he has secretly set up in their child’s bedroom for their bodyguards to see, he goes on one drug-induced adventure after another that end in wrecked cars, sunken boats and almost wrecks a commercial airliner with his angst.
This movie reminded me of The Hang-Over, only without the the belly laughs and more graphically disturbing sex scenes. And although TWOW didn’t win any awards it was nominated for, it was still critically acclaimed trash.
Fatal Attraction is a 1987 American psychological thriller film directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and Anne Archer. The film centers on a married man who has a weekend affair with a woman who refuses to allow it to end, resulting in emotional blackmail, stalking, and an ensuing obsession on her part. Fatal Attraction was a hit, finishing as the second highest-grossing film of 1987 in the United States and the highest-grossing film of the year worldwide. Critics were enthusiastic about the film, and it received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (which it lost to The Last Emperor), Best Actress for Close, and Best Supporting Actress for Archer. Both lost to Cher and Olympia Dukakis, respectively, for Moonstruck.
Let’s not forget The Piano. A mute woman (Holly Hunter) along with her young daughter (Anna Paquin), and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner (Sam Neill), and she's soon lusted after by a local worker (Harvey Keitel) on the plantation.
I still can’t get Harvey Keitel’s full monty out of my head. Yeesh.
After an affair with Keitel is discovered, her husband cuts off her finger and tries to rape her but can’t get the job done because he can hear her in his head. He then magnanimously gives her to Keitel who takes her and her remaining nine digits, her piano, which she sinks in the ocean and almost commits suicide over along the way and Paquin to another country and they live lustfully ever after.
In March 1994, The Piano won 3 Academy Awards out of 8 total nominations: Best Actress for Hunter, Best Supporting Actress for Paquin, and Best Original Screenplay for Campion. Paquin, who at the time was 11 years old, is the second youngest Oscar winner ever in a competitive category, after Tatum O'Neal, who also won the Best Supporting Actress award in 1974 for Paper Moon, at 10.
Let’s not forget any movie involving Sharon Stone.
My point is, if you are going to take the moral high ground and boycott something, make sure that it’s worth the effort, you know anything portraying human trafficking, Sharia law, pedophilia, necrophilia, genocide, or any other human horror as something wonderful. Fifty Shades of Grey just doesn’t meet that criteria.
And let’s face it, BDSM is a very taboo subject. I have to hand it to E.L. James for braving such a controversial hook. Every book needs one and she went all out on hers.
As far as the notion that Fifty Shades of Grey is about the sexual exploitation and abuse of young women… SPOILER ALERT… No, it isn’t. It’s about a young woman who falls for an emotionally damaged man (who happens to be into some pretty kinky sex) and wants to bring him “out of the darkness” and into “the light”. But she finds that she isn’t the right woman for him and in her own strength, she leaves him. Christian even tells her that she is the bravest woman that he’s every known. Anyone who sees something different didn’t read the book.
And now for the movie… I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see it for the same reason that I didn’t want to see the Harry Potter and Twilight adaptations. I was sure it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. And I was right because you can never put every emotion, every nuance, every subplot into a movie (Harry Potter gave it a good try though). I’m always irritated when I see the story deviate from the original book.
But having said all that, Fifty Shades of Grey incorporates more levity and more humor than the books did and does so in a way that left me satisfactorily entertained. My husband hadn’t read the books but said he enjoyed the movie as well, and not just because he got to see Dakota Johnson’s boobies.
With all the hullaballoo going on about this flick, I was expecting to see all the explicit scenes that were in the book. I mean, my goodness, the way some people were reacting I expected to walk out red-faced and scandalized beyond recovery.
Not so.
Fifty Shades of Grey is tame in comparison to some “critically” acclaimed films I’ve seen in the past. Hell, most HBO series programs have more sexually explicit graphic sex than this movie (True Blood, The Sopranos). Honestly, I feel a little gypped. This movie is supposed to appeal to housewives between the ages of 30-45 but I saw less of Jamie Dornan and too much of Dakota Johnson (the aforementioned boobies). There wasn’t even full frontal of either.
I’m not sure if the naysayers were just going off of the synopsis, were uncomfortable with the subject matter or just wanted to continue the negative flow from the book reviews. Either way, all of this boycotting nonsense makes me want to laugh. I mean, honestly, if we are going to get our self-righteous hypocritical panties in a bunch, shouldn’t it be over something “critically” acclaimed?
Below are examples of movies that, in my opinion, should’ve been worthy of morally high-grounded boycotts and other such book burning nonsense:
American Beauty is a HORRIBLE movie. Do you remember this trash? I remember leaving the theater thinking to myself, “what the hell was that?” It’s about a sexually frustrated suburban father (Kevin Spacey) who has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend. That’s right, the main “hero” is basically a pedophile. I guess we were supposed to feel sorry for him because his wife (Annette Benning) is an uptight suburbanite real estate agent and hasn’t exactly been fulfilling her wifely duty…mainly because she’s having an affair with another realtor, which we get to see that nauseating scene in all its adulterous glory. Oh, and by the way, because Spacey’s character is so frustrated with life we, the audience, get to see him masturbating in the shower AND when he’s in bed dreaming about his daughter’s BFF (Mena Suvari) while laying next to his wife, who catches him at it.
Talk about uncomfortably red-faced and scandalized.
America Beauty progresses with Spacey’s character buying pot from his neighbor’s son (Wes Bentley), who is gay. Oh, and the gay son is mistakenly shot by his father (Chris Cooper) who was aiming for Spacey because he thought he was having a homosexual affair with his son.
This piece of crap WON all five Oscars it was nominated for at the 72nd annual Academy Awards ceremony - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
Call me crazy, but I don’t remember any boycotts for this pile of elephant dung.
The Wolf of Wall Street was nominated for five oscars, including one for best picture.The film was also nominated for best supporting actor (Jonah Hill), best actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), best original screenplay (Terence Winter) and best director (Martin Scorsese). It could be considered wholesome only if you are a drug-addled money launderer who is also addicted to pornography. There were too many sexually uncomfortable scenes in this film to count but I’ll try to describe a few of them for you; Jordan (DiCaprio) cheats on his first wife after he learns how to scam people out of their money on junk bonds. He leaves her for a trophy-type slut who visits a party/orgy he and his friends are having. After they get married, they catch their butler having a homosexual orgy at their penthouse (yes, we even get to see the sausage-fest, as my son called it), he punks her into exposing her private parts to a security camera that he has secretly set up in their child’s bedroom for their bodyguards to see, he goes on one drug-induced adventure after another that end in wrecked cars, sunken boats and almost wrecks a commercial airliner with his angst.
This movie reminded me of The Hang-Over, only without the the belly laughs and more graphically disturbing sex scenes. And although TWOW didn’t win any awards it was nominated for, it was still critically acclaimed trash.
Fatal Attraction is a 1987 American psychological thriller film directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and Anne Archer. The film centers on a married man who has a weekend affair with a woman who refuses to allow it to end, resulting in emotional blackmail, stalking, and an ensuing obsession on her part. Fatal Attraction was a hit, finishing as the second highest-grossing film of 1987 in the United States and the highest-grossing film of the year worldwide. Critics were enthusiastic about the film, and it received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (which it lost to The Last Emperor), Best Actress for Close, and Best Supporting Actress for Archer. Both lost to Cher and Olympia Dukakis, respectively, for Moonstruck.
Let’s not forget The Piano. A mute woman (Holly Hunter) along with her young daughter (Anna Paquin), and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner (Sam Neill), and she's soon lusted after by a local worker (Harvey Keitel) on the plantation.
I still can’t get Harvey Keitel’s full monty out of my head. Yeesh.
After an affair with Keitel is discovered, her husband cuts off her finger and tries to rape her but can’t get the job done because he can hear her in his head. He then magnanimously gives her to Keitel who takes her and her remaining nine digits, her piano, which she sinks in the ocean and almost commits suicide over along the way and Paquin to another country and they live lustfully ever after.
In March 1994, The Piano won 3 Academy Awards out of 8 total nominations: Best Actress for Hunter, Best Supporting Actress for Paquin, and Best Original Screenplay for Campion. Paquin, who at the time was 11 years old, is the second youngest Oscar winner ever in a competitive category, after Tatum O'Neal, who also won the Best Supporting Actress award in 1974 for Paper Moon, at 10.
Let’s not forget any movie involving Sharon Stone.
My point is, if you are going to take the moral high ground and boycott something, make sure that it’s worth the effort, you know anything portraying human trafficking, Sharia law, pedophilia, necrophilia, genocide, or any other human horror as something wonderful. Fifty Shades of Grey just doesn’t meet that criteria.
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