See, I have sex on my brain after reading the entire trilogy of “Fifty Shades of Grey”. Yes, I did. Not ashamed to admit it along with millions of women around the world.
It topped the New York Times bestseller list for 12 weeks and urban legend says the ebook version was being downloaded once every second. It’s spawned a movie – there’s a fight over who gets to play the hero – Christian Bale or Matt Bomer.
Call it curiosity or voyeurism, but I am one of those who want to understand when something gets as crazy as it does and this book has certainly done to chick erotica what JK Rowling did to children’s literature. Actually, it’s sold 40 million copies worldwide and has surpassed Harry Potter, according to some reports, and suddenly my Kindle is pushing me books like “Anything He Wants: Dominated By A Billionaire” and “Bachelor Number One”.
Truth is, this book works because it is simple. Simple works today. People want simple. The prose is simple. The British author EL James is not attempting to win the Nobel Prize, just sell books.
“No man has ever affected me the way Christian Grey has, and I cannot fathom why. Is it his looks? (YES!!!) His civility (NO!!!)? Wealth? (YES!!!!) Power? (TRIPLE YES!)” (The words in brackets are mine.)
Anastasia Steele, a 22-year-old graduate, is the Harriett Potter in this tale of love, sex and bondage. She can’t do magic like Potter but she’s certainly able to weave her magic over Christian Grey, a 27-year-old tycoon-entrepreneur who, we are led to believe, has somehow made wadloads of money but spends very little time actually working in the three novels and more time writing emails and tying brunettes up for pleasure.
Some have compared it to The Story of O – but O was way more hardcore than this. This is marshmallow porn – call it Mills & Porn for all those girls who grew up on Mills & Boon romances.
Here are the parallels. Anastasia is a virgin, she’s never even masturbated, she falls (literally) head over heels in love with a man who’s as flawed as he is handsome – a lot of talk about his abs, by the way – sacrifices her maidenhead to our hero and then spends the rest of the time pleasing him in his fantasties and, in the process, discovers her inner goddess.
Christian is the stuff of every woman’s fantasy. He is young, rich, handsome and has super-size everything, including cars, houses, planes and boats.
He is the modern-day hero just as Robert Pattinson is the modern-day vampire – think of the Twilight and True Blood series where vampires are every teenage girl dream come true.
This book reminds me of a talk given by Cindy Gallop, an advertising guru, who a few years ago, launched a movement called “Make Love, not Porn”, and gave a talk at TED about it. (see video below)
As an older woman who dates young men, she said she’s had to re-educate her lovers in the ways of making love. See, she said, young men watch a lot of porn and so they think sex is like in those movies.
I don’t know what Fifty Shades of Grey will do but given that it’s totally aimed at women – it is called “mummy porn” – I wonder who’ll have to do the re-educating.
It also proves crap sells. Just keep it simple.
