Madame Noire: Fifty Shades of WTF
Tuesday, July 3, 2012 at 10:55AM
For black lady site Madame Noire I finally broke down my opinions of a horrible book I was (thankfully) paid to read. That book was E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey," better known as "Twilight fan fiction where Bella and Edward finally do it in unmentionable ways." Unfortunately, that concept was not as fun as it sounds. Like, for example, I'd probably love a fan-fiction erotica where my three favorite characters from the film X-Men: First Class (Charles, Mystic and Erik) finally "do it" in a really insane, super powered love triangle, but you just slightly change the names and powers because Marvel be suin', but if I wrote that it would be AWESOME. Which Fifty Shades is not. Oh, God, it is not. But I get why so many women are reading it anyway.
Psst ... the secret is the same reason why I and a whole bunch of other women saw "Magic Mike" last weekend. Womenz likes the "sex."
Here's a snippet:
I know, I know. You’re like, how is that a revolutionary idea? And yet, it is. Did you know that in our year of the lord 2012 scientists are still debating whether women can have vaginal orgasms or not or if the female orgasm is even “real?” Yes, ladies. It’s just a big, giant mystery down there for some menfolk, just like it was at the dawn of civilization and people were carving fertility idols out of tree stumps. But I bet back then our tribal ancestors had a pretty good idea that sex was awesome and both genders liked it in prodigious amounts as how else to explain the propagation of the entire human species. Pregnancy is so uncomfortable and, back then, even life-threatening. Good thing they made sex so awesome you just kind of forget about that when presented the chance to do it to it.
James’ terrible book takes a young woman, Anastasia Steele (yes, that’s her name), who is confused and awkward and boring and sexually repressed, which is a fitting literary avatar for countless American women raised in the sexually repressed “flyover states” of my beloved Midwest, raised on a steady diet of Jesus and “keep your knees” together, yet there are still all these damn kids running around. Grey meets this young woman, plucks her out of her collegiate awkward obscurity, showers her in wealth and sexual pleasure by forcing it upon her, playing into America’s puritanical views of womanhood and sex (you’re not supposed to want it!), but giving those women who badly wanted it an out (well, he INSISTED on giving me these cars and orgasms! It would be RUDE not to just lie there and accept them!)
I mean, to get everything by doing absolutely nothing is the repressed American’s dream.
Reader Comments (1)
I'm reading it now...on book 2 actually. Curiosity got the best of me with all the hype. However, had I known it was a converted Twilight fanfic I never would have bothered. Anyway, my OCD tendencies has gotten the better of me...I must complete all things when I start...even bad fanfic. No skimming over words; each must be read or my heart palpitates and I have to go back and read it anyway. Wish I had checked more into the hype before I started reading.
The sex is awful. The plot lacks. The dialogue is bland. And if they send one more email I'm going to throw my MacBook! But I can't hate on E.L. James. She was just a fanfic writer who lucked up. I'll admit...I have my own small library of X-Men fanfic and if I ever had the opportunity to do what she's done I'd take it!!