Blogosphere, welcome again! I'm officially now back at school which is depressing, but I promise to do my best in providing you all with new posts while I suffer as a student. Although the holidays are over, they were not in vein, because I did indeed get around to binge watching a number of TV shows and movies - one of which being 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. Please, before you judge me, you have to know that I had no intention of watching this, ever. Honestly, this wasn't my fault! I was at my friend's house for a sleepover, and unfortunately when it came to picking a movie, I was outvoted. So in the end, I did see the film, and yes, it was horrible. Obviously the abusive and non-consensual elements of the plot are totally flawed, however what's wrong with the film extends well beyond that. I'm choosing to focus on some of the shortcomings of the film adaptation rather than the actual book, which means that it's subject matter is something I won't be dealing with. Because believe it or not, that's almost the least of its problems. Intro over with, here they all are . . .
1. The Portrayal of Anastasia
Look, I'm not saying that I blame Dakota Johnson entirely, because it would be unfair to say that the poor portrayal of Ana in the movie is all her fault, however I guess she was a contributing factor. Believe it or not, what I'm talking about here is not the acting (although that wasn't exactly top notch either). No, the real problem was the fact that Anastasia was so damn weak. I get it, even though girls are entitled to be strong, they also have the right to be fragile (basically because we're fricken awesome), but this was seriously just a stereotypical depiction of how misogynistic men perceive women to be. Legit, she can't even form a proper sentence when she's first in Christian Grey's presence because his supposed power over her is apparently super intimidating *cough* sexism *cough*, and pretty much throughout the entire film, she never thinks for herself, but basically lets other people's decisions rule her life. The irony however is that the original book was written by a woman! Was this a deliberate, feminist critique of our patriarchal society? Sadly, I think not. Talk about that awkward moment when women start to believe the 'idealistic' image invented by sexist men and then reaffirm and perpetuate it themselves. On behalf of E.L James, I apologise to the women of the world.
2. The Portrayal of Christian
What often gets over-looked when people are insulting the atrocity that is the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' trilogy is that not only does it set feminism back 40 years, but it is also simultaneously sexist towards men. Some of you may be thinking, 'but how? he's so dominant and powerful', and that is exactly my point. Don't you think society has moved past the whole thing where we believe a man's sole role is to be strong and 'masculine', and totally oppress all women? I mean, what constitutes being masculine anyway? Basically just according with a bunch of random standards we've decided to make up and regulate by pretty much ostracising anyone who dares to break the mould. But come on, it's the 21st century, I think it's time we give it a rest and just go with the flow. You want to be a man and be brave and tough? Go for it. You want to be a man and be emotional and vulnerable? Totally cool also. But this movie basically makes out that to be considered masculine, you have to be rich and powerful, own a lot of aircrafts, and clearly assert your dominance over those feeble, pesky females. I don't know about you, but personally, I'm kind of sick of being oppressed, and I don't think the 'oppressors' are crazy about it either.
3. The Dialogue
Not gonna lie, the dialogue happens to be both one of the best and worst things about this movie. It's the worst because it's horribly written and literally makes you cringe to have to hear it uttered aloud, but is also simultaneously the best because it's so terrible that you just have to laugh. If you've (unfortunately) seen Twilight, it's really not that different. Like seriously, it's the worst. Don't believe me? Christian Grey literally, I kid you not, refers to himself as fifty shades of effed up. And that's just the icing on the cake. Every line is so predictable that as we were watching it, my friends and I were literally yelling the next lines at the TV, and the sad thing is that 90% of the time we were correct. This is something that's so bad it defies description, so if you really want to take a look at the appalling dialogue, you'll have to watch the film for yourself (although I advise against it, because why would you want to put yourself through that?).
4. The Implausibility
Okay, in addition to the characters and the dialogue being terrible, turns out the plot itself is totally and utterly unrealistic. If you have no idea what happens in it (like me this time last week), basically Anastasia, a college student, is asked by her roommate, who majors in journalism and pops up randomly in the story for no apparent reason, to go and interview Christian Grey, a super powerful businessman who apparently has heaps of time on his hands to stop and chat to university students. She asks him a bunch of questions (making sure to dramatically trip on the way in and nervously bite her pencil just to ram home the fact that she's totally helpless and weak), and somehow, from that 2 minute chat, the guy is hooked (even though she has no personality and literally has nothing to set her apart from any other girl ever).
Then, naturally, he somehow finds out where she works (because apparently being an important business man is inconsequential to the story, so he can just leave whenever he likes and work around the hours she spends doing her part-time job at the local hardware store), gets her number, makes plans to grab coffee, and then totally rejects her. Why? Who knows. Anyway, he then seems to forget that he told her to back off and starts sending her random gifts, which leads to her drunkenly calling him from some club and whining at him, resulting in a very angry Christian Grey. Turns out the guy's okay with S&M, but alcohol is a no-no. He then gets weirdly possessive and demands to know where she is, and somehow, after only being given the hint 'I'm not in Seattle', he finds the exact club she is at in a matter of minutes. I mean, I know the guy is rich, but having his own telepathic and teleportation technologies is a little excessive even for him, don't you think? To be honest, I can't remember exactly what happens next (because I've probably tried to block it all out), but somehow, they end up flying around in a lot of helicopters and aeroplanes, despite the fact they never actually leave America, and only go places that would be about 15 minutes by car, but whatever, he's rich, so his unnecessary fossil fuel emissions are totally fine. After that, he then goes on to show her his weird BDSM lair (which she is surprisingly okay with), and I think you can fill in the blanks from there.
Reading that, the plot probably sounds super ridiculous. Well, that assumption is correct, it truly is. I can assure you, I have not exaggerated anything, that is actually what happens. I honestly don't know how the book ever got published in the first place, and I certainly have no idea why anyone would want to turn it into a movie, and why Melanie Griffith's daughter would want to be in it. But, it happened, and all we can do now is warn others to steer clear of it. So please, don't come close to watching this non-sensical rubbish like I did, save yourselves.
5. Everything
Literally, there is nothing good about this movie. I don't know why it exists.
So basically, all in all, what I'm trying to get across to you is that you should definitely avoid 'Fifty Shades of Grey' at all costs if you get the chance. The only thing I find vaguely impressive about it was that it was able to insult every group on Earth in a mere 125 minutes. It's offensive towards all women, all men, anyone with intellect and people who are rational - I mean, that's quite an achievement.
Well, that's all I have in store for you. Hopefully you found this post to be vaguely entertaining or at the very least informative, and do everything in your power to ensure that you never have to sit through this film (if you can even call it one). Til' next time . . .
Annabel xx
