Arts

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Reading through this book is painful.  Every time I pick it up, I think, Maybe the writing will have improved since I last tried to read.  I’m learning to embrace the disappointment.

In today’s installment, we discover that Ana, who is about to graduate from college, not only doesn’t have a computer, she doesn’t even have an email address. Really, Ana?  Really?  What kind of sheltered life did this poor young woman have?  I went to a very small, Christian private college in the mid-90s, and even I had an email address, assigned to me by the college.  I find it very hard to believe that someone at least fifteen years younger than I am wouldn’t at minimum have electronic communication.

I’m also puzzled by the fact that Ana has no idea how to set up a computer.  Because we homeschool, our daughter has her own laptop.  You know what I did?  I went down to the store, picked out a computer in our price range, and brought it home.  You know how I set it up?  I plugged it in.  Yes, that’s right—I put the little prongs on the end of the power cord into the wall outlet.  The end.  It wasn’t terribly difficult.  Poor Ana apparently didn’t learn much from borrowing her roommate’s laptop.  She has to have a guy come in and do it for her.  Or, at least, Christian thinks she does; which may or may not be quite the same thing.

Due to the “sensitive” (read: secret) nature of the contract Christian has given Ana, she apparently can’t use Kate’s computer to look up what he means.  This is why she needs her man to bribe her take charge and make sure she has her very own laptop.  That way, she can make sure she’s clear on all the terms and conditions in the contract, right?

Wrong.  Ana doesn’t seem to know how to use Google, either.  Honestly, no wonder Christian wants her to be his submissive.  She freakin’ lives like she’s been sheltered from the real world by overly protective parents.  She supposedly types “submissive” into the search engine and comes up with…not what I came up with.  This is what I got (I like how the fourth entry pertains to this awful book).  Ana apparently found Internet porn.  I didn’t feel particularly aroused by the rather clinical definitions of submissive; she, on the other hand, was getting worked up just by reading about submission.  That right there should tell you something.

Ana also doesn’t bother reading anything about the things in the contract that she doesn’t understand or that make her uncomfortable.  One would think that if she isn’t allowed to talk to anyone about this stuff, she should at least make herself informed through reading as much as she can get her hands on.  One has to wonder if she actually does not want to know.

Another cringe-worthy part of this whole section is Ana’s back-and-forth emailing with Christian.  The emails are the worst.  They read like bad text messages, without the textspeak, or possibly Facebook chat, rather than emails.  The tone is juvenile; there are no adults on the planet who send emails like the ones Ana and Christian exchange.  Of course, we should have expect as much from the person who didn’t even have her own email address until this very scene.  Like everything else in this section of the book, it would have made a lot more sense if it had been set twenty years in the past.

Once again, this is a fine example of the horrible writing.  This whole chapter could probably have been eliminated and it wouldn’t have affected the story at all.  Better yet, the whole book could have been eliminated and it wouldn’t have affected life as we know it at all.

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Happy Monday, everyone!  It was a great vacation, but I’m ready to get back to dissecting the freak show that is Fifty Shades.

While I was away, I was thinking about the horrible writing in the book.  (Naturally; why wouldn’t I spend my vacation dwelling on literary crap?)  Here is the conclusion I drew: I don’t think E. L. James actually believes the messages that this book sends.  I think she’s just a terrible writer.  It’s unfortunate, because if it had been done better, this book could have been a commentary on how and why women enter into potentially abusive (or actually abusive) relationships.  It could also have been a fun romp about two consenting adults doing naughty things together.  It could even have been a sensitive love story of two people discovering things about themselves and each other.  Sadly, it’s none of those things.

Anyway, moving along, we’ve cum come to the part where Ana actually reads the contract Christian gives her.  This part was just so much weird that I had to read it twice to figure out what the hell was going on.  I will admit that I know next to nothing about people who are actually into BDSM, so I don’t know whether or not they regularly have contracts.  What the one in the book looked like to me was essentially unpaid prostitution.  This didn’t seem to be about D/s so much as “Here’s a list of what I want.  Do it or you’re fired.”

I can’t quite figure out why Ana still wants in.  She really has no vested interest in this man other than the fact that he’s gotten her off.  She herself says, when researching being a sub, that it doesn’t sound good to her.  I think my impression has always been that people in consensual, mutually satisfying D/s relationships actually want to be in those relationships.  They have a lot of trust for their partners.  Ana has none of that.  She doesn’t know Christian well enough to trust him yet, and they certainly aren’t in any kind of mutually beneficial relationship (unless you want to count all the orgasms—and I mean that literally).

I’m pretty uncomfortable with a few of specific things here.  First, Christian is the one entirely in control from minute one.  He’s the one dictating the terms; Ana can negotiate, but she’s not the one drawing up the contract.  Second, she has misgivings; why doesn’t she listen to her own conscience?  (Oh yeah—it’s too busy being overridden by her stupid “inner goddess.”)  Third, he sends her to the Internet for information rather than introducing her to other people within the community.

That last one really gets me irritated.  It’s not just the safety aspect, either.  I’m concerned for her that he’s isolating her by demanding she have no one but him to talk to about what’s going on.  She can’t talk to Kate about anything having to do with what’s in the contract.  She also has no one to go who has experience in a D/s relationship other than Christian.  People, this is what abusers do.  He has cut off her communication with anyone who could help her process all this.

Even as someone new to D/s relationships, Ana could enjoy a journey of self-discovery.  She could push her own boundaries (or, in her case, discover what those boundaries are).  Instead, she has to put all her trust in a man she barely knows because he has an insane need to “protect” his own interests.  I think this is the thing I find most disturbing and distasteful about the entire scenario.

As I said above, I don’t think this is what Ms. James was going for.  I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt that she was just out to write a hot, sexy story about characters in a book she liked.  In that sense, it sort of works.  Fanfiction is notorious for having characters interact in non-canon ways.  It’s a type of literary candy, and most people know that.  As a standalone novel, however, Fifty Shades doesn’t work well.  It’s just flat characters and clichés, which leads to the story coming across as horrifying rather than romantic.

This is the point at which I was so tempted to put down this awful book for good.  But you all know that I love you and I’m willing to make sacrifices for the sake of anyone reading this who wants to know what I really think of Fifty Shades.  I am grateful to Rachel Held Evans for writing a book that was good, so that I have something to look forward to reviewing tomorrow.

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Question of the Day: Has E. L. James ever interacted with any non-white Americans?

Answer: My best guess is no.

I promise to get back on track next week talking through the “plot” (*cough, cough*) of the book.  Today, however, I need to take a short break to rant about discuss the way Ms. James includes a glaring example of stereotyping.

First of all, what on God’s green Earth was Ms. James thinking when she decided to make her Jacob (remember, this is a warping of Twilight) into a Hispanic man?  Somehow, she has managed to make an even more ethnically caricatured version of a non-white person.  We could have an entire seminar on the ways in which the original Jacob fits right into our misunderstandings about Native Americans; we can even argue about how bad it is.  But there is no possible way to argue about the badness of José.  Every time he appears in a scene, I want to hide in shame.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Ms. James has absolutely no idea what a Hispanic American would be like in person.  I’m not saying here that all Hispanic Americans are alike; not at all.  We have people here who come from all sorts of different places, people who were born in this country but whose parents weren’t, people who were born in other countries but grew up here, and people who are third generation American and beyond.  There is a lot of wonderful diversity.  And that’s my point; Ms. James appears never to have met any of them.  She’s made an utterly boring, generic “Hispanic” character.  Not a man from Mexico or Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic or Cuba or anywhere else; just a guy who happens to know a couple of Spanish words (see below).

My experience has been that my friends are always happy to share about their families and culture if I ask.  Instead of doing some research, Ms. James has chosen to create a flat character who fits the ethnic stereotype in her head.  There is no excuse for this kind of sloppy work.  Not only is it painful and embarrassing to read, it shows a lack of depth in her writing skills.

Now that I’ve said all that, let me explain what else bothers me.   First, the only non-white character we’ve seen so far is the guy who takes his crush on Ana too far.  Was that really necessary?  Here in America, we already have the idea that non-white people are to be feared.  Why extend that to nearly making him commit a crime?  I have the distinct impression that we’re supposed to be unimpressed with José but sympathetic to Christian.  I’m not saying that it was okay for José to manhandle Ana, but his actions are tame in comparison to Christian, and he at least regrets it.  It really, really annoys me that Ms. James has created this obvious ethnic line.  Of course, she’s merely reenforcing the message of the original books, so perhaps we can forgive her.

That is, until we come to my second point, which is that Ms. James should have done her damn research.  I lost count after about the first twenty times José says, “Dios mio!”  Seriously?  Ms. James can use the word fuck, she can describe bathtub blow jobs, and she can make her characters have umpteen orgasms, but she can’t come up with a better Spanish exclamation?  I spent approximately five seconds typing “Spanish swear words” into Google and came up with hundreds of results.  Surely a published author could have taken a little extra time to make her character seem less…I don’t know.  Fake Hispanic?  It’s almost as if she has him use that expression to reiterate that he is completely, entirely, super-duper, actually-in-fact Hispanic.  Oh, wait…that’s exactly what she does.

So to sum up:  Instead of taking the time to meet some Hispanic Americans, or at least do a good Internet search, Ms. James resorts to 1) creating an “ethnic” character to match an “ethnic” character in the original, only with even less depth; 2) making her one minority character into a potential criminal; and 3) overusing the only Spanish she knows to demonstrate her character’s ethnicity.  Those reasons alone confirm this book as one of the worst things I’ve ever read.

Let this be a lesson to you, future authors, on the importance of doing the hard work of understanding your characters and your subject matter before you put it in writing.