Fifty Shades of Grey Theatrical Trailer – First Impressions

I feel like there should be an air raid siren sounding ominously somewhere in the distance. People scurrying for the bunkers as the first phallic shaped planes fly overhead, dropping leather bombs and heat-seeking sex toy missiles, while a parade of inner goddesses sing like a choir of inappropriately dressed angels in the background.

Or maybe that’s just the sound of a thousand critics simultaneously giving up on the human race and committing seppuku.

I made no secret of my opinions of Fifty Shades of Grey when I first read it. I read fanfiction every day – it’s been a part of my life for ten years, and I thought that I’d been exposed to the worst that writing had to offer me, until I read this book. I only read the first one, because I decided that subjecting myself to anymore of such epically bad writing would be tantamount to self flagellation. I had no problems with the content, like some people did – I seem to recall describing the sex scenes and cliché and trite. I had no qualms about the book’s humble origins as Twilight fanfiction, like some people did – as I have indicated, I’ve been on fanfiction for years. I embrace the adopting of it into mainstream media (though I seem to recall lamenting that this book would be the introduction of so many people to such a wonderful and unique community).

No my issues began with the characters, the primary of which was that Ana is such a fucking boring protagonist. If story characters are meant to grow like a tree sprouting out of the ground, then Ana grows like a carrot – backwards into the earth. By the end of the story, she’s learned no lesson from her mishaps, and she’s just as naive, frustrating and unlikable as she was at the start – possibly more so, because you’ve wasted hours of your life reading the book and you resent her for it. But even if she’d been the most engaging character on the planet, it wouldn’t have mattered, because it’s been a while since I read such epically dire writing. I speak no hyperbole when I say that I have read fanfictions by fourteen year olds which had a better grasp of sentence structure. And for the love of God, someone buy the author a thesaurus before she has the chance to write anything else!

It’s important for me to reiterate my opinions of the book here, in order to lend some context to my thoughts going into the trailer. Like most of the literary minded community, I’d been silently weeping since they announced that they were making a movie out of the book, and so the presence of the trailer sent an immediate shudder of disgust through me, before I’d even clicked on the link. I did try to view it as an entirely separate being, and make myself forget that the book ever existed in order to judge the trailer on it’s own merits. But that’s impossible – the stain of the book is just too large to ignore on the underpants of this movie, so I’m just going to review it with the knowledge, and see how I feel at the end.

First impressions are slick and shiny (rather how I imagine the actors will look at the end of every sex scene). A lot of effort seems to have been made to make this movie full of visual impact, which would make sense given the nature of this story. The locations are crisp and modern, with deep colours or flawless chromes. And while we’re on the subject of things we can absorb with our eyes, okay guys, we get the picture – scene one and you’ve dressed Ana in something visually reminiscent of a schoolgirl, holding a year four exercise book to depict her innocence at the beginning of the story. Aren’t you clever?

Any hopes I might have had that Ana might find some pools of depth for this movie are being swiftly dashed. She seems as bland and unlikeable as she is in the books. Actually Christian is drawing my eye more, and I think that’s because he’s provoking the correct reaction from me – to lamp him one in the face. He appears, for all intents and purposes in this trailer, to be a smarmy prick, which is exactly what he was in the books, so full marks for casting there. None the less, it seems that any chemistry there might be one sided. They can give each other those intense stares all the way through the trailer, but the actress playing Ana is still going to have to work really hard to convince me that she’s actually into this.

The actual sex looks as though it might possibly have been done with some taste, which is surprising since the book had none. In keeping with the visually slick style, everything looks clean and tidy and not in the least bit dirty. I don’t know if this is just Hollywood trying not to turn us all off with realism, or if it’s just them trying to stick to their visual style consistently. The trailer actually makes an effort to convince us that there is plot in this story, and not just an endless string of sex scenes, and I have to give it it’s due – if I hadn’t read the books, I’d actually think that this might be going somewhere.

Never mind the details though. Let’s just get to the ultimate question.

Did the trailer make me want to see the movie?

Well yes, and not just because I wanted to since I first heard about it. Morbid fascination is a factor here, but I am genuinely interested to see what they can do with such a terrible story. I don’t like being disappointed by movies, contrary to what some people might believe. And I must give things a chance to surprise me. That’s not to say that I won’t be taking this movie with a pinch of salt – more a mountain of the stuff.

I have to admit, that for all the praise and abuse that got heaped at the book, the people who’ve made the movie seem to have tried really really hard to treat it as a serious film. In fact if you don’t think about the book for a moment, the film almost seems respectable in a strange way – a genuine effort to make something engaging with a proper plot and characters that you might actually grow to care about. But at the end of the day, the cynic in me sees this movie for what it really is – an effort to cash in on a book that has no right to be as popular as it is.

Actually, taking the trailer as read, it seems as though more of the focus has been dedicated to the relationship between the characters, rather than the sexual nature (although that doesn’t seem to have been skimped on either). But what good is that going to be, when Ana is about as engaging as a ham and cheese sandwich? If this is the case, and they have tried to sell this more as a romance than a fuck fest, then I will at least be able to give them props for trying to improve the source material. But then again, this is a trailer, and if history has taught us anything it’s that trailers lie to us more than a cheating spouse. So I will take my mountain of salt with me to the cinema, and I will take everything that this movie gives me with a spoonful of it.

If I don’t come out at the end, someone ring an ambulance?

Have you ever told me that I’m not allowed to have an opinion on your country because I don’t live there and it doesn’t affect me? Well today is your lucky day. For five minutes I will do just that!

“It’s not your country, so you don’t have the right to get upset or have an opinion about this. It’s not going to affect you.”

This was what I was told the other day when I brought up the subject of the US Supreme Court’s decision to allow companies to refuse to pay for employee’s medicine based on their religious beliefs. At the time I took it to be an inefficient and laughable attempt to close this debate because the person was unable to come up with a counter argument for my point. In the end, we agreed to disagree, and left it at that.

But thinking back on it two days later, I realise the unfortunate implications of this statement, and I’m appalled by them. Well, nobody said I was quick at picking up on this sort of thing, but better late than never I guess.

Thinking about it, this is an argument that I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot. When a good fifty percent of my friends are not resident in the UK (and most of them are indeed, American), it’s inevitable that the subject of our country’s policies comes up eventually. And I like a good debate. I like watching two sides duke it out, either butting heads like furious rhinos, or one side crumbling like a soggy biscuit. But I also like being a part of them. I like getting passionate about my own opinion, and yes, I like the sound of my own voice.

I’ve never liked the “you don’t live here, so therefore you can’t have an opinion” argument, mostly because I always think that if that’s your only defence left to you, then you’ve pretty much lost the fight – it’s like invoking Godwin’s law only with less Nazis. I can see the basis for this argument. It’s very difficult to have a clear view of a country and its make-up when you’re an outsider looking in – heck, being an insider looking in often isn’t enough given how diverse the average culture is and how many levels make up society. There are so many sides to a story that it is impossible to generalise them all into a blueprint of the entire patch of land. I might get very upset as an outsider that American women are having more and more obstacles thrown up in the way of their sexual freedom and health all in the name of religion and freedom to express your belief, but maybe there’s a side to this argument that I’m just not seeing from my privileged position as a judging foreigner.

So let’s pretend that everyone who’s ever said to me that I’m not allowed an opinion on a country that I don’t live in, is correct. For the next five minutes, if it doesn’t affect me or my country, then I’m not allowed to care or have an opinion about it.

I’m not allowed to care that over seven hundred people are dying in West Africa from the worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded. When I think of how many families that are being torn apart as their loved ones are put into a unit of isolation where only ten percent of infected will survive, I’m not allowed to feel sad for the woman crying over her children, or the little boy weeping for his father as he coughs and vomits up blood.

I’m not allowed to care that there are still about two hundred girls between the ages of sixteen and eighteen missing in Nigeria, kidnapped from their school by terrorists while they sat their exams, being sold off at this very moment as wives or sex slaves. I’m not allowed to care about how scared they must all be feeling, and how much despair they must be experiencing as each day goes by with no sight of rescue.

I’m not allowed to care that in a few months a woman will inevitably be beaten to death outside a sexual health clinic in Massachusetts by a petitioner who’s being there was sanctioned in the name of freedom of speech. Why would I? I don’t live there.

I’m not allowed to care that in five countries in the world men can still be put to death for being gay. I’m not allowed to care that, until last year, domestic violence against women and children was perfectly legal in Saudi Arabia. I’m not allowed to care that in the last few weeks the news has been peppered with reports of teenage boys being murdered in the Middle East.

It’s not my country.

...

Look me in the eye and tell me that you did not hate the person I was just pretending to be.

So don’t anyone ever tell me again that I’m not allowed to care or have an opinion about something, just because it’s happening in a country that isn’t mine.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have belly dancing to prepare for. Good evening.