On Fifty Shades

-->

Emerald may have been declared the color of  2013, but the color I’m seeing everywhere,  from sweaters to bed linens, is grey. Fifty shades of it, to be precise.  In this year between the novel becoming a bestseller and the movie’s filming Fifty Shades of Grey, has clearly become a cultural reference.

I bought the book the summer before last at Heathrow, hoping that the erotic tome would distract me from the inevitable bumps of transatlantic and transcontinental flight. Suffice it to say that ten hours later, I had only made it through the first 70 pages.

 The fact that it took 70 pages to get to the first kiss suggests that author E.L. James was aiming to write a mainstream book.  However, this reader could not suspend her disbelief long enough to step into what novelist John Gardner called “the dream” of fiction. Take the characters, for starters. Christian Grey is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but, at 28, a billionaire. Not a millionaire, which would require only a stretch of the imagination, but a billionaire. Like a younger Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook merged with Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgard of True Blood fame. Or perhaps Ian Somerhalder, whose character Damien Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries smirks nearly as often as Christian Grey. In fact, Grey reminds me of nothing so much as the current spate of fictional bad-boy vampires, with their rock hard abs, ancient wealth and tortured souls.

And then there is the protagonist: Anastasia Steele, a college senior who is not only a virgin, but one who has barely been kissed. Anyone old enough to remember Leonard DiCaprio carousing  with models after the success of Titanic will find it hard to believe that a young, handsome billionaire would choose a girl who trips over her own feet to be the object of his desire.

Ah, but there’s the crux of the matter. For the reader (female) is meant to identify with the clumsy, innocent naïf.  Despite it’s S/M overtones, the Fifty Shades plot is all too familiar: beautiful girl is lifted from her ordinary life into the stratospheric world of the rich and powerful-- only this time the prince not only sweeps her off her feet, he also ties her to the bedpost. 

At least she doesn’t have to cook.