It’s not really mainstream until it’s only incidental to the plot i.e. A couple who are working on some project that they believe will alleviate human suffering while struggling to keep from losing their home (which happens to have a playroom).
Since we’re still waiting for mainstream movies with oh-by-the-way same-sex and interracial couples, don’t hold your breath-play.
Yes, the low-budget high-profit potential will undoubtedly have quite a few studio execs’ brains turning in what passes for high gear for them. In fact, there sort of already has been an imitator, The Submission of Emma Marx. (note, the IMDB page for the film is safe for work, so I’m not spoiler boxing it, but the movie itself is decidedly NSFW and might be hard to explain being in your browser history at work).
It’s a hardcore film whose budget was a fraction, and I mean, a tiny fraction, of FSOG’s. It was put out in 2013, after the widespread success of the novel, and it’s about a shy and retiring would-be journalist who attracts the attention of a handsome young businessman of great wealth after interviewing him. Plot sounds familiar, eh? Especially since the lead is kinda virginal. Color me amazedballs! Interestingly, the writer and director of the film is a woman (Jacky St. James, a female director of hardcore films.
It’s actually a pretty good film for hardcore, and swept up all sorts of adult video awards. To be honest, I haven’t seen the hardcore version, I saw a bowdlerized version on Showtime (it’s available on demand on Showtime even as I write these words, if anyone is interested). It’s definitely not mainstream, but perhaps it is a harbinger of things to come. People do love to copy successes in Hollywood, whether the film is hardcore, softcore or mainstream.
There’s a promo video for the film on Youtube as well, though considering the restrictions Youtube places on films, it’s not very … revealing. There’s also a hardcore promo video for the film on the Web … I leave it to the discriminating browser to find either, if interested.
Although there is some bigotry directed toward BDSM and entertainments whose primary audience is female, I don’t know that they have to fight the same kind of entrenched, deep-down bigotry that interracial couples and same-sex couples face, fictionally speaking.
Even though I didn’t read the book, I just saw the movie with a friend. The overwhelming majority of viewers were females (most of them rather young, like 15-30).
It’s crap. And I’m into D/s.
Some apparently pychologically horribly damaged guy intimidate the female lead with frightening sexual practices that are probably more tame than what the average contemporary couple engage in when bored on sunday. When challenged to do to her the absolutely worst thing he has in his twisted mind, he gives her exactly 6 strikes on the bottom with a crop (or some similar implement, can’t remember), to give an idea. More regular deviant activities are things like having her hands loosely tied with a tie while he’s giving her head or being caressed with a peacock feather.
That’s not even an erotic movie, there probably will be more sex and frontal nudity in the movie broadcasted tomorrow evening at prime time on French TV, regardless of the movie. That’s just a bad romantic flick that somehow manages to give a negative and ludicrous view of D/s despite showing nothing that could offend a 80 yo nun. And an unhealthy romance on top of it, with a male lead who seems to suffer more from obsessive compulsive disorder than from a supposed sexual deviance.
Oh! And the movie ends abruptly without any kind of resolution, obviously in preparation for the second part. This sudden end seemed to surprise the viewers (making them laugh, in fact) and relieved me since I had been trying to fight sleep for a while. The characters’ motivations and behaviour are just weird, and suspension of disbelief really difficult. When we left, my friend said something to the effect of : “It could have been a bit better if the main character had been a dominant”. He was essentially a Nice Guy ™ with a lot of money.
That’s certainly mainstream, but this thing only coincidentally has anything to do with D/s and depict this kind of relationship with about as much accuracy as a conspiracy theorist explaining 9/11. And anyway, soft “let’s pretend” BDSM has been mainstream for a long while already. I guess it will make some people buy peacock feathers.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a commercial product so wildly misunderstood.
The reason Christian Grey gets Anastasia Steele is that he’s a billionaire, full stop. That’s the appeal; the sex is the excitement. Grey being superwealthy makes the kink safe for the reader/viewer, because being seduced by a billionaire is awesome.
Actually, an even better comparison would be reality TV shows. Almost all reality TV shows are indescribably terrible, but they’re extremely cheap to make and while they don’t draw huge audiences, they consistently get more than enough viewers to make far more than the cost of production.
I can’t speak for it’s quality, I haven’t seen the movie, but it was not made cheaply. The budget according to Box Office Mojo was $40 million, which isn’t a huge action movie budget, but is more than similar romance type movies. Box Office Mojo classifies it as a romantic drama, and here are the budgets of some other recent romantic dramas:
[ul]
[li]The Fault in Our Stars: $12 million[/li][li]The Vow: $30 million[/li][li]Dear John: $25 million[/li][li]The Time Traveler’s Wife: $39 million[/li][li]PS I Love You: $30 million[/li][/ul]
The Time Traveler’s Wife is close to the budget of 50 Shades, but still cheaper, even though it had bigger stars and I’m guessing special effects to show the time travel stuff.
If they wanted to make it cheaply, they could have. They could have made it for $5 million, tons of people would still go see it, and it would have made a profit. I’m not sure why exactly they had a $40 million budget, or what all it went to, but they were obviously trying for something.
I did read somewhere that more was spent on catering than on any input from any kind of BDSM expert…
I agree with you and disagree with you. You’re right, FSOG is primarily a romance about a wealthy man seducing a young, virginal middle class woman. That’s the heart of the story. But it’s not why FSOG was so successful, because that storyline has been done to DEATH in the romance genre. If that’s all it had going for it, it would never have come to anybody’s attention.
I’d say the function of the BDSM elements is to add some adventure to the story. Look at the Twilight series from which it sprang. The lead female in that one is a garden-variety high school student who is seduced by a slightly (ahem) older powerful vampire and she has all sorts of exciting paranormal experiences mixed in with the love story. The paranormal experiences have a bit of the abnormal, the wild about it.
In FSOG the paranormal experiences are replaced with extreme wealth experiences (helicopter rides, gliding, very nice cars as casual gifts) and BDSM. The extreme wealth is exciting, but it’s the BDSM that adds the abnormal to the adventure. It’s an absolutely essential element.
Further, I’d posit that the success of FSOG is in part that the readers can, if they like, play just the way Ana and Christian did. Helicopter rides and gliders are after all not unattainable experiences for most middle class Americans, and kinky fuckery is absolutely possible. You maybe cannot live the dream, but you can experience elements of it in safety … and of course, one of the things about BDSM is that it is not QUITE safe.
Wasn’t made on the cheap, as was pointed out, for a romance, and not everybody agrees that it sucks. I found this movie review to be illuminating: the three guys all dismissed the movie dull and uninteresting, the woman liked it. Maybe there is a gender gap here?
As Midori says, it has the inestimable advantage that it starts a conversation. The thing I have noticed already in the mainstream media is that mentions of BDSM aren’t ALWAYS bookended with “EEEEEEEEEWWWW!” as they once were, in fact, they aren’t OFTEN bookended with “EEEEEEEEWWWW!” any more. Progress is being made.
Romances movies are relatively cheap, and yes, it was at the high end of such things, though granted some do cost more. (Actually, adjusted for inflation, “The Time Traveller’s Wife” cost more.) Sure, it cost more than “The Fault In Our Stars,” but there’s a reason they didn’t cast anyone who would cost a lot of money. Dakota Johnson isn’t Jennifer Lawrence.
As long as the film wasn’t made RIDICULOUSLY cheap, to the point it was laughable, it was as safe a bet as a moviemaker could make. This is not just another romance movie, it’s a guaranteed blockbuster because of the fame of the source material. $40 million is very, very, very cheap for a blockbuster; They had to spend a few bucks to make the guy look rich, but there would have been no added value in making it a legitimately big budget film.
Look, it’s okay to admit the movie sucks. It sucks. Every aggregate rating system says it sucks. Even the “positive” reviews are lukewarm and backhanded. Let’s just accept it for what it is.
Again, that’s fine, it’s not supposed to be a good movie. “Transformers” movies suck too, but they make money because people like robots blowing up.
It seems to me, as I already wrote, that it hasn’t been true in a while. Soft BDSM play has been quite mainstream for a long time (I’d say a couple decades at least). The wide success of “50 shades” might have sparkled the interest of a number of people, but on the overall it’s in my opinion a consequence, not a cause, of BDSM (at least soft, playful, “pretend” forms of it) being now an acceptable and unsurprising part of a lot of people’s sexuality (as an occasional spice, not a lifestyle).
While we’re on the topic of soft, aesthetical depictions of D/s, may I mention and recommend the short video “Mine” by Alvaro de la Herran?
Has BDSM been in a big Hollywood movie, and not been the subject of a joke? I honestly can’t think of any. Sometimes handcuffs or bondage stuff is part of the movie, but it’s usually to show that the character is a pervert, or too sexually aggressive, or something else. Or sometimes it’s used to keep the character kidnapped and they have to genuinely be rescued. It’s the same thing with TV shows. Like in True Blood, I remember Jason Stackhouse being handcuffed to a bed, and he seemed into it and thought it would be sexy, but it was because the girl was getting revenge on him. And I remember in the last season several characters being in bondage equipment, but it was because they were trapped by an evil vampire and were actually about to be tortured and killed.
Maybe this is the subject of another thread. There have definitely been movies and books that have referenced BDSM, or even have it as the main subject, but I can’t think of any right now that were mainstream movies that the average person would have heard of.
No, not porn for women. Erotica is porn for women. Erotic romances like FSOG are romances with strong sexual scenes, but still plenty of plot and characterization, in fact, those elements remain key. You may not think the plot is well handled or the characterizations particularly deep or well done, but they’re always there in erotic romances.
We agree that the movie was a safe bet given the book’s sale, which seems to be the essence of your point. The sales were still huge on the opening weekend. Will it have legs? No idea. But sequels will happen, you can be sure of that, and other moviemakers will be looking at ways of carving some cash from 50SG’s fanbase, you can also be sure of that.
Now, will they go with BDSM style kinky fuckery? Not all of them, maybe not even MANY of them. I suspect that from having read a lot of articles on the Web (I set up a Google news agent to search for “50 Shades” back in February of 2012) about publishers announcing “the next Fifty Shades of Grey.” Many of them were vanilla romances that just had strong sex scenes in them. Needless to say, none of them were “the next FOSG.” I can see a lot of moviemakers making the exact same mistake.
It’s not OK for ME to admit the movie sucks, because I haven’t seen it yet, and I distrust the critics who say the movie sucks. I am willing to admit that most critics didn’t like the movie. So what? I read a lot of articles dissing the novel FOSG by people who either admitted they had not read the book or clearly had not read the book with any attention at all, as they kept making factual errors about key points in the book. I can see a lot of movie reviewers missing the point on the same scale.
I rather think it WAS supposed to be a good movie, from the viewpoint of the people who made it. The studios might not have cared. I rather think they wanted it to be popular above all and would have been very happy if it was a good movie as well.
By mainstream media I meant cable and network TV programming not of a sexual nature and print magazines and newspapers not of a sexual nature. Not the Web, which is more of a grown-up about these things. And by “Eeeeeew” bookending I meant the way commentators had of letting people know that they had no truck with BDSM and were only reporting the weird goings-on of the strange people who do.
I will agree with you that light BDSM as a sexual practice is not all that unusual and may even be mainstream. It’s hardly the only respect in which the American populace does not jibe with mainstream media.
Well, yes,
Secretary: an excellent movie with a BDSM theme, though it had an indie feel it definitely had a big movie release and did very well IIRC.
Story of O (made in France, so maybe not “Hollywood” but definitely a big movie)
9 1/2 Weeks (all the bondage was bowdlerized out of it, but in the book the narrator says she spent most of her time with her lover with her hands tied … something you’ll not see in the movie at all),
Exit to Eden (it was played for laughs and not at all well by director Garry Marshall, so “subject of a joke” might fit here). It was based on one of Ann Rice’s early porn novels.
“Adventures of Gwendolyne In the Land of the Yik-Yaks” was a big-deal French production by Story of O director Just Jaekin, based on the John Willie comics and had plenty of kinky imagery, but was not “Hollywood” (though it got a big studio release) and was played for camp value.
“Gor” and “Outlaw of Gor” were EXTREMELY loosely based on the Gor novels and so thoroughly reworked that the very best version for watching purposes is the MST3K version of “Outlaw of Gor.” Still, mainstream studio releases (marketed as barbarian adventure stories, not kink, which seems fair, as there was very little kink).
Well, in fact, I wasn’t thinking of depictions in the medias but of what people actually do or talk about. For instance buying handcuffs in a sex-shop will hardly make you be perceived as a weirdo or perv, nowadays.
I can’t say it’s a general opinion, but a submissive friend of mine who enjoyed the book was utterly disapointed in the movie. So, even assuming the novel has redeeming qualities, it seems they were lost in the making of the movie. She also agrees with my other friend about the male lead not depicting a dominant. And in fact, the female lead doesn’t depict a submissive, either. She might enjoy a little bit of kinky play, but her desire is to cure him of his warped mindset, not to embrace such a lifestyle. In fact this point too (desire to “fix” your romantic partner) shows it’s a regular “chick flick” (with a bit of SM themed titillation), not a movie about SM.
The movie may in fact suck. I don’t know. Christian and Ana as portrayed in the book do not strike me as particularly representative BDSM couple. As I mentioned earlier, Ana goes from vanilla virgin to celebrant of kinky fuckery in very short order, which is not the way these things generally happen. And Christian is the product of child abuse and molestation as a teen, also not typical. I think that’s because James used the standard romantic trope of a powerful but psychologically damaged hero redeemed by the love of an innocent, virginal woman for her characters and let kinky verisimilitude go hang. Seems to have been a good decision, based on the book’s success.
Now how the movie made things worse, I don’t know. But I’m in no hurry to find out. I didn’t like the book all that much myself. I just feel that it gets misrepresented a lot by people who don’t understand it and who are often eager to attack it simply for being one of those trashy romances that women read, often without having read it themselves, and I’m deeply suspicious that movie reviewers are prone to do the same.