Opinion

50 Shades Of Grey, Our Opinion.

By Maître Pierre

Fifty Shades of Grey….or fifty shades of opinion.

Unless you live in a cave, somewhere, far from society; you have heard of "Fifty shades of Grey". If you are interested in the BDSM lifestyle, you have heard of it a lot more. On the radio show, where we are guest every month, that darn "Fifty shades of Grey" has become, for me (Pierre) "Fifty shades of shit!" Before I even read the books, I read many reviews, critics and peoples opinions about the books. Most of the reviews were very negative, hence, making a very negative opinion of the story for me.

Time to reset everything!

Let's just look at the book first, but, let's do it with method.

The story:

I will not spoil the end for those who have not read the book, or seen the movie.

A handsome billionaire falls for a beautiful young lady whom happens to be a virgin. He is a Dominant and he wants to make her his submissive, but, she has never consider such a thing as BDSM. She is open and willing, but has no "need" to submit. There, you have it in a nutshell.

Just that part, I said on the radio show that, for me, it is more plausible to see a story where a super hero can lift a car with one hand than to read about a story were a "virgin" would become a perfect submissive without even having the need to do so. And of course, everybody in the lifestyle knows one or two handsome billionaires that are in the lifestyle…..right!!!!

All the rich men we have met in the lifestyle, most of them have needs to submit so they can experience the "surrendering" that comes from being a submissive, allowing them to free themselves from all responsibilities and decisions. Rarely have we seen a successful business man needing to Dom!"

As for the story of a young virgin being introduced in the lifestyle as a submissive and being gifted……in our story section, on our very own website, we have a ton of these fictional stories….. Go see our "stories" section, you will see!

…and trying to get someone who is not BDSM (has no need for it) and making (forcing?) that person to become one; we have an article about it in our "DS lifestyle section; How to convince my spouse to become BDSM" where we basically say that is not possible, or you will have major problems in your relationship if you try. On this, the story of fifty shades of Grey crumbles.

Yet, Catharine said something that I often quote ……

"The fifty shades of Grey "is a "harlequin" type of story (for those who don't know the harlequin books; Harlequin enterprises has been a publisher specializing in cheap romance books mostly for female clientele since 1949.) If you look at the story from this point of view; Fifty shades is a good novel to stir some good emotion in the female clientele for these books.

The BDSM in the story:

Some says that the author is BDSM adept and some others claim that she is just someone who did research online and wrote a romance book with kinky sex in it. Some of the actions are cheesy yet, some aspect of it make you think that she may have experience in BDSM. Read the story and decide for yourself.

The movie:

We saw the movie. Again, on the radio show, I said that I wished that the movie would "save" the story if it was well produced. In one way, in the adaptation of the movie, they may have "saved" the movie. The imagery is spectacular, the camera work, the acting and the way it is all put together does a good job of "saving" it, despite that they had to cut some corners in the storytelling where, I think, some of the story does not make sense unless you read the book (Catharine disagree on this).

Is Fifty shades of Grey representative of the lifestyle?

Hell no!

Yet, I expect to see many alias (Nicks) Christian, Grey or Ana appear in discussion groups and online social Medias.

Obviously, because of the book and the movie, we will see many new comers in the lifestyle that are seduced by the mystery of the relationship and the hot action from the book and the movie. This is good. We have been saying the same thing for years; BDSM is slowly becoming mainstream…..for better or worse, but it is less and less misunderstood. Again, quoting Catharine; everybody knows what a safeword is now, many TV shows have dealt with this type of subject. The fifty shades story is big on it too. Yet, I have already seen examples of people jumping into the lifestyle, without doing any kind of research and already having problems from this. On this, sadly, I believe that we will start to get many sad emails from people who failed in their relationship (like many other websites), or have trouble in their relationship because of not doing any kind of research on this.

So.....

I read the books, saw the movie; and I still have much reservations about the whole thing. Yet, many of the critics that I read online were not true. Many vanilla movie critics already hate the movie. I disagree, despite my reservations, I had an enjoyable screening of the movie. I still don't like it, and I still will say the fifty shades of shit, but not for reasons of quality of the story or filming. Catharine liked the movie.

For me; fifty shades of Grey is the story of a fucked up individual who tries to have a relationship with an equally fucked up young lady. This is their story, a sad love story. Yes, it is a relationship based on BDSM values, but the BDSM is an accessory in the story. I still think that some of the premise of the movie is not credible but, it is fiction and should be address as such. Catharine disagrees on how fucked up the female lead is.

I hate the fact that each time, there is a mainstream movie, episode or anything related to kink or BDSM, the characters have to be a sicko of some kind (remember "Secretary"!). I wish there was a series that would picture regular folks with jobs and responsibilities who have kinky needs. Fifty shade of Grey is not different in this, both main character have their own problems.

Read the books, make your own judgment. If because of the books, you discover that the world of power exchange is for you, great! If because of the books, you want to experiment in kinky sex, cool but DO THE RESEARCH FIRST!!!!!! If you are the Dominant in your relationship and you want to experiment in BDSM, just remember, you have the life of your partner in your hands, BE RESPONSIBLE AND LOGICAL about it!

Now we are bracing for the coming of the following movie of the two other books…..I am not looking forward to see them; not for the quality of the story, for once, we don't have to go through another remake of a remake that Hollywood seems to be so fond, but at least, we are having a new original story! We are worried about what many people are going to understand from the movies and act on them.

The books and movies is the story of how a relationship is built between two people. Sadly, the marketing of the books and movie is all done on the fact that it is a BDSM movie, which to my opinion, it is not.

BDSM is a wonderful world, but things are dangerous in BDSM and if somebody acts without thinking about consequences, I am worried that we will see "accidents" in the news, all blamed falsely, on the fifty shades of Grey.

I really hope I am wrong here.

Maître Pierre

Navigation:

To borrow and use materials from the BDSM Circle web site, click here!

To go to the welcome page (top page) of our site.

To go to the "Opinion menu"