A friend joked that the only book that would interest me would be "50 Shades of Grey" (I'm actually reading Great Expectations right now. About time), and I just laughed it off. I didn't know the existence of the book then, but from her insinuations, I just guessed it was an erotica.
Cue a few days later, I'm reading several reddit posts on it in which it made the front page.
Interest piqued.
I googled it and found out how explosively popular it is. So popular, in fact, that the book sold within the 8 digits and Universal Studios won the rights to a film adaptation, following a bid war with the likes of Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Mark Wahlberg's production company... and with Emma-frickin'-Watson rumoured to play the heroine.
When it comes to understanding popular culture, I'm a sucker for it. This led me to read Twilight (I couldn't read past the second book though, it was giving me brain cancer), and now, I'd just finished reading roughly 60% of 50 Shades of Grey.
And boy, is it pure, white, literary trash.
Initially, I'd read the description on it being "soft porn in which readers explore the world of BDSM and explosive, kinky sex" and thought that E.L James was a male author, set to educate the world on bondage sex for the purpose of mass liberation and exploration of one's inner deviant sexuality or whatever.
(There's always some sad pervert with a sense of over-entitlement and perceived augmented understanding of the human psyche after all).
Reading it, I was surprised by how much it resembled Twilight. Characters were two-dimensional, plot was cliched... but at least Twilight had some prosaic moments here and there. Bad ones, but it was there.
Comparing the synopses of the two:
50 Shades of Grey: Clumsy, awkward Anastasia who internally downplays her hot bombshell self (evident by two other male suitors clamouring for her attention), unconsciously charms the young, devilishly handsome and rich business magnate Christian Grey... but aha! There's a twist! He's into BDSM.
Twilight: Clumsy, awkward
Twilight probably upped the ante by having Bella's other love interest, a red indian werewolf (at least Stephanie Myers is not racist?) falling in love with her newborn, homidical freak of nature baby.
I guess the sky's the limit when it comes to some authors' imagination.
Back to 50 Shades of Grey; Christian Grey comes off as spectacularly handsome, talented, rich, driven and...
...Non-existent. Seriously? A guy that is an accomplished businessman by the age of 27 whom can fly a plane, play the instrument flawlessly, always showering you with expensive gifts and is a magic sex god?
For someone so accomplished though, he seems to not be at work very often. He has time to give her surprise visits and spends Friday to Sundays indulging in this amoral hobby of his.
Dude, I'm a 23 year old run-of-the-mill company employee with barely an expandable income to laud about, and here's a fact: Weekends. Don't. Exist. At. All.
I gave up reading after the sordid sex scenes became too frequent. It was a lot like:
Somewhere in the middle of the book: He made love to me. He gets ready to leave. I get sad :( . I unintentionally do something that turns him on again and we make love again :)
Next chapter: We discuss about the BDSM stuff and it got me confused and sad :( Then he drops by unexpectedly and we make love again :)
Next chapter: Some lame plot-filler thing happened and then we make love :) But then for some excessively retarded reason, I get sad again :(
I felt stupid reading it. I felt stupid even wanting to read it. I thought it would be something like Lolita, in which I was thoroughly amazed by the beauty of the language used to describe the inner workings of someone irrevocably broken. I thought it would be an insight into the amoral, like how The Psychopath Test bequeathed a whole new understanding into the world of moral leprosy. I didn't expect it to be completely like those two outstanding books, I was just hoping to understand more about why people do the things they do.
I guess the description of it being "mommy porn" is more than apt. It was purely about sex, and would appeal to those judgmental mommies or any female in general whom think porn is bad but written porn is acceptable.
Double standards.
What's worse, I later found out it was originally a Twilight fanfiction.
That explained a damn lot.
So this sad, ugly fat author chick whom couldn't get wet enough from Stephanie Myer's book, decided to fantasize graphic details on the sex lives of the two main characters. She later decided that "Vanilla sex" wasn't enough to fulfill her empty life and incorporated BDSM into it.
And wrote it all out in full description for the whole world to read.
And everyone enjoyed it.
Everyone enjoyed reading the sexual fantasies of a lonely and old Twilight fan who gets off on having graphic, violent sexual daydreams of a fictional vampire that incidentally sparkles under the sun.
Seriously?
Seriously?
