“Fifty Shades of Grey” on display at a book shop in London in 2012. (AFP PHOTO/WILL OLIVER/Getty Images)
Fact: Many people fantasize about dominating others or being dominated.
Fact: Sadomasochistic relationships can be consensual and do not equal sexual assault.
Fact: “Fifty Shades of Grey” has sold more than 100 million copies.
But two stories that grabbed attention in the past month — rape accusations against Bill Cosby and sexual assault allegations against ousted CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi — make “Fifty Shades” and its new trailer seem less than sexy, if only for a moment.
Yes: The kink community has made clear that Ghomeshi doesn’t represent them. But Cosby and Ghomeshi are powerful men accused of manipulating women with less power. Watching Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey choose from a vast array of identical ties, it’s hard not to think of men of privilege behaving badly — or, for that matter, Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho.”
Maybe this trailer needs a trigger warning.
“What I find unsettling is that in Christian Grey I see the attributes of so many of the men I’ve written about over the years, the ones who abuse and sometimes even end up murdering their intimate partners,” Kathryn Casey wrote in Forbes in 2012. “Experts have said for decades that rape is more about control than sex. What I’ve seen over and over again is that a man who needs to dominate, humiliate, and physically abuse a woman isn’t a hero.”
“Fifty Shades” was released in 2011. The film is set to be released in February 2015. Though it’s been four years since E. L. James’s phenomenon was unleashed, is it, somehow, too soon for more?
