My latest cultural obsession...
Apr. 30th, 2012 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatYes, I know, I'm boring everyone with my weird obsession with the 50 Shades of Grey popularity. Which I wouldn't have known about if it weren't for livejournal, so you only have yourselves to blame. (Over 200 people showed up for the book signing in Miami.) But there's a reason for this obsession. a) I'm a frustrated writer trying to get published, and like my father, I like to figure out what works - why people go nuts over one book and not another (my father literally read every best-selling mystery novel out there - binge reading runs in our family), and b) frustrated social psychology major. (hello).
Have figured a few things out, now that I'm a third of the way through the second book.
1. This book's central problem reminds me a great deal of Nautibitz' Crave and about 99% of the Spuffy fanfic and meta I've read. (ie. Sick Mother (Inability to Protect/Save Mother) Issues meets Lost Father (Abandonment/Inability to Know or Save Father issues) .) In short, the hero is acting out his inability to protect his mother in kinky sex games. While the heroine needs to feel cherished and loved by her father and not abandoned. In this trope, the heroine's father dies young, she probably didn't know him and was raised by a step-father who is distant and taciturn and a flaky mother or a single Mom, while the hero, who is older than she is and more experienced, lost his mother to illness, drugs, and she was abused. He was too young to protect her. And often was abused himself by the father figures - at an early age. Usually he's seduced by a much older woman or his mother as a teen, and tries to act out the psychosis by beating her, and having kinky sex - the attempt to deal with his inadequacy and inability to handle the fact that she wasn't there for him and too busy having sex. Or she's ill and dies and he can't save her.
It's basically the Spike/Buffy trope. But it goes back further...much further. Almost all of Joss Whedon's stories deal with lost mother, abandoned father trope. And a lot of vampire stories fit it. And it is in a lot of erotica fiction.
2. Why does this turn us on? Well, statistically speaking a woman dies in a domestic violence situation on a daily basis. Actually more than one. Many women are left to raise children by themselves, while men go to war, travel non-step or just leave.
Most dysfunctional families are the sick mom and the absent dad. It permeates our culture.
And our stories reflect these issues back to us, they give us ways to resolve the problem. A myriad of what-if scenarios. And for me, it's no different. While my own immediate family is fine.
I can't say the same for the extended one. Two Aunts were in abusive controlling marriages, with men who were damaged or broken in some way either by culture or something unknown. Two great-grandmothers were beaten by their husbands. My Granny told me how my Grandfather stopped his own father from beating his mother to death. He was traumatized and glad he didn't have boys, also very protective of his daughters. My sister-in-law has a nut-job mother. Her cousin - a sick, mentally ill mom and a somewhat absent Dad. And for a year I worked with the Domestic Violence group in Missouri, to provide orders of protection, also, mediate child custody. Plus, two cousins' married to nutty women, who abused them, and were drug addicts. I think all families have these issues. And that's why these stories resonate on a primal level.
Even Harry Potter was about this, as is The Hunger Games. As was Star Wars. At the core of all these stories is a child dealing with the sick mother and the absent father or the loss of both. Buffy also had this at its core - constantly repeated. Jung called it the male and female anima, Frued called it what it was - Mommy and Daddy issues. Even our religions played with this mythos - the unknowable father, the insane mom...virgin/whore, devourer/life-giver. Look around the world and there they are in various guises. The unknowable universe, the violent and life-giving earth. I remember seeing it in all the mythology, and so much of the literature. Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, Fitzgerald, Heminway, Joyce...even the older one's Feminore Cooper, Richardson, and the Brontes. Not to mention Mary Shelly and Bram Stocker. At the root of most if not all horror stories, noir, romance, and even mysteries are these tropes. How do we deal with the sick mother earth...who nurtures and devours, and the universe and sky that seems so unknowable and beyond our reach?
And if you look at the recent Horror film "Cabin in the Woods" - the first victim is Jules (the whore), while the last girl standing is "the virgin who slept with her older teacher".
Twilight? Same story. From what I'm told.
One group of stories deals with the problem through violence, the other group through sex. Oddly as a culture we seem to blase with the violence. Or laugh at it. It barely bothers us. Or why else would every critic on the planet think Breaking Bad (perhaps the most violent television series on)
was the best thing ever, but can't handle sex? Why else do we cringe during the sex scenes in GoT but barely react during the sword-fights and gore? Why is Cabin In The Woods celebrated but 50 Shades scoffed at? Why do we embrace the violence, and either laugh at or cringe away from the sex?
It's a question that I keep asking myself. Why do we have no problem with the violence of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo - the graphic rape scene in that book that I could barely read, yet, think the rather tame sex in 50 Shades is "porn" and "naughty"? And why haven't we asked ourselves these questions? Why can't we handle sex and yet violence isn't an issue? And is this why a woman is killed every five minutes in this country? Why contraception is considered wrong under a health care plan - because, what, exactly, it is against a religious doctrine?
Maybe it's not that clear-cut? I don't know. And I don't know why I think about it. I swear, I overthink everything. Stupid brain - it won't stop analyzing. I fall in love with stories I can analyze whether they are good or not, much to my friends considerable annoyance.
Have figured a few things out, now that I'm a third of the way through the second book.
1. This book's central problem reminds me a great deal of Nautibitz' Crave and about 99% of the Spuffy fanfic and meta I've read. (ie. Sick Mother (Inability to Protect/Save Mother) Issues meets Lost Father (Abandonment/Inability to Know or Save Father issues) .) In short, the hero is acting out his inability to protect his mother in kinky sex games. While the heroine needs to feel cherished and loved by her father and not abandoned. In this trope, the heroine's father dies young, she probably didn't know him and was raised by a step-father who is distant and taciturn and a flaky mother or a single Mom, while the hero, who is older than she is and more experienced, lost his mother to illness, drugs, and she was abused. He was too young to protect her. And often was abused himself by the father figures - at an early age. Usually he's seduced by a much older woman or his mother as a teen, and tries to act out the psychosis by beating her, and having kinky sex - the attempt to deal with his inadequacy and inability to handle the fact that she wasn't there for him and too busy having sex. Or she's ill and dies and he can't save her.
It's basically the Spike/Buffy trope. But it goes back further...much further. Almost all of Joss Whedon's stories deal with lost mother, abandoned father trope. And a lot of vampire stories fit it. And it is in a lot of erotica fiction.
2. Why does this turn us on? Well, statistically speaking a woman dies in a domestic violence situation on a daily basis. Actually more than one. Many women are left to raise children by themselves, while men go to war, travel non-step or just leave.
Most dysfunctional families are the sick mom and the absent dad. It permeates our culture.
And our stories reflect these issues back to us, they give us ways to resolve the problem. A myriad of what-if scenarios. And for me, it's no different. While my own immediate family is fine.
I can't say the same for the extended one. Two Aunts were in abusive controlling marriages, with men who were damaged or broken in some way either by culture or something unknown. Two great-grandmothers were beaten by their husbands. My Granny told me how my Grandfather stopped his own father from beating his mother to death. He was traumatized and glad he didn't have boys, also very protective of his daughters. My sister-in-law has a nut-job mother. Her cousin - a sick, mentally ill mom and a somewhat absent Dad. And for a year I worked with the Domestic Violence group in Missouri, to provide orders of protection, also, mediate child custody. Plus, two cousins' married to nutty women, who abused them, and were drug addicts. I think all families have these issues. And that's why these stories resonate on a primal level.
Even Harry Potter was about this, as is The Hunger Games. As was Star Wars. At the core of all these stories is a child dealing with the sick mother and the absent father or the loss of both. Buffy also had this at its core - constantly repeated. Jung called it the male and female anima, Frued called it what it was - Mommy and Daddy issues. Even our religions played with this mythos - the unknowable father, the insane mom...virgin/whore, devourer/life-giver. Look around the world and there they are in various guises. The unknowable universe, the violent and life-giving earth. I remember seeing it in all the mythology, and so much of the literature. Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, Fitzgerald, Heminway, Joyce...even the older one's Feminore Cooper, Richardson, and the Brontes. Not to mention Mary Shelly and Bram Stocker. At the root of most if not all horror stories, noir, romance, and even mysteries are these tropes. How do we deal with the sick mother earth...who nurtures and devours, and the universe and sky that seems so unknowable and beyond our reach?
And if you look at the recent Horror film "Cabin in the Woods" - the first victim is Jules (the whore), while the last girl standing is "the virgin who slept with her older teacher".
Twilight? Same story. From what I'm told.
One group of stories deals with the problem through violence, the other group through sex. Oddly as a culture we seem to blase with the violence. Or laugh at it. It barely bothers us. Or why else would every critic on the planet think Breaking Bad (perhaps the most violent television series on)
was the best thing ever, but can't handle sex? Why else do we cringe during the sex scenes in GoT but barely react during the sword-fights and gore? Why is Cabin In The Woods celebrated but 50 Shades scoffed at? Why do we embrace the violence, and either laugh at or cringe away from the sex?
It's a question that I keep asking myself. Why do we have no problem with the violence of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo - the graphic rape scene in that book that I could barely read, yet, think the rather tame sex in 50 Shades is "porn" and "naughty"? And why haven't we asked ourselves these questions? Why can't we handle sex and yet violence isn't an issue? And is this why a woman is killed every five minutes in this country? Why contraception is considered wrong under a health care plan - because, what, exactly, it is against a religious doctrine?
Maybe it's not that clear-cut? I don't know. And I don't know why I think about it. I swear, I overthink everything. Stupid brain - it won't stop analyzing. I fall in love with stories I can analyze whether they are good or not, much to my friends considerable annoyance.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 02:40 am (UTC)1. Fifty Shades of Grey - Book 1
2. Fifty Shades Darker - Book 2
3. Fifty Shades Freed - Book 3
And the frigging things are looong. I know because I'm reading, reading, reading at a fast pace and the damn Kindle percentage mark has not moved.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 03:02 am (UTC)But it's really three huge books. And the reviews are weird. They don't match what I read that much at all. One said she was a college student and 20 (uh no, 21 on the cusp of 22, and graduated). Ana is not a college student, she graduated from college and is an editorial assistant at a publishing company by the end of the first book. He meets her when she's taking her final exams and is graduating. That's actually why they meet - she's interviewing him for the college paper as a favor for her roommate who got sick before she could do the interview. And they are interviewing him - because he's the speaker at the college - a young enterpreneur (think the guy from Napster). Don't believe the media reviews. It's like we aren't reading the same book.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 01:25 am (UTC)I felt the same way about the rape scene in GWTDT. I was on a long plane flight when I read it and think I would have honestly put it down and never picked it back up, if not for the plane. I am glad that I kept reading, but it amazed me that the book was recommended by everyone when the violence towards women was so disgusting and so pervasive.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 02:55 am (UTC)Do you have an e-reader? Just read a sample and see if you like it, that's what I did.
It's not as dark as Crave. And a lot tamer in the sex department. Also..
* Grey/Ana = 26/21
Spike/Buffy = 48/28
* Ana is single, out of college, a virgin
Buffy is married to Spike's son and really NOT a virgin
*Spike's ex-wife was a crack whore and his mother insane.
Grey's mother was a crack whore
In some respects 50 Shades is more believable and less outlandish. Also
the sex is more believable. But I don't know how much the publisher cleaned it up from the fanfic.
And the BDSM in Shades is more realistic...this writer has certainly done some research. (Not that I would know necessarily...but it fits what people who are actively involved have told me.)
(Note - I loved Crave.)
But the tropes and central core are very similar. This reminds me a lot of Crave, particularly the relationship between the two characters - and the hero's dark issues.
Even the text-messaging reminds me of Crave. James has a similar knack with dialogue. And her sex scenes are somewhat similar to Nauti's. There's differences here and there, but they are very similar in a lot of weird ways.
Making me want to tell Nauti that, hello, there's a ready market for your stuff - change the character's names and publish it as erotica on e-books - you'll make a killing.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 12:19 pm (UTC)GWDT
Date: 2012-05-01 02:57 am (UTC)Felt exactly the same way. The second book...couldn't make it through though.
The violence against women in those books is relentless.
Re: GWDT
Date: 2012-05-01 12:19 pm (UTC)Re: GWDT
Date: 2012-05-01 09:50 pm (UTC)Re: GWDT
Date: 2012-05-01 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 08:59 am (UTC)In BDSM violence is a kick and ultimately always very controlled, in stuff like BB or Larsson it's an element of horror. The rape in Man who hate women is not supposed to be sexy, it's supposed to show what rape is in all it's horror.
I think both BDSM stories and stuff like BB don't work if you just focus on the element of violence in them. In most BDSM stories there is a level of stalkery and control that would simply be massive abuse in real live. It's the relationship between the characters (say some actual caring of the dominant part) that makes it work within the story. But ultimately they often transport a highly unrealistic emotional set up (which is fine for a fantasy) that downplays violence in the context.
Larsson would be standing on the other side of the spectrum screaming "Hey, rape is not sexy!"
I think in the end both things are valid as long as they are kept in context. The violent sexual fantasy as well as the stories saying violence is ugly and disgusting.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 11:17 am (UTC)Also I wish they would stop it with the exploitive nudity but leave innthe casual nudity. If I remember correctly the quarth fashion was one breast bare.They cut that, because it would have meant that nudity can be just casual, that you can have a conversation in the presence of a naked breast. It's the perfect symbol for the combo of porn and prudery that I dislike so much.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 10:04 pm (UTC)Okay, I admittedly didn't do a good job of explaining myself above and hit your buttons on BB, so to clarify:
I got burned out on everything being solved by violence. Keep in mind? I read between 1990 and 2011 over 400 violent mystery/thriller/sci-fi/fantasy horror novels and have seen about that many tv shows and movies. When I watched Breaking Bad? I'd read nothing but violent books and seen mostly violent tv shows and movies. The year I watched Breaking Bad? I read Hunger Games, Storm of Swords, GWDT, Jim Butcher, watched The Wire, Feast of Crows amongst other movies and books, I can't remember but fall in the same trope. After a while I saw a pattern emerge - in all these works the problems were solved by increasingly graphic violence. The hero/heroine would take vengeance against the bad guy in a really nasty way. It got to the point in which, I felt myself physically cringe.
I needed a break. I needed something softer, something where the problems were resolved with sex, negotiation, conversation, discussion...not violence.
I thought - if I don't have to read another fight scene for a very long time, I'll be a happy camper. Bring on the SEX!
I also started backing away from tv shows I've been watching. SPN, Nikita,
both hit the chopping block. Game of Thrones - is still great, because it has more talking than action, which works for me, also unlike you, the sexposition doesn't bother me at all (there's a lot of it on HBO - sort of par for the course), as long as I don't have to watch too many sword fights, dismemberments, beheadings, etc...I'm happy.
So the difference I see?
GWTD and Breaking Bad are series that solve all the problems with violence or the threat of violence.
50 Shades which is a gothic mystery romance sort of like Rebecca, does it with sex and conversation and negotiation...which is softer.
10 years ago? I'd have hated this book. Actually 5 years ago, I may not have read it. Now? It's fitting an itch. While for some reason GWTD and BB make me want to run away, far, far away. So I'm basically trying to figure out why.
And I think it's relatively simple? I watched too many movies/shows and read too many books just like them. (Binging on pop culture - can have nasty side effects.)