I'm TRYING to ignore the media tsunami that is "50 Shades of Gray" but it's hard, man. Really, really hard. And my flying monkeys brought me in a story on the Hollywood Reporter website that I just can't resist. It has the worst headline EVAH! It reads: "Fifty Shades of Grey Rides Hollywood's S&M Wave."
The story is about two new TV shows that will feature kink: the series "Whipped," to be aired on the FX Channel, is based on the book "I Was A Teenage Dominatrix." The series "The Box," now being considered by Showtime, is based on the real-life experience of "the famous Mistress Raven." (I've never heard of Mistress Raven, but then, I don't watch much HBO outside Game of Thrones.)
There are so many things wrong here. The headline has it exactly, totally wrong. "50 Shades of Gray" is the wave, these two series that I have never heard of outside this article are tiny bits of flotsam being carried along by the "50 Shades of Gray" tsunami, which continues to swamp my flying monkeys no matter where I send them (i.e., no matter what search terms I use for my Google news agents.) There IS no "Hollywood S&M wave" there's just "50 Shades of Gray" tearing it up everywhere it goes, and a lot of people trying to catch that wave.
But it's not just the headline. It's the tone deafness of the story. "50 Shades of Gray" is a story about a maledom/femsub relationship (and how Ana and Christian negotiate it into a more ordinary romantic relationship). But it's obvious these two stories are about femdom/malesub sex, and no indication it's about the personal relationships involved in that sex at all. It's as if someone said, "Hey we got a real popular book about a man and a woman who dig the hell out of vanilla sex with each other, so there's an obvious sex wave going on here, and let's ride it by making a TV series about two men who love doing vanilla sex with each other! Everybody will love it!"
See the problem? I'll grant you, gender preferences in terms of sex go a lot deeper than gender preferences in terms of dominance/submision, but it's still real damn important to a lot of people. Yet you see this REPEATEDLY: Hollywood types make no distinction between maledom/femsub and femdom/malesub, and try to emulate the success of maledom/femsub stories with femdom/malesub stories. It's freaking RETARDED! And, apparently, inevitable.
Finally, a large part of the success of "50 Shades of Gray" is the way the author portrays the relationship between, Christian and Ana changing and growing. I don't have ANY faith in these two series managing any such thing. Maybe I am just projecting the idiocy of the Hollywood Reporter onto the series ... but I doubt it.
And if you check out the comments on the article, I let the readers of the Hollywood Reporter know what I thought of their "story."
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