Seven Reasons Everyone Wants To See Lindsay Lohan As Ana in Fifty Shades of Grey

Over the last six or eight months, the ballyhoo over "Fifty Shades of Grey" the book has mostly quieted down. It's been replaced by ballyhoo over casting for the Fifty Shades of Grey movie. In fact, the ballyhoo started off full steam last summer and has hardly lost a beat all the way the present.

I have studiously, perhaps stupidly, ignored these stories (except for my April Fools post) since it was all baseless speculation. You can tell it's baseless speculation because practically every actor and actress in the United States and Europe has been put forth as a likely lead for the movie.

But I have finally encountered a speculation I can't resist: this report that Lindsay Lohan may be, or perhaps should be, interested in being the female lead for Fifty Shades of Grey. And the reason I can't resist it is there are SO many reasons for wanting Lindsay Lohan to be the lead.

Seven Reasons Everyone Wants To See Lindsay Lohan As Ana in Fifty Shades of Grey

1) From the viewpoint of the producers, actors, etc., involved in the movie, if it's a bomb, they can just blame it on Lindsay. At this point, who wouldn't believe it?

2) With all the drugs she's done and all she's gone through, she's probably be willing to do ANY kind of scene, we're talking right up to and including a full double-dildo Savage Fold with flaming dachshunds and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

3) She's probably ENJOY doing such scenes, and her enjoyment would probably show through and make the role work for her.

4) Even if you don't think she's hot and you hate her for all the weird stuff she's done, you STILL might want to see her in handcuffs and a ballgag with a butt plug up her ass.

5) If you DO think she's hot, you ALSO might want to see her in handcuffs and a ballgag with a butt plug up her ass.

6) If you hated the book and hate the very IDEA of the movie, you might just want her in the lead in the hopes that she'd fuck the movie up royally with some stupid new antic. The insurance premiums alone ...

7) Americans love comeback stories, and dammit, a comeback story with Lindsay Lohan triumphing in a role that has her tied up and fucked senseless is JUST what this country needs, dammit!

Why Do the Bluenoses Rage?

"What, me, porn?"

Ran across a story about a schoolteacher who bought a student a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. A private school teacher named Roger Aidoo bought a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey for a 14 year old male student, who had requested the book as part of an extracurricular reading assignment.

The student's mother, Maya Ladson, did not think this was an appropriate thing for the teacher to do, and complained to the school about it. Fair enough, the school administrators hauled Aidoo in, gave him the third degree, and were apparently satisfied with his story that he was not all that familiar with the fact that Fifty Shades of Grey contained lots of explicit BDSMy sex.

Ladson, however, ain't buying it. She wants Aidoo fired. But the administrators, in a rare display of scholarly backbone, aren't firing him over the irate cries of one crazed bluenosed mom.

Here's my take on the story. Buying the kid a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey was a boneheaded move by the teacher. But it's not a firing offense. Hell, any kid with access to a computer can find porn that will make Fifty Shades of Grey look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. So the appropriate thing to do is to haul Aidoo in and tell him, "That was a really stupid thing to do, and if you do anything remotely like it in the future, we are going to fire you so hard and fast it will make you head spin. Now get out of here, you knucklehead."

The interesting thing is why Lawson's panties got totally bunched up over this. Bluenoses seem to get worked up over sex-related matters orders of magnitude more than regular people do. That's why they have so much influence, I suppose. I suspect that bluenoses are people who have attempted to repress their own sex drives in various ways, and every sexual thing that comes along is just a huge irritant to them, whereas it just does not bother the less sexually repressed. They're pains in the asses and generally useless, and it would be a shame if Mr. Aidoo lost his job because he irritated a bluenose. He would hardly be the first if he did, however.

Fork U: Cosmo's Horrible BDSM Sex Tips Inspired By Fifty Shades of Grey

As Midori and others have noted, Fifty Shades of Grey has been an overall good thing because it's allowed people to start talking in public about BDSM without the endless EEEEEWW bookending that once had to surround any commentary about BDSM in the mainstream media.

But this is not an unalloyed good thing. When the conversation opens up, everybody gets into it. At least now the conversation can be balanced between the knowledgeable and the not knowledgeable and not totally dominated by the witless old dinosaurs of media that once dominated the conversation. But now you'll get voices like your horny post college grad little sister who thinks she knows everything about sex and intimacy because shes' been on a few dates and fucked a few boys, but really doesn't know a hell of a lot, but that won't stop her from telling you how to do EVERYTHING sexual.

In the media, that would be Cosmopolitan magazine. So I was delighted when I found this hilarious, wonderfully snarky article on Nerve.com about 17 really stupid pieces of BDSM sex tips from Cosmo. I was chortling, guffawing and sniggering throughout. Check out tip number four if you don't believe me ... then go read the article.

4. "Press a fork (firmly, but don’t break the skin or anything) into different parts of his body — his butt cheeks, his pecs, his thighs."
This was clearly written at lunchtime, after a morning spent rummaging around the office for kinkspiration. Rejected options: "Hold a blueberry muffin in your fist and punch him in the mouth." "Pretend to be a naughty piece of printer paper and tell him to 'staple' you." "Act like a PDF and order him to 'fax me hard.' Make all relevant noises."
Incidentally, if the women who read Cosmo need to be cautioned against stabbing someone with a fork hard enough to break the skin, then their partners are going to need more than a safe word.

Captain Underpants Tops Fifty Shades of Grey

According to reports from the Associated Press, EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey ranked only number four on the American Library Association's "challenged books" list, i.e., their list of the books most frequently complained about by parents, educators and other bluenoses. Topping the list at number one is Dav Pilkey's "Captain Underpants" series of books, the adventures of a superhero toddler in a comic book created by two fourth graders, who accidentally becomes real (it's complicated).

The AP seems vaguely surprised that Captain Underpants topped Fifty Shades and all the others, but really, they should not have been. Have you ever SMELLED a toddler? Periodically, on the basis of smell alone, they can out-offend anything that is not either a skunk or dead, or a dead skunk. Fifty Shades never had a chance against THAT level of offensiveness. I totally sympathize with those who do not wish to be reminded of the sensitive issue of toddler stinkiness via a provocative title like "Captain Underpants."

My personal solution, however, is not to read such books. That's why I'm not a bluenose ... just a regular sort of nose that does not like the smell of toddlers.

Ian McKellan, Hellen Mirren Leads In Fifty Shades of Grey Movie?

Ian McKellan and Helen Mirren: inside track for Fifty Shades leads? Image sources: the Interwebs.

The little birds at Universal Pictures are all atwitter with the news that the studio may be preparing a surprising tasty treat in the form of an "M&M" for fans of the naughty novel known as Fifty Shades of Grey. The insiders at the studio are saying that Ian McKellan and Helen Mirren are very much in the running to play Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele.

Our ultra-secret, ultra-knowledgeable sources say that Universal has heard the complaints from some parties that at 21, Anastasia is young to be engaging in lustful, depraved, kinky sex practices, and that it was ridiculous to say a man could be a self-made billionaire while still in his twenties, so they made an imaginative leap and decided to go with someone completely at the other end of the age spectrum.

And don't be fearful that this casting move heralds backing off from the sexy hijinks portrayed in the book, fans, because word is that Mirren and McKellan are both eager and raring to go. Mirren, quite the hottie in her younger days and always ready to doff her clothing at the drop of an innuendo, and McKellan, who is gay in real life, will have absolutely no compunction about getting it on in ways that will leave audience's brains begging for bleach. And let's face it, at their respective ages, the ropes and chains will help a lot, giving them something to hang on to while they give their all.

And word is, if Mirren and McKellan turn the roles down, there's always Bette Midler and Mickey Rooney waiting in the wings.

EL James Sexy Tweet Game

Are those your hands on my breasts are are you just looking for some easy innuendo, Christian?

Increasingly, the big Internet aggregators are publishing the same boring crap published by mainstream magazines -- regurgitated press releases, articles that are pretty much copies of what all the other big aggregators are publishing (example: "Everyone is all abuzz over the new rumor that (blank) is being considered to be cast as Ana in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie!) and well, generic, boring, inoffensive crap.

So when I see an article that has some element of originality, even on a big aggregator site, I'll happily point it out. Here's a nice article: a writer has noticed that EL James likes to put a little sexual innuendo in her tweets, so she put up some actual tweets by James and made up some fake tweets. You have to guess which is which. Enjoy!

Seventy Million Copies Sold, Oh My!

"I know you want to scream in pleasure, Anna, but we must keep you silenced!"
"Then why are you using a ring gag, Christian?"
"I'm sure I can think of something to put in that ring in your mouth to silence you, Ana." Image source: Public Disgrace.com.

A recent article in Jezebel.com has announced that Fifty Shades of Grey, having sold 70 million copies in 2012 (half of them ebook sales) singlehandedly helped the Bertelsman group (the company that owns Random House) maintain overall group profit levels despite stagnant conditions in its TV, magazine, and music publishing businesses.

I'm very pleased that Fifty Shades has been so successful, it's my hope that it ushers in a whole new era of acceptance and enjoyment of kinky erotic romances, even if some publishers are trying to prevent that. But Jezebel.com is a lot more conflicted on the topic of Fifty Shades. On the one hand, they probably understand that many of their readers bought and enjoyed Fifty Shades. On the other hand, a lot of their readers, either because they are antisex gender feminists who hate any depiction of maledom/femsub anything, or are lit-crit types who can't tolerate sexy romances and the slutty women who read them, absolutely HATE Fifty Shades of Grey.

That's why I love the article, because short as it is it almost explodes with the tension between happily reporting Fifty Shades' success, and snarking the hell out of its success. The article has snark going in opposite directions. On the one hand, it describes Fifty Shades of Grey as "E.L. James' cult sadomasochistic masterwork" implying it's a cultish porn novel (that Somehow sold 70 million copies). But it also takes a slam at the lit-crit crowd, pointing out that Fifty Shades' high level of ebook sales may be because unlike other books, it invites "the book-shaming eyerolls of MFA-holding Barnes & Noble cashiers."

A nice commentary on our economy, the value of a Master of Fine Arts degree, and the probable status of the lit-crit crowd's louder voices.

A very tasty bit of writing, very revealing to the discerning eye. Enjoy!

Interesting Analysis of Fifty Shades

A writer name Nathan Branford has written an interesting analysis of Fifty Shades of Grey. I liked it because it seemed honest. He clearly, actually read the book, came up with his own ideas about it. He correctly saw it as coming out of the romance novels' Byronic romance tradition, and that it's not as badly written as the lit-crit types keep complaining, but he kind of ignores/dances around the BDSM aspects of the novels. Like, he completely misses the fact that the readers just DIVED IN to the kinky aspects of the story.

It's very much the response of a vanilla type who hasn't thought things through and doesn't really want to confront the kink, but it's honest. That's refreshing.

Nothing Happening in Fifty Shades Land

Today my flying monkeys pulled in a dozen stories related to 50 Shades of Grey. One was about Mila Kunis not playing the female lead. A second was about Kate Moss reading from Fifty Shades of Grey. The rest are all about Emma Watson issuing a tweet that says she will not play the lead in Fifty Shades of Grey. Ten different reports about that. That means there's no news out there about Fifty Shades of Grey worth reporting, or someone would would haved reported it. Carry on!

Another Writer Prefaces Comments On Fifty Shades of Grey with "Have Not Read It"

The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy section has a post where an indie moviemaker, Kieran Evans, compares his indie film, "Karen+Victor," which apparently has a femdom/malesub relationship, to Fifty Shades of Grey ... which he prefaces by saying, "I've never read Fifty Shades of Grey." But ... he's heard a lot about it, so that's all right.

I wrote a response to his post, because I'm really sick of all these people who never read the book confidently going out there and making fools of themselves by getting their facts all wrong and, of course, drawing wrong conclusions. So I straightened him out on a few points:

I have not seen your film, know very little about it, so I can't say if it's any good or not, and won't. If only you would be as fair to Fifty Shades of Grey. Anyone who says they have not read the book and then makes pronunciations about it loses all credibility, in my opinion. You get basic facts wrong: you said, " While the sex act may be viewed by outsiders as “S&M,” unlike “50 Shades” these two people have never before been involved in BDSM culture." Well the fact is that Ana is a virgin at the start of Fifty Shades of Grey and had never had ANY experience with BDSM. So ... poor comparison

Also, Fifty Shades is not ABOUT a maledom/femsub sex. Both Ana and Christian enjoy the sex, but the central story of the relationship is how Christian tries to set up their relationship as a purely contractual relationship, and how Ana refuses it, and it evolves into something more like a regular romantic relationship. That's really what it's ABOUT, the sex, while important, is not the central element because there's no conflict over it ... they both like it.

Now all you need to have said to make the point that your movie is different from Fifty Shades is that the relationship in your movie is femdom/malesub (i.e., it's Karen who does the tying-up) whereas in Fifty Shades it's maledom/femsub. Gender makes a huge difference to MOST (not all) who like BDSM, and for the readers of the romances and erotic romances, who enjoy maledom/femsub stories. You're in a different genre already. But I get the impression you don't know that, which is another strike against your credibility.

Welcome!

Welcome to Fifty Shades of Grey Considered, a blog that will look at the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy as a media and social phenomenon. I've been watching Fifty Shades of Grey happen for the last 18 months as it went from a curious publishing anomaly to something that has "distorted the adult book market" as one disgruntled competing publisher put it. I've been posting articles about it over on my main blog, Politically Sexy, for the entire time, and it's occurred to me that I've written enough posts about Fifty Shades of Grey that I might as well start my own blog on the topic. Therefore, this blog.

Basically, I am a big fan of Fifty Shades of Grey as a phenomenon. Romance novels don't interest me all that much, being a guy, but I do like the kinky, and I also like the way that Fifty Shades of Grey arose from fanfic rather than being foisted on readers by some big corporate publishing entity. (I know that Random House is the official publisher of the Fifty Shades books, but they only negotiated for the rights to publish the novel in traditional media after it had become a bestseller as an ebook, beating out THEIR books with all their marketing muscle behind them.)

I'm also interested in it as a social phenomenon, a genuine grassroots success whose 65 million copies sold worldwide indicates a definite interest in kinky reading fun among the "soccer moms" who were its primary audience. And though the books definitely had Random House's considerable money and marketing muscle behind them, they faced considerable hostility from many groups with vested interests: ordinary prudes who didn't like the strong sexual content, feminist prudes who didn't like the maledom/femsub relationship between Christian and Ana, literary types who hated that a romance novel was kicking ass in the marketplace with unparalleled success, less successful writers (i.e., almost all writers) who resented the books' success when THEIR work was OBVIOUSLY better, and smaller groups of people with various social and political axes to grind.

And I LOVED the way the soccer moms just kept on buying, reading and enjoying the Fifty Shades of Grey books without the least concern for all the media types badmouthing it. I felt a sense of renewed faith in readers' willingness to follow their own tastes, and I savored the media types' frustrated anger as they were unable to control the readers.

It was a delicious experience, and this blog is my attempt to share it with you, and speculate on what comes next ... and no, I'm not just talking about who will be cast in the movie.

OH, yeah, and the artwork? It'll be redone. I think I've nailed Ana: bright, fit, shapely, happy ... but I got an off-the-rack Christian Steele avatar in Second Life, and ... nope, just not right.

Slate's Saletan: Dinosaur Stupidity or Hatchet Job?

First published on 3/9/13

Well I brought you a bit of dinosaur-stupid reporting on BDSM from ABC News online a few weeks ago, and now Slate has decided to follow suit with a truly boneheaded blog post from William Saletan stating that BDSM will NEVER gain popular acceptance.

But I wonder if the post was simple boneheadedness. Sure, he spoke from dire ignorance that got his ass thoroughly kicked in the comments section and also provoked a pretty good ass kicking in this detailed response to his post on buzzfeed.

But there was some sneaky, subtle use of language in the post that made me think it was more of a hatchet job than a simple case of stupid meets sexy. Particularly Saletan's use of the phrase "consensual domestic abuse" to describe consensual kink. What a wonderfully sleazy bit of misdirection! This disgusting phrase links consensual kink and domestic abuse as if one were not the opposite of the other. Abuse is by its very nature nonconsensual. It's like saying "cold hot" or "good bad."

But if you don't like BDSM in the first place, or are butt-ignorant about it, you might just let the phrase slide. After all, women's shelters in England have recycled Fifty Shade of Grey as toilet paper, their leadership also having problems with detecting the difference between consensual and nonconsensual.

Saletan also makes the dubious claim that Americans find it easier to accept homosexuality than to accept BDSM. A moment's thought will convince you of the silliness of that claim. Which is Joe Average gonna find scarier, Mark tying Patricia to the bed, or Mark kissing Patrick? Mr. Saletan apparently thinks they will be more alarmed at Mark tying Patricia to the bed. Mr. Saletan is nuts. Or dissemblig.

Early on in his post Saletan makes the point that "mild bondage is no big deal" and my tastes are very mild. A lot of the stuff I see on Kink.com promos make me wince, not to mention what I've found on other BDSM sites. Kink.com is supposed to be the very pinnacle of safe and sane and consensual, but I don't care for pain at all. I understand that others like pain, but it squicks me past a certain point. But I'm not going to oppose individuals' right to enjoy what they like because it squicks me. And I sort of have the impression that that is exactly what Saletan is doing.

I don't know if Saletan's post is from sheer ignorance ignorant, so I have to consider that this may be a hatchet job. If it is, I doubt it will work. With 65 million copies of Fifty Shades of Grey sold, Saletan is whistling past the graveyard. The mommies like their kinky sex. Saletan is welcome not to like it, but he's an idiot if he thinks he can make a blanket statement about what the mainstream will or will not accept, when the mainstream has ALREADY spoken loudly and definitively on the topic.

Is Fifty Shades of Grey Public Domain?

First published on 3/8/2013

I'm still following the progress of the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon in the media, but there has not been much to report on, as it has mostly devolved into increasingly wild speculation about who will play the leads in the movie. So when a bit of actual news comes along, I'm all ears. And some has.

The first actual news I've seen in a while indicates that Smash Pictures, the creators of a porn parody of "Fifty Shades of Grey," is being sued on violation of copyright grounds by Universal Pictures, which owns the movie rights to "Fifty Shades of Grey." Seems the porn people didn't do an adequate job of filing the serial numbers off!

Now I personally think the story in Fifty Shades of Grey is different enough from Twilight that there's no question that it's not copyright infringement, and I'm guessing Random House's legal department agrees with me, as they greenlit purchasing Fifty Shades.

The defense of Smash Pictures is that "Masters of the Universe," the original story written by EL James, on which Fifty Shades is based, and which was published on a Twilight fanfic website as fanfic, was in the public domain, and that therefore, Fifty Shades itself is in the public domain. For a detailed analysis of the Masters of the Universe fanfic and its relation to Fifty Shades I'll refer you to the Obsidian Wings website's analysis.

Smash Pictures' contention is that since Master of the Universe was published initially as fanfic without any copyright claims, and that since it essentially IS Fifty Shades of Grey, the work is in the public domain and Smash Pictures can't be violating Fifty Shades' copyright.

I don't have the legal chops to speak on the matter of whether or not Master of the Universe's original provenance puts Fifty Shades into public domain territory or not. But my cynical self tends to see that legal cases are generally decided in favor of the person or corporation that has the most money/legal resources. That would be Universal Studios. In any event, publishers, legal experts, movie studios and the fanfic community will be watching this one with great interest.

Domestic Bondage On SMBC Theater

First published on 2/17/2013

A Youtube channel called SMBC Theater has come up with an actually funny bit about sexual bondage play. They called it 50 Shades of Domestic Gray but I think that's just to attract visitors, the skit actually has little or nothing to do with the book Fifty Shades of Grey. Point is: it's actually funny. Lighthearted and fun. Enjoy!

The S.E.C.R.E.T. of No Success

First published on 2/6/2013

This one was so predictable that I am surprised it has taken until now for it to happen. Publishers have decided that then Next Big Thing after Fifty Shades of Grey will be a sexy, sexy novel with lots and lots of vanilla sex and not all that problematical kinky sex, and they've found their book, they think: S.E.C.R.E.T., a relentlessly vanilla sexy novel by Canadian author Lisa Gabriele (writing as L. Marie Adeline).

At the Frankfort book fair, publishers bid the novel up to a six-figure advance against sales in 30 different territories worldwide. The widespread success of Fifty Shades has clearly left publishers hungry for a repeat, but these particular publishers are clueless gits. I predict that S.E.C.R.E.T. will go just as far as the publishers' marketing machine can push it, there'll be no worldwide cascade of interest. After the marketing machine push is over, it'll drop like a lead balloon, going only so far as its astroturf runway permits.

It was the kinky sex, specifically the dominance/submission relationship between Ana and Christian, that made Fifty Shades of Grey so popular. The importance of the kinky sex is so freaking obvious that even the mainstream media reviewers sometimes saw it, but I can just SEE the publishers wishfully thinking, "Well this book has plenty of sex, and none of that problematical kinky sex!"

Fools. If S.E.C.R.E.T. were a stock and I were a stockbroker, I'd wait til it hit a hundred thousand copies sold (the outer limit of where its astroturf sales will go) and then I'd short it like crazy. Of course, I would be foolish to bet actual money on its failure, as I have a personal animus toward the book and would LOVE to see it fail so hard that its publisher's grandchildren wet themselves every time they heard the word "secret."

GQ Fifty Shades of Grey Inspired Photo Spread Features Actual Bondage ... Of A Woman!

First published on 2/6/2013

The flying monkeys brought in news that GQ Magazine's Spanish edition has a hot "Fifty Shades of Grey"-inspired photo spread. I checked it out dutifully, certain I'd see no bondage at all, or a dude in bondage. Because that's fashion bondage for ya. So my eyeballs bugged out a little when the photos included SEVERAL images of a couple with the WOMAN in chains, cuffs, etc. And blindfolded, of course. Good lord, has Fifty Shades become such a powerful media force that even the dunderheads who do fashion photo shoots are starting to get it?

Hmm. This could be an outlier. I'm having trouble giving up the notion that fashion is run by idiots. I'll wait for further evidence. Yeah ... it's gotta be an outlier.

Midori "Gets" Fifty Shades of Grey

First publised on 2/1/2013

I've become so used to BDSM folks dissing 50 Shades of Grey because it does not portray a perfect, idealized BDSM relationship (and honestly, gets a lot of stuff wrong) that I was extremely pleased to discover a positive quote from one of the leading lights of the bondage community, rope bondage expert Midori, who has already made an appearance on Politically Sexy.com. Midori said:

Xtra: Would you say EL James’s novel Fifty Shades of Grey has had an influence on the world of bondage?
Midori: Sure it has. It’s given the general culture permission to explore a wider range of sexual expression. It’s about opening a dialogue.

Source: Xtra Canada's Gay and Lesbian News. Midori gets it! Fifty Shades of Grey, whatever its flaws as a work of art, has allowed people in mainstream culture to explore BDSM without getting the "EEEEWS" and the "double ickies!" all over themselves. For this alone it is great benefit to BDSM culture. But everybody's gotta protect their own special vision of what BDSM is or can be, so a lot of BDSM folks have taken the short & easy road to dissing "Fifty Shades of Grey" as a way of showing their superiority. Sure, we get it, you know stuff. But still ... so short-sighted! So dumb! The folks like Midori who actually do have their act together know better.

Fifty Shades of Grey Seedlings

First published on 1/24/2013

Kink.com is not the only bondage-related thing that is getting mainstreamed of late. "Soft" bondage, whatever that is, is also taking off according to a report in Entertainmentwise.com, which is not exactly a fetish site, as you'll note.

The article, basically a fluff piece, interviews James Deen (known well from Kink.com) who is fast becoming the go-to guy as bondage's most well-known star and a manufacturer of a line of sex aids/toys called Liberator (There may be some sexism going on here, there have been MANY well-known and successful women who have promoted and advanced sexual bondage over the years ... Midori, Lorelei Imboch, Chanta Rose, the list is very long indeed, yet James Deen is the go-to source for the press. Well at least they are going to someone who actually does bondage.)

The Liberator people obligingly ascribe the upward boost in sales of their products to an increase of awareness of "soft" bondage and interest in it, created by "50 Shades of Grey." And they're probably right. I'm seeing other articles in which bondage is being matter-of-factly described as a culture phenomenon rather than some bizarre fetish, like this one on celebrity bondage looks from Hollywoodife.com, which asks which actress looks best in leather "bondage" fashion.

What I see happening is that the effects of Fifty Shades of Grey are beginning to appear in our culture. Fifty million seeds have been planted, their effects are invisible as they grow in our collective unconscious, now we see the first tiny shoots poking above the unconscious into mainstream media. Gonna be interesting to watch and see what grows, and how it grows.

Filthy Shades of Grey?

First pubished on 1/13/2013

Kelly Marcel, the screenwriter for the upcoming 50 Shades of Grey movie, says the movie is gonna be RAUNCHY, that they are going for an NC-17 rating. The news is all over the entertainment blogs.

I'm kind of amazed, and surprised, and frankly, cynical. There is a long distance between a screenplay and the final movie. Frankly, to have the movie come out as raunchy as some of the scenes in the books, you'd need some hardcore scenes indeed, because there ARE scenes in the books where Christian ties Ana up thoroughly, gags her and fucks her.

I'm betting the studio execs will get cold feet at the thought of trying to make an NC-17 hit franchise film. If the film is NOT raunchy, it will be a flop, because the readers clearly liked the raunchy elements of the books. But the conventional wisdom is that NC-17 does not produce blockbuster hits. You gotta get the kids in there! And even though the thought of Fifty Shades of Grey that's clean enough for the kiddies is patently ridiculous, well, anybody who ever read the Gor novels would have said the same thing about a Gor movie ... and look what we wound up with.

Warning Tremors

First published on 1/9/2013

Found an article on Alternet wondering when BDSM became so wildly popular. The interesting element of the article was its date: it was published in June 2010, well before the advent of "Fifty Shades of Grey."

The people at Alternet definitely showed some prescience in running such an article just ahead of Fifty Shades of Grey, clearly someone at the progressive site was feeling the advance tremors of the cultural volcano that is Fifty Shades of Grey.

The tremors were as nothing to the explosion, of course. What the article cites is things like the success of Kink.com and kink no longer being considered a mental illness and Christina Aguilera's kinky outfits she wore in music video, and Aguilera's predecessor, Madonna with her Sex book back in the 80s (which if I recall, was a bomb).

All in all it is weak beer compared to Fifty Shades of Grey, the equivalent of the filler material my flying monkeys brought in for posts to jam in between the tons of stuff they brought in about Fifty Shades this summer -- only scattered over a couple of decades instead of a few months, because there just wasn't that much going on in the mainstream wrt BDSM.

When you got the top three books on the New York Times bestseller list containing a story of bondage, dominance and spanking, fifty million copies sold mostly to soccer moms, and James Deen (see above) an idol of teenaged girls in America, well you are in a WHOLE DIFFERENT BALLPARK. But to be fair, Alternet's contributors knew SOMETHING was up, more than you could say about a lot of the mainstream media.

Of course, some people, such as me, were feeling the tremors six years ago. What can I say? Prescient!