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.

50 Shades of Grey: The Next Mainstream Bondage Romance?

First published 3/1/2012
It's been a long time since there was a breakout bondage romance in mainstream media, and it looks like the drought is over: Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James, a London television executive who got published by a small Australian publisher and who is not getting wall to wall buzz for her book.

It's the story of a hot young woman seduced by a bondage-loving billionaire and all the deliciously naughty things he does to her. It's doing tremendously well in terms of sales and it has the buzz machine going on overtime. How successful is it? Well I linked to the Kindle version of 50 Shades because the paperbacks, which were printed in a small run initially, were going for $105.00 each on Amazon when I created the link. The Kindle version is only $6.95, so ... I figured most would prefer it. It's being called everything from Pornography for Mommies to Twilight for adults.

Now, there's an interesting story there. Fifty Shades of Grey apparently started out as Twilight fan fiction. And the Twilight fanbase adopted it as a tribute to the wonderful Twilight books (you know, Stephenie Myers' series about a vacuous high school girl who is inexplicably attractive to vampires). Then, the narrative goes, she somehow sneakily rewrote it as her own creative work, USING the Twilight fandom community to promote her book.

By all accounts, it's hard to see how 50 Shades is Twilight fanfic, so I'm not sure I buy this narrative, though it's apparently true that James wrote fanfic in the Twilight community as Icedragon Snowqueen. I really don't know enough to have an opinion, having read neither book. (Oh, I'm gonna read 50 Shades!) But it's some great gossip!

It's interesting, almost always, when a bondage story breaks over into the mainstream, it's a romance. Spicy romances, to be sure, with plenty of sex, but the feel of the genre is unmistakable: Story of O, 9 1/2 Weeks and 50 Shades all are about women who have relationships with a single man who brings out the submissive in them, while they bring out the dom in him. Secretary would be the film equivalent, I suppose.

I'm always interested in bondage that makes it into the mainstream, maybe 50 Shades will be the novel that becomes the gateway fiction that leads readers to find all the great erotic bondage fiction out there. Fiction like: Karg!