50 Shades of Suck

A/N: I originally wrote this when I was 17, so some editing has been in order.

A few things. before I start:

• SPOILER WARNING!! Read at your own risk.

• All points with a * will be elaborated on, in a different post.

• I believe in freedom of art. I also believe in the importance of critiquing art that spreads harmful messages, especially if it's mass produced. Or is just, y'know - bad.

• I was once told I don't like 50 Shades, because I've never been in love and so "I don't get it." This was over six years ago (as of date of posting), and to this day, I haven't been able to live it down. I'm not sure if I should be more offended at the implication that I'm too stupid to know what love looks like; or the implication that people who are in love become stupid enough to think that the 50 Shades trilogy is good representation of healthy, loving relationships. 

Anyway, the reasons I actually don't like it are because:

1.  It’s not a love-story masterpiece, it's porn on paper. There's nothing wrong with porn on paper of course, but let's call a duck a duck.

2. The relationship between Christian and Ana is abusive and that's never portrayed as a bad thing.* p. 218, 50 Shades Freed – proof.

3. The book, the author and the readers confuse BDSM with abuse. The key word is: consent!

4. It promotes the idea that “love cures” abuse. According to this book, if Ana loves Christian hard enough, she will cure his emotional and psychological trauma (see 2) and as many abusive relationships in real life have proven – this doesn’t work. Speaking of which:

5. What is Christian paying Dr. Flynn for?* I could’ve done a better job!

6. The writing is terrible.* It’s filled with purple prose, needless descriptions, little to no fundamental descriptions, clichés, little to no research on what matters.*

7. Ana is a poorly written character, who we are supposed to consider flawless, even if the book gives lip service to her not-actual-flaws, flaws (like clumsiness). All men are attracted to her, all "cool" girls want to be her friends and no one criticizes her bad behavior, even though they judge others for behaving the same way she does.

8. Ana is also a terrible person. She is whiny, spineless, misogynistic, selfish and has the personality of a doormat.

9. Christian is a huge douche bag. Book 3, p.218+ Just an example

10. There is little to no plot and when there is, the characters actively refuse to take any part in it.
Everything revolves around the sex-scenes which don’t bring anything to the story. There’s no real conflict, just angst and melodrama. When there is conflict, it is downplayed and can be resolved with one 911 call, which no one makes because fuck logic!, I guess.

11. The dialogue! Oh, dear god the dialogue! It’s cheesy, unrealistic and uses too many words to communicate very few things.

12. Stupid, foggy and unsexy euphemisms for genitalia. A little tip from your úntie Charlie: if you can only refer to your vagina as "down there," even in your own head, you might just not be quite mature enough to have sex in the first place.

13. Christian and Ana don’t love each other, and quite frankly - I'm not sure they even like each other.*

14. You can feel the author pulling the characters' strings.* Yes, it’s a book and some suspension of disbelief is expected, but the interaction between the characters doesn't seem natural at all. They all act like a bunch of puppets controlled by a puppeteer.

15. It’s started as a fan fiction of Twilight! I mean, of all the things in the world to rip off - Twilight? Really?

16. Because of 14 and 15, some things just don’t make sense. Why don’t they just call the police on Leila? Everything would be resolved right away, but you see, but since she was a vampire in the original, they couldn't. Except she isn't a vampire in this version, so that just makes no sense. In fact, kind of makes it seem like Christian wanted Leila to kill Ana.

17. It jumps the shark. Then it continues running towards the the edge of the eternal abyss, jumps over that too, and sprints for about two hundred more meters.

18. All the damn misogyny.*

19. It's too long and therefore - boring! So much from these books can be edited out and make one book. A giant book probably, but at least it would be one. EL has this awful habit to saying things that can be said into a line or two, with paragraphs upon paragraphs. To quote from a fellow blogger Chris Murray, “While Stephanie Meyer writes about interesting shit in a boring way, EL James writes about boring shit in a boring way.”

20. Rich is good, poor is shameful message. Especially in books 2 and 3. Real nice, ELJ!

21. It promotes toxic masculinity, such as the idea that a man has to be conventionally attractive, rich, sexually and personally "dominant" and hate even the mere suggestion that he could be anything other than a Straighty McHetero.

22. It's not actually very sexy. For a book, that will supposedly revive/save/better your sex life, the sex scenes are actually kind of dry, repetitive, and if I may so myself - pretty vanilla. I'm actually way more kinky than Christian Grey.

23. E.L. James refuses to take responsibility for her books and admit her mistakes. 

24. The writing is annoying. These books contain the biggest collection of annoying phrases and expressions I've ever read. "Fair point well made, Miss Steele"; "his jeans hang of his hips in that way" (what way?) and what the hell is with all of these non-edible items being described as "delicious"?

25. Clumsy attempts at creating a sense of intense and memorable romance. Reminding us of things that happened days, or better yet – mere hours ago as means to tell us "look they are so connected!", doesn’t work. Stop doing it!

26. 50 Shades Freed was completely pointless! The internal conflict was "resolved" by then. Why did we need another terrible sequel?

27. The books ignore the internal conflict, or pretend that Christian being kinky is the issue. He is also not really kinky, but that's a whole other topic.*

28. The external conflict also sucks! Jack Hyde is your typical clichéd, moustache-twirling villain; the Leila subplot had a horribly disappointing payoff and Elena could have created interesting conflict, but her subplot is not explored nearly enough and it's turned into cheap melodrama, instead.

29. Inconsistently written secondary characters. Case in point: Kate. She cares about Ana's well being, but she lives her drunk and passed out with a stranger she doesn't trust?

30. Ana’s inner goddess and subconscious. You need to read for yourself to believe those are actual characters. The first represents Ana's constant horniness and the other her internalized misogyny. I want to hit them both, possibly with a book better than this one.

31. Choosing non-conflict over conflict. There are little to no interesting issues or subplots and when there is a spark of some, the author chooses to drop them in a favour if something mundane and boring, that we are supposed to care about, like Ana's panties (book 1); what present Ana gets Christian for his birthday (book 2) and what method of contraception Christian prefers (book 2).

32. No character development. None, whatsoever. It’s even worse than Twilight!

33. Rape through coercion. 50 Shades of Grey, chapter 20 in the boathouse. 50 Shades Darker - after the Leila "conflict" (see 32) is resolved and other such "charming" occasions.

34. Hairism. All blondes are evil or bitchy. Aaaaaall of them. Even Kate, to some extent.

35. WTF moment #1: Ana is a 2011 college graduate who’s never had a laptop, a tablet or a smart phone. Riiiiiiiiight!

36. Unrealistically fast pacing. Christian proposes to Ana after only month, five days of which they had been broken up, and they get married after two months. U-hauling much?

37. Sharing a toothbrush and thinking it’s sexy. I guess this is one of those YMMV things, and I might even accept it's intimate, but sexy? Yeah, no.

38. Ana's immature obsession with sex. She is obsessed with her own sex life and assumes other people are too and judges everyone based on the amount of sex they do or don't have, which is something I did when I was fourteen.

39. Characterisation 101: Informed attributes aren't actual attributes, E.L.! If you want me to believe Christian is charming I need to actually see him be charming. If you want me to think Ana is smart, she has to show some awareness to the world around her.

40. WTF moment #2: Ana goes from personal assistant to an editor in a goddamn week, and this is meant to be taken as a good thing. I mean, come on, she wasn't even a very good assistant!

41. Clumsy attempts at Damsel in Distress trope. Listen, sometimes humans need help, that's fine. Except in this case this looks pretty damn creepy. Case in point: chapter 3, book 1. Just... just that.

42. Christian is trying to buy Ana. He gives her expensive gifts, even though she constantly tells him it makes her uncomfortable, and he clearly believes she owes him affection in return.

43. The premise is bullshit.* Kate must be the world’s worst newspaper editor-in-charge.

44. This is not how business works. Christian is shown to be this unbelievably rich and successful CEO of a huge company (that he build on his own in less than 10 years), but what we have been shown is that he never works and makes business decisions based on who he’s porking right now or who he wants to pork in the future. Oh, and supposedly he is richer than Bill Gates. Sure, Jan!

45. Ana's emotional age is eleven.*

46. These two communicate like teenagers in a bad musical. Stop playing songs to each other, you are not in Glee! Maybe try talking instead?

47. Statutory rape we are not supposed to see as bad. Elena Robinson – around 27 at the time, starts a sexual relationship with then – 15-year-old Christian and it’s downplayed horribly. Eventually it's brought up, but the issue becomes not that she took advantage of him, but that she introduced him to kink! For a supposedly kinky book, 50 Shades really seems to hate kinky people!

48. WTF moment #3: They are shaving each other, which we are meant to see as sexy. I mean, Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That's Ok and all, but I would wager that the the vast majority of the audience isn't particularly interested in the characters' body hair and what they do with it. Also, how creepy is that Christian simply won't respect Ana's boundaries about shaving and uses physical force to overpower her and do what he wants? Ugh!

49. Ana has more romantic and sexual chemistry with several characters than she does with Christian. Amongst these are: Kate, Jason Taylor and hell, even Christian's brother, Elliot.

50. The books have homophobic and biphobic messages. Christian gets mad when Ana asks, if he is gay; Ana judges Elliot, when Christian implies he is bisexual; and Ana herself seems to struggle with attraction to women that she constantly represses.