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The positives:
- Dakota Johnson was believable as Anastasia. She was shy and innocent and vulnerable and confused (as she should have been with the lack of credible information given her).
- As far as I got into the book, the movie is better because I found the book so boring it was unreadable.I may have gotten as far as the coffee shop in the book. Could have been 20 pages or 80 I have no recollection except that it felt interminable. So I stopped. I have no idea from that point on how close the movie follows the book. Maybe somebody will tell me who has experienced both.
- I suppose the sexy, fun parts where she is enjoying what he's doing are fair enough. Yes, that is what BDSM can be - good, sexy fun times that include various other sensations (except she really doesn't 'get' what is happening to her, so for me she is still giving consent where she doesn't have enough knowledge to make an informed decision - see more points on this below).
- He does give her safewords.
The negatives:
- I didn't believe Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey at all. He had no power about him. Never smiling and being impatient with everyone does not a powerful person make.
- I didn't feel the chemistry between Anna and Christian.
- And he wasn't likable. Anna's roommate isn't likable either. Her mother blows off her graduation and isn't sympathetic either. So, it kind of makes me think Anna is a little too stupid to live.
- A D/s (Dominant/submissive) relationship is based on an exchange of power and he gave her absolutely no knowledge of the joys of that from which to make an informed decision. Just bossing someone around does not a dominant make. And just letting someone boss you around does not a submissive make.
- He acted like a newbie playing Dom. He didn't bother to explain terminology, toys, tools, the energy exchange, nothing to her. He just said here, read my contract that says I get to do this and you have to do that and that's all you need to know. Bullshit. She had no reason to trust him and he gave her none at any point in the journey by actually taking care of her mentally - like explaining shit to her. You can't buy trust. And your only real currency is your reputation (aka trust). He might be a rich man in the vanilla world, but were he in any reputable BDSM community, he would be bankrupt.
- If he really wanted her to research BDSM and submission, he would have supplied her with some direction of good websites vs inaccurate ones and maybe given her some books to read by reputable authors. He wouldn't have just given her a computer and said Google submissive, so all she really got was a lot of pictures of women in restraints and so forth.
- She acted like it was a game from beginning to end and he acted like it was all serious and business-like. If he was as smart as EL James wanted us to believe, then she would have made Christian slow down and explain why it wasn't a game so at least both characters were on the same page.
- I found it incredibly cowardly that he told her about his youth when she was obviously asleep and couldn't hear it.
- I hate the fact that the kinky person here is also the emotionally distant, broken, abused person. That he learned BDSM when he was age 15 from an older lady pisses me off because it carries implication that people in this lifestyle are all either fucked up emotionally or pedophiles. We don't have one good example of someone in the lifestyle owning what they like as a positive example of a healthy person who simply enjoys giving or receiving intense stimulation.
- In my experience, if you are going to punish your submissive for breaking a rule or bad behavior, you wouldn't use toys/tools to do it. The basic premise is that you don't create negative connotations and connections with things that are supposed to give pleasure. Examples: My submissive does the dishes. If I punish him by making him do the dishes on command, then now he isn't making a positive connection with the dishes as a task he does as a service to me, he is seeing them as something bad. OR if he likes being flogged or whipped then if I punish him by flogging or whipping him, I'm taking away the joy of that. These should be rewards, not punishments. If I really want to punish him, then I'd give him some inane task like pushing a foam peanut around the edge of a coffee table with his nose or something equally inane and not fun. That's a punishment that isn't tainting the good stuff. SO, when Christian spanks her as a punishment, I thought well, that's stupid. If you want her to enjoy spanking, well you just fucked that up mister! His leaving, was more of a punishment. But he's now connected the spanking, his leaving and punishment together and that's how she's likely to remember those things in the future.
- And BDSM relationships are fun and loving and that he acted as though it isn't. We do what we do because it feels good to us. It brings us joy. That she doesn't ever get to touch him or sleep with him were just him being a fucked up individual, not indicative of him being into BDSM. He is completely right when he says he of fifty shades of fucked up. Thanks again, EL James, for putting out more stupid stereotypes that make my community and lifestyle look bad.
- Any reputable top would not just wail on their bottom like he does with the belt towards the end. They would warm them up first, they would care that she isn't enjoying this. A heavy bottom might like that kind of thing, but why would you just beat on someone new like that when they really don't even understand enough to knowledgeably consent?
- He never explains what she is consenting to emotionally, only physically. So, that's a great way to break your bottom. Good job, Christian. And thanks again, Ms James, for making us look like a lot of assholes.
Overall, the movie irritates me for the inaccuracies of the spirituality and connection that people can share doing what we do. It's like having enough knowledge and lingo to make it look good, but underneath, it's so wrong as to be dangerous.
In my humble opinion.
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