Any disturbance you may have felt in the Force over the weekend was justified: at a fan event last Friday, Fifty Shades stars Jamie Dornan, Dakota Johnson, director Sam Taylor-Johnson, and author E.L. James announced that the movie adaptations of Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed are officially happening. Here, let ineffectual feather duster wipe away your tears:
For those of you just joining us, Fifty Shades Darker is the book in which Christian, in addition to other romanticized abusive behaviors, purchases the business where Ana works in order to control both her home life and her work life against her express wishes; forbids her from seeing friends; and forces her to take birth control she doesn’t want. Fifty Shades Freed features the tempestuous Mr. Grey attempting to intimidate his now-wife into getting an abortion; punishing Ana for displaying her body in ways of which he disapproves; and threatening her with non-consensual sex if she doesn’t change her last name.
In other words, it’s not enough that one wildly popular movie is dangerously misrepresenting the BDSM lifestyle and presenting a physically and emotionally abusive relationship as the ideal, we’re now getting three films of escalating egregiousness and irresponsibility. I can’t say I’m surprised, but that doesn’t mean I’m not dreading umpteen more years of ill-informed opining on kink and advertising that ignores the movie’s obvious endorsement of abuse. Bah, humpbug.
On the bright side, as Fifty Shades becomes more mainstream, the book’s critics (such as the awesome Jenny Trout) might get more traction, too. As someone who absorbed Twilight‘s similarly unhealthy messages at an impressionable age and was lucky that other people looked at the phenomenon through a critical lens, I’m actually excited to see how the Fifty Shades backlash will grow over the years. (And if Dakota Johnson pulls a K-Stew and spends her post-Fifty career being an outspoken feminist and exposing the film industry’s double standards, that would be rad as heck, too.)
What do you think, my mother hamsters?
(via MTV)
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