Month: February 2015

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

Hey everybody! I’m drowning in work, so updates this week will probably be this, and Merlin Club on Friday. I’m on the downhill slope of a manuscript and I’m editing another one, so I’m swamped. But I wanted to stop by and tell you:

• I’m Jaclyn Friedman’s guest on Fucking While Feminist this week. You can listen here. We talked about 50 Shades of Grey, natch.

• The Boss series is coming to audio! Tantor Media has acquired the rights to The Boss, The Girlfriend, and The Bride for audio publication. More news on that to come.

• My latest 50 Shades of Grey blog is in The Huffington Post. It was already posted here, but over there it says The Huffington Post in big letters. Here.

• And here is an article on 50 Shades of Grey written by someone who has apparently never read the books and who consulted experts who haven’t read it (or any other book) either: I was going to write a response to this, but I’ve got a lot to do and oh lord, the green mile seems so long.

 

I’ll be back when all my stuff gets done. I’ll still update the DV/Rape links post, but if you want to leave links in the comments, that’s okay, too. Catch you on the flipside.

To say I am not a fan of 50 Shades of Grey is to say that the universe is kinda big, or that fire is slightly warm. Having spent two solid years of my life breaking down E.L. James’s blockbuster hit series, I consider myself something of a professional critic of the books and the phenomenon surrounding them. From its glaring similarities to Twilight (50 Shades of Grey is an unauthorized reimagining of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series), the depictions of unsafe and unrealistic BDSM practices, and the often-cringeworthy prose, there’s a lot to critique. But since the success of 50 Shades of Grey is driven almost entirely by female interest, is it anti-feminist to criticize it?

50 Shades of Grey isn’t just a literary copycat of Twilight, but a cultural copycat, as well. In its heyday, Twilight was lampooned not for its problematic content, but because of the audience it appealed to: teen girls and notably, the mothers of those girls, who were painted as humorously over-sexed cougars lusting after Robert Pattinson’s sparkly young flesh. And, like Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey should not go unexamined simply because it was created and consumed by women.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, the titular Christian Grey is a young man whose every whim has been indulged by parents who rescued him from a toddlerhood of physical and sexual abuse. As a teenager, his violent behavior was curbed through regular molestation by one of his mother’s friends, who groomed him into a tightly-controlled sadist. He acts out his elaborate psychosexual issues on women who resemble his dead “crack whore” mother–women like the awkward, naive Anastasia Rose Steele. From the day Christian and Ana meet, he seeks total control over her, from asking her to sign a highly detailed sex contract (the terms of which are discussed as he plies Ana with alcohol), to deciding which gynecologist she will see (under his supervision, in his home) and what birth control method she will use. He isolates her from her friends and family, going so far as to follow her across the country uninvited when she visits her mother. He warns Ana that he’ll be able to find her no matter where she tries to run, and once they’re married he has her followed by a security team that reports her every move back to him. Since the story is told in first person point of view, the reader is privy to every moment that Ana fears Christian or his reactions–including during the poorly-executed  and unsafe BDSM scenes that leave Ana weeping and confused. Throughout it all, Christian gaslights Ana into believing that his bad behavior is her responsibility, until she comes to the conclusion that her unhappiness is due to her failure to love him enough.

For some women, the themes of control and rape are not a fantasy. These women see their own abusive relationships echoed in the supposed love story of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, but efforts to have their voices heard have been roundly squashed by those who seem to believe that if women enjoy something, its feminism is above reproach. E.L. James herself has said she doesn’t like to hear about the comparisons between the abusive relationship she accidentally depicted in her novel and the abuse real life women have suffered, saying in a 2012 interview, “Nothing freaks me out more than people who say this is about domestic abuse. Bringing up my book in this context trivializes the issues, doing women who actually go through it a huge disservice. It also demonizes loads of women who enjoy this lifestyle, and ignores the many, many women who tell me they’ve found the books sexually empowering.”

There’s no doubt in my mind that much of our cultural finger-wagging over the book, and now the movie,  is based on our persistent belief that women, especially women “of a certain age,” should not have, or are silly for having, sexual desires. Much like the historical romances that were labelled “bodice rippers” in the last decades of the twentieth century, 50 Shades of Grey and similarly-themed erotic romances have been christened “mummy porn.” The derogatory term takes a stab at the perceived audience of 50 Shades of Grey: bored middle-class housewives reading porn on their iPads during the kids’ soccer practice. The name, and the stereotype, are meant to belittle women who have experienced a sexual reawakening after marriage and motherhood; women who, we are told, should stop having any desire but the aching need to please a husband and 2.5 children once those kiddies are squeezed out. Dismissing 50 Shades of Grey as “bad” or “trash” simply because it appeals to a largely female audience is undeniably sexist, but there is valid criticism to be levied against the franchise by survivors and experts who are trying to contextualize the realities of intimate partner abuse within this cultural phenomenon. Whose voices are we expected to value more in this situation? The women defending their right to read what they please without derision, or the women who don’t want to see abuse romanticized?

If we want to talk about 50 Shades of Grey and our love affair with fantasies of control, we can do so without mocking female sexuality. Yes, 50 Shades of Grey has empowered women, but even those things that empower us are not exempt from criticism. Women are not being harmed when the dangerous messages and themes of the books are called out, but some will be harmed if these elements aren’t explored. So when you head out to the theatre next week, don’t snicker at the women who are there to see their sexual fantasies come to life on the screen. Trust me, there’ll be plenty of actual anti-feminist material to roast.

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

Dear Diary,

It has been some months now since I began this journey, slogging through the quicksand of Apolonia. I was assured there would be science fiction in this novel, but I fear those rumors were untrue. I am now stranded in the barren wasteland of chapter eight, with nary an alien in sight. It is too late for me, Dear Diary, but I hope one day that this journal may be found, and my struggle will not have been in vain.

Warn them, Dear Diary. Warn them, and remember me…

If you’re new here, you should know that I’m one of those horrible people who hates to hear about other people’s dreams but constantly talks about their own. I figure this is okay because I love dogs, so that kind of evens things out and keeps my dick level low to moderate.

Anyway, like the last dream I forced upon the public, this one requires some understanding of who people are. Like these two ladies, here:

This is Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, whose show, Broad City, is one of my current television favorites due to the consistently cringe-inducing second-hand embarrassment-based story lines.

You also should know who Craig Ferguson is. I can’t imagine that you are on the internet and you don’t; they’ll practically delete your Tumblr if you haven’t reblogged a minimum of two .gifs of him:

He’s also the face/voice inspiration for Ian Pratchett in my Bossverse novels, and since Ian is the hero of the project I’ll be working on in March, I’ve had him and Penny on the brain. So, I’m not sure if it’s Craig Ferguson in my dream, or Ian Pratchett. Either way, this is what he looked like.

The last component here is this dude:

The evil King Richard from Galavant.

So, here’s how the dream went: I was somehow, miraculously, hanging out with Abbi and Ilana, and I get a call. It’s from Craig/Ian (actually, now I’m pretty sure it was Ian, because he’s the only person in this scenario who is an extension of my own thought and therefore would know my telephone number) and he’s like, “I just had knee surgery, can you bring me an ice pack?” We’re like, yeah, totally, we can bring you an ice pack, and we all head off to go.

So, we took off and I was being totally hilarious and witty just like them, and we were the very best of friends. And our adventures were awesome, but the entire time I was thinking, “Man, Craig Ferguson really needs this ice pack, I bet his knee is killing him.” We went to a store to buy ice packs, and they didn’t have any, so for some reason we went…

to a castle.

And apparently, a castle where bad things could happen to us, because we were suddenly plunged into this whole “evade the guards” scenario where we were trying to sneak around, but we were just getting lost deeper and deeper in the castle, until we found ourselves in this bedroom full of like, powder wigs and crowns. And I was like, “Guys. This is the king’s bedroom. We better get out of here, because we’re going to get caught and executed for treason or some shit.”

Then some guards came in, and the king was with them. We hid under the bed, but my cell phone rang, and it was Craig/Ian saying, “Where the hell is my ice pack? I asked you to do this one thing.” I don’t know why I answered, since we were hiding, but Abbi and I ran, and somehow, the way dreams are, I guess Ilana got separated from us. We looped back around and found Ilana hanging out with King Richard and vaping weed on this giant king bed. So we all sat around and got high and were having a generally good time until I remembered, holy shit, we have to get Craig/Ian that ice pack!

I called home and asked Mr. Jen if we still had any ice packs, and he was like, “No, we had to throw them out.” Which checks out, because our daughter is a total hypochondriac and she’s always hoarding disposable ice packs and hot water bottles and heating pads in her room, and we’ve had to throw out so many ice packs she’s just kind of wandered off and left to get punctured or stepped on or whatnot. So I’m like, shit. I need to find an ice pack.

In the end, we went to Mr. Jen’s store and just bought up all the frozen peas, and raced to the address Craig/Ian gave us. It was the fucking hospital! We were all furious, because obviously they have ice packs in a hospital, right?

That’s when the dream ended and I woke up.

I have no idea what this dream was about. I guess it was probably about nothing, because my dreams often don’t have any real significance. But it was a nice change from the dreams where I’m looking for a public restroom and all of them are filthy.