Apparently, fans are taking the film adaption of Fifty Shades of Grey very seriously. So much so that the decision to cast Dakota Johnson and Charlie Hunnam has been met with a deluge of angry tweets.
Since it was revealed over the weekend that Charlie Hunnam and Dakota Johnson landed the lead roles in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, passionate fans have been in a fury, directing rage-filled tweets at author E L James and film producer Dana Brunetti and starting a petition lobbying for White Collar star Matt Bomer and Mad Men‘s Alexis Bledel to replace the duo as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele.
Brunetti tried reasoning with the angry mob, retweeting hateful messages and explaining how the casting process really works.
Fifty Shades of Grey is, quite frankly, pornography, and as a man I find the emotional investment in the stars to be bemusing. But maybe that’s because I’m a man, and it’s easier to emotionally disengage from sex.
However, that raises the question of whether female-oriented pornography might actually be more socially disruptive than the male sort. For men, porn is often an outlet. Although it can become an addiction, for the most part it’s simply a means to release sexual tension — a substitute for the real thing. Nevertheless, second wave feminists in the early days were staunchly opposed to pornography, although they have a history of going back and forth on the issue, possibly depending on where they, personally, stand in the sexual market.
Female pornography, however, seems to be more of an all-consuming fantasy that becomes confused with reality. The fictional beautiful maiden being ravished by some marauding sheikh, to be carried off to live in the opulence of a desert harem, becomes a part of the self-identity of the housewife reading the porn. The sheikh becomes her dusky lover, and all that stands in the way is that schlub of a husband who expects her to fix him dinner and get his suit ready for work (the nerve!). Her imagination runs away with her, and next thing we know she’s fooling around with some guy named Habib from the local Halal market (feel free to mix and match ethnicity of lover according to porn setting).
I wonder why men don’t take this female porn as seriously as feminists take the male variety. It seems to me that it’s more consequential, after all.
