Edward Shorter - Sadomasochism and Ardent Love: A readers guide to Fifty Shades of Grey

SADOMASOCHISM AND ARDENT LOVE:

A Readers Guide for Fifty Shades of Grey

By Edward Shorter

Published by Bev Editions

ISBN: 978-0-9878146-4-7

Copyright 2012 Edward Shorter

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Contents

The remarkable success of Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James has taken the literary world by surprise. Its quick and astounding ascent to the top of the New York Times bestseller list invites us to step back a pace and ask what is going on here? Why has this book, ostensibly about the theme of sadomasochism, one even more deeply tabooed than homosexuality, struck such a chord? How does the raising of sadomasochistic themes in 2012 fit into the larger evolution of sexuality and manners?

In Jamess novel, we meet Anastasia Steele, a young virgin working in a hardware store, and Christian, a fabulously wealthy young financier, an experienced player who has already had 15 sm relationships. Ana becomes totally captivated by him and is willing to go the whole nine yards for him even though her subconscious keeps screaming No!

Sadomasochism tends to fill us with unease precisely because it seems such a repudiation of liberal western values. At its very core lies not the infliction of pain but the submission, complete and total, of one individual to another. The submissive, or bottom in the trade, surrenders all autonomy to the dominant figure, or top. The top becomes all-controlling in a way reminiscent of totalitarian dictatorship. How can we possibly reconcile this with western values? How can we explain the striking uptake of Fifty Shades among what is often described as the mommy set without assuming that the mommy set has somehow sold out to the North Korean Politburo?

We have to re-jig a couple of assumptions here. One assumption that we as a society have conventionally made for the last thirty years certainly since 1970s style feminism is that sex is about power. The early feminist days were full of injunctions about the patriarchy and how male chauvinists used their power to control you in bed in order to control you in every other way as well.

All of a sudden we find an entire generation of fast-track, autonomous young women celebrating not the acquisition of sexual power but its surrender. This is such a striking paradox.

The problem here is that in the 1970s we were switched onto the wrong railway siding. There is such a thing as power relations in sexuality, and we see this played out in rape or in some form of the Stockholm Syndrome, in which the captives come to identify with their oppressors.

But the sexual mainline does not run through power relations, a non-erotic subject. It runs through sensuality. Sex for most people is not about power but about luxuriating in the pleasures of the flesh, about a glass of champagne at ten a.m. Sunday morning and the exquisiteness of calf muscles tightened by high heels or the reach of a muscular male back. Only if we concentrate on sensuality and forget, just for a moment, about power, will we be able to come to terms with Fifty Shades of Grey.

But Fifty Shades of Grey is about a very specific form of sensuality: sadomasochism, which means tying people up and, sometimes, whipping them, or at least administering a few symbolic strokes with a riding crop that redden the skin but do not cause tissue damage. Still, it can be painful. How can this be erotic?

What is erotic here is not the infliction of pain but the exchange of control. This is not everybodys cup of tea, but for many people the concept of surrendering total control, for a well defined period of time and in the particular context of the bedroom, can be exquisitely sensual. Similarly, assuming control over another persons erotic experience its you who determines exactly when and how and wearing what outfit she is penetrated can be a delirious sensual experience. Or determining when and how he is penetrated, ditto. To the glass of champagne on Sunday morning we add a scarf that ties her hands, a pair of handcuffs that fasten his arms behind his back. Does William really accept you as the Mistress with absolute control over him? Lets test by giving him ten of the best. Does Sally truly acknowledge that you are her Master? Lets use this new dildo to find out.

So its not that William and Sally set out to inflict pain on each other. That is not the point of the exercise. Its that they set out to experience the sensual dimensions of the exchange of power. Were back to power, yes, but to avoiding it rather than acquiring it: Most players seek to be bottoms rather than tops. In the sm scene people complain about the shortage of tops.

Fifty Shades of Grey is ostensibly about the sadomasochistic exchange of power but in reality is an incandescent love story revolving around this particular sensual theme, rather than the sensuality of the missionary position or the sensuality of anonymous gay-male sex. Christian Grey is a masterful top, Anastasia Steele, in his thrall, is an unwitting bottom. What brings them together is not their mutual taste for sm she has none at the beginning, but their overpowering ardour for each other. This is a couple in which sm is conceivable only because they are so totally in love with each other.

So this is a real and powerful human relationship not some pick-up in an sm/leather bar. And thats why the novel has had such a sensational impact: These are real, flesh-and-blood people, not sexual cartoons, submitting and controlling each other in a way the most trivial expression of which is the exercise of pain and constraint. The most profound expression is deep passion, but it is a kind of lust for a master-slave relationship that until very recently was deeply tabooed in our culture.

This brings to mind the Story of O, the 1950s classic that introduced sm to mainline literature, about which more below. But Fifty Shades is not just a new Story of O, although it is that as well. It is a new Gone With the Wind. It captures the desire to experience an incandescent relationship, such as the one you are not currently in, so powerfully that you lose control and are swept away.

But the difference with Scarlett OHara, is that the vast circle of female readers of Fifty Shades are whirled not into the arms of Rhett Butler but into the welcoming fragrance of the fresh linen worn by a man who is about to tie them up and beat them. They are swept not into the fantasy of a Southern Belle, but into sm, the world of sadomasochism.

We need a context for understanding this.

Just as homosexuality, anal and oral sex, adolescent or elderly sex, have recently become destigmatized, so too is sm/fetish. The goths hint at this, with their leather armbands and Doc Martin boots; the fashion runway hints at this, with the models marching up and down in studded leather. And in the deepest privacy of their bedrooms on Saturday night and Sunday morning, many couples hint at this too, as they tentatively explore a set of nipple clamps or try to get into boot worship without feeling ridiculous.

Some couples go beyond the scarves and boots to get into sm as a scene. And the scene has its own code, one that is faithfully reflected in Fifty Shades. In this world, the top is respectfully addressed as Master or Mistress. In Fifty Shades Ana calls Christian Sir from the very beginning. The top controls the bottom not just on Sunday mornings but as a lifestyle proposition. Christian views Ana as his property. He owns her and rules omnipotently over her whole lifestyle. This is for real players: debasement and control. In Fifty Shades, Christian asks Ana which she prefers, being elevated onto a pedestal like a nineteenth-century novel heroine, or debasement. Ill take debasement, Ana whispers to him.

But it is equal opportunity debasement. Women can top men, or bottom for them. Men can serve as the coolly dominant masters, or widen eyes in astonishment as the Mistress applies the nipple clamps. This is painful, but the acceptance of some pain acknowledges the tops dominance: It is evidence that the top is truly in control.