50 Shades of Grey is now a household title.
Despite very popular criticisms for poor writing style and lack of a substantial plot, 50 Shades of Grey has been devoured and "taken America by Storm" to the point where book sellers could not keep up with the physical demand for copies of the text.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the story, overlooked Anastasia Grey falls in love with a very brilliant and seemingly cold leader of a business empire, Christian Grey. The trailer basically summarizes the rest:
I could not help but think of this title when reading "Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context" by Janice A. Radway, a bookseller turned romance fiction guru with her monthly newsletter filtering the quality romantic novels form the breath of trash that plagues the genre. (1983). Though it was authored over 30 years ago, the underlying concepts that distinguish a popular romantic novel remain pretty much the same. According to Radway's article, women tended to favor the romantic novels that featured a dependent heroine that was, to herself, unrecognizingly beautiful and a hero that was masculine with the ability to be gentle and nurturing when it pertained to the woman that he loved.
50 Shades of Grey embodies two characters that Radway claims that her clientele would not favor nor tolerate- explicit sexual descriptions and abuse- although they loved suggestive descriptions that alluded to such (see cheesy romantic titles pictured below). I believe that this shows a evolution much due to the acceptability of sexual content on TV, movies and a general cultural shift towards comfortability with sexuality.
Personally, I do not believe that this change is taboo or expresses an underlying support of violence against women but rather bluntly states and expresses the range of sexualities and desires that have been uncomfortably hidden in our culture for some time.
Agreed completely. It also reflects a stronger presence for women to explore sexuality. Note as well that this made a MUCH larger splash than the (far superior in every way) film Secretary. I also wonder what the response would be if it was a dominatrix, or if Christian Grey was not incredibly wealthy (and supposedly brilliant, although I saw no evidence of that at all in the books, in which he just seems like a whiny, self centered brat).
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