50 Shades Of Shut The Hell Up

Steve Icon

So, yes, we all know the story.  Woman writes Twilight fanfic.  Twilight fanfic gets repurposed as erotica series known as “50 Shades Of Grey”.  Woman makes money.  People make fun of situation.

Really the only problem as a progeek for me is the latter one – the mockery.

From what I hear about “50 Shades of Grey” is, to put it mildly, is rather purple and the content is may disturb some.  It’s not Shakespeare or Pratchett, and there’s elements that sound rather squicky.  But really the only criticism that seems relevant to me may be some of these quality issues, and even then there’s only so much I can say because I actually watch films like “2 Headed Shark Attack.”*

Here’s the thing – a woman took her fannish interests and succesfully repurposed them to make a load of money and fame.  This is a success story, and one where the two constant critiques I see are both kind of irrelevant:

“It’s Repurposed Fanfic!” Yeah?  So what.  Look a lot of authors repurpose other works, and that doubtlessly includes fanfic.  Hollywood writers keep scenes and bits they reuse when they’re left out of a script.

Fanfic is a learning experience.  As long as you’re really good at scrubbing off the serial numbers and making it original, as long as you don’t plagarize or do something else unethical, knock yourself out.   In fact you can’t separate your fannish experience from your professional in many cases because inspirations are inspirations, as we all know.**

Fandom can be practice, it can be learning, it can be raw materials.  Saying no one should use that is ridiculous.

“It’s Mommy Porn.” So was a lot of the romance novel industry (even though romance has a lot of male realders), and no one complained about that for a few decades.  If you’ve got no problem with porn or erotica, you shouldn’t have a problem with “Mommy Porn.”

Of course you don’t see people saying “Lesbian Spank Inferno”*** is “Daddy porn,” it’s just kind of accepted.  It’s a weird, degrading, and oddly sexist statement to say something is wrong with “50 shades of Gray” over the fact women may enjoy it and are the target audience.

There’s a market for this stuff.  You may not like that – or care – but singling it out due to gender/demographic interest is just kind of dumb.

So look, issues aside, let’s look at “50 Shades of Grey” as a fandom success and learn from it.  Talking down about it means we’re missing the lessons we could be learning.  Criticize it on many levels, but the critiques I hear the most are also the most useless.

- Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/

 

* The “surviving leads” were the best part of the film and should get a series where they are like Hart To Hart, but fighting B movie monsters

** For some reason I have a habit of creating priests/holy men in stories where at least one is influenced by Father Mulchahey of M.A.S.H.  I can even remember the scenes that inspired it – but I keep forgetting I do it.

***Name the reference, I dare you.  Oddly, it connects to Doctor Who, if you need a clue.

  • Omer Terry

    I loved 2-headed shark attack…even used it as reference in my storyboard class.

    • Steven Savage

      Omer,  I would LOVE to hear more about this.

  • http://twitter.com/nekoewen Ewen Cluney

    I do feel like with 50 Shades of Grey, and for that matter with Twilight, there’s an extra edge of hate that comes solely from the fact that they’re popular with women and not men. While Twilight is a problematic work that deserves a lot of the scorn it gets, your average male nerd is skating on thin ice when it comes to complaining about someone else being into works with problematic elements.

    • Steven Savage

      Frankly I feel the same way – there is an undercurrent of sexism about the critiques.

      • TamaraHecht

         One word: Pinterest.

        • http://mathtans.ca/ Gregory Taylor

          I wonder if the sexism isn’t related to the protagonists themselves. Admittedly my information about the stories is second hand, but in both cases, the central female lead seems to need “the man in her life” in order to be defined. Isn’t the whole media scramble these days towards more independent women? Wasn’t that even one of the major selling points of the recent movie “Brave”?

          Could it be some of the backlash towards women is “by supporting this, you’re supporting subjugation of women”? It would get women upset because they feel it sets equal rights back fifty years, and gets men upset because they feel the women are saying one thing, but then supporting something completely different.  Perhaps the better question is why it was this story that got so popular.

          I also don’t use Pinterest, so I’m not clear on the connection but maybe that answers the question? Is it demographics?

          • http://twitter.com/nekoewen Ewen Cluney

            I think criticizing Twilight on the basis that Bella is helpless and bland and basically exists to be dependent on Edward is one of the legitimate critiques that can be made. (There’s also Stephenie Meyer’s turgid prose and poor plotting, amongst other things.) The problem is that there are a whole lot of people who seem to generically hate on it basically because it appeals to women, without particularly addressing its many actual flaws (beyond complaining about sparkly vampires).

          • TamaraHecht

            I was referring to the outcry (not from everyone, of course, but from a number of people) when Pinterest first started.  It was much more popular with women than it was with men, and that had people concerned that it was somehow not a good website.  It was as though a website needs the approval of men to be considered good, or if women liked it then that implied there was something wrong with it.  The good thing about that outcry is it launched some interesting discussions (eg, why do some of us buy into that assumption?).

            And, just referring to what you said before, that 50 Shades “gets men upset because they feel the women are saying one thing, but then supporting something completely different.”  It’s not like “women” are just one homogenous group.  There are some who like the book, some who hate it, and some who don’t care either way.  I’m not saying you were generalizing, but I’m just pointing that out so there’s no miscommunication.

          • http://mathtans.ca/ Gregory Taylor

            Actually, I was generalizing, which is really stupid considering I’ve seen flavours of all different responses, so thank you for calling me on that and offering clarification.  Does leave me wondering why it was this particular story that picked up all the controversy.
            I suppose the idea of people disliking it (or something else) because women like it is possible. It seems about as ridiculous as my generalization statement, but we humans are an odd bunch.

  • http://www.genjipress.com/ Serdar (GenjiPress)

    I’d like to think most of the burning resentment directed at the “50 Shades” books  is on aesthetic grounds — meaning, they’re not even good porn. But I have to remind myself, as per the posts I’ve been making on my own blog, that most people are not critics and are not interested in developing a critical outlook on something they do mostly to put their brain at ease. Most people will never read a criticism of these books, then slap their foreheads, run to the shelves, throw the offending works in the incinerator and then repopulate the newly-made spaces with Dostoevsky. Nor should we expect them to.   

    But that doesn’t mean a critical approach to this material isn’t warranted. I think both “Twilight” and “50 Shades” are terrible books for a whole litany of reasons, but my biggest and most direct response to them is to get back to work on my own books so I can offer something like an alternative on the right terms: a better book.

  • Birdy B.


    So look, issues aside, let’s look at “50 Shades of Grey” as a fandom success and learn from it.

    The thing is, it shouldn’t be. Cutting one’s authorial teeth on fanfiction is great; I have no quibble with that — I did it, and I’m sure that many more authors after me will do the same.   

    However, as an author, I can’t think of a single publisher’s submission guidelines that specifically state that they will publish fanfiction, names changed or not. It’s always, always, always “We will not/can not/do not publish fanfiction, even with the names changed. Come back when you have an original story with original characters.”

    It’s also a poorly-written book that glorifies unhealthy people in an unhealthy relationship while portraying BDSM as “something only ‘sick’ people do/something to be ‘cured’ of”, so, you know, it has that going for it. But don’t take my word for it. Jennifer Armintrout (who has read the book at least twice) has a post about it here.

    • Steven Savage

      Birdy, thanks for your comments.  I’d like to address them.
      1) As for repurposed fanfiction, I feel that so much in writing is repurposed – and authors have repurposed ideas for elsewhere – that critique of its origins is really not that valid.  I’d love to see people make totally original works, but in many cases people get ideas from elsewhere, including fanfic.
      2) As noted, regarding the book’s actual quality or content, I’m not addressing that.  I’m specifically addressing that the two critiques (“fanfiction” and “mommy porn”) are inappropriate.  Or in short, I’m avoiding that issue.

      Now on the issue of is it right to reuse fanfiction, as noted my preference is for people to craft works as originally as possible for a variety of reasons.  However, at the very least ideas, influence, and even storylines could be reused and I see no problem with that as good ideas are worth using.  

      As for the contents, actually most of what I’ve heard about “50 shades,” as I note above, does set off my “squick” meter to be quite honest and I do have a concern about the glorifying of pathological relationships in culture.  I wonder if any of that may be appropriate to my work here, and welcome suggestions.

      • Scott D

        At this point, popularity will beat out quality.  A well written fanfic in a unknown to the general public fandom (say, Bubblegum Crisis) won’t attract the attention that a literate fanfic in a popular fandom (like Harry Potter).  However, the idea that a story gets popular enough that a traditional publisher picks it up, even if the file numbers are not filed off well, is a major step.  In the past, editors weren’t keen on the idea of fanfic and fanfic writers.  Now?  It’s a positive move, really.  Fanfiction allows beginning writers to build skills and audience.

        As for “mommy porn”…  Harlequin survives and thrives on romance of all sorts.  It’s a viable genre.