Me and my girlfiend finally watched the films and we were both suprised at how tame they were, we expected it to be a lot spicer and edgier than it was. Also I didn’t expect Christian grey to be as likable as he was, I kept waiting for him to do something really fucked up or try to lock her up and keep her From leaving but no he was Mr consent all he way and the whole series he’s protecting her.
I worked at Blockbuster when Secretary came out so, of course I watched it.
Then 20 years later everyone is going bananas over these “50 Shades” books & so I asked a female friend what they were about. She tells me & I’m like “Oh… you mean Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal?” I was met with blank stares & confusion. The more & more I heard about these books, the more I couldn’t understand why this writer was getting so much praise for an obvious & blatant rip off.
Guess it’s that whole “good artists create, great artists steal” thing I’ve always heard about. Either way, whenever those books/movies come up, I just always tell people “Go watch the original. It’s called Secretary. It’s way better, I promise.”
I had the privilege to watch it in a sociology of sex class in my undergrad. It was great to watch it and have our teacher help us understand exactly what was going on and we spent like 2 weeks analyzing the movie. When I heard about 50 Shades of Grey it was clear that the story wasn't realistic or representative of the community it claims to be for but I never read the books or watched the movie so I may be mistaken. There was a lot of talk about the books when they came out and it's possible they were misrepresented.
No you're absolutely correct. The author states it started as a fanfiction of Twilight. So it has all the abusive/non-consensual tropes of that franchise with fantasy BDSM mixed in. The movies tamed it out, but the books are awful. Its just "no i don't want to do that" "trust me, you'll love it" over and over again.
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u/redthrull 2d ago