It’s hard to miss the existence of the movie based on the book series this weekend. I talked with Hilary Towers, a developmental psychologist and a mother of five who focuses a much of her work on marriage and family about it and its dangers and why it matters.
Q: What’s so bad about 50 Shades of Grey?
A: Depends on your point of view. Reviewers at the Berlin Film Festival seemed disappointed with the “soft core” nature of the film’s sex scenes; others have lamented a shallow plot and emotionally stunted dialogue. Some of the most insightful secular reviews of the film, I think, have focused on the problem Hollywood currently faces vis-à-vis trying to imbue R-rated films with sexual shock value:
Sexual melodramas are in a double bind today – the Golden Age of Hollywood is dead, but the Golden Age of Masturbation is in full flood. You can find more transgressive and troublingly sex on the Internet before breakfast than will pass before the MPAA ratings board in the next century.
Those who view the meaning and purpose of our sexuality, and our capacity for real romance, as intricately tied to the core of not only who we are but who we are meant to be, are rightly concerned that the sheer popularity of this film (and the book series on which it is based) is a troubling indicator of our health as a nation, and a world.
Q: Does it say something about our culture today that we would consider it a love story?
A: I think in some ways it doesn’t just say, it screams: “Please – would someone show me real love? I want it so much but I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what it looks like.”
Sociologist Andrew Cherlin wrote a book called The Marriage-Go-Round in which he describes the tension Americans experience today between two competing models of romantic relationships: lifelong, faithful marriage as desirable and good, and obligation to one’s own “self-actualization” as the deciding factor (this explains why, as Cherlin wryly notes, Americans are very keen on the idea of Covenant Marriage for everyone else). We are a nation of constant moving on – moving on to new homes, new Iphones, new cars, new jobs, new churches.
And we spiral in and out of new marriages and sexual relationships at a rate unrivaled among Western nations. We have become adept at using others to fill the emotional and spiritual void only God can fill, and then discarding them when we discover this doesn’t work. Our increasing and unremitting hunger for pornography is perhaps the archetype of this trend.
To me the blockbuster success of this movie demonstrates so clearly that other-centered, sacrificial love has to be modeled to be properly understood, appreciated – and even desired.
Q: What’s so bad about its association with Valentine’s Day now, with this movie?
A: It’s easy to forget that the origin of Valentine’s Day rests in the history of the Catholic Church. St. Valentine was a 3rd century priest and martyr who married young Christian couples at a time when this was forbidden by the Roman emperor, Claudius II.
Those who know that story sometimes make light-hearted comparisons between the candy and flowers characteristic of today’s celebration and the real story of the martyr and saint.
But the appearance of this film on Valentine’s Day, and its widespread public acceptance -especially in the context of the broader attack on marriage in culture and law – makes the “candy and flowers” concern seem quaint.
Father Frank O’Gara, a Dublin priest, captures the real relevance of this film for St. Valentine’s Day: “If Valentine were here today, he would say to married couples that there comes a time where you’re going to have to suffer. It’s not going to be easy to maintain your commitment and your vows in marriage. Don’t be surprised if the ‘gushing’ love that you have for someone changes to something less “gushing” but maybe much more mature. And the question is, is that young person ready for that?”
Q: I’ve always figured women are into the brokenness of the characters more than the whips. Am I onto something? What accounts for its popularity?
A: In light of the number of people who are on the “discarded” end of the moving on phenomenon, the draw and appeal of this film makes a lot of sense to me – and in particular that women would be first in line. Valentine’s Day is still, ostensibly, about celebrating love. And it is the desire of every woman and man to give love and receive it, but we do this in different ways.
The character of Christian, for all his bizarre and repulsive qualities, will not be thwarted in his pursuit of Anastasia. He wants her and her alone (even for his twisted purposes). This is undoubtedly the “hook” that draws women into a book, and a movie, like Fifty Shades of Grey. In our core, women want very much to be nurtured and cared for, to be sought after, to be cherished and adored. This is true regardless of our intellectual ability, our capacity to lead others, to innovate, to change the world. These two sets of attributes are not mutually exclusive, and this vulnerability of women is beautiful and good.
The need to be protected and wanted begins, I believe, in the relationship between a father and his daughter. (It is interesting that Anastasia was abandoned by her father.) It stands to reason that foremost among the factors influencing a young girl’s perception of being protected by her father is the extent to which he cherishes and protects her mother. If the father has simply “moved on” or never even bothered to solidify the relationship in marriage, the girl’s pathway to a truly loving, stable, committed relationship in adulthood becomes fraught with obstacles.
Add to this the significant probability of pairing with (either in marriage or cohabitation) a man who himself has not experienced or witnessed a committed, loving marriage and this woman’s odds of marital success are meager. And by “marital success” I don’t just mean lifelong marriage, but I mean her ability to know true love, and to be loved truly, by a man.
Q: Is there something dangerous about women thinking they can fix or free men by entering into and perpetuating harmful relationships (and not only involving the physical bondage aspects in the 50 Shades story) that 50 Shades promotes?
A: Isn’t this one of the hallmarks of abusive relationships – why women struggle so much to tear themselves away? They convince themselves – against all odds, against all the sound advice of family and friends who know and love them best – that they will be the one to turn this man around. Although we may disagree on other reasons why this film is deeply harmful, I am heartened to see at least some self-described progressive feminists taking the books and the film to task on this particular score.
From a Christian perspective, there is actually freedom in submission, as it were. But we’re talking a whole different ballgame. Is there something particularly evil here about the submission aspect — that it would be considered empowering — and given the current culture’s distance from a practical understanding of the supernatural?
Saint John Paul the Great, in a chapter from his book Love and Responsibility called “The Person and Love,” speaks of the “self giving” that occurs in matrimony as a mutual dedication – a mutual surrender – of one spouse to the other. Yet he warns us against identifying this surrender in purely physical or even psychological terms because doing so might result in man’s treating woman as a an object to be used; as a means to a perverse end. Instead we must pursue this mutual submission in the light of Christ’s Commandment to love, and to view every person as worthy of love because they were created by God.
The antidote to this problem of men and women using each other, according to John Paul, runs contrary to much of the relationship advice our culture currently offers, and yet it is timeless and true:
How is it possible to ensure that one person does not then become for the other….nothing more than the means to an end…? To exclude this possibility they must share the same end. Such an end, where marriage is concerned, is procreation, the future generation, a family, and at the same time, the continual ripening of the relationship between two people, in all the areas of activity which conjugal life includes.
Q: Is there anything empowering about “BDSM” sex games/role playing?
A: If one doesn’t understand or accept the true meaning of self-giving love, then I can see how it is possible to feel at once empowered and desired and exhilarated in the novelty of this awful stuff. But all of this good feeling is temporary, because it doesn’t fill the soul. It leaves the soul empty and cold. No one wins in these kinds of perversions – neither the aggressor nor the recipient – because both have a God-given knowledge (however suppressed) that they are either using or being used.
Q: What if someone is reading this and my takeaway still is, ladies, it’s just a movie? It’s just a book? Etc.
A: I don’t believe we need academia to tell us that watching other people engage in sex acts as a form of “entertainment” hurts individuals and relationships of all kinds — I think this is painfully obvious to the vast majority of couples, and parents, who are grappling with a pornography addiction in their home.
However, some may be interested to know that social science is continuing to affirm what many know intuitively, namely that pornography doesn’t usually have the effect of empowering people or spicing up relationships. Rather, it makes us doubt ourselves – our appearance and our worth as human beings.
To take one recent example, a 2015 study shows porn use among college men is linked not only to dissatisfaction with their bodies but to romantic attachment avoidance and anxiety: “As a socialization agent, pornography use may be linked to men’s (a) romantic attachment avoidance by legitimizing and encouraging sex without intimacy and (b) romantic attachment anxiety by heightening anxiety surrounding partner commitment. That is, by showing fleeting sexual encounters and noncommittal relationships, pornography may validate men’s fears that their real-life partners will cheat on, reject, and/or abandon them.”
Q: This isn’t really a good prescription for satisfying romance of either the long- or short-term variety. Women, men — and children — deserve better than this.
A: What might you say to anyone considering it a date movie or otherwise going to see it, including alone or with friends?
Go see this one instead!