"Mommy Porn" : You're Kidding... Right?

Wrong! I am really, really not kidding.                            (WARNING: Adult content!)

Where to begin when it comes to this absolute drivel that has seen such ridiculous success it makes me want to cry. (No, seriously. If you have read it, you understand my pain).

So much has been written about EL James and her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy that I will not bother torturing myself (or anyone else) by retelling the story of the first book. What I will say, however, is that what constitutes supposed "kinky fuckery" to sex-god, Christian Grey, is actually tiresome, boring, badly written sex. Kinky? No. Fuckery? Absolutely not! And to think, this "red room of pain", filled with endless objects that could be used to really crank up the kink is hardly used at all. Barring some tying up and a rather promising use of a riding crop, the rest of the room's delights fall short of a heart's flutter much less kink. Of course, the one time towards the end of the book where the room is actually used for its sadomasochistic purposes, the heroine freaks out. What kind of message is James trying to deliver through this? I doubt even she knows to be honest.

Let us make one thing clear, I am not the kind of person who hates something simply because it is there to hate. In fact, I think that, had Fifty Shades of Grey, been given the proper time and attention to actually make it less.......irritating, then it could have been a decent book and, consequently, a decent enough trilogy.

What, then, is the main crime in this book? Aside from the very sad attempt at making sex seem forbidden, dangerous, and erotic, the real villain is the heroine: Ana Steele. I must confess that my sister, on more than one occasion, threatened to beat me over the head with the book if I did not stop my repeated outbursts on how truly annoying I found Ana Steele. If this book began as an homage to Twilight then EL James' Ana certainly has surpassed Meyers' Bella Swan in the irritating heroine department. Considering my intense dislike for dear Bella, that is a feat in itself.

The thing that troubles me is how James expects to justify her readers believing that Ana is a young woman who does not know that she is pretty. The way the male characters seem to fawn over her is, quite frankly, embarrassing and her repeated denials that she is even just a little bit attractive surely must remind us all of that one gorgeous friend we seem to all have who insists she is not. Of course, I am not saying that she should be arrogant. But there are ways of portraying a character who does not know she is beautiful until someone makes her believe it. And that does not necessarily mean constructing practically every man she comes across has to drool over her like a lovesick puppy. Indeed, her stupidity is further highlighted by her insistence at remaining friends with a male who tried to force himself on her. Seriously?
And anybody who at some point or other did not want to punch her "inner-goddess" has more patience than I do. (Anybody who knows my sister would know I have the patience of a Saint when it comes to her).

I am in two minds as to whether or not I like Christian Grey. His character is much better composed than Ana's. But for a Dom, not only a Dom but a successful businessman, he proves to be surprisingly easy for Ana to manipulate into becoming just another puppy dog who follows her around. His darkness makes him sexy and dangerous and his struggle to handle his relationship with Ana because of it is good but that is all. Just.....good. I say this because by the end of the novel I really did not care what would happen next. I could not give a flying pig what happened between them because for a Dom of his experience, Christian is annoyingly bad at it. If James thinks that his repeated commands for Ana to eat and even more irritating orders for her not to bite her lip position Christian as a Dom, then I suggest she go back to the drawing board with this one.

Overall, I fail to see why this book has generated such success if only because it was one of those books that everyone was reading and so became the fashionable read. The book is not even the slightest bit kinky because nothing happens, sexually speaking, between Ana and Christian, that could not or does not happen between couples anyway. For the most part, nothing happens between Christian and Ana that is completely unimaginable and even a little bit erotic. It is just boring sex trying too hard to be erotic. The only thing this book has managed to achieve is a willingness to be more open about reading erotica but not to like it too much because, as Ana demonstrates at the end, women are not supposed to like sex that deviates from what is considered to be 'normal'. And if this is what James is trying to tell us with her "Mommy Porn" then she does us all a disservice.

Back!

After a very long break from my blog! I am back from almost completing my Masters in English Literature. Though it has basically taken over my entire life, I have been drafting posts about books that I have come across in my research that I hope to share with you soon!

My next post is one I have been itching to post for a while but up until now I did not have the time to edit it! I had fun with this one!

Nelema
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