50 Shades of Grey: Part 1. What Can We Learn About Life and Love? By Odle.

50 Shades of Grey is not a movie about BDSM, not really.  The sex scenes are hot.  Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) has a great body and a very innocent face -- and she is very convincing that she is both turned on and enjoying some kinky sex.  She portrays a healthy college student swept off her feet (almost) by a young, attractive, and rich business man Christian Grey (Jamine Dornan). Christian however by his own words is “50 Shades of F**ked Up”.  He is a control freak which is obvious from the beginning.  He orchestrates and controls everything -- and he electronically stalks her, showing up when she’s doing something beyond his “rules” for her.  This movie shines a light on a cultural problem that is seldom discussed openly.  

Christian is a control freak that sometimes crosses the line into abusive behavior.  He goes through the motion of negotiating a BDSM relationship with Anastasia.  But, it is a little bit of a farce because it is a carefully crafted document with the agenda already established, only the details are being negotiated.  From my limited experience in that world (one can only hope for more), BDSM love scenes are typically negotiated at infinitum to the point that I think the suspense and mystery of the event is lost.  But, that’s just me.  But, they don’t typically sign a contract on a lifestyle, living conditions, or schedule as was done in the movie. Ideally, people in BDSM verbally negotiate on equal terms the details of what is going to happen in one love scene.  And of course, they have safety words to slow (yellow) or stop (red) the action.

So, 50 Shades is not about BDSM as practiced by most, although the BDSM scenes are delicious.  So, is the movie about abuse?  The last scene in the first of three movies is about abuse, kind of.  Anastasia is upset about the whole idea of punishment (although punishment can vary in BDSM from playful to really painful) and she asks Christian who is already annoyed by something happening at work “to show me the worst it (punishment) can be”.  People being abused don’t ask for it …

From that point she tolerates a rough belt spanking from him while she is bound and naked.  He has her count off the swats.  Unlike in an earlier scene where she is playfully, but roughly spanked,  this time she is spanked by an angry Christian who seems to be attacking his own demons which “live in her buttocks”.  

Anastasia does not use her safe words and tolerates the spanking, beginning to cry at the end.  When she is untied, she is angry and retreats to her room.  She orders him out of the room telling him she is starting to fall in love with him.  Well, looks to me like they have been in love for half the movie … who wouldn’t love her!  And, Christian is not without his charms and truly does seem to care about her.   She does what she has to do the next morning and leaves without a lot of discussion beyond her statement the night before that she does not understand his desire/need to punish her. There is no arguing that Christian was being abusive, but one could argue that Anastasia never really plays the typical role of an abused woman; she never accepts the role and loses herself - at least in this first movie.

The Man is in Charge

I believe the movie poses the question: “When does controlling another become abusive?”  Control of one’s mate, especially men controlling “their woman”, abounds in our culture.  The control is derived from a sense of ownership deeply embedded in our culture when two people become a couple.  Historically, a wife was a man’s property. Today we think we have moved beyond that thinking, but it’s still present. It begins with joking remarks about YOUR “other half” or “better half.”  

Control can be subtle like a man keeping track of where a woman goes or monitoring her time away, or snooping on her conversations with others.  Control can also evolve by expectations.  Women in our culture are expected to take care of the house, the kids, work a job, etc.  usually without negotiation or discussion with her mate.  The husband, in expecting the wife to fulfill her cultural role without them both considering other options, is helping to perpetuate a system that is generally not fair to women and in a subtle way controls their lives. If a house is unkept, who gets blamed in our society? What about if children don’t have clean clothes?  This is our culture, this is us, controlling women.  

From there the control can become more blatant, and the man may push the wife to wear clothing that he approves of,  for example more sexy or less sexy.  He may expect or demand dinner on the table at a certain time;  he may want or demand to know where she is at all times or who she has talked to, etc.  We all either know or have been the controlling “man/husband” at times.

At what point does control become abusive?

I am not an expert on abusive relationships, but I know a woman very well that lives with an abusive husband.  He owns her and controls her by fear and intimidation.  Neither had a great start in life.  She was abused as a child and ran away from home at the age of 13.  He spent his younger days fighting on the street.  Somewhat characteristically,  he belittles her and attempts to blame his abuse on her just not getting it and provoking him.  She fears what will happen to their children if they got divorced and he was awarded shared custody.  For awhile she tried to drag him to couple's therapy, but he always treated it as a joke.  She has tried to save him from himself for the five years I have known her.  Emotionally she believes “If I can just be good enough, love him enough, perhaps he will change”.  It is a subset of the belief that many woman have, “I am not good enough”.

One thing different about my friend than what we usually think of in abusive relationships is that this woman is college educated and makes a very good salary as a manager.  She is able to support herself and her children, so she is not also trapped by money concerns as many women are.  But, she lives and accepts being owned by her husband.  And guess what, she doesn’t stand out from the crowd at her PTA Meetings.

The Dialogue About Abusive Relationships

Perhaps 50 Shades of Grey is opening up the dialogue about what constitutes an abusive relationship.  Estimates go that at about 1 in 4 women live in an abusive relationship in this country.  In the Middle East countries I would guess it is more like 9 out of 10…. at least by our standards.

Excessive Control and Abuse is wrong, we can all agree on that.  But is a little bit of control okay?  Is the ownership model of marriage / relationships okay at any level?  Should all relationships stand on a foundation of negotiation among consenting adults?  Should we seek to identify and weed out cultural expectations of what a marriage / relationship should be?

The first movie of the 50 Shades trilogy was better than the book.   Let us hope that the next two movies are also better.  Perhaps, Christian will get some therapy and it will be more believable when he turns into a perfect husband.  At least, it’s refreshing that this movie does not yet  perpetuate the Cinderella view of marriage where the roles for the Prince and the Princess are clearly defined without negotiations, and the Prince and Princess are destined for - without any effort - happily ever after.

Much thanks to Amy for helping me formulate and express my ideas and for her helpful (and sometimes painful) editing.

Robert R. Odle

Our Story is Pure Fiction by Odle.

Everyone has a story, their story.  My story is that I was a small white child growing up in an Hispanic neighborhood in El Paso.  My parents were hard working poor people.  My dad died when I was young and I started taking care of the family at 19, etc.

Well, all of that is true.  But there are literally millions of details that I left out of this story, some of them probably more important to describing who I am than the details I picked.  Even if I gave you the long version of my life (I have a book, laugh), the details are picked by me to reflect to you who I think I am.  In fact, they are the story I tell myself to convince me that I am who I think I am. I have no mention in my story of myself of the times I have been an asshole.  I didn't think it was important.

We are our most creative when we make up the story of our love lives.  Unlucky in love, the casanova, the savior, the abused, the deserted, the wronged, the divorcee, the single long suffering single parent, man-hater, the fool, etc.  My story of myself is that I love love and intimacy, not always with just one woman.  Early in life my mate would say don’t ask Robert something unless you want to know what he thinks.  I considered myself honest, that was my story, because I never told a lie -- out of my mouth at least.  A lot went unsaid and my actions did not live up to the expectation of my partner.  

My partners have had their own story about their past and past relationship.  Obviously, I just had one side of the story, and more simply I had a fictionalized version of their story.  It is kind of like when you go to a movie derived made from a book you have read.  If the book represents the truth, then the movie represents a fictionalized story of the truth. 

Both of the stories I told on our first few dates in my latest romance were not only one-sided, and non-representative, but in some ways they were just pure fiction.  They didn’t really come close to representing my past relationships, me, or what was important to me.  The stories were convenient, entertaining, and portrayed me to the world as I wanted to be portrayed.  One would think our stories put our best foot forward, but in fact most of our stories about ourselves don't even do that.

In my current relationship, I am committed an open and honest relationship where we would make our best effort to keep the other informed of what is important to us, what we are feeling and thinking, and what our dreams are.  No pretending, no building walls and hiding behind them, no long term sulking and pouting.  Yes, it was a beginning of a journey together.  Its wonderful, its scary, its bad sometimes, but its real.  It’s life.  And even more, we are pushing each other to grow -- and sometimes there are growth pains.  And most of all, we challenge each other's stories about each other and ourselves.

What makes a relationship work is to constantly tear down the fictional stories that we make up about ourselves and others.  Every story we make up is fictional, but we try to pick those details that makes the truest story we know how to make.  Couples seldom agree completely and they should grow to realize that our stories are very feeble in representing the total picture.  It is not that we are weak minded, it is that we are open minded enough that we can see many aspects in each story that are not being represented by the current version of the story.  To realize that my mate's version of the story may hold as much truth in it as my version of the story is tough at times, especially when that feeling of righteous indignation descends on us.

We do this same kind of story making for our country.  From the republicans we have the story line Obama is destroying our country, from the democrats we have the story line that the Republicans have no plan but to say "no".  These are broad judgment stories that fail to get down to any useful detail on any issue including immigration, modifying entitlement programs where they can be solvent, balancing the budget, etc.  And on each of these issues each side has a fictional story they present as the truth that captures the details of the issues that they want to tell.

And to ourselves and the rest of the world we tell the story of our country as the land of the free, home of the brave.  Since we have more people in prison per capita than any other civilized country perhaps we need to modify the story to capture this detail.  When we say it is a country of opportunity perhaps we need to include the detail that we have wealth inequality that is worse than China -- and we know the story of how bad it is there.  Or is there a miracle happening in China?

The bottom line is pretty simple.  What comes out of our mouth as the story of our-self, our party, and our country is fiction.  The story can not be captured by one liners, by broad judgmental proclamations, and by overt righteousness (a whole other story).  The real stories are complex, detailed, nuanced and incredibly hard to capture with words. Often the story or opinion we proclaim as being insightful is simply a story we like.

When we figure out that own story is fiction, then what?  My guess the first response should be a strong dose of humble pie.  But, what most of us do is to double down on our story adding some more details, carefully selected, to show that our story has some validity and that at least some of our righteousness is justified. But, if challenging your own story is too painful for you, for me, perhaps we can start by listening to the news and first asking why out of all the billions of things that happened yesterday, why were these stories chosen.  Do they happen to fit into the bigger narrative/story told by this station?  Do they fit reinforce the culture/righteousness of their audience?  

Once you get a hang of what news from this new perspective, use this new skill first on yourself and then with the cooperation of your partner, look at the stories that the two of you tell.  Can a more realistic, and perhaps more helpful story be told?  And once your story is altered and improved will it help your life evolve to something richer and more rewarding?