December 4, 2012
We all know about Fifty Shades Of Grey. Many people reading this article will have bought a copy: and many more will know a friend or relative who has.
And, probably, even more will know someone else, who, having read at least one of the three book trilogy, will have described it as “rubbish” – or with equally damning words.
But, should you be in the mood to dismiss the book, its author and anything associated with it, wait a minute. You might be missing something.
Because, whether you like the idea or not, E. L. James’s romantic trilogy of sexy spanking and funny fetishes, is a phenomenon of the year.
With over 50 million books sold worldwide, 10 million plus of those in the UK, a film adaptation planned and Fifty Shades of Grey sex toys now being sold as Christmas presents, there’s no other way to describe it.
And, as with all phenomena, success on this scale tends to tell us a great deal more about ourselves, or more specifically the trilogy’s readers, than it does about its author – the former TV producer of Shooting Stars from Ealing whose real name is Erika Mitchell.
And the first thing it suggests to me is that, despite its notoriety as a useful handbook for weekend sado-masochists, Fifty Shades of Grey might also be a paean to sexual fidelity.
Most pornography works because it offers the reader, or viewer, the opportunity to fantasise about the forbidden or unattainable. Thus infidelity has always played a large part in sexy scenarios.
But often infidelity is accompanied by guilt, a concept, which, in a sexual sense, has no part in E.L. James’s fantasy fable. Here the two main characters, the dominating, apparently drop-dead gorgeous but seriously pervy computer software billionaire, Christian Grey, and the unlikely, 21 year old foolish virgin, Ana, are both single, free spirits.
And in this secular age, where God isn’t peeping through the cracks in the curtains with his sin calculator, whatever they do with their bodies in bed is entirely up to them.
The way the story succeeds, however, is that both parties are entirely faithful to each other. And it seems to me that the idea of eroticism within a strictly monogamous relationship is where E. L. James, she of the unabashed sex toys generation, may have tapped into something of the moment.
Namely, that despite all the sexy enticements of the modern world, where successive generations have grown up under the notion that they have a “right” to adventurous sex, what many readers really want isn’t necessarily the aggravation and disappointment of casual sex with a plethora of different partners.
Rather, that the ultimate fantasy is for heightened sex in a single, guilt free, and therefore cosy, happy-ever-after, romantic relationship.
Could it be that, ironically, the notion of staid, traditional monogamy, albeit with a few Anne Summers extras on the side, might be part of the reason for the success of Fifty Shades Of Grey? I think it might.
Of course, another element in Erika Mitchell’s elevation to the super-rich is timing, in that the publication of her novels came about in the year that digital publishing took off following the big Kindle sales push last Christmas.
The ability of the reader to purchase at a click a notoriously naughty book without the possible embarrassment of having her neighbour spot what she is buying (and most buyers are women) in her local bookshop can’t have hurt.
And for her then to be able to read it on a train or bus without anyone knowing the nature of what it is that is keeping her eyes glued to the page, must have had some part to play, too.
Which is where another aspect of the Fifty Shades phenomenon kicks in. Publishing is currently is a state of flux as it moves from paper books to digital. It seems to me there’s room for both and the future won’t be solely one or the other.
At the moment, however, the growth market is in the convenience and cheapness of digital, and what publishing needed this year was a locomotive to pull readers into the digital world.
Step forward E.L. James. Having begun its life on an online website, Fifty Shades of Grey became the ideal bridge from one way of reading to a new one, making it the best selling digital book so far, with over a million downloads.
For a very short time life must have seemed a bondage bed of roses for this new best selling author. It didn’t last long. From the moment success was glimpsed, critics were bitchily lining up to criticise. Unfortunately, some of the mocking went well beyond criticism. It was simply cruel.
And, human nature being as it is, it’s now become an almost universal default position to snidely mock the author’s writing talent.
What snobs they all are, these arbiters of literary taste, snooty book club members and cleverer-than-thou readers, who, with every caustic comment, insult the millions of readers who enjoy the books.
What E. L. James writes isn’t aimed at me. But I have enormous admiration for anyone who writes a novel – including E.L. James. It’s an incredibly difficult job, and usually totally unrewarding.
E.L. James didn’t expect and didn’t deserve to be made a laughing stock by a coven of clever harpies when she wrote her books. She was just amusing herself, never imagining them as having a future beyond a Twilight website.
In fact, if anyone is to be criticised it should be her publisher. Traditionally publishing houses employed editors to help authors with their manuscripts. Editors are said to have worked wonder on Jeffrey Archer’s novels.
But with much repetition, many English phrases coming from the mouth of a young American, and the blizzard use of the word “grey” in the books, it’s impossible to see that this happened with any thoroughness on Fifty Shades Of Grey. That isn’t E.L. James fault. She’s a first time author. She needed help.
You might think that, rich as she now is, she doesn’t deserve our sympathy. I would disagree. Money doesn’t bind wounds.
E.L. James deserves praise not contempt for discovering a new market, as other publishers clamber on to the “mummy-porn!” train (I can’t imagine where the description originated either), and for even apparently increasing the annual profits of WH Smith and for other struggling booksellers.
It’s possible, too, that the Fifty Shades phenomenon has encouraged people to read who might not have done otherwise, and that has to be good. Some may now go on to read better books.
Whether in the long run the saga of Christian and Ana will do anything to alleviate frustration in some marriages, I rather doubt.
But, if my theory is right, and all along it was an unconscious hymn for sexual fidelity, albeit with extras… well, that’s a pretty harmless fantasy, isn’t it for one of the phenomena of the year.
