Fifty Shades of Fucked Up: Pathological BDSM Desire

            In 2015, Fifty Shades of Grey became one of the highest grossing “R” rated films of all time, bringing in over $550 million at the box office worldwide. The story of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele first wedged its way into the public conscious in 2012. On some level it is a classic story, a wealthy and handsome man pursues a shy and awkward woman who doesn’t realize how beautiful she really is. However, the tale is complicated by the BDSM storyline.

            In the above clip, Anastasia attempts to understand why Christian wants to punish her. She asks, “Why do you ever want to do anything to me at all… tell me, do you want to punish me right now?” Christian explains to Ana that, “just because I [don’t] want to, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t need to… because it’s the way I am, ‘cause I’m fifty shades of fucked up.” Here, the movie explicitly tells audiences that Christian’s sexual deviance, his practice of BDSM, is pathological. In other words, Christian’s behavior is only understood because of some deep seeded sickness or damage (Weiss, 105).

            In “Mainstreaming Kink: The Politics of BDSM Representation in U.S. Popular Media” Margot Weiss argues that the mainstream public generally express boredom or even disappointment when presented with conventional ideological portrayals of BSDM, e.g. healthy/ pathological (Weiss, 105). However, this was clearly not the case with both the book and movie, Fifty Shades of Grey. While it is possible that Fifty Shades of Grey was just an especially heightened case of distanced consumption, the popularity of this BDSM-centric media should be studied further.

Weiss, M. (2006). Mainstreaming kink: The politics of BDSM representation in U.S. popular media.Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 103-132. doi: 10.1300/J082v50n02_06