Breitbart's Big Hollywood has an interesting review of 50 Shades. After reading it, I want to go see the movie, if only to plumb the depths of our modern, progressive, secular culture. In the review is this tidbit.
(The movie is a) $40 million studio-produced piece of feminist wish-fulfillment that plays like a pimp’s guide to breaking down a nice girl into a sniveling, needy doormat who is willing, literally, to wait naked on her knees in Pimp Daddy’s “Red Room of Pain” whenever he commands.The foundation of those relationship dyamics is human sexual dimorphism. Women need love, men need sex. If you accepted that, you'd realize that sadism is the ultimate power imbalance. Statistically speaking (no, I don't have the data in front of me now), it's the man exerting dominance over the woman to fulfill his every fantasy while holding the reward of some small amount of emotional fulfillment over her.
Pimps are master manipulators at convincing inexperienced young girls what love is and that they “like it.”
As the reviewer, John Nolte, asks, "where’s your feminist god now?"
The psychologists that tell us sadism is normal and healthy are not advocates of male dominance, so the only thing I can think is that they've completely rejected the concept of sexual dimorphism. That's not such a leap when you consider how saturated the culture is with stories praising one women after another for breaking down barriers and succeeding in traditionally male roles. Sex differences were all cultural and we're washing away the last traces of the oppressive patriarchy. Hurrah!
Cultural acceptance of sadism, then, is part of the evolution of our concepts of sexual differences.
I like the review at First Things better. I'm sure you're aware of that magazine/website.
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ReplyDeleteI kind of like the New Yorker review (and I'm not usually a New Yorker fan): http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/pain-gain
ReplyDeleteI have not read the book, have NO interest whatsoever in seeing the movie. I miss the television shows off the late fifties and early sixties and the movies of the thirties and forties. Sigh...
Well, if you do decide to go see it, maybe you could follow it up with another very popular movie that I understand heavily features sadism and torture - "The Passion of the Christ".
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ReplyDeletenon sequitur: a statement having little or no relevance to what preceded it
Meds?
Tim, that is easily the most uncharacteristic comment you've ever left. You must have been having an off day because you're way too insightful to make that analogy under ordinary circumstances.
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