Mommy porn? Wuthering Heights "with a torture chamber"? Is it "poorly written and utterly ridiculous" or is it "heartbreaking and deep"?
I don't know about any of those things, but I know that the three parts or books in the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series have occupied the top 3 spots on Amazon's romance best seller list for at least the last several weeks. I also know that Hollywood studios got into a bidding war for the movie rights to the book by EL James and I know that means millions in the multiples.
There are a couple of other things I know about the current "it" books - (1) I haven't read them yet despite an enthusiastic recommendation from a co-worker because the books would cost $30.00 and that's a big chunk and (2) I'm tickled chartreuse for the author, EL James, who is an indie sensation because she wrote the books as Twilight fan fiction and only later did they get picked up by a small publisher. It makes me very happy whenever writers succeed and it makes me particularly happy to see an indie author do so well.
It's the success of the books that confuses me. I understand that the tale of Christian and Anastasia is set - like Twilight - in Washington State. He's a billionaire and she's a college student filling in for her roommate to interview him for the campus newspaper. I understand that she's embarrassed by some of her friend's questions and he's intrigued and pursues her, trying to get her to sign a contract to be the submissive to his dominant. Reviewers say Christian only has dominant-submissive relationships, that he pursues Anastasia "madly" and that he stalks her, is jealous of any real interaction she has with other men and he wants to control her on his terms.
Reading those reviews and descriptions of the book, and considering its absolutely amazing popularity have me shaking my head in confusion and saying - WHAT?
See, I still love what most folks these days call either "old school romance" or "bodice rippers." Those are novels that started the romance genre, written by amazing authors like the late Kathleen Woodiwiss and by Rosemary Rogers, amongst many, many others. As I've said on this blog many times, Woodiwisses' "The Flame and The Flower" is one of my all time romance faves. But in recent years, loving those "old school bodice rippers" has become very, very UN-popular.
People have railed against how the "old school bodice rippers" show men controlling women - dominating women. And that's bad - right? It's bad even though by the end of the book the hero inevitably had been "schooled" by the heroine. He'd learned to value her gentle emotions and he'd learned to love her while she'd learned to value his passion. That's all bad and wrong and unpopular. It doesn't sell for beans today now, does it?
Before the Grey phenom, I'd have said, absolutely. Put the bodice rippers in a box and bury 'em because they're dead. I'd have said that women today don't want to read about dominating men and heroines who love them. I'd have said that any book showing a heroine as submissive to a man was D.O.A. But apparently - I'd have been dead wrong.
That's where my Fifty Shades of Confusion starts. Because I wonder -- if someone today wrote "The Flame And The Flower" as a contemporary - would it become the next big thing?
I'm hoping that the fans brave enough, bold enough, and assertive enough to love "Fifty Shades of Grey" may become smart enough to realize that political correctness is the wrong yardstick to use to measure any book. It's the 21st century and today a woman can enjoy reading about a domineering man, and then put the book down to go and chair a board meeting, perform surgery, argue an appeal -- or diaper an infant and prepare dinner.
Maybe the phrase "mommy porn" is today's version of the phrase "bodice ripper." And if that's the case, you know what I think we should do? I think we should dig up those "bodice rippers" we buried and stuff all the labels in the coffins instead.
Women can be - and read- whatever we like and we can do it without justifying it to anyone.