The Double Standard: 50 Shades and the Role of Women in Films

01/26/15
I haven't read very much of 50 Shades of Grey.  I checked out a couple of excerpts, just to see what all of the fuss was about.  Wow.  It's, well.  Visual.  Graphic, even.  It's like the bodice ripper crap novels that used to be next to the checkout lines at all of the Giant Eagles, with the perversion knob turned all the way to 11.  The bodice rippers go to 10.  This book goes to 11.

Of course, when I heard this was coming to the silver screen--I was reticent.  Part of me felt that this was like acceptable soft pornography for females to indulge in, while men are often judged negatively for doing the same thing. 

But that original gut reaction was incorrect.  The more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that 99% of movie plots involve the male being the aggressor, the female being the pursued.  Yes, 50 Shades is that same sort of thing.  But it's the female exploring the darker desires, while the male seems quite a bit like an object, at times. 

It's a rather sharp double-standard.  Most men probably aren't comfortable with this type of film coming out because women are usually shamed for expressing some of the same sentiments that men express amongst their friends, on the Internet, out loud.  Men are hailed as studs, women reviled as tramps.  Men don't need to repress their blatant aggressiveness--we probably should.  But society doesn't really require us to do so.  We're always portrayed, in films and in books, as the chaser after the chaste.

I would figure it would be rather difficult being female, watching a large majority of the films displaying the woman as the object that always needs protected.  Then, once protected, desired.  It's cliché and expected.  Maybe it's not too jarring because we're all trained to fit these roles from the time we get blue and pink blankets in our cribs.  The women who are represented as strong and aggressive figures on film and in literature are usually just given these traits by making them more masculine and aggressive--even by throwing them in leather and armor, with a bow and arrow--not really independent. 

So, I've decided to shut up.  It's probably time for women to enjoy a film where inhibitions are not forced upon them by being the object of the gaze the entire time.  The role reverses a little bit.  Society is just going to have to be comfortable with that.  Maybe even confronting, on another level, the fact that many of the preconceived notions are outdated--and due for a shift.