Abstract
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That conclusion is consistent with more than 30 years of media scholars' findings that demonstrate the myriad ways in which media shape our worldviews and ideologies. 3 Given this, one would think that Fifty Shades would be a well-researched topic by now (especially in feminist media studies), because the books construct narratives about gendered power relations, violence, and sexual inequality. However, it is academics other than those in media studies who have been the first to take the bold step of researching the impact of the books on women readers.
The obvious question here is why so few feminist media scholars have turned their attention to Fifty Shades. Part of the answer lies in the paradigmatic shift that took place in the 1990s in feminist media studies. Rather than looking at how media affect the way girls and women construct gender and sexual identities that produce and reproduce hegemonic gender relations, scholars argued that we need to take a more positive approach to media targeted to women. Starting from the premise that media texts are polysemic (open to multiple meanings), feminist media scholars—often sounding more like fans than researchers—began to argue that women and girls may actually be empowered by hypersexualized images that objectify women because they offer a kind of pleasure that comes with being noticed and desired by men. An example of such work appears in Johnson. 4
In her article on the problems associated with that kind of research, Angela McRobbie 5 points to the way in which Sex and the City was hailed by some feminist media scholars as a show that celebrated women's sexual power. Missing from this critique, McRobbie points out, is “a prior, or old-fashioned feminist vocabulary which was concerned with the power of these media forms, and their role in producing sexual objectification, differentiation and subordination” (p. 540). This results in what McRobbie calls a “complicitous critique” (p. 539) that “appears to suspend critical engagement with the wider political and economic conditions which shape the very existence, as well as the circulation and availability, of these forms” (p. 539).
I would argue that it is this “complicitous critique” that explains why Fifty Shades has been virtually ignored by feminist media scholars as a text that constructs a narrative that is consistent with the pornified images that are now the wallpaper of pop culture. 6 To understand the popularity of Fifty Shades, we need to contextualize the book within both the political economy of media and the system of images now produced by a corporate media with close economic and semiotic ties to the porn industry.
The well-resourced public-relations (PR) machine that promoted the books, and now the film (scheduled for release on Valentine's Day, 2015) certainly helped make Fifty Shades a major cultural force. The author, E.L. James, has appeared on numerous prime-time television and radio shows, and as I watched her being interviewed, it was clear that the goal of each segment was to promote the book as cutting-edge fantasy that was a must read for every woman wanting to spice up her sex life. I did not see a single mainstream interview that discussed the violence or the possible harm in glossing over the way that wealthy Christian Grey emotionally, physically, and sexually abused a naive, vulnerable younger woman. Rather, many of the segments ended with interviews of women who said that their flagging sex lives with their husbands had now taken a turn for the better, thanks to Fifty Shades.
Without cultural resonance, however—and no matter how powerful the PR machine behind the book—this trilogy would never have become so popular. To reinstate what McRobbie calls “old-fashioned feminist vocabulary,” we need to understand how the misogyny inherent in porn has filtered into mainstream pop culture and been internalized by both women and men. Whereas “old-fashioned” feminists argued that real power is about changing the structures that deny women economic, legal, and political equality, the newer wave of feminism, informed in large part by postmodernism, voided itself of any institutional analysis, arguing instead for individual empowerment rooted in a sexuality that is fun, hot, and edgy. 7 And where better to find this sexuality than porn?
Across disciplines, scholars who research and write about porn tend to see it as the embodiment of a feminist space that grants women the right to be sexual. In reality, the violence, debasement, and dehumanization that are rampant in mainstream porn undermine women's rights to full equality. As Ana Bridges and her team found, the majority of scenes from 50 of the top-rented porn movies contained both physical and verbal abuse targeted at the female performers. 8 Physical aggression, which included spanking, open-hand slapping, and gagging, occurred in over 88% of scenes; expressions of verbal aggression—calling the woman names, such as “bitch” or “slut”—were found in 48% of the scenes. The researchers concluded that, if both physical and verbal aggression were combined, 90% of scenes contained at least one aggressive act.
Only by contextualizing Fifty Shades in the larger porn culture can we begin to understand its popularity and impact on our culture. Research by media sociologists has shown that the more consistent and coherent the messages across a range of media genres, the more power they have to construct the worldview of media consumers. The subtextual themes of Fifty Shades of Grey, so well outlined by Bonomi, are not unique to the books but rather are found in music videos, video games, Hollywood movies, and, of course, mainstream porn. As young women develop their gender and sexual identities in a society awash with images of themselves as hypersexed and valued only for their “hotness,” they will internalize the hegemonic ideology that the key to power is a pseudosexual empowerment that is, in reality, transitory and ultimately disempowering. 9
The call by Bonomi et al. for critical media analysis is an important way of helping to build collective resistance to pornographic representations of gender and sexuality. Although critical media scholars have been calling for media literacy for more than 20 years, few schools and colleges include any classes or courses that teach students how to critically deconstruct the image. 10 The result is a largely media-illiterate population that is easily manipulated by highly trained professionals who use media to sell consumer products, ideologies, and, naturally enough, gender and sexual identities. Media literacy is seen by progressive scholars as one way to limit the power of corporations by providing the theories and skills necessary to critically decode the way images shape reality.
By calling attention to the health risks associated with normalizing sexual violence in pop culture and by homing in on one of the most influential texts of our time, Bonomi et al. provide the evidence-based arguments we need to build robust media-literacy programs. I applaud the authors for their willingness both to name and to interrogate the violence in Fifty Shades, and I join them in their call for more research on this important area of study.