Blog Post 11: Cultural Study about Fifty Shades of Gray

In today’s lecture we discussed about cultural factors that influence the matter of sexual assault. We talked about how the movie Fifty Shades of Gray contributes to the Kairos that creates the rape culture in the US. One thing interests me is when the professor said “Christian Gray can do it because he has money, otherwise it would be another episode of Criminal Mind.” I think it’s interesting how people would perceive Christian Gray’s character as an entirely different character with or without money. Audience might still perceive Christian as sexually attractive and powerful even if he commits abusive action like tie a girl up or beat her with a whip. Evidently, American culture perceives richness as a kind of bypass for criminality; American TV viewers would believe it is normal for a rich person to get away with crimes just because he is rich and powerful. As a Chinese girl, I can tell from the world view, not every culture agrees with this kind of notion that richness can bypass through everything. And certainly not every individual believes man with money or good appearance can get away with sexual assault. I realize that American culture always defines things in an idealistic or stereotypically perfect way, just like if this guy is rich then he can’t be a rapist. Many undeveloped cultures don’t have idealism as part of their culture, thus when they watch movies like Fifty Shades Of Gray, they hardly buy the sexual violence is romantic stuff.

In class the instructor asked us how does the movie manage to appeal? One of the student in class point out, from a parent’s point of view rape depicted on media is bad because parents don’t want their daughters getting raped, but still they don’t care if their kids watch media portrayed sexual assault. So to some degree, parents also hold some endurance for media portrayed sexual assault otherwise they won’t watch it or allow their children to watch it. Either they don’t realize media’s effect on them or they don’t care. As the instructor said, rape is something deeply rooted in their culture it becomes a norm. So if heavy TV viewers continually expose themselves to TV portrayed sexual assault, objectified woman, objectified man, would they start imitating these behaviors and believe that TV portrayed characters are real? According to some scholarly articles I read, this situation is highly unlikely for adults because adults know that media portrayed information is unreal, but children do imitate violent behaviors on TV. One effect brought by watching TV and movies is people become more tolerable with media portrayed violence or violent characters, they become to believe that TV portrayed violence is happening in the real world, thus attain more fear about the real world.

Personally, I think the movie appeal its audience by depiction of sexual pleasure. It is because the woman is depicted being sexually pleased and happy when she was with Christian (the dominant abuser), audience think their relationship is unique, interesting, romantic in a sexual way and even more acceptable. Even when violent depiction is brought into their sexual activity, the women still looks enjoyable, this consensual attitude towards sexual violence inspires female audiences and make them think that they can do this kind of action with their boyfriend, their husband or even male strangers. According to the documentary about the book Fifty Shades of Gray, the book publication is followed by thousands of ropes being sold. Couples start to role play the abnormal sexual activities depicted in the book and they said it was fun and exciting. What if these couples don’t realize their role play is actually modeling sexual violence and rape? Their role play is consensual because the female partners enjoyed playing the drama queen and beating their husband or getting beaten. I guess rape does shape our culture and construct our perception that defines who we are. If woman loves to play victims and masochist just like they did in the role play, I feel like the culture is certainly intoxicated by media’s way of shaping individual’s behavior and their way of treating their romantic partners.