“Fifty Shades of Grey”

I think I was among the last to hear about the novel Fifty Shades of Grey.  It was already a publishing phenomenon when it first swam across my radar screen.

I’ve never leafed through it.  I’ve never held it.  I’m not sure I’ve ever so much as seen a copy.

But it’s made its author wealthy, and now a film based upon it is about to premiere.

Nothing of the little that I’ve heard about either the book or the forthcoming film has suggested to me that I ought to support them in any way.  The odds that I’ll ever read the former or see the latter are about the same as those of my converting to Sikhism, suddenly sprouting a third arm, or taking up whiskey distilling as a hobby.

Still, people out there have consumed the novel in mass quantities, and it’s virtually a foregone conclusion that the movie will earn dumpsters full of cash for those behind it.

With that in mind, I invite  you to consider a short mini-essay on the topic that was recently written by a good friend of ours:

“Fire! Fire In The Theater!”

Bianca Palmieri Lisonbee

We all know our right of free speech does not include yelling “Fire” in a theater just for the fun of it, but it’s amazing to me what kind of soul-singeing toxic waste we can witness hundreds of people being exposed to in that same theater without even a whisper of “fire.”

This month, thousands of people (willing victims) will file into theaters and for two hours subject themselves to the immoral smoke inhalation of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. You don’t have to know too much about the story to deduce that it glorifies a character who supports violent sexual behavior including sadomasochism, the de-humanization of sex, and the idea that women secretly like the idea of being helpless victims of a sexual predator just as long as he is handsome and has a lot of money. If someone were to tell us that they wanted to make a film that supported all of the above, most of us would be appalled at this moral insanity. And yet, many of those same would-be-appalled people will be standing in line for this movie, feeling quite self-satisfied with their level of sophistication and sexual progressiveness.

At what point does our moral smoke detector sound the alarm that we have gone too far for our own good in what we are not only willing to view but to endorse with the most powerful kind of endorsement there is—our hard-earned money, for the price of a ticket to see this trash.

My biggest fear isn’t that we are ignoring the alarm sounded from our moral smoke detectors, but that we as a society have long since forgotten to replace its batteries. And you know what happens: We get tired of the annoying beeping sound it makes warning us before it’s too late to pay attention and replace the batteries so that it can continue to function. How many of us really do that? I fear that as a society we have instead opted to unplug it totally. I mean, who wouldn’t want to stop that annoying beep beep beep! “Hey, if you can’t stand the heat, just get out of the kitchen (or theater).” Beep Beep Beep. “No one is forcing people to go to this movie so all you religious prudes just need to stop griping about it.” Beep Beep . “It’s just a fun movie, for heaven’s sake.” Beep. “It’s ok to see all that moral deprivation because the character in the film starts to improve.” No more beeps.

If this movie succeeds, which we know it will, it will be evidence that as a society we have shoved our no longer functioning moral smoke detectors into a junk drawer. We have forgotten their existence, and we now find ourselves not only in danger of fire, nor do we even have a fear of it, but instead we have developed a perverse desire to play with it. And we all know what happens when we do that.