50 Shades of Good Greif am I actually Reading this Thread?

The Trailer is out.

Never read the book myself (honest!), but my wife adores the entire series and will no doubt see the film, possibly with me in tow because… well you can figure it out.

Just watch Secretary instead, the male lead is even named Grey.

But I also started this thread so I could link to this OTHER, wonderful story about the Parents’ Television Council being really, really upset with the Today Show for making a big deal of airing the trailer. Their mental gyrations to work themselves up over the trailer is a joy to behold.

Well, the Today Show’s primary audience is mommies, so that just seems like good business; sort of like football games having scantily-clad women trying to sell beer. But it’s not just that, says the PTC: it’s the children. Won’t anyone think of the children!?

“The Today show and Good Morning America and shows of that ilk. They’re on while you’re getting your morning situated. They’re on while you’re getting your kids situated for school or for camp … trying to get breakfast before you go off to work,” Henson explained. “You often have it on in the background as just background noise to get weather updates, find out what’s happening in the news. So the fact that they’re promoting this so aggressively during a program that we know parents are probably going to be watching while their kids are in the room is also very troubling. And … the fact that they’re romanticizing sexual violence in this way is also very troubling.”

That’s a fair objection. But the clever folks at Today already thought of that, so they showed an edited version of the trailer with pretty much all the of naughty, suggestive bits cut out. They tell the few viewers that actually pay attention that the full version is available up on the web site. But the PTC is having none of it:

“It seems like a very ordinary … romance story, so the fact that they cut off the last few seconds, if anything, might be a little suggestive, a little misleading because you don’t truly understand what this movie is about unless you’ve read the articles or read the book.”

See? It’s all very simple: Today is promoting this movie, which is terrible since kids might be in the room to see the objectionable content. And the fact that all the objectionable stuff has been removed to protect the kids is even more horrible because now the kids won’t know how much they would have been scarred for life if the trailer had been shown properly.

I love these people.

Not only that, but aren’t your kids already out the door by the time the Today show is airing? I thought it was mostly so stay-at-home moms would have a way to relax once the kids were off to school without starting drinking so early.

Dude, it’s mid-July. School?

Gotta love that theme music’s uh oh uh oh oh no no no there at the end.

I didn’t realize this was sci-fi, but apparently it takes place in a crazy universe where the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffin is considered mousy and average looking.

That descriptions sounds like it came from the book…did you READ the book???

(okay, I admit, I listened to it on audiobook because I needed to know the enemy).

You know what? I saw that movie (on DVD). I’d forgotten all about it, but I do remember that I enjoyed it.

50 Shades? Haven’t read it, might stream it. It’s just not screaming “enjoyable movie to see at the theater” to me.

The Today show and Good Morning America and shows of that ilk. They’re on while you’re getting your morning situated. They’re on while you’re getting your kids situated for school or for camp … trying to get breakfast before you go off to work

I used to watch the Today show to help me cool off and crash after an all-nighter of hookers and blow.

I know, right.

The trailer for this made me more uncomfortable about all the children in the theater I was already uncomfortable about when I went to see Lucy last week.

So what’s the deal with this book? Why is it so scandalous? Is it just that a chick discovers her rich boyfriend is into light bondage? Is that the whole deal?

-Tom

It was originally written as Twilight fan fiction that was posted on the Internet. I’m not making that up. Someone published it in book form, and it basically became a runaway bestseller not because it was any good (it’s really terribly written, like you expect of fan fiction), but it got middle-age housewives all excited about BDSM.

But, seriously, this is terribly-written fan fiction based on an already terribly-written book (Twilight), but because it sold a lot of copies, people reasoned that it must be good, otherwise how did it sell all those copies? Therefore, I too will buy a copy! And the horrible, horrible cycle continues. The end result was that the woman who wrote this was making $50,000 a day off of royalties.

I’m just waiting for someone to write an even shittier piece of fan fiction based on 50 Shades of Grey that will become a ridiculous runaway hit. Because, as I said, the horrible, horrible cycle must continue.

Aren’t there three Shades of Grey books? Isn’t everything done as a trilogy nowadays.

It also gets a lot of flack from women and BDSM folks because the relationship is evidently abusive, not what most BDSM folks would call a realistic depiction of the scene (but I’ve not read it, so that is secondhand).

Is 50 shades also about vampires?

No, it’s Alternative Universe fan fiction. Take the characters and transplant them into a completely different setting/storyline.

Here’s my confession. I’ve read the first book in the trilogy.

It’s bad. Super terrible awful bad.

If you want erotica, there are better written books out there. If you want Twilight fan-fiction, then go trawl random fic sites. You’ll find better stories there with a little searching. (Also, go get professional counseling.) If you just want a trashy romance novel, hit up some Harlequin. At least, the books are shorter.

There is nothing - and I mean NOTHING - good about 50 Shades. The one bright spot in all this is that a female co-worker confessed that she didn’t know what “love beads” were and we had to explain them to her.

Back to the subject at hand - the terrible movie made from this terrible book. My wife and I have an understanding. Three times a year I’m out of the house for a week as part of my job. She has agreed that she will wait until one of those weeks before moving whatever terrible movie she wants to see (usually one of the Twilights, or some such) to the top of our queue. That way she can watch and return it without my facing the danger of exposure.