Violence and Sexuality – from Transgressive de Sade to Consumerist Grey

Abstrakt

With the release of 50 Shades of Grey
film version a few days before Valentine’s Day
2015, and its immediate box office success,
sadomasochistic aesthetics seems to have
finally made its way into mainstream popular
culture. This feat, however, is only seemingly
an accomplishment in liberalisation of general
approach towards sexuality. The novel
is rather an attempt to commercialise BDSM
as a mass-market consumerist option, which
compromises its original, subversive potential.
The aim of this paper is to study sadomasochism
historically, as a tool used to denounce the
limitations of democracy and formal equality,
and in this context to show how much Fifty
Shades of Grey is not subversive but actually
profoundly regressive. Beginning with what
Slavoj Žižek refers to as “the heroism of the Marquis de Sade’s project for a democracy of enjoyment” voiced at times of libertarianism and the French Revolution’s declaration of universal human rights, the paper retraces how sadomasochism re-emerged throughout modern popular culture (Bloomsbury group,punk) providing means for the exploration of personal freedom and the extremes to which it can be taken. In this context, Fifty Shades of Grey is a great step back as it reiterates traditionalist stereotypes concerning sexuality and gender roles. The novel categorises good and bad sex, stigmatises homosexuality, presents BDSM as an illness that “only love can cure”, and entrenches 19th century’s definitions of masculinity and womanhood. Under the guise of promoting kinky sex, it introduces a new normativity whose laws are dictated by market economy.

Keywords: Fifty Shades of Grey,
BDSM, sadomasochism, the Marquis de
Sade, Bloomsbury group, punk, normativity,
consumerism, gender roles.