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Fifty Shades of Grey follows this long history of class ascendancy via feminine wiles, but does so cleverly disguised as an edgy modern bodice-ripper. Forget that E. L. James’s three-book series captures the intricacies of BDSM about as effectively as a “Whip Me!” Barbie doll decked out in a ball gag, dog collar, and assless leather chaps. Although admirers of the series sometimes credit it with liberating female desire by reimagining pornography for ordinary women (and introducing them to the unmatched thrills of leather riding crops and hard spankings), the story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey isn’t really about dominance or bondage or even sex or love, despite all the Harlequin Romance–worthy character names. No, what Fifty Shades of Grey offers is an extreme vision of late-capitalist deliverance, the American (wet) dream on performance-enhancing drugs. Just as magazines such as Penthouse, Playboy, Chic, and Oui (speaking of aspirational names) have effectively equated the moment of erotic indulgence with the ultimate consumer release, a totem of the final elevation into amoral privilege, James’s trilogy represents the latest installment in the commodified sex genre. The money shot is just that: the moment when our heroine realizes she’s been ushered into the hallowed realm of the 1 percent, once and for all.
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Like the most loyal and dedicated refugees from Downton Abbey, every one of the series’ cooks and chauffeurs and security guards and assistants demonstrates polite restraint and obedient discretion in Christian and Anastasia’s presence. Every careful movement and gesture, each bland remark and well-timed retreat into the background, evokes the ultimate service-economy fantasy. These interchangeable, faceless humans, whose ubiquity and professionalism we’re meant to marvel over repeatedly, represent luxury possessions. They are warm but impassive, friendly but reserved, omnipresent but invisible. They register no disputes, no grudges, no rolled eyes, no missed days of work. Nothing seems to bring these strange, shadowy figures more satisfaction than serving Lord Grey and his Lady. Like the growing pile of high-end watches and cars and bracelets that the mildly transgressive power couple accumulates, these humans start to melt into an idealized mass of blindly loyal subservience, bestowing upon their masters an oversized sense of power. And in the midst of these deferential encounters, the long-suffering reader of the series finds some bitter and fugitive consolation in recalling that Anastasia’s Russian royal namesake was exiled by the Bolsheviks.