The Important Role of Pornography: A Rant About the Phenomenon of 50 Shades of Gray

If sex is a normal part of life, why are we so scandalized by it? Dear reader, 50 Shades of Gray is well and good for those older women who want to read a romance about a rich billionaire how things could have gone for themselves. It is nothing egregious or even tantilizing. But, what should disgust you, was the moral panic and scandal around both the book and the movie. This film is why people should watch porn.

Here I admit that I did not read the book. I have better things to read. However, I took it upon myself to watch the first film. And what I saw was not pornography, but romance. I should give a basic review before continuing.

50 Shades of Gray is a female power fantasy that falls flat. It is boring, the characters are mundane, and the much talked about kinky sex is unarousing. In short, is a bad movie. It is a bad movie aimed at exciting aging women with otherwise vanilla sex lives. And that’s okay.

It could have been better, had the characters been less wooden. Had the characters driven the plot, instead of the other way around, this could have been a convincing romantic thriller about a naive college student getting involved with troubled version of Prince Charming. However, it’s not. It’s just a female power fantasy about an average girl scoring a prince with some kinky scenes to make it stand out from Snow White and Cinderella.

The quality of 50 Shades of Gray is not what is important. The scandal which surrounded 50 Shades of Gray tells any observer more about Western civilization than nearly any other measurement. When the film was released, moralists from all corners of the political spectrum panicked. The fundementalist Christians denounced it as depraved pornography. The hardcore Feminists called it a glorification of a predator.

Trust me, the sex scenes are not depraved. This isn’t A Serbian Film or Salo. This isn’t even The Life and Death of a Porno Gang. The sex scenes act more as filler for a movie that is about love at first sight pretending it’s something deeper.

The male lead is often described as a predator, but he behaves in all the ways a woman wants. He cares for the object of his affection with an alpha personality. He is a loving and dominant master. He does not even describe himself as a Sadist. Rather, he calls himself a “dominant” – much to the relief of the unfortunate author of this article, but this is not a discourse on the Marquis de Sade.

However, the scandal surrounding this film, and the relative obscurity of the movies otherwise mentioned as well as the works of the Marquis de Sade tell us something. These facts tell us pornography is a necessity. Pornography is how people can safely see new fetishes, to see what tantilizes them. And, as the villain of A Serbian Film notes, porn exists so those who cannot get laid can cum. Porn allows the mentally and physically deformed to taste what everybody else feasts upon.

When we as a Society censor pornography, when we try to hide it away, and even when we try to abolish it, we are trying not to improve Society, but we are trying to lie to ourselves. We are lying about the state Society is in. Rather than tackle the real reason for declining marriage rates, increasing violent crime, and societal friction that feels like a civil war is just ready to erupt, we say “stop the porn” as if by not seeing some one’s favorite fetish will remedy all of Society’s ills.

This makes it possible for people with too much time on their hands to scandalize anyting sexual. 50 Shades of Gray shouldn’t have even been a flash in the pan. It should have been a movie that housewives and old women went to see without judgment. That’s it. Instead, for several months it became a phenomenon. It gave totalitarian moralists an out. Rather than have to describe their solutions to Society’s problems, they could point at an old woman, touching herself, and say “there’s the problem! It’s not that my religion sets unrealistic expectations of chastity on young adults that leave them confused which causes divorce! It’s not that my philosophy sets double standards for men and women that causes men to lash out violently! It’s BDSM that does these things!”

Pornography allows for the safe exploration of sexuality. New things can be found by curious couples, and young men and women who are too naive or sheltered to know otherwise can learn about reproduction from pornography. And if pornography was accepted into Society as another artform, which it most definitely should be, moral busibodies would have to find some other scapegoat.