27 Shades of Dresses (and a dash of La Boheme)

I have a strange mashup of things in my head of late.

I've been listening to the audio book of 50 Shades of Grey, which has been an interesting and amusing experience. Then, on a sleepless night, I watched the movie 27 Dresses on late night television. Two days later, I went to see La Boheme at the opera house with my ex-boyfriend.

Let's start with the "literary" angle. Grey is an interesting book in the fact that it is part tacky romance (with all the tropes that genre uses), part erotica,part fan fic, and part BDSM 101 brochure. As I am listening to the book, I am struck by the sometimes purple prose side by side with obscure literary references (the partial Hamlet reference is my favorite so far; the full quote is from the character of Hamlet himself, in case you were wondering. "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.")

In the romance category, we have a virginal heroine, a dashing and very rich hero who is a dark and brooding (but will be eventually rescued from his emotional prison by the love of the heroine). They have the meet-cute of her tumbling through the doorway into his office and him catching her in his arms. There is immediate chemistry, the zing that comes with the touch of the beloved. The ages for both characters are a hard sell in this day and age. Anastasia is just graduating from college (and yet somehow has managed to remain chaste and at the same time have the natural aptitude to give a perfect blow job the first time). Christian is 28, a multi-millionaire, and totally in control of his shit. He is world-wise and a sexual pro, which would qualify him for the hero position in the romance genre. Not-so-reformed rakes are a favorite with the ladies.

I find it a little odd that Anastasia would fall into the lifestyle so easily when it seems as though she hasn't really ever had a lascivious thought in her head. Granted, Christian Grey is pretty tasty, but people I know who enter the lifestyle have some natural inclination to do so. The explanation of her virginal state is just that until she met Christian, she was never really interested in anyone before. I'm not saying that some relationships don't go from Zero to Fifty in 10 seconds, but to have someone so easily slide into a contracted relationship seems to be pushing it a bit.

And speaking of contracts, having the very long contractual language in the book was highly interesting to me. Not necessarily because of the thing in and of itself, but I am really curious what the ladies who work at the bank who are all reading this book are thinking at this point. I know that most anyone who has read much in the romance department is used to the borderline porn (read "erotica") that can come up in some works. They have also probably read rough sex scenes or those which would be called rape except that the heroine secretly wants the experience from the hero (I have read mainstream romance authors which have these sorts of scenes). So that's not really as shocking as an outsider to the genre might think. But the "red room of pain" and the implements/toys it contains are definitely outside the norm. The only time when I have read about these sorts of things in romance novels, it has been in the context of the fair maiden being captured by the evil villain of the book and she is to be tortured while in his clutches if not for the timely arrival of the hero.

But even so, I give the ladies at the bank the credit for having read some naughty books in their time. Or that they secretly like naughty books, and everyone else is reading this one so it makes it acceptable to read it as well.

However, how does the Dominant/Master submissive/slave contract look to those outside the lifestyle I wonder? First of all, I would think that the dry contractual language itself (in numbered points filling the page), would be a turn-off for many. Erotic buzz kill. Add to that the fact that ownership and lack of freewill aren't necessarily things that many women are rushing right out to sign up for (though a very rich man might change some of their minds, I suppose). Being a slave girl in a period romance is ok, but becomes aberrant as soon as it is seen as being anachronistic.

I find it almost cute though that there has been pains taken (as it were) to delineate possibly more acceptable kinks from other, more "unsavory" ones through the hard vs soft limits section of the contract. Anal fisting is ok, but make sure you don't use a violet wand on someone. And I wonder if this listing is helpful to the cause of making people more acquainted to BDSM or just as a point of derision ("why on earth would someone want to light someone else on fire?").

Regardless of all of this, I am still listening to the book, and managing my expectations when it comes to the writing style. It's interesting in a sociological sense, it's a fun book to pass the time, and it's sometimes unintentionally funny.

And sometimes, it's hot.

So now to return to my own headspace, intermixed with this fluffy BDSM-light grey adventure is the stereotypical romantic notions that were brought to the fore by watching 27 Dresses. This is a movie about unrequited love (with the wrong man), weddings, being authentic and truthful, and that notion of "the one." Whatever my other nasty predilections, I still am a sucker for the Rom-Com. And I am also a sucker for a quasi-musical number thrown in (which includes singing "Benny and the Jets" while dancing on a bar, in this case).

I admit, "hopeful romantic" applies to me (a term I attribute to Romancing the Stone). I cry at the parts that are obviously meant for saps in movies. I pack Kleenex as a necessity. And it makes for a very interesting world when this headspace meets up with the woman who also likes deviant behavior and practices polyamory. Where does romance fit when you're talking about anal fisting (it's crowded enough in there already!)? Where does love appear in the detailed contractual obligations of an M/s contract? Is it implied that care and tending to the needs of the Dominant or submissive means a type of love?

Can one be romantic with a Dominant long after the kinky courtship when much of the tenants of traditional romance require coquette behavior, chase rather than submission given, and a gaze that doesn't admit interest in anyone else in the world (unless it's being used to make the love interest jealous and is merely a ruse).

There are all sorts of reasons people enter into either marriages or M/s conracts. Some involve love, some don't. Some are well-thought out choices while others are the product of getting carried away on a whim or a romantic/sexual high. Sometimes people enter into these sorts of arrangements because that is just "what one does." And before someone tells me that BDSM is supposed to mitigate "have to" and "should" of mainstream society, I would just like to politely point to the level of formality and expectation laced throughout most all groups in the kinky world. Each group has its own expectations, which are no less of a "should/have to" than those pressures imposed socially on us in the vanilla world.

Before I get into a rant of the "freedoms" issue, let me interrupt myself and get back to the final dash of flavor in my head-soup, which is the Puccini opera, La Boheme. It is an odd blending of the notion of romance and "the one," with economic necessity and open relationships. There is still much jealousy at thinking of one's love interest with another person/people, but it introduces the fact that sometimes there's more of a "grey area" about what can be acceptable/desirable regarding sexual/romantic interactions.

It is perhaps more charitable to one of the women characters for being loose with her favors for monetary reasons (not prostitution, but being the mistress of more wealthy men) because of the "us against them" mentality created by the socio-economic stratification in Parisian society at that time. The notion of the poor artistic community running up against the people who are their patrons and lovers who allow them to continue to live and create art by giving them monetary support and artistic inspiration. The somewhat unintentional effect of this is perhaps more sexual freedom for women, which may be why the more tightly laced set frowns on the Bohemian lifestyle.

In the formal discussion one can attend before the opera, it amused me to hear that the press at the time was aghast at the checkered pants of the men and the shawls of the women in the opera, and a reporter at the time tried to argue that perhaps it was having to follow the dour but brilliant Wagner that most made Puccini's opera less palatable/fashionable. It's neither here nor there, but I do think Wagner's music was better, but probably La Boheme is more accessible for the general public (unless it's the Bugs Bunny cartoon version of Wagner, that is).

None of this post is meant to bring clarity to anything... I think the tea is still steeping on that one. But if nothing else, it highlights how very aware I am of the conversation of sex, gender, expectations, and freedoms in the art/film/opera I am being exposed to of late.

I think at some point I'm going to have more to say about all of this, especially as I come to the end of the Grey series. But for now, I will continue to enjoy the experiences and the artistic expression of others, and try to follow the advice of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke as much as possible:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”