Almost every time I've gotten onto social media over the past few weeks, I've seen at least one thing about the new piece-of-Hollywood-garbage-that-will-be-considered-a-box-office-success-because-it's-about-sex movie, "50 Shades of Grey", a movie based off of a novel (that was originally fan fiction from "Twilight") about consensual abusive sex outside of marriage. Not cast in a negative light, mind you, but eventually leading to a love relationship between the two main characters.
Flawless.
Honestly, when the books started making their way into circulation about 2-3 years ago, I laughed. I laughed when I heard about the plot, and laughed harder when I heard it was a success. This is proving the long satirized point of "they will buy anything". And it's not because I think that the subject matter of the book is funny that I laugh. I don't. I think it's terrible. But, really? We're better than this, world.
So, as it goes with most crappy books, crappy movies are soon to follow, and this was unfortunately no different. Naturally there was excitement from some, and unease from others. But no one cared more about this movie than the Christian industry. But they managed to stay under control until the beginning of February, leading up to the Valentine's Day release of the movie. Then it all went wild. Blog post after blog post about the horrors that hid within the film, statistics on porn in America, protests about the movie, and so on.
And maybe I missed something, but I felt like these posts were unnecessary and kind of dumb. I get the point that, as Christians (or even just self-respecting human beings), we shouldn't watch or support the movie. I really do. But I also got that point WAY before the movie was released or even thought about. Were churches planning on screening it into services until the bloggers got underway? Why are we so surprised and appalled? No one who goes to this movie is going into it blissfully unaware of what they're walking into. The hype has made it impossible to be ignorant of the central themes.
I get the outrage about the movie, but I feel like we have more to focus on than these films. They weren't designed to attract our kind of "audience", and honestly, I don't think anyone cares. It's just the way Hollywood works. And don't tell me that the Christian film industry doesn't work the same way ("God's Not Dead", anyone?).
I feel like everyone focuses on the "porn" aspect of the movie as the reason not to see 50SOG. I personally have a few other reasons (on top of that one) why I'm not going to see the movie:
1. It's a popular movie (I generally hate popular movies).
2. The movie is so crappy that even the two stars hate it.
3. How deep can a script/story go when it's all about sex?
We have so much more to be concerned about. Don't get hung up on this movie.
-Sam
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