A story with toxic ideas about gender includes the toxic image of men as success objects.
The remarkable thing about the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey is how rapey it isn’t. The book was an extremely detailed look at an abusive relationship, including outright rape that the heroine acknowledges was, in fact, outright rape. The same scene in the film is explicitly and specifically consensual. Indeed, explicit consent is all over the movie, a nice change from the constant rape-is-love drumbeat of the book.
However, there’s one major exception to that, left in because it’s not explicitly sexual and thus flies under certain radar: Christian Grey continues to buy Anastasia Steele expensive things. She repeatedly insists that she doesn’t want them and won’t accept them, but always ends up accepting them anyway. Which is the same policy she had toward his sexuality in the books.
The parallel is not accidental. Christian Grey is an exaggerated version of the traditional dominant alpha-male heroes of romance novels, which tend to come in two flavors: cowboys and billionaires. (Or occasionally, as in the hero of Tempting The Texas Tycoon, both. One learns weird things Googling one’s own name.) The fantasy of a perfect guy means, most of the time, a perfectly successful guy, because men are too often made into success objects. A success object is the male version of a sex object, when a person or character is valued not for their humanity, but for how well they live up to a single arbitrary characteristic.
Women being objectified is where we get female characters constantly being filmed or drawn in plot-inappropriate T&A poses, because god forbid we go ten seconds seeing her as a person rather than as someone the hero can screw. Men being objectified is where we get the first shot of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie, which is of Christian Grey’s enormous walk-in closet, full of hand-tailored suits, silk shirts, and jeweled cufflinks, lit by elaborate embedded backlighting that would cost easily five figures by itself.
…just as almost none of us will ever have the washboard abs and razor-sharp cheekbones of Christian Grey, so too will we never have his absurd, cartoonish wealth.
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Men are societally valued for our net worth, for our career success, and just as almost none of us will ever have the washboard abs and razor-sharp cheekbones of Christian Grey, so too will we never have his absurd, cartoonish wealth. And it’s amazing the extent to which his wealth is part of the creepy, id-driven fantasy of Fifty Shades.
Neither the book nor the movie can go five minutes without reminding us that Mr. Grey is Scrooge-McDuck-style rich. The source of his wealth isn’t important; a few mumbles about astute investments and “deals” are sufficient, because the intended audience doesn’t care about how money is made, they care about how it’s spent. (That might sound sexist, but let’s face it, if you don’t buy into creepy sexist tropes, you are not the intended audience, regardless of your gender.) It’s spent on every external trapping of wealth that E.L. James’ limited imagination can conjure, and on nonconsensually forcing expensive gifts on Anastasia Steele.
Erika Taylor-Johnson fought like hell to take the nonconsensual sex out of the movie she directed, and good for her. But she left in the forced–explicitly forced–gifts of rare books, a new computer, and a new car, which are just as much a part of the fantasy, and just as based in sick, antiquated ideas about gender relations. She’s not to be blamed for that; society has gotten a lot better about calling out rape tropes in the last generation or two, but is lagging behind on calling out ugly and sexist tropes about men, women, and money. So it’s time we got better at that.
Very interesting and thought-provoking take on the movie.
hahhrn
Has anyone considered that it is not objectification towards men, but rather an inherited trait in which we seek in our species for the sole purpose of survival? I will agree with the fact that yes, there is objectification towards men just as there is with women, however, when looking into what makes us “tick” so to speak, successful men were what we depended on when carrying for offspring, just as hour glass figures are a good indication for healthy child bearing. Especially when we became bipedal (walks on 2 feet). When we were caring for our offspring, who are… Read more »
Glad to see you’re back too Noah. I always enjoy your pieces when I agree with them and when I don’t. 🙂 I do agree that Christian Grey is a “success object”. This movie wouldn’t hold the same spice if this guy was a butcher from the mid-west. With that said. This is one movie and it should not be used as a means to define women or their sexuality. And I’m kind of sick and tired that it is being used just in that way. Not all of us ladies are fans of this book and what both lead… Read more »
YES. It objectifies men as success objects and also enables women to disempower themselves because it’s just too scary to grow up. Find another Daddy, then get pregnant as quickly as possible to seal the deal and stay home to continue being taken care of. But if a man is going to fall in love with a set of genetics, and the OBJECT of his “affections” in turn will love the opportunity to financially exploit him for it, those are just two people using each other. And they deserve each other. Not all men or women are like that. Thank… Read more »
To be honest Robbie, the notion that a woman who gets married, pregnant and tend to the home is someone who has “dismpowered” herself or doesn’t want to grow up is completely offensive and ignorant. For one reason, there are tons of women out there who have gotten married, had kids and yes stayed home to take care of the home. To imply that staying at home is akin to just lazing about and being “taken care of” is a terrible stereotype. My Mom married my Dad, who had his own business, and she largely took care of our home.… Read more »
He never said that all stay-at-home-moms were disempowering themselves to get taken care of, Erin, he was refereing to the girls who fantazise of having a luxurious life and are willing to give themselves in that sexist way to get that.
Gabe, can you point out to me where he’s clear about who he is talking about in his comments? He doesn’t even specify himself. All he does is use a general term like “women” to describe how “they” “disempower themselves” because he theorizes they don’t want to “grow up”. I won’t even open the can of worms on how I see people argue against the “infantilizing” of women yet infantilizing them themselves by upholding some strange ideas about women in the process. Although I will say that isn’t it ironic the way our culture will often name-call women who look… Read more »
In Hong Kong, beautiful tall slender models walk around luxury shopping malls in pairs… They are dressed as if they are about to attend a New Year’s Eve party even though it may be a lazy summer day…. It seems like they are trying to attract a billionaire sugar daddy… Some faceless guy who will just take care of them and whisk them off to some fantasy life…
Thanks for this perspective! Good points. I see what you are saying, but I do want to provide a counter-argument, just a little bit. My point is that successful men can be appealing for a different set of reasons. Of course, I can only speak to my own experience, so here’s what I have observed: I have been drawn to men who are successful before, but it was due to the appearance of them having their shit together. I did not want them to buy me nice things, and I was not gunning for marriage or anything that would require… Read more »
Keep in mind that we’re in a capitalist society that puts extremely high value on economic success.
Do women like wealthy men from the get go as a biological imperative or are they influenced to find wealth sexy because our society as a whole puts insane importance on economic success and the almighty dollar?
I agree with this. I think there is one thing to add though. I think there is a sexual component to men’s success objectification. Women find successful men more sexually attractive. I think we don’t make the connection because we don’t want to recognize women’s sexual objectification of men. We’d rather see it as something different.
http://newqueeries.blogspot.com/2014/11/playgirl-sexiest-mencirca-1979.html
That’s the only explanation I’ve come up with on why some guys make sexiest man lists. Women find success sexually attractive.
True, and this makes the whole discourse about attraction, objectification and standards of desirability across gender lines more difficult: There is no fundamental symmetry or comparability between male and female standards, because beauty is attractiveness and nothing more, but success and wealth are much more than attractiveness — they are good for lots of things besides attracting mates.
Incidentally, I am very happy that Noah Brand is still here! I was afraid he had been driven out of GMP.
Not driven out at all; have been dealing with some serious personal issues for a while, and am working on getting back into the swing of gender writing. Good to hear I’ve still got a fan or two. 🙂
I am also glad to see Noah Brand back.
“You don’t know what you’ve til it’s gone” may also in this case be translated to “You don’t know what you’re missing until you find it (again)”
🙂
AMEN