fundamentally good because he still take care of Anastasia’s every need and fancy. His cruelty and need to control have nothing to do with his activities in the real world or his class position, but are rooted in a past relationship with an abusive motherfigure (a sexually predatory older woman). With enough love and understanding Anastasia can rescue this poor, lost boy. On another level, she makes a wise choice concerning the investment of her sexual capital (her virginity) an comes out much the richer, joining the dominant class and being envied by other women, including waitresses and domestic servants. Relationships are as negotiated enterprises, a girl needs to negotiate her contracts and calculate profits and losses. The fantasy is really about gaining power, including power over other women, through a sexual relationship with a powerful man. It is clear that women and men need to contest a perspective on ‘liberation’ that has been fed to
us by the marketing industry. While those interested in human liberation have no interest in supporting state censorship, I believe it is necessary to contest degrading representations of femininity, which also enclose men in narrow stereotypes and shut off the possibility of real sexual fulfillment for anyone, gay or straight, man or woman. The type of raunch culture and focus on sex from which all genuine emotion or intimacy has been stripped away can only reinforce the idea that women are little else but sex objects. The argument that porn caters to a need or a human desire is used to justify the endless drive to squeeze profit from sexuality. In a different kind of society, images of sex could be part of a pleasurable human relationship. But when these images serve to reinforce the dominant ideas about women, homosexuals and other groups, while claiming to liberate them, it is time to reject them and start looking for alternatives.
Liberation through bondage? Fifty Shades of Grey and the new ‘mommy porn’
Catherine Curran Vigier
est maître de conférences en anglais à l’Université de Rouen. Elle travaille sur les femmes et la culture populaire, et sur le multiculturalisme. Son dernier article vient d’être publié par Zeteo, journal interdisciplinaire de la City Université de New York, et s’intitule "The Meaning of Lana del Rey".
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