Is Fifty Shades Erotica?
Ask an Erotica Writer
FOR A WHILE NOW, people have been coming up to me and saying, “Hey, wadya think of that Fifty Shades of Grey, huh?” And then they give me the eye—the expression that says, it’s crap, right? The right is in there because they aren’t sure how they feel, and they don’t know what you think, but everyone else they know, or at least every other erotica writer they know, has been talking trash about the books and they wouldn’t want to be uncool and like them, or anything. At least not in front of some cool erotica writer.
Well, here’s the thing, and I’m just going to come right out and say it: I liked the books. Actually, I sort of became addicted to the books, while I was reading them. When I tell my peers that (my peers being well-respected and internationally known erotica writers), they’re usually taken aback—I mean literally taken aback. They often take a literal step back, lean away from me, and give me the eye—the eye that says, surely you must be joking.
My inclination is to say, “Don’t call me Shirley,” but I refrain and tell them that, yes, I really did enjoy the books. And then I ask the million-dollar question: “How far did you read?” There’s always a bit of hemming and hawing and the answer comes out as “I read the first chapter” or “About fifty pages,” which is closely followed by “I just couldn’t do it; I couldn’t read any more—it was just so awful” or something to that effect. I don’t believe one writer of whom I’ve asked that question has actually read the books—or even just the first book—but somehow they feel compelled to render a critique of them anyway.
Sure, there are problems with the books. The BDSM isn’t always accurately drawn. A virgin probably isn’t going to experience multiple orgasms the first time she has sex. I don’t like the pop psychology attitude regarding BDSM or Christian’s adolescence. But, hey, it’s fiction. Let me say that again: it’s fiction, folks.
When all the hoopla started, I made a pact with myself. I decided that I would read the entire first book before making any decisions. Even if I hated it, I would finish it. I figured that was the only way to give it a fair chance. And my first thoughts were that Fifty Shades of Grey was not particularly well written, although it was not particularly badly written. Its two main problems, in my opinion, lay with a poorly drawn main character and poor editing. I’m an editor, as well as a writer, and a real stickler for the quality of editing in everything I read. I knew E. L. James was British (that’s fine with me; I tend to be a bit of an Anglophile), but she was writing a book that took place in America, with American characters. That might be fine, except that you can tell she’s British. Let me tell you, if you haven’t already figured it out—there are differences in British and American English. We don’t speak the same; we don’t even think the same. No American can hope to fool a Brit and, I’m here to tell you, no Brit can fool an American—not without the right editor.
I think it was the idea that one could commute between Seattle and Portland—or even worse, Vancouver, Washington, and Portland—that made me want to throw the book against the wall. I had occasion to make that drive a few years ago, while doing a West Coast book tour. It’s long. It took four, four-and-a-half hours. It’s not any kind of commuting distance, and like I said, I almost threw the book against the wall then. But I didn’t, because you see, I’d made a pact with myself. And when I decided to let go of geography and the occasional sentence structure that no American college student would utter, I got sucked in. After all, it’s a good story, and I’m the kind of person who eagerly anticipates suspending her disbelief. If I’m having fun, I’m happy to be taken for a ride, kinda like the dog that hangs his head out the window of the car on the way to the vet. He has no idea where he’s going, but he’s having too much fun getting there to worry about it.
And I had fun with Fifty Shades. Ana’s annoying; she’s a little too naïve to be believable, but she was patterned after Bella in the Twilight books.1
But now we come to the main premise for my rant: Is it erotica? I say no. I say the three Fifty Shades books are erotic romance, and there is a definite difference.
Because there’s sex on every page (actually, there isn’t. There’s sex on a vast majority of the pages), and because Christian and Anastasia fuck like bunnies, the books have been billed as erotica. But whether erotic romance authors, editors, and publishers wish to admit it or not, it isn’t the amount of explicit sex that makes a book romance or erotica, it’s the plotline and the happily-ever-after contrivance.
What makes a book a romance? It’s more than just a happily-ever-after or a love match; the book really has to be about the love story. It has to be boy meets girl, boy and girl experience seemingly insurmountable problems (such as they don’t like each other, one of them is crazy, one of them is suspected of committing murder, one of them is actually an alien, they might be related, and so on), and boy loses girl. Boy and girl overcome their problems, get back together, and live happily ever after. Although I say boy and girl, these days I could just as easily use boy and boy, girl and girl, or boy and boy and girl, and so on. The point is, it’s a love story with roadblocks thrown in.
Erotic romance means there’s explicit sex in the story, but it’s still essentially a romance, based upon the aforementioned plot points. What explicit sex in the story meant, up until fairly recently, is that there are a few sex scenes, maybe three or four, that escalate in intensity until the final scene, which is unbelievably (in erotic romance terms) sexy, hot, or erotic, because the couple is finally married, or they’re committed to each other, or they’re together forever, or at the very least, they’re together for the foreseeable future. The sex scenes are explicit in that body parts are named and there is a description of what those body parts are doing as the action gets hot and heavy.
Based on a piece of erotic romance I heard read aloud recently, those body parts might consist of nothing more than lips and nipples and the action might not get much heavier than light petting, but, that particular piece notwithstanding, erotic romance has been heading in the direction of the explicitness of erotica for quite a while. And now, sex can happen in erotic romance before the couple makes a love commitment—just as long as they do make a love commitment before the final page.
Erotica, on the other hand, is more about the sex than the undying love. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be undying love in an erotic novel, it just means the undying love isn’t the reason for the story’s existence, as it is in a romance. No, in erotica the sex is the reason for the story’s existence. I would argue that the main purpose of erotica is to arouse and titillate and, while that might be a by-product of erotic romance, it is not the main purpose. Is that an oversimplification? Yes, but just bear with me for a moment, I know a little something about this, you see; I’m an erotica writer, and along with short stories and novellas, I’ve also written two erotic novels.
As with Fifty Shades, my novels share a BDSM milieu, although they are intrinsically different, as my books are set in a world of female domination and male submission.2 They are also different in another, very fundamental way: while my books also include a romantic love match and a happily-ever-after, or at least a happy-for-the-foreseeable-future, ending, the sex is what drives the plot, rather than the love relationship.
Here’s a little secret about the difference between erotica and erotic romance: you can take the sex out of an erotic romance and the story will survive just fine (although it won’t be nearly as much fun to read), but you can’t take the sex out of erotica. If you do, you’ll be left with nothing to hold the story together. Go ahead, think about it. I’ll wait.
It took me a while to recognize the difference, a difference that is usually apparent to erotic romance writers, editors, publishers, and readers. I say “usually” because it doesn’t seem to be as apparent to readers and critics of the Fifty Shades books, who continue to call them erotica. Granted, if you took the sex out of Fifty Shades of Grey, it would be a lot shorter, but if every time Christian got ready to do something really perverse to Ana, or every time they wound up in bed, the scene faded to black and ended with them cuddling together afterward, her crying on the floor or him playing the piano in the living room, the story would still be there. Yes, it would be pretty boring, but it would hold together just fine.
If you took the sex out of my Melinoe books, you’d have nothing. You wouldn’t even have the love match, as the main characters are together because of the sex, not regardless of the sex, as Christian and Ana are.
When I sent the manuscripts to erotic romance publishers, the books were resoundingly rejected. After they were published, as erotica, I tried sending them to reviewers of erotic romance. They didn’t like them—at all. It turned out there was nothing but sex in them and the love match wasn’t at all romantic.3 But mostly, the complaint was that the books were just sex, sex, and more sex. And, of course, they are. Some people like that.
If, like I said, you can take the sex out of the book and still have a story, it’s an erotic romance. On the other hand, if once all that sex has been extracted, you’re left with a loose array of characters in search of a plot, you can be fairly certain you’re reading erotica.
E. L. James’ books are generally termed erotica, because a lot of people think that, based on the fact there’s an overwhelming amount of explicit sex in the books, they can’t be considered romances.4 Those people, however, would be wrong. These books are unabashedly romantic. They follow the tried-and-true formula for romance and the series ends happily. And, as previously stated, this would hold true even if aliens came down and vacuumed all the sex out of all the copies in existence. With that in mind, there can be no denying that the Fifty Shades series is a romance.
In the past, the movers and shakers in the world of romance have eschewed sex in their novels. Sex was somehow base and didn’t belong in the rarefied realms of romantic love. Of course, if sex weren’t intrinsically bound to love, the human race would have died out long ago. We are sexual creatures. We not only enjoy but indeed live for sex, whether it’s an imperative or not. Why then, as sexual beings, wouldn’t we want to read about it, too?
Readers, worldwide, have answered that question. And they have answered it resoundingly, with their wallets, something that all publishers, whether of romance or anything else, use as the ultimate measure of acceptance. With the introduction of Fifty Shades, an awful lot of people have read books containing an awful lot of explicit sex for the very first time—and they’ve liked it. I think the floodgates have been opened. Now that they know what they’ve been missing, they’re going to want more, and who can blame them? After Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed, I don’t think it will be possible to put the genie back in the bottle. Of course, being an erotica writer, I wouldn’t want to.
D. L. KING’s (http://dlkingerotica.blogspot.com) short stories have appeared in titles such as Best Women’s Erotica, One Night Only, Luscious, Please, Ma’am, and many others. She is the editor of Seductress, The Harder She Comes, Spankalicious, IPPY Gold Medalist Carnal Machines, Spank!, The Sweetest Kiss, and the Lambda Literary Award finalist Where the Girls Are.