The Annoying Part of the New Fifty Shades Trailer
The new Fifty Shades Freed trailer is here because God forbid another Valentine's Day go by without another Fifty Shades movie we've had at least half a year to obsess over. Here it is again, so you may w(h)et your appetite (and yourself) over Christian's Mediterranean Sea-slicked abs:
This trailer has a few key takeaways: 1. Ana and Christian have graduated from a moody relationship to a moody marriage; 2. Fucking. 3. Spanking (implied); and 4. Christian is super-rich! Ana is now super-rich too!
Let's talk about point number four, because it stands out about as much as the lace wedding dress and certainly more than Christian's monotone wedding vows, which end with, "All that I have is now yours." Cut from Ana's wanting, haunted stare at the altar to a shot of the plane they'll be taking to their honeymoon with a red carpet running from its door to that of Christian's chauffeured Audi. "You own this?" Ana asks him as though, after all this time (two entire books' worth and then some!) she didn't realize Christian owned a plane. Maybe she just wants extra confirmation she got into this for the right reasons? If she looked unsure during their vows, at least now she has to be sure - here is his wealth on wheels in all its ostentatious glory, bestowing upon her an unnecessary red carpet. "We own this," Christian says back to her. And this is the exact face Ana makes next when she turns back to revel in the heart-stopping reality that she now co-owns a jet:
And this is exactly where I feel deeply annoyed. Not because I'm over Fifty Shades, because I'm not - it still entertains me - but because the whole trailer is a reminder that Christian Grey as a conceit doesn't work without his cold, hard private jets. And Ana probably couldn't like him enough to marry him without his money.
Because she's marrying a man who has tried to police her sex life, everything she eats, who she hangs out with, what she does for work and for leisure, and even her time with her mom. He has performed secret background checks on her, stalked her, lied to her, and tried to contract their sexual relationship. If he didn't buy her new cars and rare ye olde books and expensive Champagne and wasn't so rich that he could employ a body man at a high enough pay grade to buy underwear for his kept women, he wouldn't have an iota of the appeal his good looks alone might give him. Separate the man from his eight-pack and the gilded world he inhabits that Ana could previously only dream of, and he's a possessive lover abusing her over pizza and watery beer instead of organic venison and Sancerre. It's a reductive notion of Anastasia as a character, but also women in general. Because when you play all this up in a major motion picture, the implication is that hordes of us ladies are relating. "Ooh la la! His plane is Soo0ooo0o0OOo big!" Yeah. So is his ego. So is his capacity for being a dick.
There's a way to make wealth a part of the spectacle without trying to get audiences to buy into the simpering fantasy of having it all themselves. Bravo reality shows, for instance, are a subset of wealth porn that probably turn a lot of audiences off wealth. And it's not just because of all those Housewife statement necklaces that you could probably kill someone with or all that jewel-toned cocktail wear that looks like it should have come from Contempo Casuals when it actually came from a full-price rack at Neiman Marcus. But because the wealth doesn't overshadow the ugliness of the personalities who possess it. You can marvel at their manses and still feel like you would not want any of it in the slightest if it meant having that life.
That's not the case with the Fifty Shades movie. While the books were mercilessly ridiculed for their bad writing and utter lack of literary merit, the people who made the movies had the chance to make the source material a little bit more complex. What about the notion that what truly appeals to Ana isn't Christian's planes, gliders, and automobiles but his blinding, worshipful obsession with her? Isn't this really what women want at the end of the day more than not having to board airplanes by zone? Someone who is obsessed with them?
This is just the first teaser. The movie still has the chance to make audiences believe it will exploit this idea more than the idea that women love men because of their money. But so far, we're probably better off holding out hope for something more likely. Like koalas becoming lawful and easy-to-adopt household pets in the U.S. A girl can dream.
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