Three Movies, One Week

 

I’m usually not a person who channel surfs looking for something to watch. Of the 98 channels on my cable lineup I watch only four consistently and another two or three occasionally. Over the weekend I was totally bored and I started clicking through the channels. It was still early evening---sevenish---and I was shocked to find Fifty Shades of Grey starting. Fifty Shades of deviant behavior in a time slot where little kids could be watching! What were they thinking? The movie caused quite an uproar when it made the rounds in the theaters a couple of years ago. I’m not a prude about sex in movies and books but I strongly objected to a story line that includes bondage and sadomasochistic crap being marketed at an erotic "love" story. Don’t correct because I’m not wrong, but there is nothing romantic about a woman giving up her power and allowing herself to be handcuffed and beaten and I don’t care how many "safe words" you agree on ahead of time, sadomasochism is the product of a sick mind. 

I’d hadn’t seen the movie or read the book but I’d read enough about the controversy over the so-called love story to have that strong opinion above and it didn’t change after I sat in my living room watching this movie minus the minutes they had to cut to make it “suitable for TV.” It’s starts out like an overused and outdated boilerplate romance with tired plot devices---extremely wealthy man takes an interest in a naïve virgin and remains aloft as he tries to resist falling in love. Where it separates from the romance genre is when he presents her with a bondage contract. The woman who plays Anastasia, Dakota Johnson, has the most expressive face! She was mesmerizing even if the character she plays is ten shades of stupid. 

125 million copies of Fifty Shades of Grey were sold and when the film was in town back 2015 I watched a news segment where a local TV personality interviewed the owner of an X-rated video and sex toys store and he said their bondage kits were “flying off the shelves.” I don’t shock easily, but that interview shocked me---that a store on the fringes of polite society was being presented like it was just another dollar store in a strip mall! According to Wikipedia in the year that followed the book’s release injuries that required a trip to the ER from S&M related sex spiked 50%. So much for 'safe' words. I rest my case. I win. A marketing department mainstreaming deviant, abnormal behavior as “normal romance” is just plain wrong. And speaking of marketing ploys, the third in the “shades” trilogy, Fifty Shades Darker is due out for Valentine’s Day.

The second movie I found channel surfing was a cute romantic comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black called Shallow Hal. It has a good message about judging a book by its cover, so to speak. Jack plays a guy who is stuck on superficial, physical looks in women until he gets hypnotized by a life coach who makes him only see a person’s inner beauty and not the package it comes in. He falls in love with Rosemary, a morbidly obese woman who, to him, looks like Gwyneth but when he is given the trigger phrase to break the hypnosis he doesn’t recognize her. Fast forward past this turning point in the story that has her heartbroken and joining the Peace Corps to where he has an epiphany. He comes to realize she has a beautiful, loving soul and he signs up for the Peace Corps, too, and they presumably live happily ever after. How’s that for movie bookends? One lighthearted and uplifting and the other gratuitous and sending the wrong message to young people.

In between these two movie bookends I saw Victoria and Abdul with four of my Gathering Girls pals. It’s based on the true story of elderly Queen Victoria’s unlikely friendship with a young servant from India. It takes place in the late 1800s and I’m glad I saw it at the theater instead of waiting until it comes on TV. Why? Because It was filmed in twelve spectacular locations, places like: Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire and Osborne House in England; the Isle of Wight in the English Channel; the Highlands in Scotland , Agra, Uttar, Delhi and Pradesh in India; the University of Greenwich, National Railway Museum, Windsor Castle, York, North Yorkshire, Richmond, Surrey and Hertfordshire; West Wycombe House and Ham House in London. Downton Abbey fans will probably love this movie and we were quite entertained by the humor in it. Lines like when Victoria’s son said to his mother, “You’re treating him like a member of the family.” “No,” she replied, “I like him.” We all enjoyed the movie and lunch afterward but I was hoping for a knock-your-socks-off, full of wisdom answer to Victoria’s question to Abdul when she confided: “Everyone I have loved has died and I just go on and on. What is the point?” “Service, my queen" Abdul said. "We are here for a greater purpose.” What’s the ‘greater purpose?’ He didn’t explain and I need to know! And how can I find mine? ©

Shallow Hal

Fifty Shades of Grey

 

 Victoria and Abdul

When a Mother Dies...

My nieces and nephew are hurting now. Their mother, my x-sister-in-law, just died after a long struggle in Hospice that has been hard on everyone who loved her. And I’ve been debating whether or not to write about her years of on again, off again addiction to prescription pain medications. On one hand, it’s not my story to tell but on the other hand it’s not a secret. People who matter to my nieces and nephews already know and others who might not know will never in a hundred years find my blog. The tipping point was I decided that if everyone who knows someone who is a part of this national epidemic would put a face on the statistics maybe it will help the push to get the laws passed to do something about it. My x-sister-in-law was not one of 18,000 who die every year from prescription opioid pain medication overdoses but she came close a few times.

I’ve known ML since I was thirteen or fourteen when she started dating my older brother. Her home life was tumultuous but she sure knew how to have fun. She was cute, bubbly, and full of energy, a cheerleader and loved being the center of attention. My first real memory of ML dates back to a walk we took to a store two miles from our cottage when she explained in vivid detail what happens when the birds and bees get together and make a baby. She thought it was hilarious that: 1) I didn’t already know the facts of life and, 2) I didn’t believe her.

The year my brother graduated from high school he and ML were married in a lovely but quickly put together church wedding then they moved into our cottage. It didn’t have central heat or indoor plumbing and it was the middle of the winter. They planned wisely and worked hard in their early years together. They bought a piece of wooded property, built a small house inside of what would later become a two stall garage. Stage two was they added a breezeway/temporary master bedroom. With their own hands and a lot of help from my dad they went on to build stage three: a beautiful, two story house that was finished several years after their third and last child came alone. ML was a hard worker, a good cook and my best holiday memories stem from the parties at that house on the curve. Half through their nearly twenty years of marriage ML went to cosmetology school and opened up a hair salon in their former breezeway and she had quite a following. From the outside looking in anyone would think they were happy, but there was trouble brewing underneath---much of which, in my opinion, stemmed from my x-sister-in-law’s dark childhood experiences that got in the way of her placing full value on herself and her accomplishments and left a hole in her core that could never be filled.

Long story short, somewhere along the line after the divorce ML got injured. Maybe it happened when she was working as an aid in a nursing home---I don’t remember---but after a surgery or two she got hooked on prescription pain medications and she got caught doctor shopping in four counties who’d all write prescriptions for what she craved. She tried it all to get clean---drug rehab, support meetings, counseling but it never lasted for very many years before she’d find herself back in same cycle of addiction. My firsthand knowledge during those years is limited because the only time I’d see my x-sister-in-law was at weddings, graduations, funerals and baby showers, but ML once told one of her daughters that she could convince any doctor she had a condition that required a strong pain medication and I don’t doubt that. Who would guess that an average, middle class working woman would lie about something like that? But at least one doctor in very recent years plainly didn’t care if she was. The number of overlapping prescriptions he wrote for her was certainly unethical if not outright criminal.

ML’s yo-yo of addiction and getting clean took its toll on her over-all health and her family. Still, there was so much in her life that was good and worthy of pride besides the fact that she and my brother produced three amazing kids who she loved. ML could be funny, fun, compassionate and resourceful. She was smart and gave her full measure at any work or play situation she tackled. She also loved deer hunting, fishing, her dogs and chickens, her little house on a lake and her second husband. My x-sister-in-law was a complex person full of dichotomies and it’s a darn shame her life story needs to include a chapter on prescription drug addiction. It was a part of her, but not the whole of her…and here's what society needs to understand about people who abuse pain medications: It can happen to anyone and you could know someone right now who is hiding a secret life of addiction.

For me, I’ll remember ML warmly for those years when the house was going up, when the kids were growing up and for holiday times when she filled their house with traditions and laughter. She was loved and my heart aches for everyone whose life she touched...including my own.  ©

50 Shades of You’ve Got to Be Kidding

I live in what has traditionally been considered a very conservative area of the USA, both in terms of politics and social values and when I, a flaming liberal, find myself on the prudish side of an issue I have to wonder if I’ve changed or did West Michigan when I wasn't looking. The other night on the local nightly news they did an interview with an adult bookstore owner---you know the kind of business that sells sex toys, X-rated movies and all the parking is around back so your neighbors won’t see your car parked in their lot. I haven’t been in one of those kinds of places since a bunch of us did it on a lark 50 years ago and back then they had the “peep shows” where girls danced half naked in front of glass windows while guys in trench coats fed quarters to a timer to keep the curtains open.

Anyway, the interview was a long one and it was all about how people are flocking in to buy bondage and S&M kits for Valentine’s Day. The book, 50 shades of Grey, it seems has mainstreamed tying up your partner, whipping and spanking butts and who knows what else…I didn’t read the book and I don’t plan on doing so, thank you very much. Apparently, I’m from the Dinosaur Age where a candlelight dinner, a red rose and soft kisses on your neck were considered foreplay---not putting a mask and pair of handcuffs on your partner. It was surreal seeing reporters in conservative West Michigan talk about bondage kits like they're DVDs of Marvin Gay singing Let’s Get it On. What I find fascinating (and repugnant) about the whole thing is how a generation of young people, who mostly grew up in an age where spanking kids was (and still is) a no-no, can find bondage and sadism/masochism something they want to explore.

The store owner who was interviewed was talking smack about how it brings couples closer together and makes their marriages stronger when they test the boundaries of sex and erotica. Okay, but what if your partner’s boundaries are different from yours and you find yourself chained to a post in the basement for weeks at a time? Call my crazy but when something could lead to a prison sentence if you do it to a stranger it has no place in a marriage, in my prudish opinion. Ya, I know there’s a difference between jumping off a curb and jumping off a cliff but a lot of couples can’t even agree on how they like their eggs cooked so what makes a woman think a guy’s going to stop when she uses the so-called safe word? Trust? Roger that Captain Obvious. Trust is a wonderful thing but, in my book trust and chains don’t go together like peanut butter and jelly. And in case, that isn’t clear enough, I’d trust a guy to pick me up outside of the Piggly-Wiggly Grocery Store at an appointed time, but shoving who-knows-what up my butt while I'm wearing a blindfold? No way! The next thing you know your partner will bring a gerbil home from a pet store and you’ll be making a trip to ER with an embarrassing story to tell. (I'm not making that up. It's happened in the Department of Weird Sexual Antics.) Oops, I understand from reading movie reviews that Mr. Grey actually asks for permission before escalating each episode of inflicting pain. What a peach of a guy he is. I didn't kill-kill her, officer. She was suicidal and she signed a permission slip for me to help her die.

When I was younger I read the entire two-volume set of The Encyclopedia of Abnormal Human Behavior. It still sits on my bookshelf. It’s not like my "Victorian-like" sensibilities would be shocked by anything I’d find in 50 Shades of Grey and while I know it's wrong to write a review of something I haven't read---sue me!----I also think it's playing with fire to mainstream S&M and bondage. It also makes me feel old, prudish, and judgmental and exactly like every stereotype ever captured by a cartoonist’s pen. All I need now is a rocking chair and a front porch. Am I the only person on earth who doesn’t get the gravitational pull (or push) towards 50 Shades of Grey?

Speaking of books, I went to a lecture titled Midwinter World Tour. The speaker was a librarian who has a gift for making books come alive. She highly recommended nine books and I sorely needed the recommendations. Why? Because I’ve had the worst luck picking books lately. Four books in a row I didn’t want to finish---but I did and they weren’t worth the time invested. Then I tried a fifth book that was marketed as another Marley and Me, which was a sweet story about a family dog that made me laugh through his puppy-hood and cry when he died at the end. How could I go wrong with another book like that? I thought. But it was nothing like Marley and Me! The dog was a pit bull that had been used to fight and the guy who ended up with him didn’t even want a dog and wasn’t a very likeable character. And I honestly did not need to know the details of how dogs are trained to fight, how they use heavy chains to build up their neck strength, how they tape the mouths shut on the bait dogs and, well, 50 other shades of cruelty and abuse. Dogs and people do not belong in chains while being whipped into submission! There, I said it and I’m not sorry I did! ©