I don't know anyone who has read Fifty Shades of Grey who actually thinks it is a good book. As far as I can tell, people read it knowing full well that it is literary junk food.
And yet they read it. Like an extra naughty Mills & Boon, it has swept women off their feet, 100 million copies sold worldwide.
I should say at this point that I once tried to write a Mills & Boon novel. I decided it might be worth selling out my creative integrity if it could fund my poetry habit. Poetry does not sell anywhere near as well as pornography, apparently.
My idea was to make a secret living by writing romance novels under a pseudonym.
For research, I got a couple of Mills & Boons from the library. My resolve failed in the first few chapters. I just couldn't stomach reading that stuff, let alone writing it. And that was the end of my misguided fantasy.
I once asked a friend of mine why she thought women were going so nutty over Fifty Shades of Grey.
She suggested it was the fantasy of being wanted, really wanted, by a billionaire. I'm not sure what was more important, the billionaire or the being wanted. I suspect it was being wanted.
A lot has been written about how Fifty Shades of Grey is a dangerous influence because of the way it glamorises an abusive relationship. Once you hear those concerns expressed by people who have survived genuine abuse, it gets harder to take a charitable view of the film. Those survivor stories need to be told.
And yet I am cautious about giving the film too much credit. Despite all the fuss, the movie is just a movie - by most accounts not a terribly memorable one. Its big moment will pass and soon we will be worried about the next terrible thing.
Fifty Shades is the cinematic equivalent of KFC's infamous Double Down burger, that fat-tastic stack of greasy chicken, cheese and bacon. "Don't buy it," people warned, "it's horrendously bad for you." So, of course, lots of people bought it.
Society's collective health problems do not revolve around that single, idiotic burger. What happens if you defeat the Double Down? Nothing. The fast-food industry still exists.
Likewise, Fifty Shades is such an obvious target for moral outrage that railing against it almost becomes meaningless.
From children's cartoons to music videos, there are far more insidious problems with the unhealthy ways that women are represented in the media.
At stake are questions like: how should a man treat a woman? How should a woman allow herself to be treated?
Fifty Shades of Grey forms part of this conversation, but let's not spend too much energy dignifying one R-rated movie when there is an entire culture at work.
-Marcel Currin is a Tauranga author and poet
