Boycott adds more sex appeal

I WAS wakened from a sound sleep recently, when Radio NZ said a Christian lobbying group, Family First, is calling for a boycott of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. They claim that the film by virtue of its depiction of dominance/submission and sado-masochistic sexual elements as a form of love poses a danger in that seeing the film will encourage subservience among women.

The ascribed motive for the boycott piqued my interest in sensing an unusual philosophical mating between groups on the left and the right like the local Christian one with counterparts in the US, and some extreme radical feminist groups in the US. The former promote an agenda that is anti-abortion, often anti-contraception, anti-gay rights, and favouring attributed biblical themes of male primacy in marriage. The radical feminist cause includes opposition to pornography, a definition of heterosexual activity as rape and promotion of women as more than equal to men.

The book that forms the basis of the movie has an interesting publishing history. It was originally developed from a Twilight fan fiction series and titled Master of the Universe.

After renaming the book, in 2011, the author, Erika Leonard aka EL James, self-published Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book of a trilogy, as a print-on-demand ebook.

The erotic story about the romantic relationship between characters Anastasia Steele, a shy but adventurous young woman, and Christian Grey, a rich, brilliant, astonishingly handsome man with a penchant for sado-masochistic sex, quickly became an internet sensation. It was soon issued in hard cover with sales of 60 million copies.

Last year, aware of the publishing phenomenon, I made an attempt to read the book but could get no further than the first 10 pages. I'll let Salman Rushdie, a victim of boycotts, speak for me: "I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made Twilight look like War and Peace."

The currently recommended boycott is particularly odious because its intention is not only censorship, but a form of prior restraint. In this case, the Family Firsters have rushed to judgment. They seek to defend young (18-24-year-old) women - according to their website - from the alleged influence of a movie that they themselves haven't seen. Unless they have obtained and viewed a pirated copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, there is no way they could have seen the film before rushing to judgment and to their proposed boycott.

Because the movie does not open until February 12.

With a few exceptions, I'm opposed to boycotts. Boycotts are a blunderbuss weapon that often backfires and hurts the very people they're supposed to help.

Besides, they are often an ineffective but problematic impedance of legally-compliant commerce, which the conservative part of me decries.

In the bad old days in Boston - a bastion of puritanical rectitude - whenever a clever PR flack sought to promote some literary or theatrical concoction of less-than-intrinsic value, he'd happily get some moralising outfit incensed enough to label the thing "banned in Boston".

It brought in multitudes of the curious unsuspecting.

The movie is scheduled to open almost simultaneously worldwide on February 11, 12 or 13, depending upon whether it's in Serbia (50 Nijansi Sive) or here in En Zed ( 50 Shades") or in Spain (Cinquenta Sombras de Grey). Only in Iraq does it open (if it does) later - on March 5.

Whenever I see a simultaneous worldwide opening of a movie, the thought that goes through my mind is that the distributors are hoping to recoup their costs quickly before the reviews come out or word-of-mouth sentiments can spread.

So Family First may, however unwittingly, become a helpmate to the hype machine of the movie, generating an excitement that may or may not be deserved.

I won't join their silly boycott, but I'll certainly wait a while for reviews because my own bet is that Fifty Shades may be another name for a sleep mask.

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.