Review: Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

In which Ana returns to Christian and resumes their abusive relationship because she is an idiot.

I really do not understand why this whole series is so popular. If Fifty Shades of Grey a book which basically depicted an abusive control freak and his successful attempt at seducing an innocent virgin into a kinky, semi-sadomasochistic arrangement, is supposedly liberating then how come Christian Grey shows all the signs of being an abusive partner. Seriously. The guy controls every aspect of Ana's life, from what she eats to what she wears. He even hires people to sit outside her workplace all day and watch her and seems to object to the idea of her undertaking any type of paid employment at all. He justifies his behaviour with pathetic statements that go somewhere along the lines of, "This is who I am," and "This is the only way I know how to be." And if you've read the series and don't believe me that the relationship is abusive, I suggest you read this: abuse-warning-signs-types.html And once you've finishing reading that article, go out and read The Female Eunuch instead of the next installment in this very silly trilogy.

Anyway, the plot. In this installment, Christian basically opens up about his abusive childhood but actually does fuck all to help himself apart from scribbling on his chest with lipstick. The psychiatrist he's been seeing for years still hasn't made any major breakthroughs, but Ana is sure that she can singlehandedly help him. There are a couple of kinky sex scenes and a wedding proposal. Oh and there are a couple of people out to kill both Christian and Ana. And that's basically it. The intoxicating, exquisite and beguiling text remains annoying and repetitive. Of course, some may argue that Ana's actions are done out of love and that Christian attempts to help himself because he loves Ana and that's all quite romantic, but I'm not really fooled. Just call me the misery chick.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more