A Marian Take on "50 Shades of Grey"

The fascination with Fifty Shades of Grey and its masochism has been perceptively related to the overload on women in a post-feminist world: they are stressed with pressures from the marketplace of work/career and that of popularity/appeal, they are overachieving in industry and academy even as they are taking care of the kids, the home and the parents. They are so active, so in control and in charge of so much...the logic goes...that they welcome retreat into a fantasy of passivity, inertia, and submission. This is probably accurate. If the "feminine" includes a dynamic of reception, than it will re-assert itself, in an unfortunate form, if repressed by a hyper-masculine culture of unbalanced agency, achievement and control. The problem goes beyond women: men also are drawn to masochism. The same-sex male act is defined by domination...an ugly reality entirely avoided by those who so cavalierly legitimate the act. The theme of the female dominatrix has wide appeal, even in softer forms as the pornographic classic Lolita in which the weak, older man is overcome by the underage female aggressor. This "submission" theme, in conjunction with its complement "domination," suggest an underlying privation: an obsession with control, action and achievement and an aversion to reception, contemplation, and "the feminine." As creatures, gratuitously brought into being by a generous, loving God, we are always first and foremost in the posture of reception: we receive existence as well as this particular mother and father, family, time in history, DNA, and so on. And if we are created to love we are first loved...by family, and others, and God...long before we can ever love even in the slightest. And so, the appeal of masochism suggests that so many of us have not been loved, have not received, have not learned to surrender to love... be that in family or romance or friendship or religion. It suggests we need to learn to open our hearts to the wholesome, ennobling, freeing and strengthening love that comes, in so many marvelous manners, from the God who created and saved and loves us!