ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the Fifty Shades book series, composed of Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, along with the film adaptation of the first instalment, as a portal through which to survey the landscape of popular bondage/discipline/sadomasochism (BDSM) representation. It also considers the two main genre categories that feature BDSM themes – the romantic drama and the erotic thriller – and discusses how Fifty Shades incorporates both, conforming to some conventions and defying others. The chapter explains the way in which stories with sympathetic BDSM characters, such as Fifty Shades, often displace stigma and abjection onto other identities and practices, using narratives of childhood trauma and pathology and reinscribing gender and sexual normativity, albeit with a tolerance towards mild heterosexual kink. It offers a brief summary of the analysis and then consider the progress made in humanising BDSM subjectivity.
