I'm Five Seconds Away From Starting a Dakota Johnson Stan Account

And other thoughts on Fifty Shades of Grey

When you write romance, people tend to assume you have some familiarity with Fifty Shades of Grey. Not people in the romance genre—I actually don’t know any romance authors or readers who particularly love or even talk about Fifty Shades. But for people on the outside, Fifty Shades is romance, even though it isn’t really a good representation of the genre as a whole. 

But the thing is, I’d never read the Fifty Shades books (they’re very long!) or watched the movies. Of course I heard the buzz about them; it would’ve been impossible not to, unless you were living under a rock. Even if you were under a rock, you probably still would’ve heard a couple of hikers chatting about how Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan supposedly hated each other, or about how the production of the first film was plagued with strife. I mean, I didn’t seek these stories out, but I saw them. And I thought to myself, “Well, those seem very boring and I think I have better things to do with my time.” 

You know where this is going. I did not have better things to do with my time.

About a year ago, my BFF Cat watched them all and live texted me updates and I was curious. I mean, so many things happened that I was like, “Surely all of those things can’t actually happen in one very popular movies series. A helicopter crash? I thought these were about a sex dungeon.”

I was wrong. So much happens in the Fifty Shades trilogy. After watching them, I’m a changed person. Who was I before I followed the multi-film saga of Anastasia “I love books, I guess” Steele and Christian “A fun fact about me? I play piano” Grey? 

The first thing you should know about the Fifty Shades of Grey movies: they are not sexy. Yes, there is sex. It’s relatively explicit in that there’s a lot of nudity (like, a lot; prepare to be well acquainted with Dakota Johnson’s nipples and the top half of Jamie Dornan’s butt), typically set to a slowed-down pop song. But they’re curiously sterile, and not just because they mostly take place in Christian Grey’s “red room” which is presumably sterilized often by his employees. When I watched any of the (many, many) sex scenes, all I could think about was the technical aspect. Like, it’s very obvious what parts of bodies were off-limits (what’s going on with the bottom half of Jamie Dornan’s butt? We’ll never know. Perhaps it, like the chemistry between the two leads, doesn’t actually exist!) and it was sometimes confusing as to what was actually even happening. You could just feel the actors waiting until the scene ended and they could throw on a robe. It was more “uncomfortable” than “sexy.”

Which I guess is the limitation of film when it comes to romance. I read a lot of romance novels, and the thing about romance novels is…there’s sex. In an open door romance novel, you’re there in the room with the characters, seeing what’s happening. That’s just not a possibility in a movie, at least not the R-rated kind or the kind not directed by Lars von Trier. 

But the far, far bigger problem with Fifty Shades is the complete and total lack of chemistry between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. I’ve watched a lot of romantic comedies and romantic dramas in my life, and at this point I can safely say that chemistry between the two leads is the absolute biggest predictor of success in a romance. There is no point in Fifty Shades of Grey that the viewer actually believes Ana and Christian want to have sex with each other, let alone build a life together. 

Maybe I did this to myself, because right before I started my Fifty Shades Odyssey, I watched some of the neo-noir films on the Criterion Channel. These are movies that are primarily about sex, much in the way Fifty Shades supposedly is, but they’re also weird and sweaty and personal. In Body Heat, for example, William Hurt (sorry to bring up William Hurt for the second newsletter in a row) wants to have sex with Kathleen Turner so much that he breaks through a window to get to her. A window!! That would never happen in the Fifty Shades movies. Christian would just be like, “I need to somehow punish you with this glass shard” and then there would be a lot of confusing camera angles as a slowed down Beyonce song played. 

Who’s to blame for the lack of chemistry here? I know who’s not to blame: Dakota Johnson. The most terrifying and exhilarating part of my Fifty Shades journey has been my transformation into a full blown Dakota Johnson stan. Before this movie, I didn’t understand the Dakota Johnson lifestyle. Once, when I watched the movie The High Note and tweeted about it, I got retweeted by a ton of Dakota Johnson stan accounts, the kind that exist solely to repost pictures of Dakota Johnson with captions like “Just Dakota being a perfect angel.” Luckily, my comments about The High Note had been positive. I shudder to think what the stans would have done to me had I maligned their perfect angel. 

sonya⚡️ @daisystender

the prettiest of them all

I didn’t get what the appeal was, though. Sure, Dakota Johnson is beautiful, and of course it’s satisfying to watch someone give Ellen the business, but what else was going on there? Why should I care about Chris Martin’s paramour, Melanie Griffith’s daughter, Tippi Hedren’s granddaughter? Yes, she has wonderful bangs, but what else is there?

I don’t know how to explain it, but after going on this odyssey with Dakota, I now understand. There really is something about her, and whether that’s the result of her impressive genetics or some kind of inherent sparkliness that’s unique to her, I don’t know. But she does the impossible with this film: she makes it watchable. She takes the ridiculous material and imbues it with life. Ana, much like the source material of Bella from Twilight, is an empty character. She’s boring, mousy, hobby-less…nothing but a cipher for the viewer to project themselves onto. “Perhaps,” you think, “I, too, could find myself dating a lonely billionaire with a sex dungeon. If it could happen to Ana, lowly English major who trips her way into Christian’s office, it could happen to me!” But Dakota somehow brings personality and a sense of humor to this role, and boy, does it ever need it. 

Because Christian Grey? Listen, the man’s a pill. A billionaire, but a pill all the same. I don’t think I can blame Jamie Dornan for Christian’s awfulness (nor would I want to, because it seems like he gets nonstop shit about it), because I struggle to think of an actor who could play this poorly written character. Christian has to start out as a cold rich man who cannot love but who recruits women to be, essentially, his sex slaves. He doesn’t do emotion. He doesn’t do anything sashay around his red room in low slung jeans. That, he loves. 

But then, after the events of the first movie (which we’ll get to later), he has to become…fun? Capable of love? A person who plays Paul McCartney songs on the piano? That’s a lot to juggle, and it simply doesn’t work. At least not with the level of dialogue he’s given. 

Anyway, after watching Fifty Shades, I have many thoughts. Thoughts that I simply must share with you, because my husband is tired of hearing them. I’ve broken them down by film, and I’m warning you right now: there are spoilers ahead. However, I don’t think that your enjoyment of these movies will be in any way diminished by knowing what’s going to happen. For starters, you’ll never be able to remember all of this. I certainly couldn’t. 

Fifty Shades of Grey:

-Christian and Ana meet because she’s an English major who interviews him when her journalism major roommate is sick. In what world is that a possibility? I don’t remember ever being able to just take over my roommate’s assignments when she was sick. 

-When Christian first shows Ana his “red room,” which is just a room filled with all his sex devices, he tells her it’s his play room. She breathlessly responds “What, like where you keep your Xbox?” and reader, I laughed out loud. 

-Christian simply will NOT stop taking Ana up in small aircrafts. A helicopter? Some type of plane I can’t identify? He loves them all. Personally, I’ve read enough books/watched enough movies/read enough articles about the tragic and untimely death of JFK Jr./Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy/her sister to NEVER let a man take me anywhere in a small plane. My husband has shown no interested in getting a pilot’s license and let’s hope he never does!!

-Christian is DAMAGED and he is UNABLE TO LOVE. He keeps women as his submissives and has them sign extremely long contracts but relationships? Well, much like a rom-com lead, he’s just not that into them. He just keeps texting Ana like, “When you are you going to sign my weird relationship contract” and she blows him off and he FOLLOWS HER TO HER MOM’S HOUSE IN ANOTHER STATE! Christian, find another girl!

-But Ana is Special, obviously. For reasons that are never fully defined.

-The movie ends when Christian hits her so hard during sex that she cries and then leaves him. That’s right! That’s the end! I breathed a sigh of relief that Ana finally fled from this man, but then I remembered that there were two more movies. :(

Fifty Shades Darker:

-Things do get darker, y’all. Christian still can’t forget about Ana and now he’s like, “actually I would love to be in a relationship with you. You’ve changed my ways.” Amazing what love/Dakota Johnson can do to a man. 

-Ana is now working at an independent publisher called SIP (a bad name). She loves books. She is an independent woman.

-I will simply share this sentence from the Wikipedia description of the movie’s plot: “Christian also tells Ana that his birth mother was a crack-addicted sex worker.” This movie has some interesting things to say about sex work, drug abuse, and foster care, that’s for sure!

-At various points, there are up to four people actively working against Christian and Ana’s relationship succeeding. No relationship should ever have this many haters. 

-Ana’s boss at SIP tries to sexually assault her and he’s fired and Ana becomes editor. Sure! 

-There’s a plot line with Kim Basinger playing the role of a woman who sexually abused a teenage Christian that I honestly can’t even get into because it’s a) too confusing and b) maybe a bit too dark for this newsletter. All you need to know is that Christian is hurting but, most importantly, he is also horny. 

-You know how Chekhov says “If there’s a man who loves flying small aircraft in the first film of a trilogy, he should crash said aircraft in the second film”? I am paraphrasing here, but only slightly. Anyway, Christian crashes his helicopter but he’s fine and everyone moves on very quickly. 

-Christian and Ana are engaged!!! But her old boss from SIP is watching them from afar, plotting something. 

Fifty Shades Freed:

-Ana and Christian get married and we are treated to a montage of their honeymoon set to a Hailee Steinfeld song. I can’t believe this movie expects us to believe that Christian is now fun and can do things like “have a carefree bike ride” when in reality he would be like, “Ana, I have deep-seated trauma around bicycles for reasons I never explained but expected you to intuit. I must storm out and take comfort in Kim Basinger.” Christian Grey is a lot of things, but he isn’t fun.

-Christian gets mad that Ana went out with her friends and then SHE gets mad, so to make it up to her he plans a trip with two of her friends and HIS brother and sister. At one point on this trip, he plays the song “Maybe I’m Amazed” on the piano. Can you imagine if you were on a trip and some dude just started playing a Paul McCartney song on the piano? I’d be like, “I need to go spend some time in my room now.”

-Ana is pregnant because she forgot to take her shot and Christian yells at her! Christian, you love nothing more than controlling every aspect of Ana’s life…couldn’t you also have used that skill for good and made her gynecologist appointments? 

-There’s a very cathartic scene where Ana tells Christian he has to grow the fuck up and that he’s not a kid anymore, but strangely enough, she does this entire monologue while walking around in a thong. 

-There’s a kidnapping and more kind of offensive stuff about foster care. I recently watched the Mark Wahlberg movie Fear, which also has some weird foster care stuff, and then I remembered that these movies have the same director! Honestly, it kind of makes sense. Fear and Fifty Shades have very similar vibes…Mark Wahlberg and Christian Grey aren’t all that different when it comes down to it. 

Honestly, now that I’m finished watching these movies, I’m going to miss them. They kept me company on the treadmill and frequently made me laugh out loud. 

This week’s homework: 

Okay, so I’m a person who loves to give myself homework, so I think this section is fun but you may find it obnoxious. Feel free to ignore. But if you’re still reading, I challenge you to watch a Dakota Johnson movie and see if you fall under her spell. Here’s my ranking of DJ (what us insiders call her) movies I’ve seen:

1. The High Note: Fun and she wears some great jackets.

2. Suspiria (2018): This is an actually great performance, even if I can’t necessarily recommend this film because it made me feel sorta sick.

3. Fifty Shades: Duh.

4. How to Be Single: I think this movie is objectively bad and DJ has a bob (half the point of Dakota Johnson is the hair!) but as a treadmill watch, not terrible. 

Just Dakota being a perfect angel.

If you watch Fifty Shades, please let me know! See you next week. Please spend some of your newly dark evenings embarking on a Dakota Johnson filled lifestyle.