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Film: 50 Shades of Selma
/ February 14, 2015
There’s a discussion happening on our cinema screens this week that is completely out of balance.
Breaking Australian cinema records on opening night trumping the first Twilight, Hunger Games, and Skyfall, 5O Shades of Grey is making a very loud declaration about love and violence.
Based on the bestselling book by E.L. James it invites us into Christian Grey’s manipulative erotic seduction of Anastasia Steele, encouraging us to accept violence and domination as a form of sexual pleasure. Normalizing mistreatment and abuse, Grey wants us to believe BDSM is ‘empowering’, ‘sexually liberating’, and ‘romantic’.
Then, in the cinema next door is Selma.
Selma
Sitting unassumingly in the ‘Now Showing’ list, it suggests violence is racially degrading and inhumane.
Based on the historic civil rights marches of 1965, “motivated by dignity and a disdain for hopelessness” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. encourages us to normalize equality and empowered participation in a shared society. Charged by God he seeks to change a nation’s prejudice, and give platform to common opportunity.
So which is it? Is violence OK if it ‘stimulates you’ and is mutually agreed upon? Or is it derogatory and abusive?
Perhaps you can find validation for either point of view, leaving ‘each to their own’, picking up your popcorn and Coke, walking on your merry way. But what you pass up is an opportunity to think about what filmmakers are telling us is acceptable in our society.
On the one hand you have a self-serving billionaire sullying the innocence of youth for ill-conceived satisfaction, and on the other a Father of liberation. Watching Dr. King, and witnessing his heartbreak as injustice was perpetuated by arrogance and ignorant disinterest, I’m compelled to give attention to his side of the story; Laying out the burden of a people and calling it ‘ours’ and not ‘theirs’, he invites us into a life of self-sacrifice as opposed to self-gratification. He shows us the power of non-violent protest, and the good that can be done in the name of Christ as oppose to the evil. He lays out love as either selfish or selfless; there are no shades of grey, it is black and white.
So when you choose your ticket, consider what message you want to take home. Beyond the entertainment and the story, choose what view of society you want to support. Cast your vote, and use it wisely.
Watch Now: 50 Shades of Grey trailer
Watch Now: Selma Trailer
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