BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhD)
d_ozkan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Biology is the science of exceptions, which suits me just fine because I’m a natural-born contrarian. So when all my fellow columnists expressed their disappointment regarding this “Fifty Shades of Grey” contraption, I just had to find out exactly what it was and try my darnedest to see some good in it.
I too was disappointed. The book is…well, it’s bad, to be sure, but not exceptionally bad—not one of those showstoppers that make “Codex Seraphianus” look coherent and straightforward. If you’re looking for that kind of book, try Storm Constantine’s “Wraeththu” series, Marian Engel’s “Bear” (guess who the dashing love interest is—hint: it’s a bear) or, if you’re eager to see humanity at its worst, the infamous “My Immortal”—that last one is among the rare category of Lovecraftian tomes that are dangerous even to read. But “Fifty Shades” is not one of those little gems; it will not become a cult classic or a case study into a deranged mind. It has neither the kitschy charm of “Robot Monster” nor the bizarre, sprawling plot of “The Eye of Argon”; it lacks both the slow-acting, methodological madness of Erik Andrulis’s gyre paper and the relentless, no-holds-barred misanthropy of…ah, I will not name that book here (even I have standards, and the book I speak of is well and truly appalling). All in all, “Fifty Shades” is just a bad piece of fiction, and these are very common.
They have always been very common. Bad fiction is ubiquitous, as are protagonists who are horrible, horrible human beings. Let’s talk about some.
“The Tale of Genji” is one of the very first novels in history. It was written by one Lady Murasaki, and incidentally features a character also called Murasaki, who is a ten-year-old girl the protagonist has kidnapped and is raising to be an ideal wife for him. He does this because he is displeased with his previous relationships…not that he has any right to complain, of course, given that he has had some twoscore affairs (including one with his stepmother, who is also the reigning emperor’s wife). This propensity for affairs is also present in the rest of Genji’s lineage, and the relationships eventually get so complex and numerous that you’ll need diagrams spanning several generations to chart them all out—of particular note is an incident where Genji, rebuffed by a lady he’s courting, sleeps with her little brother as a replacement. Said little brother is around twelve years old. So that’s your starting point in terrible romance plots in literature, more or less, and to be honest I’d take both the stalking vampire and the bondage contractor over it.
Classical music is not free of bizarre stories either—while Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” is pleasant to the ears (or so I’d like to say, but if I hear another “Weia! Waga!”, I’m going to renounce love and forge a ring out of the Rheingold myself), it also thoroughly butchers Norse mythology by mashing together several unrelated stories and creating a gigantic mess of a plot out of ’em (this is the reason a full staging of the Ring cycle lasts the better part of a week). But at least it has the saving grace of well-meaning (albeit clueless and needlessly bloodthirsty) protagonists, while the same cannot be said of the most frequently performed musical in history, “The Phantom of the Opera”—I mean, the titular Phantom is nothing if not dangerously unhinged, and the female protagonist, Christine, is equally insane for feeding into his control-freak tendencies. The lyrics to “The Music of the Night” alone are creepier than anything Mr. Grey can throw at you, especially in light of the fact that it is sung while the Phantom is spiriting Christine away into his eerie opera-dungeon (which like any proper dungeon is also filled with death traps, used to great effect when Christine’s lover, who is only slightly less of a madman than the Phantom, shows up to rescue her).
As for fanfiction proper, look no further than the Arthurian cycle. Although the original myths are largely from Welsh sources, we owe most of the stories to the French, who also saw fit to sneak in the ridiculous Lancelot/Guinevere subplot (on a better note, Arthur’s court also got a werewolf knight along the way, based on a lai by Marie de France). And let’s not forget about all the New Testament fanfiction out there: Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is among the foremost, as is Dante’s “Inferno” (which, mind you, also features a self-insert character).
But I suppose I’ve no right to wail on these, on the basis that they are genuinely good—so let me end by saying this: “Fifty Shades” and its ilk are not the first of their kind, nor is their popularity a sign that humanity has become degenerate or debauched—embarrassing as it is to admit, we have been like this all along. In fact, I don’t think that the fundamental nature of humans can be changed easily, for better or worse: our base nature is just that, base, and it is up to the individual to rise above it.
Don’t say that around any night hags, though.