The Fifty Shades of a Cultural Phenomenon

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Brenda Reis Professor Record Composition II 27 February 2014 The Fifty Shades of a Cultural Phenomenon E.L. James is a former TV executive, wife and mother of two based in the suburbs of West London. Since January 2012, her life has taken an extraordinary turn with the runaway success of the Fifty Shades trilogy, sending this erotica author E.L. James straight to the top of the highest-earning authors list. The Fifty Shades of Grey author earned $95 million in the past year (Forbes Magazine). It all started when James went to see the movie Twilight. She enjoyed the movie and soon read all the books and felt in love. Then she discovered Fanfiction site, where they had a Twilight forum. She read several stories and figured she could write them to. She wrote the fanfiction in three weeks. And a year later here she is making millions of dollars. However, this best seller has a lot of professional critics claiming this novel to be a literary disaster, because of its poor language, and its character and plot underdevelopment. But, its fame and popularity cannot be overlooked. The novel is an easy read; the language is pretty much one of a teenage girl; who portrays her experiences of her sex life as a narrative. During the sex, she is inexperienced and does not know what to expect from her first intimate relationship. The language during the sex scenes seems to be drastically filtered, which does not match the intensity of the erotic practices involving dominance and submission that are seen in the relationship between the main characters Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. This is illustrated by some of the phrases used when they are intimate such as “his fullness” as “his nose up the apex between my thighs” (James 110) “I can’t wait to be inside you” and “my sex” (James 280). While most novels do not use

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