Handcuffs, nudity and shades of wanna-be Greys

So you think you know bondage, eh? Not bondage as in “Of Human Bondage,” but bondage along the lines of “I’m naked and I can’t get untied, honey. Honey?”

Woo-woo.

I find it amazing how many bondage and discipline (B&D) experts have popped up in the media just in time to review “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Movie reviewers in general don’t hold any sway with me. It’s easy to go to film school and then, without making a movie, tilt a beret and jump right into critiquing someone else’s work. Unless a movie is reviewed by a person who has made a movie and knows the difficulties and challenges involved, I don’t pay him or her any mind, and neither should you. You just encourage them.

I read five or six reviews of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the movie that fell all over itself making money at the box office this weekend. The reviews were consistent and went something like this:

“The bondage was laughable. Nobody behaves like that in the bondage and discipline world. If they did, they’d be laughed out of the dungeon and into the street.

Really?

Such reviews imply, thickly, that the writer knows what he or she is writing about. It’s not unreasonable to expect a writer to know his or her subject matter. So did a coven (I’m fairly certain they travel in covens) of B&D experts conspire to put out reviews with the same faux-leather flavor?

Doubtful.

More likely than not, the movie hit too close to home for several reviewers who get the giggles just thinking about this stuff,  not to mention writing about it with one hand on their mouse and one hand on their mouse, as the late Robin Williams once said. That’s what happens when most of the nation would agree on a survey that, “I am a prude.”

I, personally, think the reviewers are all jealous of the protagonist and antagonist in the movie. They want to have a little fun, have a go, try it out, take it for a spin, run it up the flagpole (as it were), but their own prudish senses of behavior won’t let them.

What a shame, particularly as the rest of the world marches on into the 21^st century.

Tying up your significant other as a way to spice things up is old news in places like England and France. I read a brief Associated Press (AP) story yesterday about the London Fire Brigade issuing warnings about the movie. The story said the brigade had rescued 9 people so far in various stages of handcuffery and nudity.

And in France, the topic is so blasé that 12-year-olds are being allowed into theaters to watch the film, again according to the AP. Parents apparently aren’t worried about their children being irreparably harmed.

Before you get up on your high horse, consider this. “Fifty Shades of Grey” got a hard R rating. Movies like “Excalibur,” where a knight in King Arthur’s time is graphically impaled on a spear shortly after the movie begins, is rated PG.

Also, you might want to take a look at the video games children are playing. Grand Theft Auto, for instance, is all about raping women. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Watch a kid turn red when you ask to play the game all the way through with him.

What sort of society would you be most proud of: one that can tie a square knot or one that is numb to the violence of the streets, brought to you on the big screen by Hollywood?