Episode 030: I Can’t Get Over the Stalker Behavior! 50 Shades of Grey (2015) with Kiersten Baughman

Join Alex and guest host Dr. Kiersten Baughman in a discussion of the psychological concepts in the poorly-acted but provocative BDSM LARP, 50 Shades of Grey (2015)! Starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, this film really shows how a stalker can ultimately win: just be rich!

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Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro (“Self-Driving”). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: “Et Voila” and “Weekend in Tatooine”. Used under license.

Episode Transcription

CHRISTIAN GREY: I thought it was you.

ANASTASIA STEELE: What the fu…?

CHRISTIAN GREY: What a pleasant surprise, Miss Steele.

ANASTASIA STEELE: Just Ana, just Ana. You’re in here.

CHRISTIAN GREY: I was in the area on business.

ALEX SWAN: Wait dude, are you stalking her? This is clearly stalking, and if you weren’t rich, you bet your sweet bippy she would have a restraining order on that face right quick. Dude, that’s creepy showing up to her place of work. Super creepy.

ALEX: Hey everybody, and welcome to the CinemaPsych podcast! Where psychology meets film. I’m your host, Dr Alex Swan and today we are going to jump into a movie that I honestly never thought would be on this podcast, but here we are. We’re talking about the first of a wild trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey. You know that book by E.L. James. Now, the writer of this was Kelly Marcel and the director— who does not appear as the director on the second and third installments, 50 Shades Darker and 50 Shades of White Caps. I don’t—I’m not entirely sure what the third one is called. You can let me know in the feedback. But 50 Shades of Grey, Sam Taylor Johnson is director. Like I said, he doesn’t come back for the second or third ones. Stars Dakota Johnson, the daughter of Don Johnson. And stars Jamie Dornan. I gotta tell you, not a very good American accent on Jamie Dornan. And yeah he is the eponymous Mr Grey, Christian Grey, and then some other some other famous people sprinkled in here. Jennifer Ehle’s in it, Marcia Gay Harden, Luke Grimes. And that’s pretty much it. I mean, there’s not a lot. Outside of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey in this movie, there’s very little outside influencing. It’s just really a back and forth of those two people—hooo boy and there’s a lot. There’s a lot that we are going to talk about in this episode, and a word to my listeners. One spoiler alert, but to the content that we talk about on this podcast. In this particular episode may be difficult for some to hear. Because we will be talking and approaching various various concepts and topics like sexual assault and among-among the like. So that is my warning for this particular podcast versus any other podcast—we will be talking about some heavy, heavy topics. And with that let us jump right into it.

ALEX: My guest host today is Doctor Kiersten Baughman. She is an associate professor of psychology at Valley City State University in rural North Dakota, where she teaches a variety of psych courses in the curriculum. A few of her favourites are introduction to psych, social psych, and a special topics course she designed about her research area, intimate partner violence. She has been teaching full time for seven years and has held faculty positions in multiple states, including her home state of Kentucky. She earned a Masters and PhD in social psych from the University of Oklahoma. Kiersten, welcome to the show!

KIERSTEN BAUGHMAN: Thanks so much for having me on the show, Alex.

ALEX: You bet! I am happy to have you on. So as I ask all of my guests before we jump into the movie that we are discussing today, 50 Shades of Grey, I sort of want to ask your overall thoughts about film in general. Just as a general moviegoer and then if you do or when you do use film in your teaching.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, so I have described myself as someone who’s pretty much willing to try anything once in the classroom, and I realize that there are a pair of tools and resources available to educators and I strive to be very intentional about selecting those that work most effectively for my students. In a very specific context, I teach primarily by asking a lot of commentary from my students, like a conversational style, and I provide lots of real world examples and stories. So it really drives home those concepts and I personally feel that as psychologists we are uniquely positioned because I do feel that psychology is truly all around us, right? And to this end, I frequently incorporate movie clips into various lectures, although I know that this is all about the full length film and the very first time that I ever decided to include a full feature film was actually a children’s film. It was The Lorax by Doctor Seuss. I actually happened to be channel surfing one day, and if you’re familiar with that film, there’s a scene where one of the main characters, the Onceler is singing a song that’s called “How Bad Can I Possibly Be?” And I was teaching motivation and that song just resonated with me as “oh my gosh, this is a great example” for the different kinds of motivators we can have and I just was immediately drawn into the rest of the film and I started looking at it from the lens of a psychologist, and so it was tired the end of the semester and I decided that I didn’t want to change the nature of the total points in the course, but I was like, you know, just for an extra credit assignment, I’ll offer my students that they can, you know, watch this movie and reeling-realizing that they probably had seen it before, but I wanted them specifically to talk about their choice of three concepts at least related to our class, that they found in that movie. And those extra credit, at the end semester—didn’t know how many, but to my surprise, of quite a few of my students did actually take me up on that offer. I should note that it wasn’t many extra credit points, so it wasn’t like the people that really need these extra points, as we know, what typically happens. But I was really impressed with all of the different concepts, many of which I hadn’t even considered myself, and so I decided, you know what, I think I’m going to incorporate this into other classes in the future and have it as an actual assignment, and my students have really appreciated that.

ALEX: That’s awesome! FIrst of all—well, two things. First of all, love this and I imagine this is the remake of The Lorax. So not the 1970s animation, no, this was the this was the one from this current century. Yeah, awesome. And-and Ed Helms does a fantastic job as the Onceler and specifically singing that song. And I’ve used it in Learning before because of the various concepts of, like, operant conditioning, in that film too. So it works with motivators of course. And the second thing is that I love the paper idea because that has primarily been my film analysis assignment over the last, I want to say 2-3 years: choose three concepts from class, apply it to scenes and write a 2-3 page paper. Not a lot. I really love the little added tidbit that you added at the end there, which was that it wasn’t for a lot of points and you still got more than you expected, which is, it tells you the power of using a medium. An art form like film to express these psychological concepts and asking your students to go find those. ’cause, I mean, that’s that’s why I like using that assignment, because it requires them to think about the film in another way instead of giving them a cookie-cutter, kind of, find the scene where they talk about X. It’s like well, can you find X in the entire movie? Oh, I love that. That’s so awesome. Other films have you used in the past? I doubt you have or will ever use are the film we’re talking about today in class?

KIERSTEN: Actually I have.

ALEX: You have?

KIERSTEN: I have. Yes really! I don’t explore a ton of a full length films, but this one—let me tell you a little bit about why I-I have incorporated this one. So as you mentioned to our audience, I am an experimental social psychologist by training and my research area is the influence of culture of honor on relationship violence and as you also mentioned before, I found myself in various teaching focused positions. To that end, I have a lot of teaching responsibilities, but I also do find myself and plenty of opportunities to supervise individual or independent research projects from students, and I still try to stay current on my research. It just so happens that when 50 Shades of Grey came out while it was taking the world by storm, I actually was teaching social psychology and I noticed that there were plenty of opportunities to incorporate into that class. But then shortly after, I actually had the opportunity to design a new special topics class on intimate partner violence, and so I have incorporated it into that class.

ALEX: Yes! And I assume it comes with the, you know, the standard warning. Like, you know, this is this is an R-rated movie, but honestly there were a lot of people at the MPAA who wanted to be Nc-17. I read that-that was—that was interesting. Yeah, it barely skirted. Barely skirted the MPAA, and of course if anybody is familiar with the MPAA, they don’t really have a set of codified rules for many ratings like Pg-13 and R has to do with the amount of F-words that are said because if you say it more than once, then you’re automatically an R rating. That’s—what kind of, what kind of standard is that? That’s weird, but-but this one, particularly with the amount of nudity and sex scenes in the film. It was it was almost NC-17, so I’m assuming that like you had to get some, you know, some buy in with this one right? Even though everyone is an adult. Over the age of 17, over the age of 18, there’s still some by and I would imagine.

KIERSTEN: Absolutely. So that was my initial response. Certainly was, you know, this was actually my first full-time teaching position and I didn’t want to get myself fired. So I talked with my department chair and there was a lot of support at that level and I, you know, obviously recognize the importance of giving warnings to students, saying, you know, we’re going to be discussing, you know, watching scenes from a movie that might make you a little bit uncomfortable. We’re all adults here, and again, I think without that support from that department chair, this probably-this podcast probably wouldn’t even be happening. Given that latitude, I’m so very grateful and again I think it’s really important to create that safe space for discussing relationship norms. Like, what does love look like? And as we’ll get into, I’m sure you know what-what does the media do to kind of twist our version of what love is? And so I really value the opportunity to have that discussion in this safe environment of the classroom to explore. You know what are our own perceptions of what relationships look like based on our own experiences? And what have others told us? And what does the media tell us? And so it’s really given some very rich discussion and interaction among my students. But absolutely, I would say that any steam from this movie, some as you mentioned, more sexual in nature than others, would need to have their own warnings and certainly buy in from students and even administration.

ALEX: Right? I mean, if I were to ever use this movie, it would be something to watch on their own time, to be honest, but I can— but obviously there’s value in showing clips and refreshing everybody and all of that. It’s-I will be perfectly honest, dear listener, not a fan of this movie for its filmmaking—if you can even call it that. It’s acting—if you could even call it that. Soundtrack. It’s odd. And among the other things. So I will-I will be less likely to be charitable for this particular film that I have had in the past. Although, I mean on the show, if you’ve been a faithful listener, for years now, I have-I have thrown movies under the bus. This is one of those movies. This is one of those movies, so why don’t we jump into it? Because there is a lot. There is a lot. In this movie—it’s two hours. It came out in 2015, so it’s not even that old. So let’s jump right into it. The biggest thing, Kiersten, is that the series of books written by E.L. James is about a guy, Christian Grey, who apparently has amassed a fortune. In some sort of industry, I’m not sure. I don’t know why it’s called Greyhouse. It reminded me of Random House.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, like publishing, yeah?

ALEX: Publishing, that’s sort of how I felt like what his-what his empire was, but I’m unclear. So it’s about this guy, Christian Grey. And what is the particular thing that he enjoys, Kiersten?

KIERSTEN: Sure, so that would be BDSM, and depending on which source is you look at and what time period you look at it—’cause this has shifted in recent years—the B stands sort of as a group for bondage and discipline. The D is for dominance and submission. And then the S and M is sadomasochism. And that’s actually a point that I wanted to make here, Alex, is that the BDSM community came out very strongly against this movie and the way that it was portraying their community, which leads to, I feel, a very sort of broad discussion of stereotyping, which we know is an important concept in social psychology specifically. But you know, if people’s only in-introduction, or even interaction, with BDSM is the way that it’s portrayed or characterized in 50 Shades of Grey, then that can be pretty problematic. And I actually had the opportunity to serve on a an expert panel with some members of the BDSM community. They titled—this was at that same institution…I’m not going to be vague…that was at Ball State University, which was where I held my first faculty position—and I was approached by some students and I don’t remember. I wish I could, I think it was something like the Activities Council, but they asked me to serve on this panel of what they titled 50 Shades of Consent. And so I came as the researcher, you know, kind of showing what was going on there and then we had some members of the actual BDSM community and I thought it was a really good opportunity for them to sort of contrast the way that this is portrayed in the movie versus what is actually happening. So one example is the messaging around consent. The BDSM community is very, very emphatic that consent must happen. There must be a safe word and there must be some way to signal that, you know, OK, I’m not going any further. And while that is loosely portrayed in the movie, those people on that panel were very clear to the audience that it doesn’t come across in that way. So there was a lot of coercion. At least that’s the way that the BDSM community has taken the way that they’ve been portrayed. And there is absolutely zero room for coercion in the actual practice of BDSM.

CHRISTIAN: Just beyond this door.

ANA: What is?

CHRISTIAN: My play room.

ANA: Like your Xbox and stuff?

CHRISTIAN: It’s important that you know you can leave at anytime.

ANA: Why? What’s in there?

CHRISTIAN: I meant what I said. The helicopter’s on standby to take you whenever you want to go.

ANA: Just open the door.

ANA: Oh my God.

CHRISTIAN: It’s called a flogger.

CHRISTIAN: Say something please.

ANA: Do women do this to you or? Do you-?

CHRISTIAN: No, I do this to women—with women. Women who want me to.

ANA: You’re a sadist.

CHRISTIAN: I’m a dominant.

ANA: What does that mean?

CHRISTIAN: It means I want you to willingly surrender yourself to me.

ANA: Why would I do that?

CHRISTIAN: To please me.

ANA: Please you—how?

CHRISTIAN: I have rules. If you follow them, I’ll reward you. If you don’t, I’ll punish you.

ANA: You’ll punish me? Like you’d use this stuff on me?

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ANA: What would I get out of this?

ALEX: Yeah, that’s actually that’s. I mean that makes a lot of sense. So we learn in the middle-in sort of the middle of the film that Christian was born to a drug addict of some kind. Meth I think was sort of alluded to, if I’m not mistaken, and he has some scars on his chest and she died when he was four years old, when he was adopted by this these rich people. And so he has significant trauma in his life, and then that that is-that is reinforced through his characterization in BDSM. And so, the character characterization is then, you know, consumed by the viewer as only broken people with highly traumatic childhoods engage in this, and that is clearly not the case. I mean, it’s considered a subculture within-within erotic practices so, you know, there’s a lot of role-playing which you see in the movie. But it’s very one-sided, right?

KIERSTEN: Yes. Definitely, and I think that that is again just driving that point home that if this is the only exposure that someone has to BDSM, it’s a gross misrepresentation, and you know there was a large and probably growing at one time, group of people that were, you know, going straight to the author and saying, you know, why did you do this? And she just emphatically kept saying no, it wasn’t meant to be this and, you know, it wasn’t mischaracterizing, and she just, you know, stood. And I think that’s a good example there of confirmation bias. You know, she’s looking for any evidence that she has, that her point of view is correct. You know, it’s just, you know, some fictional tale and-and they were like no, but you’re doing actual damage to our our community, our-our subculture. And I also wanted to bring up some considerations, especially with some of the high profile cases that we’ve been seeing lately. Again, my research areas, intimate partner violence, and, Alex, I think you made a great point that it’s not the case that we only have people coming from broken backgrounds that are able to perpetuate this sort of violence against a romantic partner. And in the last year, we’ve actually seen sweeping changes at the federal level to our Title IX policies. And if you’re not familiar with that, that’s our sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, but also it includes things like dating and domestic violence, and one that people maybe don’t know much about is stalking. And that’s one that certainly is portrayed in the movie. That’s another one that the author of the book series denied that, you know, that Christian was not stalking Ana, but there are many different examples of not just stalking behavior, but what researchers and as myself like social psychologists would call mate-guarding. And I think this is a good discussion point for our classes. For our students. You know, first of all, do they know what mate-guarding is? And that is driven out of evolutionary psychology and parental investment theory. And this idea that the lesser-investing sex is the one that has to really provide avenues so that they are safeguarding that person that has chosen them and in the lesser-investing sex in humans is of course men. And so, what we tend to see here is is things that depending on which way you look at, it can be construed as either. Oh, he loves me. Which I would argue E.L. James and others who are proponents of this film in the series would say, yeah, that’s a display of love versus some more problematic things because we know, for instance, the mate retention inventory has been linked with actual violence toward partners. And so that’s a discussion that I’ve really appreciated having the opportunity to have with my students. Saying, you know, OK, for instance, Christian just randomly gives Ana a car, you know, as a present. Now, most people can’t do that. You know, I, I certainly don’t have the money that I could just give somebody a car, but some people would say, oh that’s because he loves her or because he cares about her. Or it can be, I think, it starts with the computer, but he also gives her a car and you know, gives her these things and he’s calling and checking up on her. I already mentioned the stalking, showing up literally, like for instance in her bedroom unannounced. And you know, totally startling her. You know, depending on how you construe that. Some people might say, oh well, he’s displaying his affection for her, but I would argue, and I think the research is pretty clear out there that that’s borderline on, you know, these offensive, you know, like literally federally offensive criminal behaviors?

ALEX: Yeah.

KIERSTEN: And—yeah.

ALEX: Dude was straight up stalking. I mean the cold open that I-that I recorded for this episode is literally the clip of him showing up at her work. And I interject, saying dude, you’re stalking. So you can go listen to that listener if you-cuz you listened to it already. So I’m talking about it in the past. But yeah, such a stalker. Also super problematic behavior about boundaries, right? We, you know, when-when you are growing young humans to be good adults, you tell them about boundaries and when it’s OK or inappropriate to touch somebody and we’ll talk about consent in a little bit. But when to engage in shenanigans with somebody versus when to-when to nod and be serious. These kinds of things. When to give people personal space. And I gotta say the first half of that movie was Christian not recognizing boundaries and kudos, I will give kudos to the characterization of Ana and her pushing back on that. She doesn’t go as far as what a normal person would do. I think in that case, I would be like dude, you have a restraining order, this is-this is not OK, is clearly not OK. There is at no point contact with police about this guy because he is rich. But the first half of—and her characterization, when he keeps asking about the contract is, you know, her coyness. And she’s just like, oh, and then walks away. I think that was that was brilliant writing on E.L. James’ part to extend it. Or I mean, obviously I know the literary technique about extending and making this like a game. Well, we were talking earlier about what kind of genre movie this is, and certainly it just-it just occurred to me—it’s a cat and mouse game.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, I think that would be a good description. And as you’re talking, you know, some of the sort of most famous Disney heroines are coming to mind and you know, sort of this, oh, you know, this unrequited love. But again, what message are we ultimately sending when the female character ultimately gives in to the male’s advances?

ALEX: Yeah, and so she gives in. And then she ultimately backs out because there has to be another book, another movie. We were also talking about how the movie abruptly ends, and that is like, honestly, the cliffhanger-y of—cliffhanger-y of cliffhangers because she doesn’t then like what occurs at the very end of the film. So I give-I give the characterization of Anastasia Steele more props than I do the whole movie in general, because at least there are some sparks, some some tiny indications that there isn’t a complete acquiescence of submissiveness, which is of course, the role that Christian wants her to play. He wants her to be his submissive, in the oveur of the BDSM, so she eschews that a little bit and that was refreshing that it doesn’t end with her like, oh, this is amazing.

KIERSTEN: Yeah. Yes, but you know, speaking of that voice, one of the things that researchers came out with in sort of the year or so following the release of this film were, you know, the actual examples in the book and the movie itself. If you know these kinds of actual violence, violent acts, that criminal offenses because they wanted to make sure that teens, which I think we could argue, this is maybe the target audience of again showing, what is love? What does it look like? And I just want to make a note here and this is something that I always talk about with my students, as well, that the films are always released either on or as close to Valentine’s Day itself as they possibly can be. And again, that’s just sort of maybe not so subtle messaging from, you know, Hollywood, and the powers that be that, oh, you know, you should come with your romantic partner. And if you don’t have a romantic partner you should come and watch this. Listen, you know, this is a lovey-dovey movie and I think as you’ve said, Alex, most of us would disagree with that assertion that it’s actually not what love looks like and I will give props as you were mentioning to some of the ways that Ana doesn’t acquiesce at first, but then ultimately again, if you know the rest of the story, if you know the rest of the trilogy, I mean they go on and get married and they have this sort of happily ever after. And again, just to go back to some of those Disney heroines. You know, characterizations of “Oh well, if I don’t give in long enough, then eventually, you know, what’s going to happen to me” and when message boards are filled with teens who are saying “I can’t wait to marry my own very own Christian Grey,” you know, that is like raising a huge red flag to researchers like me who know what partner violence looks like and how it can masquerade itself as something else entirely. I think that’s just a really dangerous message that we’re sending to those teens.

ALEX: Yeah, a fully agree. An-an-and the one thing that I wanted to add to that because you brought up the other two movies. They’re never going to be on this podcast, but what I will say about those two movies is that, and the fact that they all get married, they get married and everything like that, and I can only imagine— Now picture this: as somebody who’s never read these books and will refuse to do anything but read the synopsis. And so this is my challenge. This is my challenge. I will, after we have this discussion, I will see whether or not I am right. The idea about the the other two movies, which had the seed planted in this one, is that because Christian has had a traumatic past and does not know how to quote unquote “love” and he’s like, “I want!! This is just me, this is who I am!” in his terrible American accent—yeah, Jamie Dornan, you know, work on that one a little bit more. The idea for her character is that now she is going to try to fix him.

KIERSTEN: Absolutely, and I again I would say that that’s a really dangerous message to send. So for instance, we know that one of the worst things you can do for a couple that is experiencing intimate partner violence is send them to couples counseling because there’s so much manipulation in most of those cases, and even very well trained therapists can fall into the trap of the perpetrator. And so I would-I would argue that, again, maybe there are rare cases out there where, you know, Ana or people like Ana could fix, you know, this broken man and come to love him and show him what love looks like. But I would argue that that’s a very dangerous narrative to perpetrate. And I think it feeds into rape culture, you know? I mean, there’s so many people again, when I teach this intimate partner violence class, a lot of my students are surprised that we can even have something called marital rape, right? And we know that. I-I know you mentioned. And we’ve we’ve mentioned before consent, but, no, you can not consent in a marriage and that can still be rape, against the law.

ALEX: Right, and hang on to that. I want to-I want to jump into that particular idea about rape and consent when we come back from a quick break.

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ALEX: OK, we are back with Dr. Kiersten Baughman. We were talking about 50 Shades of Grey. Yeah that movie? That movie, that series of books! So we before the break, we just mentioned rape culture, rape and consent. And I think it’s a pretty good topic too. Flesh out completely, Kiersten, on what kind of consent messaging is in the movie. We mentioned a little bit, but then also explore how Christian’s background is indicative of a culture in the United States that is very broken and that-that-that culture being rape culture and the idea around sexual violence. All of the ideas and behaviors around sexual violence. So in the movie, the McGuffin, if you will, the object which advances the story, which is not necessarily essential to the story itself, is the contract that Christian creates for his potential submissives. And the vast majority of the film was about “hey, did you sign that contract yet?” “No I didn’t sign the contract.” “Oh well, you didn’t sign the contract.” “I haven’t signed the contract yet.” I mean, how many lines were about the friggin contract? And-and ultimately in this film, she never does sign the non-disclosure agreement about being Christian’s submissive, and yet they do engage in sexual acts.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, and so again, I know we’ve talked at length about how the BDSM community was pretty outspoken against the way that they were portrayed. But that’s one credit, I think that we can afford to the author and the filmmakers here of the contract. That is very important, but as you mentioned, at least in this film, she doesn’t actually sign it, so they are engaging in things that, again, you could argue are nonconsensual. So consent is a word that seems like it’s really simple, but it’s actually quite nuanced. One thing that I think is a theme in the movie is the use of alcohol, and I think that we should also pay attention to the age of Ana by comparison to Christian. Christian is much older. He’s much more experienced. She’s never had a sexual encounter of any kind. I think that it might not be, you know, as apparent in the movie, but definitely in the books, that comes across like this is someone who’s never even had a boyfriend. So you know he is-he is her one and only lik,e this is what a relationship should look like. And again, I think that we have to think about what message is that sending. So that’s a good discussion that we can have with our students, as if you had no other romantic connection before. And then you know this very wealthy guy starts having, you know, sexual encounters and wanting to have you be his submissive. And I mean, I think there is like a play on, well, it’s kind of exciting and enticing, but then I think that that line between, “is she really able to fully give her consent?” is blurred, so he does use alcohol in some pretty stereotypical ways. You know, have another one. Have another one. Again, he’s just throwing things around at her, and in some scenes that seems like she’s less coerced than others in terms of, you know, her alcohol consumption, but in others it’s very clear that she would be what the legal definition would call her as incapacitated, where she is fully not aware of her senses in some cases, not even conscious. And then obviously not able to give consent. I think when we think about consent, we have to think about the history of where we as a society have come. It used to be that yes means yes. So if I say yes then I’m consenting to whatever and if I’m in some way nonverbally agreeing then, you know, consent is present. But there has also been a big push for the no means no, and I think that we have to keep those sort of in connection with each other because I think each of them is missing an important element. So if I’m not saying yes, but then I am otherwise not saying no. What am I doing? And that’s where the law is is very blurred. So when you think about the law and is this crossing that legal line. The law, by the way, I’m talking about like the Cleary Act and the Violence Against Women Act—that goes along with or we see in tandem with Title IX considerations for the educational setting. I think we shouldn’t miss the fact that Ana is in an educational setting. She is in a university, she’s going to school, and it’s actually a job that she starts trying to interview him for when they initially meet, and certainly not having any love interest at the beginning. But then we all know where it goes from there.

ALEX: I think there’s-there’s a case to be made, by the way— sorry to interrupt. I think there’s a case to be made about Title IX, Title IX violation, because Christian is a speaker at the commencement address that she is attending as a graduate. And so yeah, clearly something is being blocked there. Some-some, potential Title IX thing there because he is not public about their relationship. Do they even have a relationship? He says he doesn’t want to do relationships and yet takes a picture with her awkwardly, which was so, so strange. And then yeah, and also, on a side note, you don’t go to a commencement—you don’t-are not the commencement speaker talking about your own initiatives… like, that was also very strange. We need to have him give us-need to have him give a speech. What do we do so he can give a commencement speech and talk about his initiatives? But like what? No! Anyways but to your to your point, I think there’s a nuance there is really important because the “no” has to, in my understanding, the no has to be very clear, and if there is no “no” then there is no “yes.”

KIERSTEN: That’s correct, and so again I think like, when we say that yes means yes. It’s kind of like an asterisk. You know, you have to OK, but-but what? How can I say yes? And if I’ve said yes to one thing, I think this is where the law is quite clear, and I think that some people, you know, miss this line. We talked a little bit earlier about boundaries. Yeah, just because I consent to one act does not mean that I consent to something else, right? I think that the movie displays this in a really powerful way. In other words, you know that she’s, she says yes to something. Or maybe she doesn’t actually come out and say yes, but she somehow provides that nonverbal consent, but then she is, you know, maybe pushing him away because she doesn’t want something else or, you know, she’s backing away from him physically. I think another myth that we should explore and discuss here is this idea that it has to be forced in most sexual assault cases. We don’t actually have, you know, this physical force and if there is any sort of holding someone down. It’s as minimal as it’s needed to be in order for them to do whatever act they’re doing right, and so I think, yeah, “yes” means yes, we all understand what “yes” means, but again, you can say “yes” in different ways, and you can say “yes” to one thing but not to another. But then on the “no means no,” just because I don’t come out and say the word “no,” doesn’t mean that I am consenting and saying” yes, I want to do this other thing with you.” And so that’s where I think we need both of those pieces.

ALEX: Yeah, and then there’s an interesting scene and I think perhaps my favorite scene in the whole movie—and that’s saying a lot—is the meeting scene, so I’ll go ahead and play that particular scene here.

ANA: Impressive.

CHRISTIAN: I’ve done this before. Business meetings I mean. Miss Steele. Your meeting.

ANA: Page one: strike out my old address and replace with the new one.

CHRISTIAN: An oversight. Duly noted.

ANA: Page three, section 1520. The submissive shall submit to any sexual activity demanded by the dominant and shall do so without hesitation or argument. Turn to page five, appendix three: soft limits.

CHRISTIAN: With you.

ANA: Find anal fisting.

CHRISTIAN: I’m all ears.

ANA: Strike it out. Strike out vaginal fisting too.

CHRISTIAN: Are you sure?

ANA: Yeah. Same page is the use of sex toys acceptable to the submissive? vibrators? OK. Dildos fine. Genital clamps, absolutely not.

CHRISTIAN: Consider them gone.

ANA: What are butt plugs? You must go through quite a few non-disclosure agreements.

CHRISTIAN: My staff know only what I choose to tell. Please resume, Ms. Steele.

ANA: Also, on page five, there are some terms which need clarification. Suspension?

CHRISTIAN: Hanging on ropes from the ceiling.

ANA: For what possible reason?

CHRISTIAN: For your pleasure.

ANA: Really?

CHRISTIAN: And mine. Something to consider.

ANA: No. Hard limit. Is bondage acceptable to the submissive and good with rope? Leather, cuffs, handcuffs. Please lose tape. What’s other?

CHRISTIAN: Cable ties. Can I just say how impressed I am with your commitment to this meeting? And in that spirit, I’m going to throw in a sweetener. How about once a week on a night of your choosing, we go on a date. Just like a regular couple. Dinner, movie, ice skating—whatever you want.

ANA: Accepted. You’re very kind.

CHRISTIAN: I’ll suggest it in Appendix 5.

ALEX: So in that scene, there’s a great negotiation that is that is occurring and that negotiation is what you’re just what you’re explaining, Kiersten, which is that she agrees to some things in this agreement, but she does not agree to all of it, so she doesn’t want to have various aspects of Christian’s entire BDSM repertoire used on her. She doesn’t want all of it. She doesn’t think that some of it is appropriate for her, and wants that as part of the never-signed contract. But it was her also displaying her ability to advocate for herself, which I thought was, like I said, my favorite scene. And that’s not saying much. It was one of the few scenes where she advocated for herself. In a very powerful way, but to your point about the-the rape and not if I say “no” to one thing, it doesn’t mean “no” to other things or “yes” is other things. It just means “no” to the one thing and the amount of control that you need to actually complete the sexual assault. And that’s because a vast majority of the sex in the movie is borderline, I would say, borderline relationship rape. At no point does she-at no point does she—well no, I shouldn’t say that ’cause at the end she does consent to go into the bondage room. The red room. But there is the—her-her first sex scene with him. Ao her first sexual encounter. I was aghast that he decided, “oh, you’re a virgin? OK, let’s go.” Like she didn’t even get a chance to be like, “wait, what are we doing?”

KIERSTEN: Yeah, I definitely think that the role of power and authority is not missed in this. Whatever we want to call the relationship or growing interest between really from him to her, I mean, I think that in the opening scene it’s clear that she, you know, finds him attractive and sort of like, a mysterious like, “I’m kind of-I’m curious about you” kind of way, but maybe not so much in a love way. But then we can see that develop, and certainly throughout the rest of the series. But I think that-that’s, again, another important point for us to discuss with our students is, you know, how much control does each party have in a romantic relationship that’s either just beginning or that’s well established, because control is one that we often see removed in that power differential in a cycle of intimate partner violence. And I think that’s another good point for us to just remind students that “hey, it might not have see,ed at the time that this was what that was looking like, but indeed that is an example of that, you know, power differential there.”

ALEX: Yeah, I think—I mean, this is this is me looking in, but I think when she first meets him, when she first meets Christian, he’s alluring in some intangible way to her-to him, but he was not at all charming or charismatic in my in my view. And I think that-that was the wooden acting issue more… I don’t know. Like, I did not read the novels, so it’s hard for me to imagine it any other way, but beyond that first meeting, I would not have expected if those two people were real. I would not have expected that to continue in the way that it did because he’s, first of all, he’s very dismissive and curt, and even though he gives her a second chance and then yanks the paper to give her friend clear and concise answers to all of her-to her journalism paper or whatever. He wasn’t-he wasn’t that charming to me. I wasn’t like, “Oh well, yeah, I can see what she sees in him” because it was very strange. Their first meeting and then he goes in stalks her. So then I was like bop, I’m out of this.

KIERSTEN: So I think that’s a good point as far as, you know, the casting decisions. I mean, what little I know about what has transpired there is there was an active sort of hostility between those two characters. They did not like each other at all, and so they have this sort of play this in the movie as far as the the charismatic piece, you know, it’s been years, literally since I’ve read the novels. And by the way, I should mention I only read them because a graduate student said, “hey Dr. Baughman, you know about the 50 Shades of Grey series, right?” And I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about and so then, you know, the rest is history, so they say. But-but when thinking about the charismatic piece I, I do seem to think that he was more charismatic being portrayed that way in her novel. Then he was in the movie, but ultimately, from what I understand, the filmmakers decided that they wanted to see if they could sort of have this thing progress maybe organically, but not really. And again, as if you are—I’m not sure that it really did that job. But I will say that at least one spouse, when they were looking to cast for the 2nd movie in the trilogy, really had a very hard “no talking about consent” that, you know, the spouse was not going to play that character because, you know, they had small children and, you know, what message was this sending? If I’m not mistaken, that was Jamie Dornan’s wife who was like, “no, Jamie is not going to be in this movie.” And yet what we see happened is that he he was again in the movie, so interesting sort of like, real life tidbit in the way of talking about power and control. Like I see he won that-that debate.

ALEX: Yeah, and that also plays into the whole the he’s rich and that’s what he’s got going for him. He-he does have a nice body. OK, fine. Make me feel bad about myself, that’s OK, OK? And then, you know, he is a high status figure. Whatever Grey House is. And so, I wonder, and I don’t know if this is in the backstory of the novels, but I’m really curious…. Oh speaking of rape, Christian was totally raped as a statutorily by his first foray into the BDSM community by his first dominant. He says that he was 16 when he was first made a submissive of this woman and yet, totally… Nope. You can’t. Nope, can’t do that. So yeah, I mean dude’s got some-dude’s got some issues. And as-says, the issues to the viewer but not to Ana, which I thought was just like, “OK if that was in the book, shame on E.L. James.” Also in the movie, what? OK, there are better ways to do that. Not to tell a sleeping person your life story and be like, “oh you’re awake now. I’m sorry I wasn’t saying anything.” I-I hate that so much. I hate it. I as soon as I saw it and like she wasn’t stirring.,I was like, “oh he’s doing the thing, where he’s telling the viewer. And then she’s not going to know anything about it.” It’s awful, but in any case, I forgot my point. Yeah, so the fact that-the fact that like he sees Ana going back to the whole status and money and dominant versus submissive kind of idea, the fact that he is money, the fact that he has status and sees her as some diminutive creature tells you a lot about his-his character, who he is as a person and who general other allegories and analogies that exist in real life for this character, and the finding of the submissive, not even just BDSM “submissive,” you know, quote unquote. But just like a submissive person, somebody to be submissive in a-in a relationship. I think that was very glaring in my mind that she acts very meek in the beginning of the movie. But it’s actually a trick because she’s not that meek when it comes down to it, especially at the end of the movie when she’s just like no, you don’t get to punish me. You don’t get to do that to me. I’m leaving now. This is the end of it.

KIERSTEN: I think that it can’t be missed that he, being Christian, really expects her to be an open book, so to speak, like, he wants to know every little thing. He shows up everywhere he wants to know every aspect of her life. There’s a lot of an element of control there, but there’s what I like to think of as a double standard, in that any sort of push that she asks him for some, you know, just basic information, you know, like that’s-that’s off limits. Like we—

ALEX: “THIS IS WHO I AM!”

KIERSTEN: Yeah. So I think that’s a good talking point. Discussing with students in that, you know, again, that power dynamic and also getting them to think about maybe some examples of people that they have met who might have a similar dynamic. And then again, that broad context of what does a healthy relationship look like and what might be some of those more subtle or less subtle warning signs or red flags.

ALEX: Yeah yeah, you hit the nail on the head with the whole double standard. About their past—like he shows up in freaking Savannah, GA when he doesn’t get a text back from her. He’s like, “no, I’m going to go see her.” It’s like dude, space.

KIERSTEN: Stalking for sure. And again, if it’s not seen that way by the viewer, I think that’s another point for us to make with our students. You know, call it what it is, you know, that is a violation of the law.

ALEX: Yeah, that is that is very true. That is very true. So to end on a lighter note… I like to end on discussions on lighter notes, especially with the heaviness of such topics. So, this is going to be a little bit out of left field, not in our notes or anything like that, but, I was thinking about it. So, In the movie, Christian’s brother is dating, Ana’s best friend. And he is—”he,” I shouldn’t do that. Christian is annoyed by this. So, my question to you, Kiersten, is who has the better relationship in the movie?

KIERSTEN: Oh hands down, his brother and the friend. That’s-that’s a healthy relationship and I think I’m glad you mentioned that ’cause I had forgotten that sort of minor plot, but I think it’s important because again to the clued-in viewer, you can catch that. And there is again that juxtaposition of, OK, look at this, and I think that-that actually is really insightful for Ana to be looking at. OK, these are the kinds of behaviors that they’re displaying that seems really normal. And yet, why is he treating me these other ways? And so she’s-she’s not as you know, meek, as you mentioned, or naïve. As you know, viewers might want her to seem—I mean she-she’s starting to get the hang of, “wait a second, not every relationship looks this way.”

ALEX: Yeah, and, wow, what a cool plane glider ride. Also you really need to ask for consent if you’re going to do a barrel roll in a glider, OK? There’s no coming back from-there’s no coming back from a missed barrel roll on a glider—that’s just falling. I saw that I was like, “you didn’t tell her you were going to do that!” She’s going to barf all over this glider.

KIERSTEN: Yeah.

ALEX: Oh boy, oh boy.

ALEX: Well, I want to thank Dr. Kiersten Baughman for joining me to discuss 50 Shades of Grey! Before we say goodbye, Kiersten, is there anything you’d like to plug? Where can folks find more about your work?

KIERSTEN: Yeah, thanks! You know, I’m on the typical media platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, ResearchGate. But I do a personal website that is on Weebly, so that’s kierstenbaughman.weebly.com. And I do try to keep it regularly updated with, you know, my teaching. Again, I’ve taught across the curriculum. I’m sort of always developing new classes and to that aim, I am pretty active with the Society for the Teaching Psychology, STP, and I post pretty frequently there on the Facebook page, and I do have some publications that are coming soon. In fact, one about theseminar talk that I gave at the teaching conference about that intimate partner violence class. So be looking for that. And then a couple ebook chapters as well.

ALEX: Nice! So I will link your website with the show notes so everyone can just click click, and find you right there. And I’m assuming that those publications will be on the website? Alright, well that is perfect and I want to say thanks again, Kiersten.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, it was my absolute pleasure Alex to bring light to the important role that media messaging like the one that we see in 50 Shades of Grey plays on a variety of concepts like relationship dynamics and how they can be perceived. How we can perpetuate dangerous stereotypes, and most importantly, perhaps, how psychology teachers can engage their students in productive conversations about what love is and is not.

ALEX: Awesome! Well that’s going to do it for this episode! Until the next episode, thanks for listening…