Fifty Shades of Grey’s ending raises many questions about Ana and Christian’s relationship as well as the ethics of the storyline. In 2015, Universal Pictures released a movie adaptation of the eponymous book, which started out as a Twilight fan fiction. The story follows a billionaire businessperson named Christian Grey who sets his sights on an undergraduate student named Anastasia “Ana” Steele, wanting to make her his sexual submissive. The two Fifty Shades characters meet when she steps in to interview him when her roommate Kate gets sick.
Christian immediately becomes enamored with her and starts showing up where she is. Eventually, he proposes that she become his sub because he doesn’t do romance but is interested in her. As a virgin, she has no idea what any of this means, so he gives her a contract to read and research. While she is looking everything up and thinking about it, he continues to pester her until she finally agrees, even though she wants a romantic relationship. This leads up to Fifty Shades of Grey’s climax, which is morally dubious and raises many questions.
Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey from Fifty Shades of Grey in Front of Music Notes
The Fifty Shades of Grey movie soundtrack includes songs made especially for the 2015 romance title, one of which was nominated for an Oscar.
Do Ana And Christian End Up Together In Fifty Shades of Grey?
Ana And Christian’s Relationship Becomes Strained As He Implements Punishment
As the central couple in what’s considered a romance story, the question naturally comes up whether Ana and Christian get together and stay together at the end of Fifty Shades of Grey. Prior to the two officially getting together, Christian starts treating her like his submissive without her agreement. Ana eventually says yes to being Christian’s submissive at the graduation ceremony to being in a submissive-dominant relationship, with a small bit of romance added in so that she would agree.
It’s worth noting that Christian does many horrible things like continually pushing her to make a decision on the matter, even when she expresses her uncertainty. He also love-bombs Ana by showering her with attention, gifts, and compliments. Combined with the uneven power imbalance, this paints the consent as highly coerced, which negates its validity. Ana visibly struggles throughout the movie to be okay with the dominant-submissive relationship. She even expresses to Christian that him punishing her makes her feel the way that he does when she touches the scars on his chest. This does nothing to delay him from punishing her, though.
Ultimately, by the end of Fifty Shades of Grey, Ana decides she can’t continue this relationship anymore, ending things after a particularly brutal punishment session. Her mannerisms and words afterward are challenging to watch as they mirror those of an abuse victim. Unfortunately, Ana cutting things off isn’t the end of Ana and Christian’s story, because the series has two more Fifty Shades movies.
How Christian Started BDSM
Christian’s Backstory Misrepresents BDSM As A Result Of Trauma
Because the entirety of Fifty Shades of Grey centers on Christian being a dominant who wants Ana as his submissive, the movie needed to explain at some point how he got into BDSM. Unfortunately, his sexual preferences come from trauma. When Christian was 15 years old, his mother’s friend Elena Lincoln, nicknamed Mrs. Robinson by Ana, groomed the young boy and eventually preyed on him. She became his domme for six years, and Christian states that he enjoyed this because he could feel free. After six years, he became a dom (who acts more like a sadist) to others.
Within the movie, Ana is the person who sees the person for what it is – sexual abuse – but the movie seems to dismiss her concerns due to her sexual inexperience. Consequently, Christian also writes off her concerns. This shows just how little he cares about Ana’s thoughts, seeing
Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan were age-appropriate and well-cast for their iconic characters in the Fifty Shades Of Grey movie series.
Luckily, Elena is treated as a villain throughout the next two movies, correcting the horrible handling of this sensitive issue within Fifty Shades of Grey. Unfortunately, the series never walks back the implicit message that only people with abusive pasts – whether a victim, perpetrator, or both – enjoy participating in BDSM, which paints the kink community in a horrible light and simply isn’t true.
One of the only times Fifty Shades of Grey properly engages with a BDSM norm is when he and Ana negotiate a contract to ensure everyone knows the expectations, rules, and limits within the sub-dom relationship. However, the content of his contract is woefully lacking. The contract only outlines rules for Ana, providing no rules or restrictions for Christian, a fact that he uses to wield power over her even when it’s unwanted. The contract also lacks a time limit, which is general practice with BDSM contracts.
Moreover, Christian’s contract is viewed as unbreakable and ignores shifting needs and desires within a BDSM scene. BDSM contracts are always supposed to allow for the revocation of consent at any time for any reason. Neither a sub nor a dom need an excuse to stop the scene, even if they agreed to it beforehand. Christian’s contract essentially negates Ana’s consent by telling her that she must perform anything not laid out in the contract without question. These factors contribute to the normalization of abuse throughout Fifty Shades of Grey.
