What Fifty Shades can learn from Secretary
Inspired by GFF’s screening of Steven Shainberg’s Secretary and this month’s release of the Fifty Shades of Grey sequel, we take a look at the lessons the modern spankbuster could learn from the 2002 cult classic
Superficially, Steven Shainberg’s 2002 film Secretary and Fifty Shades of Grey couldn't be more alike. Both use BDSM as a prism through which they present sexual awakenings of young women at the hands (literally) of dominant men. Men who, coincidentally, share a surname. However, beneath this veneer of similarity, the contrast between how the two films actually broach the subject of sex could not be starker. Secretary uses BDSM’s reified power dynamics to present sex as the great leveller of gender, an empowering force that can put women on equal footing with men. Sex in Fifty Shades, on the other hand, is used as an oppressive tool forcing women to submit to men narratively as well as literally.
Sexual acts in films, Secretary argues, mustn’t happen in a vacuum. When they do, women are demeaned and robbed of their agency. Every erotic act in Secretary is refracted multiple times to show that sex, especially forceful sex, requires distinctions. Lee (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) enjoys being spanked by Edward (a particularly eldritch James Spader) while wearing a saddle and biting on a carrot, but that doesn’t mean she’ll let a man watch her urinate on a patio. Lee’s arousal and repulsion at certain BDSM practices highlight that pleasure is multifarious and subjective.
This kaleidoscopic approach extends to the ostensibly troubling nature of Lee and Edward’s relationship – that of a male employer and female employee. But Secretary tackles this issue and enforces Lee’s independence through sobering contrasts in which other female characters in the film find themselves in situations that aren’t equal: a family friend sexually harassed by her boss; Edward representing another sexual harassment victim; Lee’s father shoving his wife to the floor.
The film fleshes out these distinctions so that even the most visually troubling scene – where Edward first forcefully spanks Lee – is deeply contextualised. Through these refractions we understand that although she’s a submissive in the erotic acts, unlike Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) in Fifty Shades, Lee is undeniably active and Edward’s equal when it comes to initiating them.
Contrast that with Fifty Shades, where the only refraction that happens comes when the camera wants to show Christian (Jamie Dornan) dominating Anastasia from a new angle. And he wants to dominate her, as the film helpfully elucidates, because that’s just the way he is. This lack of distinction – of context – lays bare the cognitive dissonance between the film and its female protagonist.
Anastasia clearly wants a romance that includes walks in the park and sex in the missionary position; the film gives her a rapey billionaire, who wants to anally fist and whip her, and calls it love. Yes, Anastasia becomes aware of the disparity and rejects Christian, but because Fifty Shades is framed as a love story, that rejection – which is the only time Anastasia has any agency – is merely temporary. It’s not character development but a speed bump to add drama.
Where Fifty Shades abandons Anastasia’s agency to serve the story, Secretary preserves Lee’s until the very end when she, now married to Edward, looks straight into the camera. By breaking the fourth wall – a power almost exclusively granted to men (Alfie, Alvy Singer, Ferris Bueller, Frank Underwood...) – the film demonstrates Lee’s complete control over her story. She's directly looking at you, the viewer, daring you to accuse her of having no agency to her face. It’s a brilliant act of defiance that Fifty Shades would never allow Anastasia. The closest she gets to looking into the camera is when there's a mirror in front of it.
Secretary’s final minutes hammer home its greatest lesson about sex in film: done wrong, it deprives women of their agency; done right, it can show that agency was the real story all along.
Secretary screens in Glasgow Film Festival 24 Feb, SWG3, 7.30pm, followed by a postscreening after party, featuring Torture Garden performers and a specially-curated playlist. Dress up not necessary, but highly encouraged. +18
Read more about Glasgow Film Festival in The CineSkinny – in print at Glasgow Film Festival venues and online at theskinny.co.uk/film/cineskinny
Follow Ben Rabinovich on Twitter at @benjyrabs