Fifty shades of naivete

WHILE on the ticket booth queue, I asked if the thing up ahead had a sequel called “Fifty-one Shades” and “Fiftytwo Shades…” Instead, I got the look, and was told, matter-of-factly, that yes there was a trilogy, but the other two tucked “Darker” and “Freed” in the title. I apologized, and said that my supposed time for fresher literature and my delusional crack at immortality have been marred miserably by an obsessive tendency at Candy Crush. I confessed I was Fifty Shades illiterate.

So there I was, face up towards the large screen of the theater, anticipating a monochrome movie, as the title suggested. It could be a Chaplin retro, I imagined, but then again, at that point, I was told that Grey was a guy’s name, and that the “fifty shades” suggested his mystique, which cuts across the whole spectrum between black and white.

Ah, so. That Grey guy, I vaguely gathered from excited teens, could be the one character who gave metallic sex lessons, I asked. Yes, I was told, this time with a shush because there was Randy Santiago and John Estrada explaining how "malabo" camcording was.

In no small measure was it made more solemn by the fact that it came after a silent run of the Lupang Hinirang with which every self-respecting Filipino was supposed to sing, as a demonstration of commitment to nation-building. But too much pork had condemned me to a life of singing off-key, and I wonder what that says about my commitment to the nation’s greatness.

I looked around, and wondered if the ones on the balcony, with catatonic eyes in hard anticipation of the soft-porn that was about to unravel, was likewise worried about the future of the country. Fifty Shades of Lupang Hinirang, I told myself.

So I gathered that, in that highly chromatic plot, Grey was an abused child. A little close reading made you see that behind Grey’s dimple and lollipopping eyes crept a dark interiority, a suffering lump of a soul that shrieked at the slightest gesture of tenderness. Just like how the monster, at the first instance of his awakening, scared the hell out of the smug Dr. Frankenstein because the latter couldn’t handle the creature touching him and expressing gratitude for the gift of life.

Grey, on the other hand, passed on the ferocity to another “submissive.” He said he wasn’t cut for romance, but he’d be on the piano after a night’s savage whipping. The ambivalent partner Anastasia was just starting to toe the line towards irreversible darkness.

A movie’s length, someone said, must be measured by how long the bladder can hold water, but I had to miss some moments of the movie because it was long, over two hours, my bladder was ticking. As of press time, I still wonder if I didn’t miss any nipple-as-foreground scene. Given proper cinematography, that thing is supposedly art.

Back on the seat, I heard faint protests on the side: that is not true in the book! Grey is not like that! Grey is sweet and all, they said as though they were about to tear their cedula and declare an uprising.

I was about to ask if those black spots appearing on important body parts and all the blurred pubis appeared as stunning turns of phrases and sentences in the book. Like, for instance, “As Grey prowled like a wolf, he dove into a pixellated pool of love.” Or something to that effect. I shut up, thinking it was impolite to ask.

Fifty Shades scares some households like an intruding roach in the playpen. But eliminating porn, which prowls like an underground economy, also takes the nature of fifty shades.

There were scenes in the movie that sent the whole theater in total silence. I could only imagine all the bloodshed had the city’s power blackout arrived that exact moment. That would be fun, but I’d be guilty of extreme sadism.