Back to 50 Shades of Grey, Ana, Christian, and your sex life.  (What?  You didn’t know your sex life was in this book?  Well… it inadvertently is.)  I was talking with my friend, let’s call her Kay*, and she mention that she was depressed after reading 50 Shades of Grey.  “Oh,” I said.  “Like you miss the characters and being ensconced in the story?  You can visit them again, you know.  I mean, I’m on my 103rd read-through of Harry Potter.”

No, Kay explained.  She was depressed because her relationship wasn’t smokin’ hot like Ana and Christian’s.  She loves her husband, he loves her, they still have sex.  They also have kids and jobs and family obligations and volunteer work, and all of that adds up to a relationship which looks a little like a reusable grocery bag life vs. Ana’s Prada purse life.  You know reusable grocery bags: dependable, does its job, nothing flashy, you can ball it up on the floor of your car for a bit and it’s barely worse for wear.  Whereas Ana’s relationship is a Prada bag; albeit one in the shape of a pair of nipple clamps, but a Prada bag nonetheless.

My end of the conversation came from how I feel about the cross-over of fiction into real life to the admiration of abusive relationships, and we had a half hour conversation while I ate through a box of Special K (the cereal… not ketamine).  I come at this not as a therapist who knows anything about relationships but as a writer who has examined countless fictional relationships and knows how writers construct them so the reader is not only attracted to what the fictional couple has but covets it for themselves.  There’s no greater interest-inducing drug than jealousy.  And no, this isn’t just about 50 Shades of Grey.  Substitute in whatever book you’ve read that has made you feel like shit about your relationship.

I also preface this with the fact that Kay is done with the three books, and I am still reading 50 Shades Darker**, but I don’t think I’m overshooting here by writing this now because everything I needed to know about how I feel about their relationship came from their first few interactions in the first book.  And because we’ve seen this story play out with different characters numerous times before.  It’s a little bit of weak storytelling that is still totally enjoyable as long as you consume it rather than having it consume you.  Books like this are like candy; the problem comes when you start trying to restructure your totally healthy, nutritious life to have the caloric-emptiness of a fictional, candy relationship.  The book isn’t the problem; inviting the book into your life is.

In fact, let’s go back to the original text — Twilight — since 50 Shades of Grey is just Twilight fanfiction.  Edward approaches Bella, whom he picks out because he likes her smell (it makes him hungry, and he wants to drain her), and pretty much tells her that he fantasizes about killing her.  And Bella gives him a chance.  Because that’s what teenagers do.  I found this more excusable in the characters of Bella and Edward since they’re teenagers (I mean, a 111-year-old teenager) vs. Ana and Christian who are both adults.  Real life is somewhat like Twilight in that teenagers see danger signs in a relationship and they ignore them because they either don’t believe that the danger will come to fruition or because they’ve read too many books like this and mistake Edward and Bella’s relationship as epically romantic.

Did it end in a good place; I mean, good insofar as being part of the walking dead?  Sure.  But real relationships aren’t about the end point.

They’re about the beginning and middle too.  And Edward and Bella, as well as Ana and Christian, have a pretty fucked up beginning and middle.  Both girls were chosen because they fulfilled the need of the male character.  Twilight’s sometimes I think about killing you becomes Grey’s sometimes I think about beating you for my pleasure.  In both cases, we’re celebrating someone sticking in there (you know, staying in an unhealthy relationship) to get to the happy ending where they’re cherished.

And please don’t mistake me for saying dom-sub relationships aren’t healthy.  They can be, and certainly, if that’s how you get your rocks off, go get your rocks off.  But a healthy dom-sub relationship doesn’t include berating, cajoling, or overpowering; especially prior to the relationship starting.

In both stories, the action, the objective, is all provided by the male.  It’s about the man seeking his personal gain, and the woman providing it by being inactive and non-goal-oriented.  See, not so admirable, right?  Sure, he ends up getting all entangled in real feelings for the woman, sort of in a romantic, two-way Stockholm Syndrome sort of way, but that’s not where the roots of their relationship stem.  This isn’t about two people coming together because they’re seeking companionship or have a mutual attraction.  In both cases, if Bella hadn’t seemed so mouth-watering and Ana hadn’t seemed so klutzy and weak, they wouldn’t have been attractive to Edward and Christian.  Doesn’t look that romantic when you discover that’s the reason someone wanted to be with you in the first place.

It’s about as romantic as learning that someone only likes you for your fame or money or whatever else you can do for them, and then having them learn along the way that they actually aren’t the star-fucker/gold-digger they thought they were but they honestly have feelings for you.  Is it an enjoyable story to read?  Sure.  But is it a healthy relationship to live through?  Uh… no.

But this is so common; looking at a fictional relationship that is inherently unhealthy and using it as the measuring stick for a healthy, real relationship and believing ours is the relationship that comes up short.  For our generation, I pin all of this back on Pretty Woman***.  Other generations have their own bad lesson fiction; but this one is ours.

Vivian (Julia Robert’s) is clueless, especially when it comes to anything other than sex.  Which isn’t really fair because she’s a sex worker, so she should feel confident about sex, in the same way as I’m a writer, and I should feel confident with words.  So taking sex out of the picture, Vivian is our empty vessel who will be used to advance the objectives of the male character (Edward Lewis).  She’s got a touch of “who me?”  She’s uncomfortable in that rich world and moreover doesn’t really believe she deserves to be there (which is mirrored in Bella and Ana’s “I can’t believe he chose me and what if I’m not enough for him” mentality).  Vivian admits at the beginning of the film: she dreamed she was a princess trapped in a tower and she’s waiting for the knight to come to rescue her.  In other words, this isn’t a woman who is going to write her own ending to her story.  She’s waiting for the knight to do that.  She even tells Edward Lewis as such: she “wants the fairy tale.”

The problem with the traditional fairy tale is that it isn’t predicated on the notion that the man and the woman are equally writing the story.  And while we may draw certain ideas from that fairy tale that we look for in our love life — for instance, that concept that we want someone who will take care of us, will ease the burden that comes with living — we don’t really want the whole thing: the woman who just sits around and waits for the man to come and save her.  Because while it does workout for Vivian, Bella, and Ana, the vast majority of women who actually try this will end up waiting indefinitely.  Healthy relationships have a give and take; have a see-saw motion where sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down and sometimes you’re balanced evenly in between.  But hopefully you’re both agreeing to the same objectives and working together toward them; or you both have objectives and you’re supporting each other on your individual objectives.  And hopefully you don’t live a Bella/Ana/Vivian sort of life where you are an empty vessel, waiting to help your man fulfill his goals without any of your own.

This works in fiction.  You can have a strong character with an objective, and all other characters help that character fulfill his objective.  But it doesn’t work well in real life.  You can’t live your life for someone else.

As for the hot sex that Ana and Christian have; that combustible passion?  It’s part of that whole, and even if some people have it in real life, in this case, it’s wholly fictional.  All the reader sees is that the sex is hot, the passion is hot, that level of commitment is hot, that I’d die without you now is hot.  And they’re forgetting that if the main character had a shred of self-esteem and confidence, she wouldn’t have been chosen by the man as their target.  That real world waiting can go either way for real world humans, whereas fictional characters can feel pretty comfortable knowing that if they’re waiting, their love will come around by the final page.

If you’re sad because you think you might have missed out on a technicolour relationship somewhere along the way, you need to take that step back and remember that you don’t live inside a book.  You live in the real world where you need to make very real choices, and you can’t sit around fulfilling someone else’s objectives even if they bring you hot sex.  And if hot sex is what you’re really coveting, well, there might be ways of getting you hot sex (and I’m sorry, but not having hot sex is also a fact of life sometimes.  Not everyone is going to run a five-minute mile or memorize Pi or achieve any of those things that we’d like to achieve that are sort of innate abilities but are also things you can work on).  But hopefully you see that your relationship is better than these fictional ones.

And if you need to look at a fictional relationship and feel like crap, look at something more like Pride and Prejudice, which has multiple characters with multiple objectives.  Sure, the women need to operate within the confines of their time period, but at least Elizabeth Bennett knows what she wants and strives to get it.  A more interesting relationship to consider as a yardstick.

I hope that if you are experiencing 50 Shades of Grey depression that this has reframed the story somewhat.  And helped you untangle yourself from fiction.  Now go have hot, passionate sex.  Or go have no sex and do the laundry because those t-shirts aren’t going to fold themselves.

* She gave me permission to write about our conversation as long as she got to wear a figurative paper bag over her head.

** I know.  I’m aware of how slowly I’m getting through these books.  The friend who asked me read them said she would have never asked me to start them if she knew I was going to read like a fucking snail.  In my defense, I’ve been trying to finish up my own manuscript, work on an edit of another, practice guitar, attend yoga class, and coo at Cozy Jackson for enormous intervals of time every single evening.  The cooing and blueberry feeding of the hamster cuts into my ability to devour porn.

*** It was such a popular movie for our generation, and I heard the same thing said after that movie came out (people thinking their relationship didn’t measure up).  Everything is pretty interchangeable: Vivian is Ana.  Instead of asking for directions, they conduct an interview.  In both cases, he’s rich and she’s poor.  She is asked to come into his world and doesn’t fit in, and he never really comes to her world where he has to discover how it feels to not fit in.  In both stories, he dresses her up like a doll and makes her feel like a princess.  And there’s lots of sex.  Hey… is 50 Shades of Grey Twilight fan fiction or is it Pretty Woman in disguise?

Welcome to MFA Sunday School, a once-a-week, free, online writing workshop. MFA Sunday School posts are uploaded on Sunday mornings, though you can read them or participate any time — the comment section is always open for people to post a link to their work or ask a question. You can subscribe to blog posts via the RSS feed, or look for them under the category heading “MFA Sunday School.” If this is your first time in “class,” you may want to jump back to the first post in the series in order to understand how things work, or peruse all of the past lessons as well as a glossary of terms by reading the MFA Sunday School Glossary and Course Archives.

We’re returning to fiction next week, and getting into some heady stuff such as how to deal with rejection or getting over writer’s block.  But right now, I want to jump back into a fixed form poem because these exercises are not only poetry in and of themselves; for prose writers, they are the verbal equivalent to sodoku.  They are helping you problem-solve with words, and if you can do it here, fitting your thoughts into a restrictive poetic form, then you can figure out ways to get your character from point A to point B in your book.  I promise you; trying other forms of writing only strengthens your capabilities in your chosen writing field whether that is writing blog posts or churning out novels.

The third form we’re going to look at is the sonnet (remember, we’ve already done the sestina and villanelle, and if you’re joining us for the first time today, delve back into the archives because we’re on lesson ten).  Fixed form poetry is meant to free the mind by providing a structure much in the same way a house frees the person who lives inside to focus on things other than the elements outside.

I find sonnets very difficult to teach because the form is somewhat a mess. It began in Italy in the 13th century — a 14 line poem that was a little musicless song (sonetto means “little song”) with a set rhyme. And then people started playing with it — most notably the Earl of Surrey (though we’ve slapped Shakespeare’s name on the earl’s invention because he wrote a lot of them). But other poets started riffing off of Shakespeare, changing the meter or changing the rhyme. To simplify things, since we don’t have all day to walk through the various tweaks poets have brought to the form, we’re going to reduce it to two schools of thought: the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet (even though I really love the Spenserian sonnet… sniff).

Petrarchan sonnets are a conversation (actually, all sonnets are a conversation, but they are split in different ways). The first part of the poem is an octave (eight lines) which outlines the situation. Usually it’s a love problem, as in “dude, I love this person so much and they don’t even know I exist.” It could also be presenting an idea or question. An octave is just a fancy way of saying eight lines. If we’re working with 14 lines total, that leaves us with six lines for the sestet, which is the resolution (or answer if the writer poses a question in the octave). The ninth line of the poem, the start of the sestet (six line part) is called the “turn” or “volta.” It should be clear to the reader that you’re switching direction, making a proposal, saying what you wish would happen.

All sonnets (for the sake of reduction) follow iambic pentameter. If you’ve forgotten this meter, go back to the villanelle post and refresh your memory.

The rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is somewhat fluid. The octave (first eight lines) are set in stone:

A
B
B
A

A
B
B
A

That’s how you get that song quality — the meter as well as that constant rhyme. All the “A” lines rhyme and all the “B” lines rhyme in their final word.

The sestet has some wiggle room. Some people use:

C
D
E
C
D
E

Some people play with it and make it C, D, C, C, D, C. There is also C, D, C, D, C, D. All are kosher.

An example of a Petrarchan sonnet is John Keats’ “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Classic Petrarchan in form: set meter and traditional rhyme scheme — A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A, C, D, C, D, C, D. There is a breakdown of the situation (he never could get into Homer until he found Chapman’s translation) with a turn line (“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies”) and a reaction (finding this translation made him feel like an explorer finding a new land).

Shakespearean sonnets are those poems you slogged through in high school while the boys in your class giggled when the teacher read “her breasts are dun.” Instead of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines), you have three quatrains (four lines) with a two line couplet. This form gives you more space to outline the situation because you get 12 lines to play with. The final couplet is the answer or the resolution.

All Shakespearean sonnets follow the same rhyme scheme (and all are written in iambic pentameter):

A
B
A
B

C
D
C
D

E
F
E
F

G
G

Think of Shakespearean sonnets as having a big lead-up, and then the final couplet hits the idea out of the park. That couplet needs to pack a punch because it’s the end thought for the reader. The final two lines are the “turn.”

Shakespeare wrote many free-standing sonnets as well as incorporating them into his plays. A good example is Sonnet 130, otherwise known as “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun.” For the first three quatrains (12 lines), Shakespeare puts down his woman, saying her eyes don’t sparkle like suns, her lips aren’t red enough, and her breasts don’t have that snow white creamy skin the Englishman craves. And then he hits it out of the park with that final couplet, stating that it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t measure up to traditional beauty standards because in Shakespeare’s eyes, she’s hot.

Pretty cool, right?

Homework: write a sonnet. And when you do, come back and leave a comment with a link to your sonnet posted on your blog. That way, future students can take a look at other examples of sonnets as well as visit their virtual classmates’ blogs.

I’m going to be honest; I don’t get the Forest Boy.  I don’t understand why he did what he did, I don’t understand how it could be publicized for 9 months and not be solved prior to this point, and I cannot fathom how no one called shenanigans before this point.

The story: An English-speaking boy emerges in Berlin saying that he is a 17-year-old boy who has been living in the woods for five years with his father.  His father died and he buried him in a shallow grave, and continued to live in the woods on his own for five days until he emerged with few memories.  He told the police his mother’s name was Doreen, and she died before they went to live in the woods.  Additionally, he knew his birth date.

On Wednesday, CNN reported that the Berlin police were finally releasing an image of the Forest Boy in hopes that someone could help identify him.  He had been living in Berlin since he was found back in September.  So… that’s the first thing.  Why wasn’t a photo released prior to this point?  Such a simple thing to do.  Truly, how many people are found each year with no memory of who they are that we can’t dedicate a little media time to throw their image out there and ask the public for help?

And then, today, we discover that the whole thing was a nine-month-long hoax.  The boy came clean (Why now?  Why not deny the story of the girl who identified him?  Why didn’t he change his appearance to disguise himself before he started the hoax?) and admits that he is now 20 years old.  From the Netherlands.  When he left home at 19, he was reported missing by his family, but because he was an adult, they only conducted a small investigation.  He has been living on government assistance for the last seven months in Berlin.  Which may have been his motive: to have a roof over his head and food.  But aren’t there more concrete ways one can go about conning the system that won’t be unraveled the moment a photo is released?

And somewhat more amazing, no one questioned the validity of his story.  He didn’t slip up at any point?  Say anything so bizarre that it would make the police question whether or not this boy had buried his father in a shallow grave in the woods?  Nine months is a long time.

I’m trying to figure out why I find this hoax so fascinating.  But I do.  Forest Boy occupied my mind all through yoga.

And on a side note, thank you so far for the movie recommendations.  I’m moving them into the body of the Roundup so people can find them, and I’m going to come back and asterisk the ones the twins end up seeing.  So many good ideas on that list; 90% of which I had totally forgotten about until this point.  Go Internet!  Please keep them coming.

The Wolvog’s team ultimately lost, but — come on — it was their first season, and they were number two in the division.  That’s amazing.  They went from Bad News Bears to a well-oiled machine.  In the final game, the Wolvog had two times up at bat; two amazing hits.  He had a forced out at home on the second hit, which was hard to take.  But he pulled his shit together and went out and did some amazing fielding in the next inning.  And that’s all that really mattered to me; did he try hard, did he shake off the disappointments, did he support his teammates.  And yeah, the icing on the cake was that he got better skillwise during the season too.

A few weeks ago during one of the championship games, the Wolvog stormed out of the diamond when he was tagged out on first, crying as he threw himself into the dugout.  And Josh took him through Tom Hank’s famous, “there’s no crying in baseball” speech from A League of Their Own. (And yes, in that moment, all the parents whipped out their cell phones and played it for the kids from YouTube.  Ah… technology.)  We borrowed the movie from the library, and they loved it.  Hardcore.  Thought it was one of the best movies they ever saw, and they’re trying to watch it for a second time before it has to go back.  Though when that scene came up, the Wolvog rolled his eyes and buried his face in my pillow as if he couldn’t be bothered to watch the advice.

I love that movie so much.  There are dozens of times when my throat starts closing up, either because I am so happy or so incredibly sad for the girls.  My favourite line in the movie is when Dottie Hinson’s husband is back from the war, and she takes it as an opportunity to leave the team which has become too emotional and difficult a space.  Jimmy Dugan, her manager, finds her slinking off and calls her on it.

Jimmy Dugan: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I’m in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up, you can’t deny that.
Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard.
Jimmy Dugan: It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.

Oh my G-d, has there ever been a better line?

The point of this story comes back around to the forced out.  The bases were loaded, and the Wolvog was on third.  The boy at bat bunted, and the ball dropped directly in front of home plate.  The catcher picked it up and stood on base as the Wolvog ran toward him.  And halfway down the base line, facing the boy standing on the plate, I could see the idea click in the Wolvog’s head and he started to pick up steam.  So he came barreling down to the base, and slid into home as violently as possible, kicking out his leg to bring the catcher down.  The catcher dropped the ball, and the look of glee that passed over the Wolvog’s face as he got up — in those two seconds before the out was called — were priceless.  He literally thought he had just reenacted the final scene between Kit and Dottie in A League of Their Own and got the run, not understanding the difference with a forced out.

Hence why the tears were so intense; because he had not only slid for nothing, but his movie moment hadn’t come true.  Still, best moment ever to watch.

*******

Speaking of good movies, we’ve shown them E.T. as well and have Back to the Future (skipping the shooting of Doc) in the queue.  We’ve done a bunch of cartoon ones like Snoopy.  All of Star Wars.  Ferris Bueller isn’t appropriate yet, right?  Nor is War Games?

What other movies from the past — think late seventies to early nineties — would you add to our queue?

Updated: moving the movie suggestions from the comment section into the post so others can easily find them as well.  Thank you so much for these because I had forgotten about most of them.  Keep them coming!

• Goonies
• Space Camp
• Flight of the Navigator
• Princess Bride
• Labyrinth
• Karate Kid
• Neverending Story
• Land Before Time
• Parent Trap
• Field of Dreams
• Big
• Mrs. Doubtfire
• Hook
• The Sandlot
• The Last Unicorn
• An American Tale
• The Man from Snowy River
• Black Stallion
• Incredible Journey
• Ghost Dad
• My Girl
• The Secret Garden
• Jumanji
• Fly Away Home
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• Short Circuit
• Escape to Witch Mountain
• Babe
• Wall-E
• Stuart Little
• Charlotte’s Web
• The Cat from Outer Space
• The Rescuers
• The Secret of NIMH
• Flubber
• The Muppet Movie
• The Last Starfighter
• Little Big League
• Billy Elliot
• The Journey of Natty Gan
• Honey I Shrunk the Kids
• The Mighty Ducks
• D.A.R.Y.L.
• Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (might be a bit too soon)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Soul Surfer
• Les Miserables (Clare Danes and Liam Neeson version)
• The Blind Side
• The Railway Children
• Swallows and Amazons
• Adventures in Babysitting
• Pollyanna
• The Sound of Music
• Mary Poppins

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “DWYNTD Parenting (or Yes, I Just Learned about Natural Parenting)” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Lori!
• “And, Then, We Had to Give Our Son CPR” (Trying Not to Scream)
• “Go to the Head of the Class” (Silent Sorority)
• “Attachment” (Sprout)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Tales of a Cautious Optimist has a particularly good piece of advice for dealing with infertility that stems from a Sex and the City episode.  It’s about finding how you — in particular — reboot.  She writes, “The list goes on and on, but the point is when you board the infertility train, disappointments, setbacks, and feelings of failure are inevitable… and the only way to survive is to Breathe and Reboot.”  Go read the post in full.

A Half Baked Life asks a few really really interesting questions in her post about what bloggers owe each other in terms of the truth.  She examines a blogger’s trial-by-other-bloggers (though… in a way… we would be the jury) in regards to her bankruptcy hearing.  She explains: “And yet, we hold bloggers accountable to certain standards, don’t we?  To standards that we don’t even use, perhaps, for celebrities, whose images are more obviously cultivated for public consumption?  Just like we expect the Girl Scouts to act a certain way even when they’re not in uniform?”  It’s a really thought-provoking post.

A Thousand Oceans has a post about the missing parts — both of a painting and the holes in her heart.  It is a heartbreaking post about a portrait that goes unfinished after the birth and death of her twins.  This thought was particularly gorgeous: “I really didn’t want to spend any time looking at the self-portrait, which I had not seen nor really thought about since I was pregnant with the twins. I could not, however, ignore the obvious irony of my own missing parts in the painting.”  Sending love to A Thousand Oceans for the missing parts.

Lastly, Bébé Suisse has a post about what time means to her as they approach their unfulfilled due date not pregnant.  It’s about the hard choices we have to make, the retrospect that comes afterward, and the decisions that still loom as we spin the dozens of plates in our lives, hoping none will topple off their sticks.  She adds: “Life is not just about well-timed sex, as much as it can sometimes seem that way, and this is the moment for me to look beyond that part to the others that make up a well-rounded existence.”  I think many will relate to this post.

The roundup to the Roundup: The hard is what makes it great.  What movies should we show the twins?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 8th and June 15th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

The Wolvog’s baseball team made it to the “world series” game of the championship, that final showdown between two teams.  The championship games have been fun but stressful.  It was so exciting to win the first one, but the stakes felt higher and higher with each subsequent game.  This past one had my stomach in knots with a 12 – 10 win.  And now we’re at that ultimate game, the final game, and I can’t help but beg the universe to make the pitches be easy, the bat swinging be hard and the running be fast.

Please wish his team good luck.  Not that they need luck.  I mean, they rock; they try so hard.  But you know… we’ll take some luck too.