Christian Grey Is the Basic Bitch Version of Patrick Bateman

Do you remember college job fairs? All those alarmingly professional people from consultancy firms and the students who turned up in suits with printed CVs to meet them? Do you remember how you'd leave with a bag full of stress balls and branded notebooks, hoping to be courted with interviews and aptitude tests? You might have been a little scared by their glassy eyes and handshakes, but a part of you wanted to join them. To be transformed and absolved from your grubby graduate existence. To be spirited off into a life of Power Point decks and mild fascism, just like Christian Grey.

In the new film of EL James' novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, Jamie Dornan – an otherwise likeable actor – portrays Grey with a dead-eyed, constipated calm. The character inhabits an antiseptic world of chauffeured cars and glassy surfaces. He speaks in infrequent, growled pronouncements ("I don't make love. I fuck."), which are as meaningless as they are embarrassing. Wealth has afforded Grey the luxury of a complete lack of personality: he woos Anastasia Steele from a distance, with corporate gifts like a Macbook or a helicopter ride. Moulding her personality through the film, he wants Anastasia to give up her quirks – her beat-up car and childish clothing – and to be more like him. "You are mine", he tells her, repeatedly, like the faceless protagonist in every Sunday night anxiety dream you've ever had before work.

The time is ripe it seems, for another corporate psychopath. EL James's creation instantly calls to mind the memory of the last sharp-suited young sadist to permeate modern consciousness: Patrick Bateman. You could even call Grey the American Psycho's heir. But while the same undercurrents of misogyny are there, it's not Grey's sexual preferences that make him a psychopath. His interest in BDSM, for all the scandal it provoked, only manifests as a bit of spanking and handcuffing in the film, and is about as erotic as a flick through an Ann Summers catalogue. No, what is psychotic and disturbing about is Grey his blankness.

Christian Grey is corporate America. While Bateman is an unrealistic parody of the coked up corporate narcissist, Grey is more terrifying, because he is so much more real. While Bateman stocked his fridge with severed limbs, Grey fills his with ( apparently) gluten-free pancakes. His family look and act like a bland parody of the American WASP elite: a blow-dried mother, Dr Grace, a bad-boy brother, and a sister so two-dimensional she had to be played by Rita Ora in a bad wig.

Christian Grey is hyper-normal. How this American Dream came into being is not elaborated on: there's no career description for him, or even mention of his industry. So much of Fifty Shades of Grey is structured around the idea of unwrapping this impossible enigma – why is Christian Grey the way he is? To what does he owe his success? This tactic would make sense if it led to anything interesting: a big reveal, some hint of vulnerability. But Grey is a great white American man, and that's all we really know. His skyscraper building is marked "Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc", but nobody knows what goes on inside.

Which leads us back to the story's all-consuming capitalism. The hard-working Christian pulled himself out of hardship and into a glassy American skyscraper home – one where dominance is a lifestyle, spirituality, and economic outlook all in one, never so much satisfying as necessary. One where even his sex life is the result of consultation with his lawyer. One where sex is not an interaction but a currency – an exchange quantified in bruises.

Ultimately, Anastasia is subjugated and bought. She is prescribed a new life when she meets Christian Grey. The contact he wants her to sign dictates the clothes she will wear and the food she will eat. We've seen this before and it's disturbing: Scotty in Vertigo dresses Madeleine up as his dead girlfriend. Hannibal Lecter buys Clarice a dress, and when she puts it on she's corrupted and joins him for dinner. Kanye puts Kim in khaki and an Adidas…. body stocking? The woman is remade and "educated" to suit the man's preference. Fifty Shades has its precedent in every creepy porn title involving the words "the education of….", and most notably in the Twilight franchise which it was [originally written in homage to. ](http://fiftyshadesofgrey.wikia.com/wiki/Masterofthe_Universe)

If Christian cannot convert Anastasia into his ideal submissive, he will go one better: he will make her wealthy and cold and corporate, just like he is. It's why elevators feature as a motif in Fifty Shades . The couple's first kiss is in one, but more importantly we see Anastasia ushered into one when she goes to interview Christian for their first meeting. The lift is a shortcut to class mobility, helping her scale the looming skyscraper, which Christian sits atop. In terms of record-breaking 18-rated films, Fifty Shades is being directly compared to The Passion of the Christ , a similarly linear narrative based on a process of ascendence marked along the way with physical suffering. But Anastasia's story ends with no redemption: she chooses to descend, and disappears behind those same elevator doors when she says her final goodbye.

A scene cut from the film's ending shows Anastasia crying, back in her old college apartment. Including this scene might have struck better at the film's core. Because more than anything, Fifty Shades of Grey is about the wilderness we all go through after college ends. Presented as a virgin "educated" by an older man, Ana doesn't know what she wants out of sex any more than she knows what she wants out of life. The two are analogous: go out there in the world, the narrative urges us, experiment, go through things you don't enjoy and find out what you like. Or, at the very least, find what makes you financially secure.

This is what makes the film's promotional smartphone game, the " Grey Internship Programme App", so creepy. We're instructed to compete for a rich sadist's affection, to impress him and emulate his habits, with the final result of endless riches and a psychological state that's fifty shades of fucked up. It echoes the film's interview scene, during which Grey essentially offers Steele an internship. This captures precisely the balance of excitement and fear the adult world presents to someone about to be released into it: the terror of freedom and possibility, with money replacing essay grades as a measure of success.

Graduation leaves a void behind, snatching back your life's purpose as quickly as your college library card expires. Being poor suddenly stops feeling quaint, and you start desperately looking for options. Grey offers Anastasia a way out, to have everything in her life looked after without having to decide. This is what Fifty Shades is about, and where it holds true pornographic value: we get a glimpse of what life is like for Christian Grey, the emotionless CEO automaton, and what life could be like for us if we take the same elevator. Anyone who's ever dated somebody with a "five year plan" or an interest in accountancy knows how boring these types are in real life. Which is why, as the film ends and Grey's corporate grip finally slackens, it's a relief for all the wrong reasons.

@RoisinTheMirror

Previously:

What I Learned at a 'Fifty Shades of Grey'–Inspired Sex Expo