Why Fifty Shades of Grey is more depressing, less erotic

When I had seen Fifty Shades of Grey (the movie, because I could not get past page two of the book, or was it page one?) in London, because it was banned in India, I had been extremely worried. Not because of the weird sex the business tycoon Christian Grey seemed to want from the innocent college student Anastasia Steele, but because it was an insight into the strange and sad relationships people can request from each other. For those of us who crave equality in all relationships, it was a disturbing insight into a very unequal world. A badly written world of pulp fiction where bizarre reasons are given and accepted for unacceptable behaviour. A world where inflicting pain is presented as play.

Perhaps all of this is fantasy, but the worrying question is how seriously are followers of the Grey series taking it? Because how can you ignore a book series that has sold 125 million copies? The film earnings alone were over 300 million pounds.

And, if this was a reflection of our world, it also made me fear for those young women who might meet good-looking strangers, only to find themselves drawn into a masochistic or sadistic relationship, and imagine that this might be love. Could impressionable young girls, who are immature, could be so easily trapped? And could some misled young men actually think that fearful, gratuitous violence had its origins in love?

It was a depressing, rather than an erotic film. In that sense, I actually thought Sam Taylor-Johnson had succeeded in revealing the dark heart of the book, which might not have been apparent to readers who thought it was just a sexy romp, full of whips and bondage.

The question is whether this is the secret erotic fantasy of every woman and man, or does fear itself provide titillation.

But most importantly, unlike the book which seemed to be made up of repetitive drivel, the film also explored the tragedy of falling in love with the wrong person. It reminded us how often we make mistakes. It is, after all, sometimes true that those who are not good for us, are whom we often are attracted to the most.

Now that the fourth book in the series Grey, told from Christian Grey's point of view has just been published, I was relieved, at last, for some reviews that are pointing out what I had felt after seeing the film of the first book. That the story is about a perverted, obsessive stalker, and if Anastasia enjoys being his sex slave, and we enjoy looking at her in that situation, then something is obviously wrong with all of us. Has this society become so sickened that it requires us to buy books about sadistic stalkers? Don't we see and read plenty about them on the news every night!

So the latest book in the Grey series which has arrived in stores has already been snapped up, probably by thousands, if not millions. The author, EL James undoubtedly has made lots of money. But she has also turned the publishing world upside down, where it's no longer important what the critics or even the publishers say, because James self-published, before publishers found her. In fact, another theory turned on its head was that books in a series need to come out one by one, on an annual basis, but in this case, all three books were sold together.

But if the Grey series has many admirers, it has also been universally panned by critics. The question remains: What does the popularity of these books say about the world we live in?