I worked at Blockbuster when Secretary came out so, of course I watched it.
Then 20 years later everyone is going bananas over these “50 Shades” books & so I asked a female friend what they were about. She tells me & I’m like “Oh… you mean Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal?” I was met with blank stares & confusion. The more & more I heard about these books, the more I couldn’t understand why this writer was getting so much praise for an obvious & blatant rip off.
Guess it’s that whole “good artists create, great artists steal” thing I’ve always heard about. Either way, whenever those books/movies come up, I just always tell people “Go watch the original. It’s called Secretary. It’s way better, I promise.”
I had the privilege to watch it in a sociology of sex class in my undergrad. It was great to watch it and have our teacher help us understand exactly what was going on and we spent like 2 weeks analyzing the movie. When I heard about 50 Shades of Grey it was clear that the story wasn't realistic or representative of the community it claims to be for but I never read the books or watched the movie so I may be mistaken. There was a lot of talk about the books when they came out and it's possible they were misrepresented.
No you're absolutely correct. The author states it started as a fanfiction of Twilight. So it has all the abusive/non-consensual tropes of that franchise with fantasy BDSM mixed in. The movies tamed it out, but the books are awful. Its just "no i don't want to do that" "trust me, you'll love it" over and over again.
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u/Chillie_Nelson Jul 22 '26
I worked at Blockbuster when Secretary came out so, of course I watched it.
Then 20 years later everyone is going bananas over these “50 Shades” books & so I asked a female friend what they were about. She tells me & I’m like “Oh… you mean Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal?” I was met with blank stares & confusion. The more & more I heard about these books, the more I couldn’t understand why this writer was getting so much praise for an obvious & blatant rip off.
Guess it’s that whole “good artists create, great artists steal” thing I’ve always heard about. Either way, whenever those books/movies come up, I just always tell people “Go watch the original. It’s called Secretary. It’s way better, I promise.”