A snippet of a swatch of Fifty Shades

Sexually frustrated yentas of America have been heard. The movie adaptation of E L James’s S&M manual for bored middle-class housewives, Fifty Shades of Grey, is set to arrive on Valentine’s Day, 2015, and Hollywood can’t wait to show off a little of what’s already in the can.

They come in green band, red band, teaser, and advance, and for the first time in memory Hollywood senses a demand so all-consuming that Universal Pictures has created a trailer for a prevue of a coming attraction. And for what’s certain to be an NC-17 picture, no less.

Perhaps it’s due to the glut of free online porn, but sex, particularly NC-17 sex, no longer sells. More people have seen Kim Kardashian’s sex tape than Cameron Diaz’s Sex Tape. Sex is out, comic book violence is in, leaving one to wonder what kind of teenage nerd would choose repeated viewings of Transformers over Blue Is the Warmest Color? Sure, the latter has subtitles, but don’t comic books contain hurdles in the form of dialogue boxes and bubbles that muddle the artwork? Besides, shouldn’t their favorite shade of Grey be X-rated Sasha as opposed to X-Girl Jean?

NC-17 rated films have always come with a stigma attached. Moviegoers tend to look the other way whenever the rating flashes, and many newspapers will not accept ads for NC-17 pics. Those in the market for multiplex sex had best consult the foreign and/or independent offerings at their local neighborhood art cinema. Distributors that sense an NC-17 in their film’s future (Y Tu Mamá También, Where the Truth Lies, and Nymphomaniac are three prime examples) frequently surrender to the MPAA and chose to have their films play unrated.

The trailer for Fifty Shades hit YouTube today and has already attracted over three million hits. Far be it from The Big Screen to rub our loyal reader’s noses in this onslaught of molten perniciousness. This sneak peek at an advance look coming soon to a theater near you is more than enough to wreak havoc on one’s impure thoughts.