Fifty Shades of Grey took in a massive amount of money this past weekend, but the film itself didn’t really hit with critics. Dakota Johnson was praised for her performance as Anastasia Steele, but Jamie Dornan’s performance as Christian Grey has been criticized for being overly bland and stiff.
I’m not even going to pretend that what follows is some sort of scientific study on what people who work in the sex industry think of 50 Shades of Grey, but I did find myself curious what the people who work in a job that deals with erotic situations every day (internet live sex cameras, in particular) thought of the film. Specifically, what they thought of Jamie Dornan’s performance as Christian Grey, asking male and female performers (and anyone else in the chat room, really) a version of, “What did everyone think of Jamie Dornan’s performance in Fifty Shades of Grey?” This did not go well at all. Regardless, I captured some screen shots of my futility. (One encounter with a woman who specializes as a dominatrix finally paid off.)
What you see below is how most of this experiment went, with me being, understandably, ignored.
Here, I got “Jordanye” to respond to me, but she hadn’t seen the movie.
Again, being understandably ignored by the host and other people in the chat room who were more interested in “feet” than the intricacies of Jamie Dornan’s acting ability.
This person gave me the stink eye as I asked in vain. Again, a very understandable stink eye.
I asked a man named “nicefoxy” about his thoughts, but he hadn’t seen the movie either. (I will give each and every one of these people credit for not forming an opinion before seeing the movie. I’ve seen paid critics ignore this pretty simple rule.)
Chanttall was nice enough to ask me to clarify my question, but then asked me to change the subject.
ErikaFoxX didn’t know who Jamie Dornan is. I suspect she’s not alone. Anyway, she stopped responding to me.
Finally, a dominatrix named DamianaHilll answered my questions about Fifty Shades of Grey, though I really can’t tell if she’s seen the movie or not, even though she refers to it as “a sh*t.” (She hated the book, too.)
Mike Ryan has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
