Abstract (eng)
This thesis applies a film semiotic analysis to the Fifty Shades of Grey films, one of the most successful cinematic franchises between 2015 and 2018. As an economic reading, the analysis of class-related power structures facilitates a better understanding of recurring themes, such as seduction, submission, and surveillance. First, Christin seduces Ana through an economy of the material by establishing a hegemonic universe of capitalist markers. Based on his financial excess, or accursed share as George Bataille calls it, Christian creates a capitalist order by showcasing a spectacle of brands, incentives, and gifts. Through the obligations of gift-giving as economic exchange, Ana turns into a gift herself and expands the hegemony by internalizing Christian´s capitalist ideology. Furthermore, through an economy of the body and mind, submission is considered in relation to the transgressive aspects of Bataille´s eroticism as a means of dissolving and re-establishing sexual as well as non-sexual limits. Transgression, as an inherent part of erotic acts, can be observed in relation to sexual as well as class boundaries. Lastly, the submission to capitalist hegemony is perpetuated within the economy of the gaze. The use of external instruments of surveillance, such as technology, security, and stalking behavior, produce Ana as a Foucauldian docile body through the internalization of panoptic spaces and time management.