Last spring, Fifty Shades: Freed, the third installment of the notorious sadomasochistic film series based upon the books written by British novelist E. L. James, was released on DVD in America. The original novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, has spawned a franchise that has made author E.L. James over $95 million, and the movie adaptations are closing in on  almost a billion and a half dollars. Despite its financial success, Fifty Shades as a franchise has been subject to incredible (and often hilarious) derision from critics--the Iranian novelist and author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie, said of the first novel, after reading a couple of pages, “I’ve never read anything so badly written that got published. It made ‘Twilight’ look like ‘War and Peace.” Nonetheless, Fifty Shades of Grey is one of the most important and influential cultural artefacts of the 21st century and has caused a radical sea-change in Western sexuality.