50 Shades of Tedium - is there anything sillier than mainstream pseudo-porn?

The Western world appears to be going through one of its occasional paroxysms over sex in mainstream entertainment media. I remember being puzzled, when Basic Instinct came out, at how the whole world got itself in a lather about whether or not the film gave us a subliminal flash of Sharon Stone’s shebang. I was more interested in the fact that it was really quite a bad film, about which I can now remember absolutely nothing apart from the supposed fanny flash – and I only remember that because there was a vogue for replaying the scene endlessly on television.

The hysteria caused by one of Janet Jackson’s breasts popping out during a US Superbowl performance also had me scratching my bonce. I can’t think of an earthly reason why I’d want to get a peek of a breast belonging to someone who looks quite like Michael Jackson. Yeeccchhh! Besides, it was just so ridiculously “Ooh, matron!”

Madonna’s ridiculous crotch-emphasising on-stage gyrations have always struck me as desperately joyless rather than titillating. When she released a book-cum-photo album entitled Sex I was once more astonished by the furore. Then there was the tawdry little trollop’s onscreen kiss with fruit-loop Britney Spears. Cor! Daring! Surely we got past all this nonsense decades ago. I mean, don’t people remember just how filthy films and TV and magazines were back in the Seventies?

I’ve already admitted to being a prude about simulated sex in mainstream television drama and films – nobody over the age of 25 who enjoys an even vaguely normal sex life can find this sort of thing anything but embarrassing. I’m just tired of being asked to snigger at or be shocked by the idea that fictional characters are performing fellatio or cunnilingus just out of shot, or to be horrified that some women are sexually attracted to other women, and some men to other men, and that some chaps like to dress up in women’s clothes, or that some people find pain sexually stimulating. Okay – I get it. It’s just not particularly interesting.

As for Fifty Shades of Grey (and, no, I wouldn’t read it, even if you threatened to flay the skin off my buttocks), well, there appear to be three main things going on here. First, it’s evidently time for another global sexual frisson. Second, many women are turned on by the thought of glum, brooding, manipulative, dominating, damaged, vulnerable, “interesting” men (a cross between Mr Rochester, Rasputin, Bill Sykes and Nick Clegg – oh, hang on: I might have got that last one wrong) whom most normal chaps would run across the road to avoid.

Third, the need for super-masculine sadistic bullying fantasy figures has no doubt been exacerbated by years of we men being encouraged by an increasingly feminised society to turn ourselves into anaemic, sensitive, metrosexual ladyboys. Apparently, without this encouragement we’d all be selfish, bone-idle, lard-arsed, sexually inept philistines who can’t do anything right and who spend our time either consuming internet porn or slumped in front of sport on the TV, guzzling beer, munching pizza, belching and scratching our testicles.

The odd thing is, if women secretly wanted us to boss them about and beat them up (which seems to be what Fifty Shades of Grey boils down to) they’d better let the likes of Harriet Harman and Polly Toynbee know.

I have absolutely no objection to a bit of harmless erotic fantasising – I just wish people would keep it to themselves. What ever happened to good, old-fashioned furtiveness?