Nine 1/2 Weeks lost me during the opening credits. In less than a few minutes, there were FIVE brief scenes of less than stellar images of black people-ranging from just implicitly negative to neutrally negative to actively negative: a black woman in curlers impatiently walking her dog, a couple of black guys cleaning windshields and side mirrors in a busy city street, and a black mugger being chased by an older and younger white guy in business suits. After those scenes, I didn’t trust the movie so what MAY have been a movie about a woman’s sexual and emotional awakening, i.e. a journey of empowerment, I eyed suspiciously. I swear to you that I thought, “What is this Flashdance?!?” BEFORE I found out that Nine 1/2 Weeks has the same director as Flashdance. If I want to be unkind, I would say that it was an elaborate audition video for Kim Basinger to get a part in Prince’s Batman video. If I wanted to be cheeky, I would say that Fifty Shades of Grey better give some profits to Nine 1/2 Weeks. I do think that there is a deeper unspoken, positive message regarding gender in Nine 1/2 Weeks, especially during the gender bender scenes, the masturbatory slide show or when the main character approaches an artist in a faraway cabin and reconnects with him in empathetic despair at an art show (also symbolism of fish in that scene and in the opening) among other moments, but I’m going to let someone else do the analysis because of the opening credits. Next time, Adrian Lyne, dilute your racial negative images so I can try to ignore them more effectively. Dear parents, Nine 1/2 Weeks’ closing credits have a song called Let It Go. Not the same as Frozen, right? 😉