With the red menace of Valentine’s Day bearing down, there was another, more local, dust up that just happened — the opening of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey at Suffern’s Lafayette Theater. The Rockland County Times was scandalized that Town of Ramapo would support what RCT called a “smutty” film. One presumes that RCT was not referring to parasitic fungi.

Phil Tisi’s office of public affairs regularly sends out bi-weekly or so notices of upcoming Lafayette Theater movies. Town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence and the town council stepped up in 2009/10 to lend support to the Lafayette in a public/private partnership that kept the theater from shutting its doors.

For nearly two years, the Office of Public Affairs has helped oversee the theater’s movie bookings, working with distributors and Hollywood studios to keep first-run movies in the pipeline. Town Councilman Daniel Friedman questioned whether any government should promote the Fifty Shades, which is based on the popular erotica-infused romance novel that became a trilogy by British author E.L. James. The books sold some 100 million copies worldwide.

While I love watching movies – probably more than most- I find the concept of 50 Shades of Gray to be nauseating. http://t.co/CBrsGUrwUs — Daniel Friedman (@CouncilmanDF) February 12, 2015

The Lafayette Theater had a “sneak peek” Thursday evening before Friday’s national release.

“I don’t believe government should be promoting a movie that so many women’s advocacy and domestic violence groups have condemned as glorifying violence against women,” Friedman said in the RCT. “I urge everyone to visit 50shadesisdomesticabuse to learn more about this national problem.”

There’s a contingent of people who believe the funky relationship depicted between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, in both the novels and film adaptation, showed all the signs of domestic abuse.

Grey is a handsome playboy billionaire who loves him some BSDM. Christian takes an immediate interest in shy Ana, a frump of a mess with self esteem issues. Christian spots the burning beauty hiding underneath and the lass becomes a perfect black swan in Grey’s special red room of dreams. That Grey is a control freak who culls Ana from friends and family, encouraging her isolation and dependence on him, is really beside the point.

Christian is a handsome and dangerous, rich, mysterious, super rich, apparently friendless and materially super badass, and very very rich, and, well, you get the picture. Ana is smitten. But first Ms. Steele must wade through a ton of contractual and non-disclosure paperwork before getting close to CG.

Anthony Lane, writing for the New Yorker’s The Current Cinema, said: The global appeal of the novel has led some fans to hallow it as a classic, but, with all due respect, it is not to be confused with “Madame Bovary.” Rather, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the kind of book that Madame Bovary would read.

Tisi clarified a few things in his RCT letter to the editor response, including that the movie promo release was not generated by Town Supervisor St. Lawrence and that Ramapo’s partnership with the Lafayette has kept the one screen theater from going the way of other old-style American movie houses.

” …It is comforting to live in a country where citizens enjoy freedom of choice,” wrote Tisi. “As a grandfather having several beautiful female grandchildren, being a woman’s advocate is a daily occupation – not simply one rooted in political opportunism.”

RCT editor Dylan Skriloff throws back in a brief post op-ed response to Tisi: “On another note,” writes Skriloff, “some might also question why it is that the town supervisor’s closest assistant is employed as a local theater’s film coordinator?”

Fifty Shades may not be Councilman Friedman’s (or RCT’s) cup of tea, but whether it rises to the level of domestic abuse is a whole other issue. The Lafayette’s four-week, hugely successful run of the Clint Eastwood-directed film American Sniper drew both an audience and praise, though even Tisi called the film controversial. The movie depicts a particularly hot period in the Iraq war around the time of the Fallujah uprising. American Sniper was considered controversial by some because it portrays hidden American snipers as war heroes as they zero in on head kill shots of Iraqi insurgents in and around Fallujah, fighting in what was essentially a civil war.

American Sniper was called many things by many people, from glorifying war to jingoistic hokum to a crystalline example of American fascism, although a quick Google search shows that the film was never called smut.