SINGAPORE - The film adaptation of bestselling erotic novel Fifty Shades Of Grey dominated American and Canadian cinemas with US$81.7 million (S$110.7 million) in ticket sales on its opening weekend.
The R21 movie starring James Dornan as kinky billionaire Christian Grey and Dakota Johnson as innocent college student Anastasia Steele was released in Singapore on Feb 12, with no cuts.
Sometime during the week leading to Valentine's Day, the movie with a sado-masochistic theme had a steamy date with Singapore's SG50 jubilee celebrations, and spawned the hashtag #SG50ShadesOfGrey.
While other parodies of Fifty Shades Of Grey have been shared online, the odd pairing of SG50 and the titillating romance roused Singaporeans to contribute their own creations.
The SG50-linked tweets climaxed on Monday, becoming the No. 1 hashtag in Singapore, according to Trendinalia, which tracks trending topics on social media.
The hashtag can be traced back to poet Alvin Pang who simply posted: "#SG50ShadesOfGrey go go" on his Facebook page on Feb 12.
It has generated dozens of suggestive posts in the comments thread since, referencing durians, the haze, Electronic Road Pricing and other "in-jokes" that only those living in Singapore would get.
He also posted tweets with the hashtag on Twitter, where it soon caught on.
"(#SG50ShadesOfGrey) reminds us of all the quirks of being Singaporean," Mr Pang told The Straits Times. "It makes us look around them and think about very Singaporean things."
It was a way of injecting Singapore's 50th anniversary celebrations with an "infectious sense of fun", and not done with malice, he added.
Who would expect so many Singaporeans to be budding writers of Twitter erotica?
