Fair point, but we see the sympathetic ‘hopeless romantic’ trope from the protagonist’s viewpoint far more often than you see characters being painted as obsessive stalkers or creeps, and rarely are stories told from the “the bad guy’s” point of view.
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“She knew what she was doing.”
~The Hero
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I’ve had male and female stalkers in my past. It’s especially creepy when, pre-internet, they know your home phone and where you work.
ETA: I’m surprised Untamed Heart didn’t make the cut.
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I took a writing class taught by the screenwriter of that movie when I was in college. It was apparently semi-autobiographical; unsurprisingly he was a real winner.
The class sucked, too.
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Yikes.
I’ve had whackadoos obsessed with my online persona; it was disturbing, to say the least.
Luckily my paranoia about not divulging personal info has served me well enough, and none of them ever found out anything pertinent about me.
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I rewatched one of my favorite childhood films, The Explorers, with my kids recently. Three kids are visited in their dreams by an advanced intergalactic alien race with partial instruction for building and interstellar vehicle. The genius inventor one (River Phoenix), builds it and they discover it can generate a spherical and impervious force field that they can use to travel in. The first thing they use it for is to let Ethan Hawke’s character peep through his crush’s bedroom window.
Experiencing art from my childhood with them has proved an invaluable source for discussions about consent, toxic masculinity and a whole lot of other crap that needs to stay in the 20th century.
Edited for clarity.
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This trope is so ingrained and is bloody dangerous.
Look at how much of the media is portraying the Santa Fe shooting: that one of the victims “humiliated” the shooter.
She told him “No.” And she had to do it repeatedly, because of messages like this.
I have said it before and will say it again. The stories we tell matter.
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Word.
We need to stop excusing this childish mentality:
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Yeah, but the intent for that was “creepy”. One can argue whether the execution failed (though it is one of only two songs that gave childhood-me nightmares), since so many people see it as romantic, but I give Sting credit for recognising how fucked up that behaviour is.
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Well, given all the wedding parties I attended where this was played as a romantic song alone I’d go with ‘yep, execution failed’.
But then again, I don’t live in an English-speaking country.
Which probably explains all the birthday parties I attended where Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday was played without anyone realizing what it is about.
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I’ve said it before;
It ain’t Sting’s fault if some of the Police’s “fans” completely failed to actually listen to and understand the lyrics of the song, as well as failing to note the stark and sinister tone of the accompanying video, which was creepy a/f, and in no way “romantic.”
I remember there was a tv interview once, where Sting mentioned various people coming up & telling him they played Every Breath You Take at their weddings, and he’d reply archly;
“Well, good luck with that, then.”
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That’s not The Police’s only stalker song, though. Everything you Do is Magic, Can’t Stand Losing You, Don’t Stand So Close to Me and J’aurais Toujour Faim de Toi come immediately to mind.
Sting had some…issues as a young man.
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True, though it is the most famous.
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From the start of movies (until about the late '60s) there was the repeated appearance of the Forced Kiss meme.
A romantically-inclined male overpowers his target female, and forcefully begins kissing her against her will. She struggles at first, then (from the placement of her hands or body), we detect resignation, compliance, and, finally, enthusiasm.
It must be very confusing growing up to this "No Means Yes" propaganda.
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Not just movies. I always thought “Every Breath You Take” by the Police was basically a stalking anthem.
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How about the TV series “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”? I’ve only watched about 2/3 of the way though the 2nd season, so I’m not sure where it has gone since then, but I’ve heard it’s gotten dark.
Or the movie “My Super Ex-Girlfriend”. Technically, she was a hero. But not the “good guy”, and it wasn’t from her perspective.
Your point is completely valid.
I’m certain there are 100s of examples of movies where men are doing the stalking vs. one example of a movie where a woman is doing the stalking. And if it’s a movie or show where the woman is doing the stalking, she’s portrayed as a crazy stalker, not a romantic, misunderstood woman searching for love. Ugh.
Our culture has – for as long as I’ve been alive, at least – said that women are to be pursued, and men are the pursuers. It’s about damn time that shifts, and I like that attention is being called to this.
I haven’t seen “About Time”, but your comment made me wonder if the video discusses “Groundhog Day”? I haven’t watched the video yet, but will later when I have a bit more time.
It’s a shame there isn’t a way to trap stalkers in an endless time loop until they finally figure out that they have to not be shits.
ETA Hah! I finally watched the video, and he started with “Groundhog Day”… Wow! Thank you all for not tearing into me for that.
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One of the most egregious examples of this is in Ratatouille. Not only because it the movie was made well after Hollywood should’ve been more sensitive to the issue of consent, but also because its target demographic included impressionable children.
“Look, she was about to mace him but he won her over with his amazing kissing skills! How romantic!”
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