Watch this epic takedown of movie plots featuring abduction as romance

So, in case I end up getting sent back in time to save a woman from a murderous cyborg, exactly how should I go about it? I really only had the one role model for that scenario.

It’s interesting that Misery was brought up, because it exemplifies the reaction to the kidnap trope with the genders reversed. When a guy kidnaps a woman it’s played for romance and laughs, when a woman kidnaps a man it’s because she’s a psycho bitch who’s going to smash his ankles unless he gives her the love she wants.

If you’re unsure whether you’re watching a psychological horror flick or a rom-com, try inverting the genders and see how it plays.

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The irony is real.

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Watching this, I was reminded of this standup bit from Eugene Mirman:

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It always turns bad when the kidnapper falls in love with what’s on the outside.

This reminds me of one of the Revenge of the Nerds movies. Maybe the first one… it features the main character essentially raping someone and the lady is cool with it somehow. God i hate those movies after i rewatched them.

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Do you have any evidence or reason to believe that Jonathan McIntosh’s analyses are motivated by signaling rather than sincerely held principle? If someone were “trying to be such and such” it strongly implies their goal is in-group signaling, and that any principles demonstrated are merely means which would be abandoned if they ceased to serve an end. Since you’ve indicated McIntosh’s objective is to be progressive, I’m curious as to your reason for believing that. It seems borderline ad hominem.

I concur with the rest of your critique, though I still think it’s an excellent video despite its flaws.

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They could even keep it as being Pratt’s fault and a result of his pining for JLo by having him creep on her and accidentally damaging her pod.

I think we may have a misunderstanding here - I’m not calling the guy out for ‘signaling’, just that his level of discourse is about the upper limit for what passes for meaningful discussion in media critic circles, at least as it pertains to women’s roles re: domestic-violence-adjacent concepts.

My overall take is that it takes one harmful media portrayal (okay to treat women as victim-ish as long as you’re a strong, white, cis male that’s got a pretty okay reason for doing it, or at least you’re not as bad as the real antagonists, because it’s for her own good) and replaces it with a different potentially harmful one (okay to treat women as victim-ish as long as you’re a liberal, enlightened, critic with a pretty okay reason for doing it, or at least you’re not as bad as the real offenders out there, because it’s for her own good).

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That Gif just goes with everything!

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Yes, I had misunderstood you. Thank you for clarifying.

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Ayyy, happy cake day!

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Merci. :tada:

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Saw a video about how that movie would have worked much better if it had been from the Jennifer Lawrence’s perspective, since the reveal would have been a lot more devastating – you could have then gone with a long-flash back. With Chris Pratt obsessing over it for the first half of the movie, you get why he did it but it’s skeevie.

Here it is:

I still wonder how much cocaine she had before agreeing to wear that outfit.

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Considering the times, probably a lot.

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The way Carrie Fisher told the story they showed her a picture of the gold bikini to scare her into going to a Hollywood Fat Camp before shooting started.

When Luke shows up in Jabba’s palace Leia doesn’t even say a word of acknowledgement. Fisher claimed that’s because she was concentrating on holding her breath while sucking in her gut.

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Are you sure you watched the right video? The one I watched was about the abduction of women in film, the portrayal of men who abduct women in film, and how the women who are abducted in these films commonly fall in love with their captor.

Your comment appears to be about something completely different from the focus of the video, the dynamics of abusive relationships in real life. Though he briefly touches upon this, it is not really what the video is about.

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Carrie Fisher was a master of telling wild Hollywood anecdotes!

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As long as we can discuss these things, keep wisening up, and laugh when we look back at the John Wayne characters I don’t see too much of a problem here.

What worries me about this video is all the conflation between story tropes and real life. A post online (I forget where exactly) addressed the demonization of problematic relationships in fiction this way:

…Fictional stories can also serve as a safe, consequence-free zone to explore interesting dynamics that are not always black and white or ideal. Most forms of fiction will dive into dark realms because it offers exploration into human nature that can’t be grasped or condoned in reality. That does not mean that the abuse that takes place is excused or modeled in real life but, ultimately, fiction isn’t there to be a role model or to teach people’s kid’s how to live.

I’ll withhold judgement on this kind of storytelling until I see evidence that it’s having a reasonable and measurable effect on people in the real world. Until then I’m putting these arguments against problematic relationships in fiction in the trash along with “having gay characters on screen is going to make people gay”.