Passion killer: netflix's you and the dangerous romanticisation of stalking

Kat Brown 16 January 2019 3:32pm GMT Ah, romance. The thrill of chemistry. The frisson of a lingering eye-meet. The quickening heart when you worry your beloved might find all the personal

belongings you’ve stolen by breaking into her apartment. Wait, what? You is a new Netflix drama series centred around Joe (Gossip Girl actor Penn Badgley), an attractive bookshop assistant

who becomes obsessed with a customer named Beck (Elizabeth Lail). By stalking, manipulation, and murder, he configures events so that he becomes part of her life and, eventually, her

boyfriend. At no point does Joe see anything wrong with what he is doing, and, worryingly, nor do some of You’s younger female viewers who have been declaring their support for Joe online

including, worryingly, the 14-year-old Stranger Things actress Millie Bobby Brown. In an Instagram Story (a format which disappears after 24 hours and so is deemed less concrete that a post

on a user’s main “grid”), Brown said that Joe’s “not creepy, he's in love with her and it’s okay”. “By the way, I know everybody is gonna say ‘Ahhh, he's a stalker, why would you

support that?!’” she said. “But like, he’s in love with her... just watch the show and don’t judge me on my opinion.”  We may not judge Brown, who at 14 is still a child, but we can

certainly judge the Hollywood mainstream that has made her think this way.  The fact is that Brown’s “opinion” is something which filters down to impressionable young romantics through

culture. From Groundhog Day to Fifty Shades, Wedding Crashers or Twilight, the trope of a man – often awkward, straight and white – “stalking for love” is a long-running, and worryingly

acceptable, trope. And then of course, there is Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually, a confection so sickly and bad for you that he may be as well be the “sad stalker” equivalent of candy floss.

Note for future lovers: if you are in love with your best friend’s teenage fiancé, do not tell her. And certainly do not tell her to say it’s carol singers and then kiss her like a terrible

creep.  Jonathan McIntosh’s Pop Culture Detectives series has an excellent video analysing its prevalence, pointing out that, “while it may be nice to imagine sweeping your crush off their

feet, the truth is that much of the behaviour we seeing these movies could land you in jail. In the real world, stalking isn’t romantic, it’s a crime.” You, based on the best-selling book by

 Caroline Kepnes, is clear about what it takes for your average “Joe" to fulfil his beloved’s every wish. He stalks Beck. He saves her life when she falls onto the subway tracks while

drunk, because he is following her around New York – and then he steals her phone. Still logged into her Cloud account, Joe uses Beck’s phone to monitor her every communication and thought,

so that he can become her friend and, eventually, the boyfriend of her dreams. (At least one real-life stalker appears to have been taking tips from Joe.) “Romantic gestures are not always

troubling,” says McIntosh. “If two people are already in a relationship, or if their feelings have been openly communicated, then it can be really sweet.” However, Joe and Beck are not in a

relationship, and their romance is predicated on Joe’s dogged insistence that her life would be massively improved were he to play a part in it. “Stalking is not ‘for love’. It arises as

part of a sense of entitlement about controlling another person,” says Ammanda Major, Head of Clinical Practice for the relationship charity Relate. She tells me that it is also one of the

key factors in women who have been killed by an ex-partner, or by a partner. Women are taught to aspire to a partner who, if not anticipate their every desire, will at least understand what

makes them tick. As you get older, you realise that this usually goes hand-in-hand with being a considerate human. When you are in your teens or 20s, and have yet to completely understand

who you are, the idea of having a partner who worships you can feel reassuring. “Very often, the initial phases of extreme jealousy and a sense of entitlement, which can be where stalking

comes from, are misinterpreted as, ‘Oh, wanting to know where I am all the time is how he shows he loves me – so it’s OK really’,” says Major. “For people who are starved of love, or people

who’ve been brought up without much love and caring, and who deep down think they aren’t worth having a respectful loving relationship, those initial behaviours can understandably be very,

very alluring. But essentially, it can happen to anyone.” > @PennBadgley kidnap me pls > — Malika (@MalikaPlays) January 9, 2019 However, pop culture doesn’t always tell us what

happens when this goes too far. In a comedy or romance, it’s likely that the charming if incompetent stalker will end up with the girl, even if she has spent most of the film being irritated

and unnerved. It’s only if the film is marked as a thriller or a drama that she will not. Penn Badgley has been pushing back on social media against the people tweeting him to say how sexy

and romantic they find Joe (on Badgley’s actions, one viewer quipped, “with great hotness comes great responsibility”). One such meme shows a picture of Badgley in character captioned, “tell

me you wouldn’t want to be stalked and murdered by this man?” “The amount of people romanticising Penn Badgley’s character in You scares me,” one viewer tweeted.  “Ditto,” Badgley tweeted

in reply. “It will be all the motivation I need for season two.”  The message presented by Badgley, and by You to an extent, is clear. Being honest is how to earn a good relationship – not

by pursuing the person you want to date. “It is not love, because love is about a respectful open transparent communication between people who care for each other,” says Ammanda Major.

“Stalking has no place in that. The emotional and psychological impact of being stalked is usually devastating, and sometimes fatal. If you think this is happening to you, tell someone, and

get help fast.”