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The Stalker as Romantic Hero
A little over twenty years ago, an independent, today
little cited American movie about the rock music scene popped up at a
small-scale screening event in Melbourne: Slaves to the Underground (1996) directed by Kristine Peterson. A minor film, but
containing one remarkable scene in which a character’s raging monologue
expressed a new, politicised awareness about the supposedly “innocent” genre of
romantic comedy:
The Graduate [1967] is my mother’s favourite movie. And the other night it occurred
to me that it's actually a movie about a stalker. I mean, here’s this guy; he’s
obsessed with this girl and, even though she tells him to go away and her
parents tell him to go away, he keeps after her, follows her around, and then
trashes her wedding. The Dustin Hoffman character is actually a selfish,
irresponsible proto-slacker who, at the end of the film, takes this poor girl
hostage. It’s your basic romantic slacker/stalker film. And this was the movie
that defined a generation – my parents’ generation.
The charmingly nutty, fixated guy who loves the woman
of his dreams so much that he takes apart her ordinary, routine life: that’s
been, more or less, a standard plot in many a romantic comedy, ranging from the
1930s to John Cassavetes’ Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) and Garry Marshall’s Frankie
and Johnny (1991). But it only takes a small shove, as the heroine of Slaves to the Underground suggested, for
this persistent suitor to morph into a stalker – or far worse. That’s the premise of You, which began airing in September 2018, had its second season in December 2019, and continued in October 2021].
Both seasons, developed by Greg Berlanti and Sera
Gamble, take off from material in novels by Caroline Kepnes, You (2014) and Hidden Bodies (2016). For Joe (Penn Badgley), working at the
counter of his quaint New York bookstore, it’s love at first sight when he
spots Beck (Elizabeth Lail). A master of every form of personal surveillance
bequeathed to us by social media, Joe not only worms his way into each corner
of Beck’s life, but also endeavours to “manage” all other influences and
contacts in her daily rounds. And then there’s the looming enigma of whatever
happened to Joe’s previous flame, Candace (Ambyr Childers), not to mention the
malign influence, in his youth, of father-figure Mr Mooney (Mark Blum) …
At least since the first season of Dexter in 2006, serial television has
been in love with these ambiguous heroes who commit atrocious, heinous acts,
while seducing us (and everybody around them) with their charisma, wit and
flair. As in the very-low-budget, indie classic David Holzman's Diary (1968) by Jim McBride – a very prescient dramatisation of the
intimate connection between romantic fantasy and outright stalking – Joe’s
obsessive tendency gradually turns from adoration to suspicion: what is Beck
hiding, what’s her “secret self”?
You takes not only its script cues
from the romantic comedy genre, but also a certain screwball rhythm and style –
updated for the age of text messaging (superimposed on whatever scene is
playing through) and related Internet distractions. This ultra-fast pace gives
a hallucinatory edge to almost everything going on – and the general air of
unrealism helps us skip over the many improbabilities of the script (such as
how Joe can stare at – as well as perfectly hear – virtually anybody anywhere
in public, without ever being caught). It also puts us in the head of Joe, even
in the middle of normal conversational scenes – his voice-over musings provide,
hands down, the best and wickedest bon
mots of the series (such as: “Beck and a bottle of booze. What could go
wrong?”).
Above all, the slick patter and jazzy montage of You manage to frequently lull us into a
state of temporary amnesia as viewers, until we are forcibly brought up short: in-between
all these cute scenes of love-matching and making-up, some nasty, violent
things are actually going on. A sub-plot involving Joe’s apartment-block neighbours
adds further complications and possibilities.
You puts its central premise through a few different gear
shifts – and usually just at the point when you feel it is about to become
stale and repetitive. A key moment in Joe’s romantic conquest of Beck reveals
him to be not exactly at peak performance in the bedroom. In the fourth episode,
the narrating voice-over suddenly switches over to Beck for twenty minutes –
giving us an entirely different perspective on her propensity for keeping
secrets. And Beck’s various friends and associates keep constellating into
different patterns of response in relation to Joe, variously admiring and
jealous.
In the second season (now solely a Netflix venture), the action shifts to Los Angeles – no doubt giving Joe a new set of colourful passers-by to insult in his nimble mind, as well as a new woman (Victoria Pedretti as chef Love Quinn) to fixate upon. Both Badgley and Pedretti return for season 3.
Another nimble mind, the French philosopher Gilles
Deleuze, once chummily confided to the students in a film-school seminar: “If
you get trapped in the dream of the Other” – i.e., caught inside somebody’s
fantasy-projection – “then you’re screwed”. It’s just a pity for Beck that she
takes so long to start wondering, in a similar vein, whether Prince Charming and
Bluebeard may not be exactly the same guy.
© Adrian Martin February 2019 |
