TAINTED LOVE The Troubling Messages of Big-screen Romance

The year 2017 saw women’s rights gain unprecedented attention in certain areas, most notably with the #MeToo campaign, which dominated headlines and social-media feeds in the wake of dozens of allegations of sexual assault being made against heavyweight Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Women around the world told their stories of abuse at the hands of men, and alleged perpetrators were outed in Hollywood and beyond. Not only that, but there were real consequences for these alleged abusers, particularly in Hollywood, which saw powerful men lose their jobs, their roles and their careers. The so-called Weinstein effect shows no signs of slowing in 2018. The first of January saw the founding of Time’s Up, a movement against sexual harassment that is supported and funded by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. The movement successfully urged (almost) all women attending the Golden Globes ceremony to raise awareness by wearing black on the red carpet, and prompted many men to wear ‘Time’s Up’ pins.

The overwhelming message to emerge from this movement is that Hollywood has long been a man’s world. As Maureen Dowd writes in The New York Times, ‘We’re talking about a world that is just as cutthroat, amoral, vindictive and misogynistic as any Quentin Tarantino hellscape. We’re talking about Hollywood’. This, combined with the fact that men still write, direct and produce a vast proportion of the content we see at cinemas, must lead us to ask a vital question: can we expect Hollywood to create stories that speak to, and for, women and girls? If Hollywood is home to a culture of misogyny in which abuse is rife, can we really expect its products to emerge unscathed?

RELATIONSHIP MODELS

Relationship experts and psychologists stress the importance of young people having healthy relationship models. If they can see healthy relationships, they are more likely to enter and maintain such relationships themselves. A recent study has also highlighted the need for parents to actively educate their children about healthy relationships, beyond just modelling them. Crucially, the study finds that it’s not happening, and the authors point out that, in lieu of this education, popular culture is left to fill in the gaps. This is an issue, they write, because many forms of entertainment and media […] spawn all kinds of misconceptions and reinforce deeply ingrained cultural myths about romantic love: that love, for example, is an intoxication or an obsessive attraction; that ‘real love’ is clear, unmistakable, and undeniable; that love happens suddenly and is forever, which means