A take-down of movies about nice guys who pester women

Stalk­ing is a pat­tern of fix­at­ed and obses­sive behav­iour which is repeat­ed, per­sis­tent and intru­sive. This unwant­ed atten­tion can involve some­thing as seem­ing­ly innocu­ous as reg­u­lar­ly send­ing flow­ers or gifts, to mak­ing unwant­ed or mali­cious com­mu­ni­ca­tions. It can esca­late to dam­ag­ing prop­er­ty and even assault. The para­me­ters of this can be vague, but if the behav­iour is per­sis­tent and clear­ly unwant­ed, caus­ing fear, dis­tress or anx­i­ety, then it is stalk­ing and no one should have to live with it. That is, unless you trust what you see in roman­tic come­dies, in which case, not only should you live with it but you should find this all pos­i­tive­ly delightful.

For decades main­stream films have been fram­ing stalk­ing as a quaint love rit­u­al. Though one would expect this more in clas­sic-era cin­e­ma, it actu­al­ly remains preva­lent in mod­ern roman­tic films as well. Obses­sive, unhealthy and sin­is­ter behav­iour is ren­dered as noble, whim­si­cal devo­tion. We are all aware of how pornog­ra­phy can skew our per­cep­tion of sex, but stud­ies have also shown that expo­sure to rom-coms that fea­ture men engag­ing in stalk­er-like behav­iour make women more like­ly to tol­er­ate obses­sive­ness from prospec­tive roman­tic part­ners. Here are some of the most insid­i­ous tropes of stalk­ing as romance.

What could be more roman­tic than love at first sight? That fabled moment when your eyes meet and you imme­di­ate­ly know that you are meant to be togeth­er. When Gene Kel­ly spots Leslie Caron in a bar in An Amer­i­can in Paris he is instant­ly smit­ten and will stop at noth­ing to win her over despite her repeat­ed­ly beg­ging him to leave her alone. Woody Allen, nev­er one to shy away from a dis­turb­ing pow­er dynam­ic, steals, bribes and black­mails to track down the porn star who is his adopt­ed son’s bio­log­i­cal moth­er in Mighty Aphrodite.

Allen then dou­bles down to pick apart and reassem­ble this seem­ing­ly con­tent woman’s life to resem­ble one he deems suit­able. Worst of all is Andrew Lincoln’s char­ac­ter in Richard Cur­tis’ sop­py port­man­teau, Love, Actu­al­ly, who is so con­sumed by his obses­sion with his friend’s wife that he edits togeth­er long videos of close ups of her face. When he then shows up at her home in the mid­dle of the night to silent­ly declare his ter­ri­fy­ing devo­tion to her – a woman with whom he has nev­er had a full con­ver­sa­tion – she is inex­plic­a­bly delighted.

Refus­ing to take no for an answer is one of the more sub­tle abus­es com­mon­ly fed to us as roman­tic. In 10 Things I Hate About You, Patrick (Heath Ledger) refus­es to admit defeat when pur­su­ing Julia Stiles and tries to con­vince her she is crazy when she dares to ques­tions his dubi­ous motives. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Cameron (Joseph Gor­don-Levitt) sets his sights on Bian­ca (Lar­isa Oleynik) and, when she doesn’t rec­i­p­ro­cate his feel­ings, he screams at her about how self­ish she is in his car until she relents.

Ten years lat­er in (500) Days of Sum­mer Gor­don Levitt’s Tom refused to accept that Zooey Deschanel’s Sum­mer does not want to be in a seri­ous rela­tion­ship with him despite her hold­ing firm to this from the very beginning.

Stub­born­ly refus­ing to accept that a rela­tion­ship is over is often framed as being symp­to­matic of a cou­ple being ​“meant to be” rather than an indi­ca­tion that one of the pair is deeply dis­turbed. The Note­book swoons over Ryan Gosling send­ing his ex-girl­friend let­ters for 365 days in a row that go unan­swered, and in the years that fol­low, makes no friends and decides that the sin­gle thing he should do with his life is restore a house ​“for her”.

John Cusack’s most famous roles in Say Any­thing and High Fideli­ty both involve his refusal to stay bro­ken up with, and his propen­si­ty for show­ing up unan­nounced, at ex-girl­friends’ homes. In both cas­es they stay stead­fast in their com­mit­ment to stay away from him until trag­ic pater­nal cir­cum­stances leave them vul­ner­a­ble to his charms.

One of the more ill-con­sid­ered recent exam­ples of this was in auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal rom-com The Big Sick. In real life Kumail Nan­jiani and Emi­ly Gor­don were in a com­mit­ted rela­tion­ship when she fell into a coma, but the film has them break up just before­hand and has her ask him to stay away from her. His con­stant pres­ence dur­ing her coma as an unwant­ed ex-boyfriend is a very dif­fer­ent propo­si­tion to a beloved part­ner stay­ing by your side.

It’s dispir­it­ing that, in 2012, spy­ing on your ex was con­sid­ered an accept­able use of super pow­ers, but this seems to be the mes­sage of The Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man. Spi­der-Man (Andrew Garfield) stalks Emma Stone’s Gwen Sta­cy. He swings from sky­scraper to sky­scraper to keep a fas­tid­i­ous eye on her. Inef­fec­tu­al ​’80s rom coms such as The Rachel Papers, St Elmo’s Fire and Can’t Buy Me Love employ this spy­ing behav­iour to indi­cate to the audi­ence that their male pro­tag­o­nists are vul­ner­a­ble love-sick pup­py dogs with­out any appre­ci­a­tion of the dis­turb­ing dynam­ic it creates.

Fifty Shades of Grey seems par­tic­u­lar­ly enam­oured of spy­ing as an expres­sion of devo­tion, with thin­ly drawn bil­lion­aire Chris­t­ian Grey using his con­sid­er­able means to show up unin­vit­ed at his target’s work, social events and home.

This prac­tice nor­mal­ly takes the form of a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor like in There’s Some­thing About Mary where a hap­less Ted (Ben Stiller) is des­per­ate to track down his exceed­ing­ly stalk­a­ble teenage sweet­heart, Mary (Cameron Diaz). In Bil­ly Wilder’s 1957 film, Love In The After­noon, Gary Cooper’s play­boy Frank hires the father of Audrey Hepburn’s Ari­ane to look into her sex­u­al his­to­ry to decide whether or not she is a suit­able can­di­date for a fling. As trou­bling as this may be it is, at least, framed as being trou­bling behav­iour in those films; albeit a jus­ti­fi­able means to a roman­tic end.

The 2005 Will Smith vehi­cle Hitch, mean­while, frames this as a harm­less and use­ful tool when it comes to win­ning over a roman­tic tar­get. Kevin James’ char­ac­ter hires Smith’s Hitch to put togeth­er a detailed strat­e­gy on how to seduce a woman who he is com­plete­ly in love with despite hav­ing only met her in pass­ing. Hon­ourable men­tion in this cat­e­go­ry also to the film 27 Dress­es in which James Mars­den essen­tial­ly hires him­self to inves­ti­gate and stalk Kather­ine Heigl.

This is often the sec­ond step of the jour­ney of the ​“noble stalk­er”. Films men­tioned else­where – An Amer­i­can in Paris, Can’t Buy Me Love, The Rachel Papers, There’s Some­thing About Mary, High Fideli­ty, The Note­book and 27 Dress­es – all fea­ture a sec­ond act devot­ed to break­ing up an exist­ing rela­tion­ship so our love sick obses­sive can get the girl. In real­i­ty, this is one of the most preva­lent behav­iours of stalk­ers: believ­ing that if they can only free up the object of their affec­tion they will fall straight into their arms.

A film that dances around this mis­guid­ed belief is 2013’s What If. Daniel Rad­cliffe plays a lovelorn fop obsessed with Zoe Kazan’s char­ac­ter, with whom he repeat­ed­ly assures that he is hap­py to be just friends. In a moment of self reflec­tion the film then has his best friend tell him how fruit­less a pur­suit this is, as she has a long term boyfriend with whom she is very hap­py. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the film then aban­dons the idea of women being capa­ble of mak­ing these deci­sions for them­selves and sends Rad­cliffe scur­ry­ing after her when she vis­its her boyfriend in Dublin.

The sanc­ti­ty of the work­place is often vio­lat­ed by stalk­ers who bom­bard their tar­gets with unwant­ed atten­tion in a place they have no choice but to be. This tech­nique is used with mani­a­cal rel­ish by Jason Schwartzman’s overzeal­ous school­boy and Bill Murray’s lack­adaisi­cal indus­tri­al­ist in Wes Anderson’s Rush­more. They both pur­sue vul­ner­a­ble wid­ow Miss Cross (Olivia Williams) at the school where she teach­es with lit­tle con­cern for the poten­tial pro­fes­sion­al ram­i­fi­ca­tions for her.

Crazy, Stu­pid, Love takes a slight­ly dif­fer­ent approach by hav­ing a nan­ny stalked by the child in her care. Despite her explain­ing how inap­pro­pri­ate this behav­iour is, he esca­lates his actions by pub­licly declar­ing his love, forc­ing her to leave her job. The film soft­ens this blow by hav­ing her tem­porar­i­ly soft­en her resolve and, hor­rif­i­cal­ly, send nude pho­tos to a child.

In Scott Pil­grim vs the World, mere­ly hav­ing sex­u­al harass­ment occur between two adults is far less dis­turb­ing in com­par­i­son. Edgar Wright’s 2010 film sees Michael Cera’s Scott fall instant­ly in love with deliv­ery girl Mary Eliz­a­beth Win­stead. She repeat­ed­ly rejects him but rather than respect­ing her wish­es he orders pack­ages to force her to his home where she reluc­tant­ly agrees to see him voluntarily.

There is a sub-genre of films where super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ties are used to stalk and manip­u­late an intend­ed love match. Ground­hog Day, The Time Trav­ellers Wife, Last Christ­mas and About Time all involve exploita­tive behav­iour that is tan­ta­mount to groom­ing. The unfor­tu­nate objects of affec­tion have no agency and can not escape the rela­tion­ships no mat­ter how hard they try. It is every stalker’s fantasy.