Can ‘YOU’ Survive As Guilt Free TV With Violence Against Women Gripping The Public Conversation?
The third season of Netflix’s hit psychological thriller has officially dropped, ready for spooky season.
There’s been little conversation around the unfortunate timing of ‘YOU’ Season 3, which comes at a time where hearts and minds across the world are captured by a series of violent events against women.
Just last month, a carousel of headlines regarding missing influencer Gabby Petito were beamed on every US news channel, newspaper and social media platform. Petito was found dead on 19th September in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, with her fiance Brian Laundrie also missing and suspected of her murder.
Across the pond in the UK, an all too familiar story also dominating news-feeds, with the murder of Sabina Nessa, a primary school teacher walking through a London park, only 7 months after the case of Sarah Everard, who was murdered in a similar nature.
Against this backdrop, anyone familiar with the brutality of ‘YOU’ will be watching the new season with gritted teeth. The starry eyed lens at which the show romanticizes toxic relationships, stalking and misogyny is as troublesome as it is hypnotising, but it’s important to recognize that not everyone, but some, will accessorize these issues as an aesthetic.
It’s clear from the hype on social media that a substantial segment of the audience is enthusiastically forgiving of the tormenting and torture of people, because Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) is so devilishly attractive. Equally, there are critics who find it problematic that some fans could even look past Joe’s crimes solely because of his attractiveness, which is an argument, I think, that doesn’t want to admit that this is TV we’re talking about, there has to be a commercial appeal.
It can’t be left unsaid that within its commercial appeal and casting, there is an obvious beauty bias. In fact, Badgley regularly makes it a point that ‘YOU’ is about “how far are we willing to go to forgive an evil white man”. Badgley also often highlights the “less than elevated” social media interactions he’s had with fans begging him to put them in a glass box, amongst other wild things.
He openly hates Joe, and there’s a sense that he feels guilty for playing such a villain, which explains why he uses his celebrity to turn attention to causes and organizations such as the Tahirih Justice Centre, a non profit for immigrants fleeing gender based violence. Badgley is a huge asset to ‘YOU’ in this respect, and to the audience who may not have considered that for some people, violence is not a fiction, but a reality.
Entertainment isn’t the only industry that beauty bias is baked into. The mainstream media has played a primary role in enabling the bias and therefore creating the amount of coverage surrounding Gabby Petito’s case, which has been criticised and reignited the debate around “missing white woman syndrome”, a term coined by the late journalist Gwen Ifill to describe the media frenzy that occurs when a white, young and attractive woman goes missing. ‘YOU’ is at its best when it explores new cultural phenomenons, and todays debate around violence against women provides plenty of avenues for ‘YOU’ to pursue.
At its worst, it often relies too heavily on the cheap thrills of toxicity and murder to breed it’s viral content and response, rather than exploring every theme with the most intellectual maturity. Still, most of its social commentary is subtly weaved throughout the show, whether it’s Joe’s twisted solidarity with #MeToo or the pervasive ways social media can be used to facilitate stalking.
The ball is entirely in the audience’s court on whether or not they want to analyse the themes at face value, or at a deeper level. Even so, shows like ‘YOU’ need to exist and explore trivial territory in order to create dialogues about what is and isn’t problematic for producers to create and viewers to watch as entertainment in 2021, and ‘YOU’ certainly seeks to balance the two healthily.
