Stop Redeeming the Psycho Stalker - The Problem with Netflix's YOU

this mug is a total lie not even an aunt or the best but I can be your BAE if you subscribe to the channel that's not true at all let's not encourage that anyways let's get away from that and into the video so today we're talking about you and I don't mean you the person I mean the hit Netflix series based on the book you obviously before we get too far into this spoilers there's definitely spoilers in this video if you haven't watched you if you're not done you season two I'm gonna tell you exactly when not to watch past and you season two but just me I don't know finish watching the show and then come back if you care so you was a massive success for Netflix the bin jabal stalker show fit perfectly with their release method and the show completely took off this season even spurned a wave of memes based on this characters inner monologues even though I'm about to talk about a lot of the problems that I have with the show and how certain things are portrayed I still really like it it's super easy to watch it keeps you engaged and it's nowheres near the worst content that Netflix has on its platform so the show itself centers around Joe and absolutely obsessive psycho stalker and his delusional internal ramblings that were subjected to as he violently stalks women and masturbates while watching them through their windows because contrary to popular belief romance is not in fact dead so the show is actually based on a book that I stumbled upon during one of my many trips to the bookstore because I'm cultured like that and I thought it seemed pretty interesting a story in the perspective of a stalker endorsed by Stephen King neato and honestly it was pretty good but the most part I thought I did a great job kind of exemplifying how delusional Joe is and calling out how traditionally a lot of his behavior is super romanticized in other media and how on a significantly lower scale a lot of us might relate to some of the stuff he does not all of it he's basically all of these bad habits put into one person and then blown up so yeah that was the book and then when the show hit Netflix I obviously watched it and honestly like I mentioned for I really liked it but I did find a lot of issues with it issues that weren't really present in the book but very present in the show now obviously some of this just comes down to the fact that like you have to adapt things in a different way so that they work for television a lot of these changes of things that didn't need to be done and we'll get into some of those so at the show and I would say more so the book are trying to achieve with Joe is kind of they can like the dark reality of what a lot of rom-coms and romance films and romance novels put forward to their audience that everyone just kind of immediately takes at face value and they think wow imagine having someone like that and I think a great example here would be Edward Cullen from the Twilight series so this guy is totally obsessed with Bella and it's honestly at a violent level because when we're introduced to him as a character he literally can't restrain himself near her because he wants her blood so badly and then he ultimately turns that you know murderous feeling into love literally becoming the personification of I love you so much I want to kill you and I'm literally addicted to you your scent it's like a drug to me like my own personal brand of heroin why did you hate me so much when we met I did only for making me want you so badly even without all that Edward is constantly following Bella around reading people around her his mind's breaking into her bedroom to watch her sleep a great burn pulled this and it was weird and creepy and the girl was creeped out but in Twilight it's romantic because Edward is just so cute but in reality it would be terrifying if you knew that someone was watching you sleep that you had not let in to your home and again people just ignore how terrifying that would be in real life because oh my god Edward so cute and he doesn't like anybody but he took special interest in me and that makes me feel so special and he's a vampire so it's so cool and I know I'm ragging on Twilight here but y'all know I love but it's not just Twilight obviously that uses this kind of stuff I'm just using that as like a prime example of something that just kind of like blew up you you also see it with what was originally Twilight fan fiction turned into some weird and healthy [ __ ] Fifty Shades of Grey except that movie does a bunch of other weird stuff to try to make it seem normal that Christians acting that way also if you guys want a reacts to Fifty Shades let me know because I'm down for that but Jo's kind of the counter there that kind of behavior we realized it's weird that he follows these girls around we realize it's weird that he's breaking into their homes stealing their phones going through their personal records we know it's toxic and unhealthy behavior but in fiction we're usually so quick to just dismiss a lot of this kind of behavior if it's shown to us and given to us through a romantic lens even if it's just I he met well kinda way and this shows kind of trying to subvert that by putting us in Joe's position and hearing him go through his insane rambling but they kind of handle it weird at some points so Joe is basically an amalgamation of all of these different romanticized characters who are actually super unhealthy but people still kind of just give a pass for and then add in like the entire idea that like oh if you work hard enough you're gonna get the girl because you deserve her and that no matter what you do as long as your intentions are pure and it's just for their benefit it's okay that you did all of these crazy insane toxic things and we see this in the show and the book he genuinely believes he's operating as a true romantic he'll even call out other people's behavior that's similar to his but nowhere near his bed totally devoid of the self-awareness that he's the biggest weirdo of them all which is something that you also see in a lot of real people who pull these kinds of stunts obviously to a lesser level a lot of lack of self-awareness and the actors and the showrunners acknowledge that intent and they'll tell you that that's pretty much the intent of the character what the show is trying to do what the book was trying to do but the show can really derail that idea a lot of the times just by presenting us with situations where it seems like Joe kind of has a moral code and a desire to protect those that can't protect themselves and he's just oh he's just ends up in all these horrible situations it's terrible but when reality everyone needs to be protected from him like this isn't supposed to be Dexter we're a serial killer is guided and curated into only killing other killers therefore becoming an antihero that we can root for while still acknowledging that his behaviors not good Joe is the bad guy the Dexter's waiting for now obviously like I mentioned earlier everybody can be guilty of little things people can get obsessed with girls and guys that they see walking by them in school or at the mall or at work or anything like that even if you don't really know who they are and you start making these like what-if scenarios like what if you said hi to them what if you guys went out and got coffee what if what if maybe you find their Facebook maybe you find their Instagram maybe you do go try to talk to them to figure out if you guys have anything in common and obviously there's a lot of people in relationships that go through their significant others phones be they don't trust them or they have their own insecurities and I like to think that these are a lot of like unhealthy behaviors that the older you get you just kind of start growing out of or you get more secure in yourself so you're more secure in your relationships these are all things that people can be guilty about lower levels that Joe reflects personifies and enhances and even when they get so much of that right they have these slip-ups that just make him likable and again I get that he has to be likable to a degree but not in the way that they're trying to do it because on top of all the crazy stalker stuff and the stealing the phones and the breaking into houses which I'm gonna call the low tier Joe behavior he also murders people and while some of them might be [ __ ] they certainly don't deserve to die and now before anybody says although and you know Benjy killed someone too so it wasn't really that bad he just took out another killer first of all no that doesn't make it okay because he didn't kill Benjy because Benjy had killed somebody else he killed Benjy because he didn't know what to do with Benjy and then secondly that is something that the show added in the books Benjy didn't kill anyone he just got kidnapped by Joe and while again he was a [ __ ] he did not deserve to die and they do the same thing with peach in the book he just flat-out kills her to get her out of the way and then in the show it switches that to a showdown between the two of them where Joe kind of has the benefit of self-defense both of these are really weird changes that make Joe seem more like a victim of circumstance and necessity for self-preservation than the reality of the matter that he's just insane so as much as they're trying to express the fact that he's like the amalgamation of all these really unhealthy ideologies and tropes and romantic things that we see in media there's so much they put in the show that counters that and one of the things the show was added that was not in the books that perfectly captures what I'm trying to say here is the adding of these damn kids so season one added a character named Paco who was a boy who lived in the same apartment complex as Joe whose mom was being beat by her boyfriend so Paco's frequently turning to Joe for guidance Joe lends him books and tries to like offer him like safe places to hide out when his mom's getting beat on and the boyfriend gets super pissed at Joe anytime he gets involved and you see this is like a macho thing where this is an abusive [ __ ] that obviously we don't like either but one of his main issues with Joe is that he can tell he's a weirdo and maybe it's just because he's around and it's like a macho thing but there's a really good chance that he can just tell the Joe is a [ __ ] creep because he is Joe is 100 percent a dangerous weirdo as I one violent [ __ ] can sense out the other violent [ __ ] Joe is not somebody that we should be sympathizing with or rooting for about here we are and I get that they add characters like this just kind of flesh out Joe's life to make it seem more complex but that was kind of one of the central points of the book and the idea of Joe as a whole he makes these women he's obsessed with his life and they become his only focus again I'll link back to Edward who literally makes his life about Bella even says that out loud to her belly bar my life now which is just super and healthy behavior but again just really encapsulates how teenagers talk to each other but either way this is supposed to be the reality of that kind of behavior put into a person he doesn't have time to help the neighbor boy whose mom's being beat on isn't give a [ __ ] he has a girl to stalk and manipulate into loving him in the book does a really good job showing how these obsessions take over literally everything in his life it hits a moment where it actually acknowledges how astronomically dirty his apartment is when that comes by and it's not something that's ever been mentioned before and suddenly he it's just he's pointing out everything and it's the most disgusting description because he's literally let everything else in his life fall apart - just keep pursuing his obsession with Beck to follow Beck around to make sure he knows what she's doing every minute of the day if he's not with her and this all makes sense because again he's not well dude kept a used tampon a box do you really think he's gonna take the time to care about the kid down the hall and adding in a character like this for Joe to protect blurs that line with the viewer giving Joe something resembling a moral code which lets people think he might not actually be as bad as he in fact is he's a good guy and he's gonna protect the kid teach him how to grow up and be a good person amazed and again this is repeated in the second season when they give Delilah a kid sister who's just running around LA at the tender age of 15 and in this season and amps it up even more Joe literally has like this internal debate with himself as to whether or not it's his duty to protect her as if that's something that he would really struggle with who protecting her no no she is not my problem no he's an obsessive violent stalker he don't give a [ __ ] you're not the dark hero you have a guy from that secret obsession movie would probably get along really well and I can't tell if this self-awareness of him trying to be better in the second season makes things better or worse I really think he's supposed to maintain this total delusion that he's just the victim of circumstance and if people just behaved the way he expected them to bad things wouldn't have to happen to them at his hands so I feel like season two really deviates away from what the showrunner said they were trying to accomplish with his character on a few different levels some that I've mentioned for one they gave him an even more layer troubled upbringing in addition to the daddy issues we already knew about they give him some mommy issues now too he has someone contained for ages in his cage and then lets him go and the guys just like oh yeah no hard feeling man I'm sure your you're a great guy I'm just gonna go keep living my life and like we could be pals now like no if you didn't want to have the guy go to the cops that's one thing but having the buddy-buddy and offer up advice later on Stockholm Syndrome much it's one thing for the character who's delusional to have his own delusions that he's a good person you don't need actual people to validate those delusions for him and then I think on a bigger level we get issues with the love interest love so it hits the reveal moment that hey not only is love gonna be okay with the fact that you're a murderer she is too I love being a killer kind of undermines everything the show said it was going for I like the way they handle it in the book but in the show they basically make her the female version of Joe and the best part about that is like the second she shows her hand he's just like ah hell not you crazy witch which I did like with a good thing there is that her being that way completely countered everything that he had built her up to be in his mind we all know that when things don't go the way Joe thinks they are in his head things are not good for Joe in the book when love finds out she ends up being okay with everything but it's because she kind of believes Joe's version of where in his mind it did become like just a matter of necessity and not necessarily something that he wanted to do she's not also a killer this is at least supposed to point out how absolutely ridiculous it is that people can find that hole ideas super romantic that someone will do anything anything for the person that they love to be with the person that they love she kind of has to be another one of those exaggerated characters whereas I think what made the first season so great is that Beck is just a normal person a normal person that finds everything he did super weird and crazy because it is it's absolutely insane he does not deserve to be a free man and Beck herself is a flight character that Joe puts all of these ideals and characteristics and beliefs and expectations on who she is and who she's supposed to be rather than wanting to see who she really is but Beck's constantly showing us exactly who she is and she's very normal she has regular struggles she's not perfect she has procrastination issues she's so normal there one of the common complaints is that she's too average and maybe boring but you kind of needed that you kind of needed to have somebody who didn't have one of those special quirks that for some reason just attracted everyone around them to that one person this is just a normal person living their life that some obsessed weirdo decided to focus in on and it literally destroyed her life which to lesser extent and sometimes to that full extent happens every single day because she's normal she's not trying to portray herself as anything else it's joe that chooses to put her on the pedestal and it's joe that gets angry when she doesn't fall in line with what he expects yeah those are just kind of some of my thoughts on you let me know what you guys are thinking down below if you've watched the show do you like it you have some of the same issues let's get the discussion going I hope you're all having a fantastic day I don't catch you all later you

Channel: Amanda the Jedi

Views: 716,211

Keywords: you, netflix you, you netflix, penn badgley, you season 2, the problem with you, joe you, netflix, netflix series, caroline kepnes, victoria pedretti, elizabeth lail, beck, you season 2 ending, you ending explained, joe goldberg, peach salinger, shay mitchell, you book, book vs show you, things you missed, stop redeeming joe goldberg, netflix original, nice guys

Id: JGBMjfBgzM0

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020