The Creepy Implications of Time Travel Rom-Coms

about time is a wistful and heart-wrenching drama about a father and son the bond between them and the processing of long-awaited grief it's also a really messed up movie about a guy who lies and cheats his way into a relationship with a woman he keeps in the dark while manipulating her today I want to talk about the often horrifying world of time travel romance on screen and its relationships with our own ideas about love in real life buckle up because buckle up buckle up because buckle up because it's going to be a wild ride I'm using the phrase time travel romance as a catch-all here but these types of movies and shows Encompass a bunch of micro genres and outlier examples they run the Spectrum from Comedy to romance and The rom-com Sweet Spot in between you have the time Loop model where one or more people is stuck repeating one day over and over again in an endless loop think Groundhog Day we also have the use of time travel as we more traditionally know it where someone travels back and or forward during their lifetime either at will or at random like about time or the time Traveler's Wife of course there's also the historical time travel where someone will be thrown into a time that isn't their own like Outlander or Kate and Leopold and finally there are the movies that don't technically have time travel in the science fiction way that we might think about but where a character is functionally experiencing the same effect in their own perception of reality a prime example of this being 50 First Dates time travel is an element of romantic plots wasn't birthed into existence in 1993 with the release of Groundhog Day in fact romance novels are a likely originated of this concept in The Wider public sphere with the sub-genre already firmly established by the time the 1980s rolled around and where deliciously trophy romance books are so too is Star Trek which gave us some tragic time travel related romance Shenanigans in the episode City on the edge of forever way back in 1967. if you're unfamiliar with this episode uh let me Enlighten you so after finding himself in 1930s New York Captain Kirk Falls for a soup kitchen worker called Edith who he has to Let Die in order to save the future wow Save the future that sounds pretty intense how could one woman change the future so much well if she didn't die then she would go on to form an anti-war movement in the 1930s which would delay America's entry into World War II leading to Hitler developing the atomic bomb and taking over the world Kirk had to let his love die in order to defeat Hitler I am not joking but I do think it's fair to say that the mainstream Awakening to the potential of this sub-genre was indeed Groundhog Day to the point where the time Loop plot device is now referred to by that very name I'm sure you know the basic premise at least but to summarize the movie follows Phil a cynical weatherman who thinks that he is above the small town Hicks who are observing the Groundhog Day Celebrations that he's been tasked with reporting on he's cursed to repeat the same day of groundhog reporting over and over going through the classic series of emotions and actions that we now associate with the Trope confusion and denial followed by hedonistic freedom and gradually depression and despair searching for a way out a time Loop offers limited consequences for your actions as long as you remain the only one within the loop because those actions will just get erased at the start of the next day but many protagonists soon find out that no consequences means nothing of consequence really happens consequences after all are how we find meaning both good and bad the appeal before we get into what you're really here for me explaining why I can't help but view the nice Bill Nye and Donald Gleason movie as a secret horror film I think it's useful to talk about the appeal of this genre because even though I do obviously love to tear things down I also think it's important to show multiple points of view and the fact that like this genre doesn't just spring out of nowhere for no reason to be horrifying to me um there are in fact reasons why people do enjoy it I guess it goes without saying that in general plots involving time travel are going to give the opportunity for a high concept premise that is a concept that you can grasp in a sentence or two a Punchy tagline that makes it easy to understand what you're about to see man is cursed to repeat the same day over and over or woman can travel back in time but only within the last 24 hours that in itself has Market appeal within a tangle of new releases when you add romance to the concept of time travel then there's this clear connection to the idea of a kind of fated love the idea of soul mates that can transcend time how much is it to have to travel a hundred years into the past to find the one that's right for you across the bounds of space and time you find the one I think there's a kind of obvious wish fulfillment here for people who can quite literally get a map of eligible Partners within a kilometer radius on their phone but still can't find the love of their life intersecting romance with speculative elements like time travel provides a distance between our reality and the life of the protagonist it provides a fantasy without overtly tapping into the sense of why can't I have that that can accompany normal contemporary romance as Julie Anne charpontier notes in time travel romance plots where heroine moves into the past disruptions of contemporary Society Fade Into temporary Oblivion overshadowed by a world far removed from reality in this way from a purely Financial point of view books with these plots are able to provide readers with a combination of contemporary and historical romance that might otherwise split audiences between genres it can give the tone of a contemporary narrator but the Swoon Worthy edition of a dashing Mr darcy-esque lead and speaking of Dashing men and 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modern woman journeying back into the past I think there's a specific layer of appeal here that will foreshadow a later section of this video where we talk about modern Romance the appeal of finding a man who is unique in his inevitable Perfection he's contrasted to other men of his era who often embody the worst misogyny of the time with his Progressive support of the heroine or else his old-fashioned values provide a Guiltless fantasy for the modern lead character and by proxy the modern reader by removing the pressures of 21st century live through no fault of her own conversely settings of the past can also forgive behaviors in the leads that we would otherwise find unacceptable specifically because they are a product of their time it's the ultimate extension of the icon fix him narrative although most often the narrators of tales about romances across eras are women when modern male protagonists time travel in Romance plots it seems predominantly to be within their own timelines whether that's a comedy like Groundhog Day or a psychological Thriller like the butterfly effect when we look at the appeal of the time Loop a time travel Trope within the character's own lifetimes another interesting pattern has been seen to emerge one that critic Natalie zutter spoke about in regards to The Time Traveler's Wife in particular that darkness is what may made the book such a compelling love story because it was about the unpleasant metaphor of a woman forced to wait for a man to grow up and the ways in which she tries to control her Destiny romance as a genre is primarily aimed at women even with the man as a central point of view character so it could be argued that what a straight woman wants to see from modern male love interests is specifically that self-improvement and learning of lessons that time travel plots facilitate in a way that would take years in real life years that those same women might have to participate in as opposed to a Time Loop that they wouldn't even remember when it comes to romance stories where people time travel into different historical eras these often split themselves between two versions of History the first involves a whitewashing of the past to make the Regency Era or the 1950s exist only as a cute ascetic for a modern heroine to travel back to for the sweet Romance the violent colonialism segregation and other such atrocities don't really reach the story option two the story does engage in some way but makes the love interest the one good man the single deal amongst all these sexist villains who doesn't want to assault her or at least learns not to want to at some point in the story and that really is true love don't get me wrong there will be stories that explore this genre really well especially books with more time and space to get into these issues and I'm fully aware that romance is often an Escapist genre and that people are going to enjoy what they're going to enjoy but I think where it gets messy for me is how much these stories reflect issues with our modern conceptions of romance and how they might have the power to reinforce these issues if we aren't aware of them romance is a genre which I think doesn't get the mainstream discussion it deserves but how much it can tell us about people's desires fears and wider social trends so there's going to be a lot of other nuances to the appeal of this genre that I haven't had time to cover here but now I want to put aside all this nice Kumbaya [ __ ] and get to rant time so let's move on to the issues with the time travel romance genre manipulation and control let's start with about time which doesn't do too well on this from in about time our main character Tim discovers on his 21st birthday that the men in his family are able to time travel specifically into moments that they've lived before importantly he has control over when he travels and when he travels to when he does his father warns him against using the power for personal gain in terms of wealth or fame so he instead decides to use it to improve his own love life because personal gain which involves manipulating unsuspecting women is of course much better now his first very into time travel dating comes in the form of Margot Robbie as Charlotte a friend of Tim's sister who visits for a summer on her last night staying with them Tim decides to ask her out she rejects him joking that asking her out on the last night felt like a slightly insulting afterthought and that his sister had warned her that she would need to be firm and clear while rejecting him which seems like a red flag but moving on he obviously then goes back to the middle of the summer to confess his love rather than wait till the last night and what do you know she says like you know why don't we wait to see how the summer goes and ask me again on the last name she says it in this way way that really makes it seem like she's doing that thing that women often have to do when they reject men this gentle not trying to provoke him kind of way like she knows she's stuck in this house where he can just let himself in and sit on her bed with her so if he asked on the last day then there won't be time just what she knows for him to get weird about him she can just leave now at this point in the movie with Tim realizing that just manipulating time won't make someone like you this could have been the end of it like lesson learned but no instead the lesson seems to be you can't just manipulate time to make someone like you you have to manipulate more than that to get the job done it's at this point in the movie where we meet chronic Time Traveler's girlfriend slash wife Rachel McAdams AKA Mary they go for a literal blind date in a pitch black restaurant and she gives him her number however in doing some time traveling to help a friend he ends up never having met her so he uses information that she gave him on their date that never was to find her at an exhibition like a week or two later and finds out that she is now dating someone else opportunity Miss right not for overall Tim he can time travel remember so he finds out where and when Mary met this other man and gets rid of him I mean he doesn't kill him but honestly he could and this movie would have had very similar Vibes to me he gets married to leave with him before the new boyfriend even arrives so she basically never gets a chance to even meet him there's really no conception of what would be best for Mary whether this other guy was better suited what she would think about this very blatant manipulation of her life unimportant you are with the woman that you decide is the one after one date you don't have to change her mind using personality or wits you can just manipulate her life so that she doesn't have the choice of even meeting her current boyfriend to rub salt into this time wound Tim does get this freedom of choice for himself like literally on screen he bumps into Charlotte again while fully dating Mary guess Charlotte's number goes on a date with her and then gets all the way to her inviting him into her room to have sex before realizing wait I'm in love with Mary like this parallel scenario where he is allowed to choose and she isn't so you know now Tim has made the big decision they can get married and have a daughter called Posey so much stuff happens in their relationship that I've just glossed over but don't worry we'll be doing a Tim and coming back to them in later sections but just these initial elements I think are a clear indication of how manipulation and control are key aspects to about time and in fact a lot of these time travel romances imagine going on a bunch of dates with a new partner there's a smoothness to it that seems otherworldly a seeming Serendipity in your shared interests they're saying all the right things it seems utterly effortless and all these elements make you feel like this is a kind of fairy tale love that they talk about in stories and then you find out it only went smoothly because it was rehearsed with you as a prop over and over again they don't really show your interests but are parroting back your own shared excitement to make you feel more at ease and trusting that the effortlessness has in fact been a concerted effort behind your back to manipulate you into feeling this way is it just me that would find that a little bit [ __ ] and that's before we talk about how the how concept of concern gets real messy when sex relationships and time travel plots intersect but okay let's do a little recap of offering consent into teacher mode consent must be freely and enthusiastically given by someone with full knowledge of what they are agreeing to as Rowan Ellis says in her book here in queer a queer Girl's Guide to Life True consent is all about being in a situation that is informed everyone knows what's being agreed to freely given everyone can just as easily say no as they can yes enthusiastic everyone is fully on board with what is being consented to rather than just giving in or being worn down reversible so everyone feels able to change their mind or withdraw consent at any time and aware everyone is aware of themselves and their surroundings including being conscious and sober I think we can already see how a bunch of these might pose a problem when applied to some of these movie plots time traveling to get a goal is the science fiction endpoint of no means persuade me kind of [ __ ] in Groundhog Day Phil has a subplot involving TV producer Rita during his party Loops he decides for a while to use the loop to try and seduce her using things he finds out during previous Loops to manipulate her but she repeatedly rejects him because as she says he doesn't even really know her the end of the movie does have them get together however as Phil puts aside his attempts at wooing and goes about helping the people of the town and she falls for the selfless person he seems to have become the overall plot of man learns to be a better person is pretty much the mode of many movies in various genres this time with time Loop Shenanigans thrown in but the scenes with Rita are often uncomfortable and at worst outright gross in one particular moment in his hotel room Phil tries to persuade her into having sex with him really he kind of pressures her into it as she repeatedly robust his advances and tries to stop kissing him as writer Amar Abdi puts there taken out of the context of romantic comedy these scenes play out very differently they show men stretching the limits of consent in a way that does not look too different from date rape and similar to most real life cases they also go without repercussion I think probably one of the most talked about examples of the complexities of control and manipulation in time travel romance is a Time Traveler's Wife life the original book and subsequent adaptations follow the relationship between Henry a man who has uncontrollable powers to time travel within his lifetime and his titular wife Claire Henry essentially time travels at random Landing somewhere along his timeline and doing so totally naked which means that his wife first meets him when she's a child and he is an adult man the latest adaptation of the book a new TV series from Stephen Moffat is overly aware of the potential issues that this type of romance presents in one scene a young player asked about Henry why grown-ups like kissing and he asks her why do you like brushing your toy Pony's hair and she responds it's not brushing I'm grooming her this is some very obvious lamp shading sort of hoping that the audience will ignore a problematic element of a plot simply by pointing it out in the script reassuring them that the writers are totally aware don't worry about it it's fine they know what they're doing they've seen this too outside of the show itself Moffat has commented on this idea that as critic Natalie zitter puts him the only way for Claire and Henry to fall in love is for her to have known him since she was a child an adult version of him his best possible self who is also 30 plus years her senior Moffat said that's not what the story is in the book or the film or the TV show he's married to her he meets her as an adult he falls in love with her he gets married to her and then he's flung back in time through no fault of his own and is confronted with the childhood version of the woman he already loves even more so in the TV show version he absolutely makes it clear that he's just a friend but that's just the reality from his point of view from her point of view she's been visited by this man her entire life with this even inadvertently on his part means she was primed to fall for him as an adult he doesn't get to decide where he's sent in the past but he could decide whether he engages with her or not and he chooses to engage over and over again The Time Traveler's Wife is a drama through and through and in many ways invites you to ponder the nature of their relationship however I couldn't get through this section without mentioning a comedy that does nothing to consider its own internal horror that is 50 First Dates as I mentioned before this is not a typical time travel movie but it's almost a reverse time Loop narrative in the lived reality of the love interest Drew Barrymore's Lucy Lucy has a form of Amnesia after a car accident she remembers everything up until the night before the accident but can't form new memories every time she sleeps she effectively resets at first her friends and family essentially work to keep this information from her letting her repeat the day of the accident except you know without the accident over and over and hiding evidence of time passing around her like painting over art she does and hiding the actual day and year from her but as our main character Adam Sandler's Henry another time traveling Henry very fun and there's a scene it all starts to crumble now Henry himself even though he is a notorious womanizing Playboy explicitly says that using her just because she can't remember him is and I quote evil but he does then go on to make Bets with people about whether she'll give him a chance and like use the effective Loop to utilize information he gains to get her to like him so yeah you know he's he's like going close to the line he just went across the line you know this sort of entirely one-way situation comes to an end when she discovers the truth of her Amnesia and is more hurt by the lies than the situation itself so Henry comes up with a plan for all of her friends and family to make a video that she can watch when she wakes up each day that explains everything and allows her to process what has happened since the accident and where her life is now this includes her relationship with Henry which again she remembers nothing of she's able to add to the video each day by recording what she's been doing and because this is accommodate we don't think about how easy it would be for someone to manipulate that edit for their own gain instead the idiot manipulation is actually Lucy's idea when she finds out that Henry is but his life on hold for her abandoning a research study he's been working on for a decade together they remove him from their video and burn her diary entries about their relationship so that he can move on but of course just before he brokenheartedly goes to leave for the trip he realizes wait I think there's a chance that her Amnesia is improving and they realize that she she's been dreaming of him and painting things that happened to them although she doesn't actively remember so they reconcile classic rom-com third at conclusion but then the final scene plays and we realized that it's years later they're married living on the boat on This research trip together with their daughter like in the ocean and she finds out about it through an up-to-date tape which means that her memory still isn't back and it also means for months this woman woke up Suddenly heavily pregnant and in fact if she fell asleep which isn't uncommon during labor then she potentially could have woken up in active labor with no memory of how she'd got and I just I just want us to take a second a moment to think about the implications of this because the movie is from his point of view essentially we see the whole Arc but for this woman she is essentially living every day as a random 24 hours that she never remembers she goes to sleep the night before her dad's birthday at one age and then every day is another age another place a whole life she doesn't remember and effectively she will never be able to leave this man like she will never remember their fights or disagreements their incompatibilities for at least a while there she is on a boat unable to leave like literally unable to leave she has a child that she remembers nothing about including not to remember ever wanting or loving the child at all there is this underlying manipulation and control that isn't as self-serving as Tim's and isn't about time but it's inevitably there nonetheless with this kind of setup Obsession let's start with about time which doesn't do too well on this front obsession is creepy enough in the real world but Obsession crossed with time travel abilities is a whole nother level because because of both what it allows someone to do but also how it enables the obsession in this cyclical momentum after accidentally erasing his perfect first date Tim uses the information he gained during the first date that Mary no longer remembers giving him to essentially stalk her and find her IPS feels almost like someone you don't know secretly checking your social media accounts to find information about where you'll be and what you like and what you think so he can find you while pretending it's all a wild coincidence to reiterate after one date that Mary does not remember Tim feels entitled to a relationship with her there's this moment where Tim tells an unsuspecting Mary that he loves Kate Moss he says I always think the key thing about her is the history we all remember those fantastic pictures of her as a naked girl on a beach so that even now beneath all the glamor we still see the wonderful young impish amateur we can see how his words Amaze Mary it's like this man has read her mind little does she know that this stranger her friend's party doesn't actually care about the history of Kate Moss in reality Tim is using is exact words from the previous version of the past he's manipulating her using information that she doesn't remember giving him from her perspective this moment is magical from his perspective it's heavily calculated Tim doesn't care if Mary is happy with her boyfriend Rupert he doesn't care if Mary only likes him because of a feigned passion for Kate Moss Tim only cares that he gets to be with her this obsessive behavior is rooted in a kind of dehumanization when you have the power to change any moment of your life other people become maybe inevitably less real in many ways they can be changed and molded and corrected at will do you really like this woman for who she is or what your life is like when you have her in the way that you want to have her when you can write and rewrite your experiences with her after their second first day Tim and Mary go back to her apartment to have sex in the first timeline Mary establishes how she wants things to go she's going to go into her bedroom put on her pajamas and then Tim can come in and take them off Tim and Mary have sex and it's consensual and just a little bit awkward at the end of it Tim says he's sure the next time will be better a Mary responds that she thought the sex was actually lovely sweet lovely Good Times all round not perfect but you know and here we see this obsessive Behavior come in from Tim again because Tim goes back in time effectively erasing Mary's first experience with him and has sex with her again this sex is implied to be more pleasurable presumably because of knowledge gained during the previous sexual encounter that Mary no longer remembers it's something that Tim has access to and he uses but still not satisfied he repeats that Loop one more time and the final version of events Tim doesn't wait for Mary to finish putting on her pajamas he barges in ready to give her the ultimate perfect first time the movie implies that this sex was even better than the sex in the previous loop with Mary calling Tim perfect there are so many things that strike me as wrong and weird about this scene it implies that sexual satisfaction heterosexual relationships is entirely dependent on the man sex is turned from something collaborative to a chance for a man to prove his prowess Mary doesn't get a chance to learn alongside Tim because every time for her was the first time and she has no idea that he's been having sex with her over and over again each time erasing her experiences from existence Tim has his obsession with Mary but also with perfection and the two intertwine in repeated scenes of him going back to redo moments that don't go exactly as he wants them he even redoes his proposal to her not even with the pretense of making it perfect for her but so he can get her to pay him enough attention when he wakes her up in the middle of the night to give it the importance that he thinks the moment deserves I would like to point out again this moment is directly after he has gone on a date and almost slept with Charlotte it gives us this sense that and I'll go into this in more depth later romance and love is when everything is seamless but it isn't real the messy bits of Life are the fun bits they're the growth the shared laughter the stories you want to tell for years access to time travel often creates a sense of obsession in the time traveler they become fixated on their relationship with their partner and their entire existence revolves around this connection whether to fix it or continue to experience it for as long as possible but it can also inadvertently create Obsession in those around the traveler too in The Time Traveler's Wife Claire claims that older Henry visiting her as a teenager provided unbearable company throughout a very horny adolescence to which 20-something Henry correctly points out you were a child there is this sense of inevitability in the confession Claire has been in love since she was a teenager when Henry was approaching middle age across these different timelines they were right for each other drawn to one another but as critic Alicia Lansing puts her this unsettling fact is Illustrated most clearly when Claire tells Henry that she grew up longing for him and forming herself around him to hear how a young girl was essentially groomed into liking her husband while she removes her clothes is jarring to say the least reciprocity let's start with about time which doesn't do too well on this front for a relationship to be truly equal it has to have a sense of open communication honesty and reciprocity let me tell you right now Tim laughs in the face of all of these Concepts because and this was the real kicker for me when I was first watching this movie he never tells his wife at a solar Thomas summarizes this perfectly the fact that Mary never learns about Tim's power to repeat each moment to restart a conversation to relive a sexual experience between the two of them which gives him an unbridled power in the relationship that I now find deeply unromantic and yet in the movie it is presented as if this is all in the pursuit of Love That him going to this effort to try and make the relationship perfect is admirable he's just this sweet bumbling Englishman with a pure heart who just needs a little bit of help in the wooing department is that so wrong we see him lie about his powers but also just lie in general like during his proposal he pretends the band he's gotten to play romantic music for her in the Next Room is actually the radio it's a comedic moment in the movie but it's just an additional layer in how easy he finds it to conceal things from the people but especially the women around him Thomas continues this power imbalance gives these time Lords boundless access to their romantic interests and helps them fade accountability responsibility and the vulnerability that comes with an equal relationship the unequal Power Balance could well be helped by open communication about the situation but Tim keeps it firmly Under Wraps through the movie and presumably for the rest of their lives going forwards towards the end of the film Tim's father advises him to live every day twice in order to be truly happy first with all the everyday tensions and worries and then go back and do it a second time noticing How Sweet the world can be and so he does because this is a time travel movie not like a Black Mirror episode where he's just watching or reliving memories on a screen the second version of the day is the one that continues into reality and he loves it it's great he gets to live the version of his life where he can appreciate the beauty of the world he gets to visit his dead father in the past basically it's just living a Charmed existence and he never tells his wife he just never thinks to bring her along for the ride on some of these perfect relaxing days that make his life so much better because it is established in the lore of the movie I have to stress that he can travel through time with other people look he just keeps that funnel to himself he ends up stopping this practice at the close of the film after he becomes unable to go back in time to visit his father and there's this sugary sweet ending lesson of like he decides to only live each day once from now on but to try and live it like it's one of those second days and he never tells his wife couples in time travel romances can lack the reciprocity and transparency that is essential for healthy relationships establishing a lack of shared knowledge and experience just like having more time with Charlotte that first summer couldn't make her like Tim one person making infinite changes to a relationship significant moments is no match for a shared life-lived collaboratively but she likes it let's start with about time which doesn't do too well in this front I feel like there's this brushed away justification for the behavior of these time traveling men in the idea that the women that they're in love with are fine with her Drew Barrymore is Happy on that boat Rachel McAdams is blissfully unaware these ladies are living their best lives not having to worry their pretty little heads but here's the thing these are not real women right they are inventions of writers and the writers can make them feel however they want them to so it's a great way to persuade us not to question how objectively messed up these men's actions are because we're left thinking oh what a happy ending it can't be that bad see it ended up all right she obviously doesn't mind she she liked this whole thing but to me these manufactured reactions portray a kind of lack of authenticity in the characters rather than convincing me of an objectively happy ending and that's compounded by the doubtful authenticity of the love within the story itself knowing the influence of time travel's manipulative potential as Thomas once again points out in about time if love is something that happens when people consent to the mortifying ordeal of knowing and being known by one another neuroses and all it makes sense that Tim and Mary's Miku will be technically endearing but it also isn't fully consented to if that knowing is a mere performance Tim knows what to say to Mary to reach her to conjure this feeling of familiarity between the both of them this places pressure on the authenticity of Tim and Mary's love the writers decide that in the world of the story their protagonist is in the right he's the good guy he deserves the girl and so whatever they have him do to her they know that she will eventually forgive him not because that's what she should do or because it's what someone would do in reality but because she is a character written to be a prize at the end of the movie for a man who is the hero of the piece superiority in the male time traveler let's start with about time which doesn't do too well on this run there are movies about women who travel through time to find love in fact I'll talk about a few of them later in this video but there is this particularly Insidious flavor to the male time traveling protagonists in these narratives and this undercurrent of male entitlement is a clear factor in about time Tim's father tells him that only the men in their family can time travel but that isn't strictly true Tim for example takes his sister KitKat back in time to undo her relationship with her abusive boyfriend maybe she can't go back in time by herself but she can still time travel with him but there's only ever happens once and Tim ends up erasing it from ever happening anyway and so time travel is treated as a special boy's thing a bonding element between Father and Son that the women in their lives are deliberately kept from when he goes back to relive days with his father there is seemingly no thought from Tim about how his mother might also want to see her husband again even when his mother tells him that her life without her husband holds little interest for her he is unconcerned with giving her a chance to say goodbye like he had it's a decision that critic Colin Dre describes as a astonishingly selfish indeed this patronizing decision to exclude the women in the film not only from the experience of time travel but also the knowledge that it's even happening at all is mystifyingly baked into every part of the narrative presumably this premise is meant to be Charming a kind of playful wish fulfillment riff in which the protagonist is granted an extraordinary gift only to learn some life lessons that the audience can vicariously share an updated Midas Touch narrative like 2003's Bruce Almighty or Adam Sandler's click in 2006 but in practice despite promising the potential ramifications of meddling with one's own existence The Narrative only Embraces the conventions of the Sci-Fi genre in order to craft the quintessential narcissistic male fantasy Tim is all about personal gratification with little moments of helping others with his powers always weighed up against how it affects him other people suffering like his sister's abusive relationship are lessons they must learn from and experiences they must endure to become who they are but he experiences Life as a series of artificial highlights a moment moments of Rewritten Perfection he constructs the exact life he desires around which the other people particularly the clueless powerless women revolve it's a house constructed on a foundation of Lies when we step back and look at his sister kitkat's life it's not hard to see where the unknowing influence of Tim's Powers have affected her siblings are naturally going to compare themselves to each other and her own perceived failures are not seen through the lens of being The Sibling unable to redo any and all mistakes on a whim because she doesn't know about that she just sees herself as naturally lesser for no reason other than her own deficiencies when he does tell her about his powers and take her back in time he only allows her that knowledge for a short period before going back and a raising ever telling her because it had led to a change in his own life the birth of a son rather than a daughter larger questions of time travel and Butterfly Effects Beyond Tim's own small world are left by the wayside of the plot which I think is fair enough a small insular sci-fi is a genre I really enjoy but it only ends up highlighting for me the selfish nature of his actions where time literally really revolves around him and so the world we're presented with is the often careless creation of one or two male egos the moral let's start with about time which doesn't do too well on this front all of these things that Tim does across the movie could have worked for me they would still have been objectively horrifying but that would have been part of there if the narrative had acknowledged that aspect characters can do awful things on screen but the toner message of the movie especially in the context of a romantic comedy often treats them as awful and something to be redeemed from think about the school boys making bets about taking girls to the prom who have to learn humility or the Playboy womanizers who need to learn empathy and respect the messed up actions of these romantic leads are the realm of Acts 1 and 2 and the movie and audience in turn see them as bad actions but in about time this isn't the case at all the expectation of a lesson learned a huge mistake that he can't fix his wife or mother finding out and confronting him about the lies it doesn't happen it comes to nothing and you really lies the selfish manipulation is meant to just be silly Japes from a foppish British man and the things he's gained from these manipulations are meant to be a reward that we support him gaining Tim's happy realization at the end of the movie that he's going to live each day only once and not use time travel again Falls flat because it's not a lesson learned through loss caused by time travel but after using it to gain everything he wants like sure man you keep living your lovely life with your wife and kid a nice job but I sacrifice my dude his loss in the movie is his dad's death which really has nothing to do with his time travel use in any kind of cause and effect way like it isn't connected instead the lesson of living each day making the most of it is a lesson learned through thousands of very special practice days using the people especially the women around him their bodies and Minds as malleable play things and he seemingly has no regrets as critic Dre points out in Groundhog Day although we have these scenes of Phil being kind of creepy and using his time Loop knowledge for his own head and his gain he is rightly painted as a lecherous prick but he eventually learns to grow Beyond his indulgent narcissism this is a kind of alternative to the about time framing because Groundhog Day doesn't really frame his attempts to get with Andy McDowell as romantic but rather as something sort of pathetic at first it's something that he has to move past Real World Romance so what do these elements have in common Obsession possessive Behavior chasing Perfection well they're all toxic elements of romantic ideals that are ingrained in our own culture the myth of the love at first sight romance being the only real kind of love becomes these time traveling men constructing a fake and rehearsed meat cue or having them desperately try and recreate their first date chemistry this is part of a larger Trend that many people have pointed out in the world of rom-coms or movies with romantic subplots that are one step away from just being straight up horror movies in the way they glorify potentially abusive Behavior Within These narratives you're encouraged to think of stalking not in terms of reality but as a show of how dedicated a loving interest is screaming matches are a display of passion making someone cry doesn't matter if you hold them afterwards and relationships based on straight people literally hating each other until suddenly they're in love is the height of chemistry writer Emma Marie Smith who herself had experiences of abusive relationships commented on the commonalities that she saw between movie romance logic and her own thoughts while in this relationship Defenders will argue that the audience can differentiate between what they see on screen and what happens in real life but the trouble is many of them can't granted some people are more impressionable than others but I consider myself an educated self-aware open-minded feminist yet if I'd watched this movie when I was in an abusive relationship a few years ago I can tell you the exact effect it would have had on me I would have said to myself see this does happen in other relationships it just means he has an intense uncontrollable passion and love for you you just have to accept this about him if you stay with him despite his abuse he'll change eventually I would have fallen for this idea of what romance should be because I wanted to believe my struggle was worthwhile these movies can perpetuate toxic ideas of romance and love which are already in the mainstream Consciousness but they're also at risk of helping romanticize his ideas too and enforcing their relevance in a kind of vicious cycle obviously as Smith acknowledges this won't be the case for everyone but when we still live in a society where abuse is both prevalent but also often misunderstood where victims are blamed and where warning signals are ignored or not even known about by many I think it's healthy to discuss the elements of fictional relationships that might be enjoyable on screen that wouldn't be acceptable in reality and as part of this conversation I think it's also really interesting to discuss subversions in time travel Romance the map of tiny perfect things is maybe the most Earnest attempt at a time loot romance film it succeeds in large part because both of the love interests are trapped in the time loop at the start of the film the male lead Mark has a crush on someone outside of the time Loop he's basically Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day but like trying to live a virtuous life inside a Time Loop in order to win the girl then he meets Margaret a girl who's also trapped in the same day as him their shared temporal prison puts someone equal footing instead of one character gaining knowledge while the love interest remains oblivious both Mark and Margaret maintain their individual agency they both get to be fully developed characters within their own separate character arcs rather than a leading man and a love interest Mark and Margaret are colleagues and as a result when they develop feelings for each other it feels more real there's no hilarious montages of redoing their first kiss or first date with only one of them aware Mark doesn't get to use his time Loop knowledge to unlock Margaret's affections it's an actual relationship they built together the loop just gives them time and space to connect making both of your love interests involved within the time travel is a quick way to avoid the tricky elements of movies like about time the recent comedy Palm Springs takes a similar approach although rather than fully avoiding the problematic underbelly of time travel narratives it confronts them head-on from the start Palm Springs gives its female lead far more agency than many of its time travel predecessors the opening scene follows the perspective of Sarah and for the most part the film stays with her we the audience find out information only when she learns him she becomes stuck in a Time loop on the day of her sister's wedding Niles played by Andy Samberg has already been stuck in the same time Loop for a long time narles and Sarah become close embracing a kind of nihilistic lifestyle far from a passive character Sarah is the true protagonist of the film her actions not Niles are the ones that drive the plot in many ways Palm Springs also addresses the problematic dehumanization aspect of time Loops head-on during a fight Niles confesses that before Sarah fell into the time Loop he had had sex with her multiple times Sarah becomes upset that Niles used her for sex so she doesn't remember and she's angry that he hid the truth from her for so long like Tim men about time he'd used information from previous Loops to seduce her unlike Tim you know Niles feels guilt not only for sleeping with Sarah without her remembering but also for lying about it for so long more importantly the film frames his behavior as negative there are narrative consequences as well after his confession Sarah avoids him and dedicates herself to finding a way out of the loop once again Sarah drives the plot here she becomes an expert in quantum physics and finds a way to escape the time Loop she and Niles reconcile and decide to stay together after the loop ends Sarah is neither passive nor oblivious and because of that the relationship between her and Niles feels far more real than that between Tim and Mary in many ways but while giving both cinematic leads the ability to time travel is a great way to give agency to the lead characters it's not the only way let's talk a little bit about the Cinematic Masterpiece happy death day a horror rom-com that is extremely underrated if you haven't seen it and seriously you should see it it's about a sorority girl named tree who finds herself stuck in a Time Loop that always ends with someone murdering her the focus of happy death birthday isn't romance but over the course of the film tree develops a crush on Carter the cute guy whose dorm she wakes up in at the start of the time Loop and the movie ends with them getting together because Carter isn't experiencing the time Loop his memory resets at the start of each day and he never gains the ability to time travel like Mary in about time he's not so much of a co-lead as a love interest however happy death day still manages to give him some forms of agency throughout the movie Tree makes a choice to tell Carter about the time Loop multiple times this knowledge allows Carter to take a much more active role in the story he's the one to suggest that tree uses the time loop as a tool to solve her own murder and in a later time Loop he also saves her from a serial killer perhaps most importantly after she escapes the time leap tree Once Again tells Carter exactly what happened even though he doesn't remember the previous timelines he still knows what happened in them balancing out the weight of knowledge within their relationship and ensuring that no lies lay between them as they move forwards how happy death day is a great demonstration of how to show informed consent within a Time Loop but there are also a lot of interesting films that decide to explore different darker potentials of time travel embracing the toxicity Miku is just as creepy as about time but it specifically doesn't pretend that it isn't creepy the film follows Sheila and Gary on their first date but it quickly becomes apparent that this is in fact not Sheila's first rodeo turns out she has access to a tanning bad time machine that can send her back in time she uses it to voluntarily create a Time Loop of her and Gary's first date and later in the film she uses it to go back in time and alter Gary's childhood like Tim Sheila is obsessed with getting things right like Tim Sheila voluntarily time travels to alter the course of her love interest life however Miku makes it clear that these are not healthy actions when Gary finds out that Sheila has used time travel to alter his life he is furious in response to Sheila saying that she is the unique ability to take away his trauma he exclaims don't [ __ ] with my trauma Sheila he also says that his pain is not hers to take away this point is further driven home by nail technician June saying that if you erase the pain you erase the person the film clearly portrays Sheila's misguided attempts to fix Gary Through Time Travel as a violation of his autonomy and his identity likewise the film portrays Sheila's obsession with creating the perfect day as selfish and possessive rather than romantic or charming Sheila's refusal to move on to the next day stems from a crippling fear of rejection and consuming sadness in Sheila's words this night could be the only thing that ever makes me happy instead of actually dealing with her mental health she's pinned all her hopes on Gary the movie also makes the interesting choice to have the previous time Loops affect Gary even if he can't remember them as the time Loops continue he becomes less interested in her over a year into the time Loop Gary tells her I'm getting this weird Deja Vu feeling and it's really sad and when she tries to reassure him that the deja vu is a sign of their connection he responds no I feel like I'm stuck this Choice challenges the dehumanization that can be present in the time travel genre unlike other time Loop movies there isn't a clean slate at the start of each Loop there are consequences for Sheila's Behavior the previous versions of Gary Mata even if they no longer technically exist in reality like happy death day the film still manages to give the love interest some agency without making him part of the time Loop like in Palm Springs the film doesn't excuse Sheila's actions or dismiss them as romantic but neither does it demonize her she is severely depressed before the discovery of the time machine she was planning on killing herself and this undercurrent of self-destruction is present throughout the film like at the start of each Loop Sheila cheerfully kills the other version of herself so she can take her place the film doesn't portray Sheila's insecurity and mental health issues as endearing or quirky or an excuse it betrays them as harmful to her and everyone around her this isn't a rom-com it's like an exploration of depression and Trauma wearing a rom-com's coat time travel within horror instead of avoiding the creepiness of the time Loop why not wholeheartedly embrace it in an episode code of The Twilight Zone reboot called try try they're basically answering the question what if a real bad person was caught in a Time Loop or alternatively what would about time look like if Mary realized that Tim could time travel so in the episode Claudia hits it off with Mark after a seemingly random encounter the two have a spontaneous Museum date and Mark seems well perfect he shares her interests makes her laugh he seems almost like he was made for her and then Mark reveals that he's done this date before he's on a Time Loop and he's using the loop to try and make himself the perfect soulmate for Claudia it's like okay you know that YouTube video about the movie Passengers that like everyone has seen it's really good it basically explains how the movie Passengers would have been way more interesting and horrifying if it been from Jennifer Lawrence's point of view I kind of feel that way about time Loop movies and and this episode of the TV show really digs into that idea in the Screen Rant review of the episode critic Abdullah Gandhi points out the twist of the episode what makes it work so well is that it features a Time loop from the perspective of someone who demonstrates barely any desire to get out of it his main focus by his own admission is to make Claudia his soul mate he doesn't appreciate the fact that she doesn't share his sentiments gradually turning violent and emotionally abusive he drops his veneer of niceness as the episode approaches its conclusion he tells Claudia that she's not even real taunting her about the fact that he can do whatever he wants the new version of her that will arrive when the date resets won't even remember this episode makes the implicit horror of time Loops explicit and it really works I think a movie with one of the most ballsy conclusions to the male ego driven time travel narrative is the butterfly effect not the theatrical cut I hasten to point out because that is a very different ending but the truly wild director's car essentially this I would say underappreciated movie tells the story of a boy Evan who grows up having these terrible blackouts and memory losses a lot of them due to moments of trauma he discovers as an adult that he can go back in time using journal entries and inhabit his younger body during these moments of memory loss but when he does so it causes a knock-on butterfly effect affecting everything in his life that comes afterwards sometimes for the good but mostly for the bad he starts traveling to try and make his life better but inadvertently makes it worse not just for himself but also for his friends in the director's car Evan doesn't learn that you know he should reset the original timeline or that he should be content with how Fate has played its hand or he should live every day appreciating what he has no instead he realizes his actions have monumentally [ __ ] up a lot of people's lives and then on his final chance to go back and change the past decides that the only way to make the lives of those he cares about better is to not have been given the chance to play God at all and so he uses a home video of his mother in labor with him to go back and ensure that he dies before he can be born with his powers honestly an iconic and they went there an exploration of trauma time travel narratives especially time Loops reflect the flashbacks internalized skill and constant reimaginings that happen so often as a result of trauma in a fictionalized way racism and police brutality have established a kind of micro genre in this space in short films like two distant strangers and Groundhog Day for a black man TV episodes like the Twilight zones replay and movies like see you yesterday and the obituary of tunde Johnson these stories all reflect on the tragic reality of police murdering black citizens using science fiction to add new layers of meaning the protagonist is typically either the murder victim themselves or a family member who then uses a Time Loop to try and prevent the murder these stories directly challenge the if only narrative surrounding police brutality if only he hadn't run if only he'd stay inside if only he'd been nicer in these films no matter how the characters react the police officer still attacks them sometimes like in replay the main characters survive but the underlying message is clear you should never blame police violence on the personal behavior of the victim because the issue is larger and much more systemic than that we can see time travel used to explore a very different type of trauma in the popular Netflix show Russian doll season one of Russian doll has a happy death day style time Loop where a woman named Nadia is stuck in a day that keeps ending with her dying eventually realizing another character Alan is experiencing the same phenomenon and then in season two it features voluntary time travel with Nadia and Alan taking the subway and suddenly inhabiting the bodies of inordia's case her mother and in Alan's case his grandmother during their youth while there are romantic storylines in both seasons more so for Alan than Nadia time travel is used primarily to explore intergenerational trauma as opposed to the dehumanization that appears in movies like about time here time travel is used as a profound tool of empathy as a result of the time travel both Alan and Nadia become less self-centered and more empathetic to themselves to each other and to their family the first season ends with Alan and Nadia saving each other from Death the second season ends with Nadia making peace with her mother's negligence the escape from time travel was always to care more about other people ultimately I think the problematic elements of certain time travel romances reflect a larger issue with the stories we tell about romance itself across the world of romance movies rom-coms and romantic subplots you can find lead characters mistreating their love interests and that abusive Behavior Being Framed as romantic in itself and the most popular time travel romances uniquely demonstrate our societal understanding or rather a lack of understanding around topics like consent by romanticizing these manipulative versions of Love versions of love that once you see them can't help seeing what they truly are over and over and over again thank you so much for watching I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments um if you listen to me read that little section of my book and we're like huh Rowan that was quite good I'd love to read more I will leave a description in the comment for you to check it out and I'm about to go and watch knock at the cabin which is a like gay Thriller horror situation um specifically for the queer movie podcast which is a podcast that I co-host with my friend jazza John if you like the more um chaotic funny uh stuff that I do on this channel then go and check it out because essentially it's just a podcast where me and jazza Bully each other a lot in a very fun and friendly way and talk about queer movies which I'm sure is right up your street if you're watching this video I'll also leave a link to my patreon if you want to help support me make videos like this one and all my social media so you can find me all over the Internet and until I see you next time bye

Channel: Rowan Ellis

Views: 468,956

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Id: drB3-o3SejY

Length: 53min 37sec (3217 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023