Yeah, that’s really why I started the thread: there seems to be a given idea that romantic comedy = actual stalking, but it’s sometimes hard to pin down to actual scenes: awkward, unwelcome and embarrassing, but calling it stalking is a bit harsh.
Yes, fair enough–but the romance that buds between them isn’t depicted as perverse or dysfunctional in any way, so while they are stalkers, they’re both resolutely sympathetic in their portrayal (even if their actual stalking is seen as over-the-top).
The general assumption these days is that if it’s not love at first sight, it’s stalking. A woman can’t have a bad first impression of a man, but change her mind as time goes by, and God forbid a man try to overcome a bad first impression.
So essentially, if you ask a woman out and she says no, you must never, ever try to do it again or risk being labeled a stalker. I’ve seen cases where teens were very worried about even talking with someone they had a crush on because they were afraid they’d be accused of stalking.
In most movies, the assumption is that the man made a bad first impression, or there was some other hindrance that prevented him from getting together with the woman. It’s usually portrayed as charming and generally respectful, and the point is trying to have the woman – who is at least partly open to getting together – see that there is more to you than your first impression. This is a basic element of many screwball comedies – Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Awful Truth, It Happened One Night, for instance. In Bringing Up Baby, Katherine Hepburn tries all sorts of tricks to get Cary Grant to notice her.
Hmm, would My Man Godfrey count? Irene hires Godfrey to work in her home, does everything possible to manipulate him, and at the end <spoiler alert> shows up at his house with every intention of marrying him and moving in (whether he wants to or not, or even knows it’s happening).
Still a great movie, though.
In The Graduate, Katherine Ross learns Dustin Hoffman had an affair with her mother. This upsets her so much she breaks up with him and flees from Pasadena to Berkely. Hoffman follows her there, where his encounters with her leave her so upset Hoffman’s landlord threatens to evict him.
This was the movie I first thought of, but this description is wrong. Slater sees Mary Stuart Masterson crying in her apartment and later delivers flowers to her work. After that bit of stalking, he admits the flowers are from himself, and they proceed with an otherwise normal relationship. The hundreds of bouquets come when he’s trying to win her back after some oblicatory strife.
I don’t know if 50 First Dates counts, but it’s 100 different kinds of wrong.
Also, in The Awful Truth, and His Girl Friday, you had divorcing/divorced couples getting back together.And what Irene Dunne did at Cary Grant’s fiancee’s parents’ house, besides being the funniest 6:39 minutes of any movie, ever, was not what Emily Post would recommend, but it wasn’t stalking.
About Big Fish…
…the scenes at the end, when we see a tall man (but not a giant) and two Asian twins (but not Siamese ones) at Edward’s funeral, hint that there was some core of truth to Edward’s stories, but much exaggerated. So we don’t know if his romance with his wife really involved that much “stalking”.
Fair point, Hermione. I was just presenting the scene as relayed by Edward.
Could someone provide a single legal cite that this qualifies as stalking? Hell anywhere on earth?
Man sees woman upset and crying, arranges for anonymous flowers to be delivered to her office.
In Victor/Victoria, King Marchand becomes obsessed with the title character to the point of sneaking into her hotel room, hiding, watching her bathe… all to reassure himself that she’s actually a woman impersonating a man impersonating a woman.
The post-breakup scenes in Valley Girl has Nicholas Cage acting as his hammy best!
I don’t get Aladdin as a stalker, either. Yes, he becomes a prince, but that’s because he knows that Jasmine is not allowed to date a commoner. They’d already hit it off before all that. And that’s only one wish, since the second wish is to be saved from drowning and the third is to free Genie.
Now, maybe some other versions of Aladdin have him be a stalker, but not the Disney version.
And then he stalks her to her wedding . . . and then . . .
In French Kiss, Meg Ryan tries to stalk her ex-fiance, but gets distracted by Kevin Kline.
In the Disney movie, Aladdin’s courtship of the princess is much less creepy than in the original folktale. In the book, she is engaged to marry another man before she even meets Aladdin. Aladdin’s treatment of his rival is just slightly short of homicidal. But, hey, it’s True Love, so all is forgiven.
One wish. And it’s not stalking as it’s only a ploy to be able to even talk to her.
Superman Returns- creepy stalking of the first order.
Not quite. The beast imprisons the father because the father trespasses. Belle offers to be the prisoner so her father can go free.
Crazy ex-boyfriend behavior is pretty damn close. That’s not HER apartment. And he keeps calling at Godawful hours. His is monitoring her whereabouts. She has asked him to stop calling. If that’s not stalking then nothing is.
The only reason a lot of these guys don’t go to jail is the understanding that ‘we’ve all been there’.
edit: High Fidelity is definitely stalking, but a lot of these fall under “Creepy enough that the girl who falls in love with me doesn’t need to know exactly how I found her or what I did to win her heart.”
Like FB stalking a cute friend of a friend, finding out what restaurant she works at and going to sit in her section. It’s better off for all if she doesn’t know I looked at all her pictures.
If my daughters EX-boyfriend, shows up at my house at 6 in the GD morning playing a boombox…he’s going to jail unless the cops I called are very understanding.
Thirty-eight (-nine!) posts, and no one so far has mentioned Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo?!? :eek: I wonder just how far I’d get today by following a woman into her apartment and saying “Don’t be afraid; I just want to talk to you.”
Perhaps I’m missing something, but how does It Happened One Night fit into the stalker category? 