Title: You Get Me
Released: June 19, 2017
Produced by: Brent Bonacorso
Access on: Netflix
Netflix Summary: After a one-night stand, Holly develops a dangerous obsession with Tyler and transfers to his high school, desperate to keep their “romance” alive.
Gaze Theory: This film perfectly exemplifies the sexualization and objectification of women. The character, Holly, is depicted as a psycho, love-crazed girl. However, despite only being in high school, she is very sexual in nature. Her first encounter with Tyler is a one-night stand hook up. Beforehand, they go to a club and are sexually dancing and grinding on each other. She even performs sexual acts on him in public which makes her appear scandalous and sex-driven. They then spend the day together but she spends it half naked and crawling all over him. Her entire character is based around being a sex object for Tyler. It could be argued that Holly’s character is sexualizing herself. However, it is clear that she is overly sexualized and objectified in the film.
Sex Role Theory: This film does combat some stereotypes surrounding women and sex. Tyler’s girlfriend, Ali, explains to him that she is not some saintly virgin which fights the stereotype that women are not allowed to have sex for pleasure and should be pure. However, her character is also meant to be a teenager and she talks as if she has many sexual partners. This normalizes the idea that teenagers should be sexually active and extremely sexual in nature.
Effects: As a result, this film tends to over sexualize the women in the film; each character’s main focus is finding a boyfriend and pleasing him sexually. Teenage girls watching this film may receive this message and feel they too must sexualize themselves to men. However, Holly’s character who is the most sexualized is portrayed as psychotic which may steer them in the opposite direction. Overall, the film portrays teenage girls as extremely sexual and provides examples of women sexualizing themselves for male pleasure
Shared by: Olivia Smidel
Image Credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5539054/