“Grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it”—this is what actress Blake Lively said while promoting “It Ends With Us,” a Hollywood film about domestic abuse.
It’s an adaptation of the bestselling novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover, which garnered considerable public attention as it rose to fame on BookTok, a subcommunity on TikTok.
The story follows Lily Bloom, a Bostonian florist, as she is caught in a cycle of abuse with her husband Ryle Kincaid. Hoover credits the story as being inspired from real-life experiences from her own parents.
Though the relationship between the main characters can be interpreted as romantic towards the beginning of the novel, Hoover herself claimed in an interview that she wrote the novel with the intention of bringing the issue of domestic abuse to light.
Why, then, is the story framed as “an unforgettable tale of love,” as proclaimed on the back cover of the novel?
The promotion of the movie was no better—perhaps even worse.
The insensitivity of the press tour has the potential of impacting viewers and actual domestic abuse victims.
Stories about abuse and similar mature themes have been a staple in the literary world and Hollywood for years, making victims feel seen and understood when executed correctly and with empathy.
But botched attempts have the power to affect how audiences—in particular, younger audiences—interpret and respond to real-life situations.
Much of Hoover’s audience consists of young women, and it’s not as though she is blind to this fact. Romanticizing domestic abuse as a love story can blur the line between healthy and abusive relationships in real life.
If younger audiences, including many students at PVHS, see abusive relationships portrayed as romantic in mainstream media, they likely won’t be able to recognize if they themselves or someone they know are in a similar situation, making it even more difficult to remove themselves from it.
The media’s influence on society’s values is perpetual. The initiation of more socially aware advertising practices, therefore, is essential to putting an end to the misrepresentation and romanticization of such a significant and widespread issue as domestic abuse.