Definitely a Creepy Stalker and Probable Serial Killer but He Is Soooo Hot“ Navigating Questions of Romance and Monstrosity in Netflix’S You

“Definitely a creepy stalker and probable serial killer but he is soooo hot“ Navigating Questions of Romance and Monstrosity in Netflix’s You

Author: Linda Kopitz Student ID: 12023361 Contact: [email protected] Submission Date: 20th of June 2020

University of Amsterdam Research Master Media Studies Television and Cross-Media Culture Supervisor: Dr. Toni Pape Second Reader: Dr. Joke Hermes

Table of Contents

Abstract 2 1. Introduction 3

1.1 Romantic Killers, Killer Romance: Situating a Television Phenomenon 3

1.2 Introducing the Series: Netflix’s You 5

1.3 Methodology 7

1.4 Chapter Outline 10

2. Of Private Attraction and Public Approval: Negotiating Experiences 11

2.1 Theoretical Framework: Realism 11

2.2 “But I feel for him, ya know?” – Private Attraction as Shared Experience 12

2.3. “I swear I was #beck in a psychotic relationship” – Connecting Fictional

Events and Lived Reality 15 2.4 “I REAL LIVE said ‘what in the Joe?’” – Sharing Humor and Disbelief 19

2.5 Conclusion 22

3. Of Love and Hate: Romanticizing the Serial Killer 24 3.1 Theoretical Framework: Genre and Gender 24 3.2 “I need a Joe in my life” – The Fantasy of Romance 26

3.3 “In my eyes he’s not guilty ... doing it all for love.” – Romantic Intentions and

Voice-Over Narration 31 3.4 Conclusion 36

4. Of Monsters and Men: Physical Attractiveness and the Appearance of Monstrosity 39

4.1 Theoretical Framework: Monstrosity 39

4.2 “Okay, Joe Goldberg is hot. I think I have some issues.” – Physical

Attractiveness as Diversion from Monstrosity 41 4.3 “Penn Badgley is hot, but his character is a fucking psychopath” – Reading the

Character Joe Goldberg through the Star Text of the Actor Penn Badgley 45 4.4 Conclusion 49

5. Conclusion 52

6. References 56

1 Abstract

Hannibal Lecter, Dexter Morgan, Joe Goldberg: Are there fictional characters so monstrous that we should not consider ourselves fans? While the serial killer has been the object of television crime procedurals for decades, the last years have seen a shift in this dynamic: Following a broader interest in anti-hero narratives, the serial killer has morphed from the antagonist in (mostly detective-led) criminal dramas to being the protagonist himself. The Netflix series You, which has been framed as a “global cultural phenomenon” (Larson 2019), is taking this trend even further by establishing the main character, played by former Gossip Girl heartthrob Penn Badgley, not only as the protagonist but romantic lead in a format blurring conventions from both the psychological thriller and the romance. Through a discourse analysis (following Potter and Wetherell) of viewer comments posted on Twitter and YouTube about the show and its main character, I will discuss how viewers navigate the similarities and differences between the series and ‘identifiable’ tropes, actions and concepts – including the ideal of the romance, the concept of fantasy and the (gendered) body of the hero – in an attempt to make sense of the series’ ambiguity. This navigation of questions of attractiveness and monstrosity in relation to the series You can be traced through the three different interpretative repertoires Experience, Romance and Embodiment. The Experience repertoire, which places the fictional events of the series in relation to the lived and shared experiences of viewers, can be understood as a strategy to both validate the private attraction to the series protagonist and deflect judgement in the public online sphere. The Romance repertoire expands on the notion of shared attraction and approval by linking the interpretation of the main character to the ideal of the (literary) romantic hero, thus providing a further acceptable explanation for a notion of ‘rooting for the bad guy’. The third repertoire, Embodiment, underlines this gendered romanticization by highlighting different aspects of the actor’s appearance to interrogate questions of monstrosity and morality through the visuality of the body. Ultimately, the interpretative repertoires viewers employ can be understood as a practice of meaning-making that is aware of, but does not necessarily follow an ‘intended’ reading by the producers of popular culture.

Keywords: Television, Television Studies, Netflix, Fictional Characters, Genre

2 1. Introduction 1.1 Romantic Killers, Killer Romance: Situating a Television Phenomenon

Hannibal Lecter, Dexter Morgan, Joe Goldberg: Are there fictional characters so monstrous that we should not consider ourselves fans? As Cornel Sandvoss has argued for an understanding of fandom as a “space used by fans for the articulation and reflection of self” (2003, 27), taking a closer look at controversial, yet beloved characters becomes especially interesting in understanding the relationship between viewers and television programming. While the serial killer has been the object of television crime procedurals for decades, the last years have seen a shift in this dynamic: Following a broader interest in anti-hero narratives, the serial killer has morphed from the antagonist in (mostly detective-led) criminal dramas to being the protagonist himself. As the center of attention in both fiction and non-fiction narratives (see true crime documentaries, for instance), the fascination with the serial killer “as mirror images of our darkest selves, frightening reminders of the human monster that lies latent in Everyman” (Santaulària 2007, 63) could be considered a cultural phenomenon of the 21st century. Understood as the contemporary version of the monster, which serves “as the ultimate incorporation of our anxieties – about history, about identity, about our very humanity” (Cohen 1996, xii), the serial killer embodies questions of morality and monstrosity, power and control, normality and deviance. While Steven Jay Schneider argues that “it is the cinematic serial killer's compulsion to commit acts of violence that are as intimate as they are extreme that makes him so compelling” (2003, 3), the examples listed above point towards a somewhat different fascination in the context of the televisual serial killer: understanding. Whereas both Hannibal (NBC) and Dexter (Showtime) provide on the one hand a (generally) understandable explanation for the main characters transgression – psychological childhood trauma and a clear moral framework respectively – and on the other hand continue to follow the consistency of the crime procedural, in which each episode “anticipates and delivers a spectacular kill scene, each catches a murderer, solves a mystery, relieves the audience, and momentarily restores the social order – albeit a trifle bloodstained – providing viewers with that tidy feeling of having wiped down the benches and taken out the trash” (Green 2012, 583), the newest addition to the list of television shows centered on fictional serial killers seems to deviate from this established logic. The series You, which has been “propelled into the cultural zeitgeist” (Stern 2020) since the first season became available on the streaming platform Netflix in December 2018, has introduced a protagonist at the same time in line and notably different from other serialized serial killers. In the absence of a larger redeeming narrative for the main character Joe Goldberg, the series has been simultaneously criticized for romanticizing psychological abuse and applauded for “igniting conversations around hot-button

3 topics like abuse, social media safety, and white male privilege” (Stern 2020) by television critics. Following Greg Smith’s argumentation that “the persuasive force of images depends not only on the images themselves, but also on the frame we use to interpret them” (2017, 166), the interpretation of the series and its main protagonist takes place at the intersection of seemingly contrasting and conflicting interpretative frames. This reading is also supported by the emphasis both the author of the novel the series is based on and the showrunners of the series have placed on their intent to polarize the audience through the portrayal of a series protagonist at least partially open to interpretation.

Part of this ambivalence of interpretations appears to be connected to the series’ position between different genres. Understanding meaning-making as a “process whose aim is to produce fully satisfactory and plausible meaning; a process which offers us myths with which we are already familiar, and seeks to convince us that these myths are appropriate to their context” (Fiske and Hartley 1978, 88), the blurring of different genre conventions and fictional prototypes complicates how viewers arrive at a ‘plausible’ – and shared – meaning. By Netflix itself, the show is characterized as a thriller, a genre that is characterized by “a metaphorically downward movement into the psyche” and “concerns itself more with questions of subjectivity and the psychological basis for transgression, and makes no guarantees regarding narrative resolution” (Pittard 2012, 2). In popular discourses, however, the series is also labelled as horror, romance and “a self-aware work of melodrama, [which] combines the best elements of murder-mystery series, Millennial sitcoms, and revenge fantasies” (Georgis 2019), thus referencing genres with established narrative solutions – in other words: a happy end. If “genre dictates how a series may tell a story as well as what is to be expected of characters and the relationship they enter into” (Hermes 2007, 163), the intricate ways in which You blends and distorts genre boundaries arguably lead to a dissonance in these expectations. In relation to genre, Graeme Burton claims that “the very process of categorizing, of identifying a category of television material, is in itself a cultural statement” (2000, 33). Following his line of argumentation, labelling the series as both a thriller, horror and romance, then, does not highlight the similarities between the series and the conventions of these televisual genres as much “as the importance of those similarities” (Burton 2000, 33). Stressing the connections to other genres and the affective reactions we might have to these genres in turn informs the search for an interpretation of the series and its main protagonist between romance and thriller, empathy and (moral) judgement. In an interview on his relation to the role, Penn Badgley, who plays the main character Joe Goldberg in the series, refers to this ambiguity as intentional, claiming that “there’s no doubt that we’re using constructs to make people like him. And so that’s where the show, to

4 me, is never meant to be like a clinical portrayal of a real person. He and the show is like an allegory. I mean, it really is like a social experiment and a reflection of the stories that we tell, because in a way, we’re taking the same tropes and devices you’ve seen and simply following the logic in a way that challenges the entire premise” (Ferguson 2019). How viewers navigate the similarities and differences between the series and ‘identifiable’ tropes, actions and concepts – including the ideal of the romance, the concept of fantasy and the (gendered) body of the hero – is the main interest of this thesis. Through a discourse analysis of viewer comments posted on Twitter and Youtube, the interpretative strategies viewers employ to navigate the ambiguity of the series become the focus of attention. As a way to compare and contrast both the narrative format and the viewer reactions, I will further draw on academic scholarship on other ‘serialized serial killers’ – specifically the previously mentioned Hannibal Lecter and Dexter Morgan – to further highlight what makes the positioning of You between psychological thriller and romance so different from other contemporary serial killer narratives. If our “cultural fascination with monsters” is based on the “twin desire to name that which is difficult to apprehend and to domesticate (and therefore disempower) that which threatens” (Cohen 1996, viii), the emphasis on the romantic reading of the series arguably functions as an extension of this ‘domestication’ of the serial killer as televisual protagonist.

1.2 Introducing the Series: Netflix’s You Based on the novel of the same name by Caroline Kepnes, the television series launched on the American network Lifetime in September 2018, followed by an international launch on the streaming platform Netflix in December of the same year. According to data provided by Netflix, the show was an instant success with close to 40 million viewers for the first season – just within the first month of streaming (Kafka 2019). Although these numbers are not independently confirmed, the series has been the topic of conversation in both traditional media outlets – with reviews, articles and interviews from the New York Times to Fox News – as well as online discussions, which can be seen as an indication of the significance of the series as a “global cultural phenomenon” (Larson 2019). One year after the release of the first season, the second season aired in December 2019 – this time exclusively on Netflix in the popular ‘binge-watchable’ format. According to data provided by Netflix, the second season of the series ranks as the 5th most popular series on the streaming platform in 2019 (Andreeva 2019), considering the launch in late December an especially impressive achievement. The official description on Netflix summarizes the plot of the series as follows: “A dangerously charming, intensely obsessive young man goes to extreme measures to insert himself into the lives of those he is transfixed by” (Netflix 2020). Played by former Gossip Girl

5 heartthrob Penn Badgley, the objects of transfixation of this “charming creeper extraordinaire” (Di Trolio 2019), “deranged stalker” (Larson 2020) and “handsome-but-deadly protagonist” (Ferguson 2019) named Joe Goldberg are Guinevere Beck and Love Quinn in the first and second season respectively. The phrasing of these critical descriptions – ‘charming creeper’, ‘handsome-but-deadly’ – highlights the juxtaposition between the character’s charm and attractiveness on the one hand and his monstrous actions on the other. In both seasons, this act of ‘inserting himself into the lives of those he is transfixed by’ does not only involve stalking behavior both online and offline but also an escalation of violence, leading ultimately to his killing of Guinevere Beck in a bookstore-basement-turned-plexiglass-prison at the end of the first season. Although getting away with this murder by framing Guinevere Beck’s psychotherapist (and romantic rival for her attention), the return of another presumed dead – murdered – girlfriend leads Joe Goldberg to abruptly leave New York and assume a new identity. Beginning his new life – under the name Will Bettelheim1 – in Los Angeles, the second season follows Joe’s attempts to evade his past and change his behavior, ultimately failing at both. How, then, does a character who stalks a woman, kidnaps and murders his presumed competition (both male and female) and ultimately kills his love interest qualify as a romantic lead and object of fan love? While the attraction to the (apparent) villain might not be an entirely new phenomenon – considering characters from Dexter’s Dexter Morgan to Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Spike – the absence of a larger redeeming storyline for the main character of You, Joe Goldberg, in the first two seasons of the show has fueled the discussion about this precise fan love both among critics and viewers themselves. At the beginning of 2019 – following the release of the first season of You – one interaction especially garnered attention. With 1.462 Favs, 97 retweets and a wide number of comments including one from Penn Badgley himself, the tweet

“Said this already but @PennBadgley is breaking my heart once again as Joe. What is it about him? ” – @nobia_parker has become emblematic of the way viewers of the show are engaging online with the show, the actor and most importantly each other. With both the tweet and Penn Badgley’s response – “A: He is a murderer” (Badgley 2019) – the center of following articles and interview questions, the importance of studying online discussion as a way to ‘read the audience’, and in turn approach an understanding of the series as cultural phenomenon, is highlighted. At the same time, the online interaction between @nobia_parker and Penn Badgley makes the attempts of the actor – and by extension the production team – to emphasize the intended, highly reflexive meaning of the series visible. Portraying the narrative as a commentary on “some really strange and

1 To avoid confusion, the character will be referred to as Joe Goldberg throughout this thesis. Interestingly, this also coincides with the references to the character in the viewer comments.

6 distorted ideas about love and relationships that seem more like lust and possession than actual love” and a way to “encourage this reflection on why we’re so willing to watch a character like him” (Zaragoza 2020), then, could be understood as both a reaction to the criticism directed towards the show by television critics and towards the enthusiastic viewer reactions. Labelling the comments about the character Joe Goldberg as “problematic and disconcerting” (Zaragoza 2020) hints at a discomfort connected to a positive, romantic reading of the series and its main character, that does not (or at least not sufficiently) follow the reflexive – almost educational – intentions of the series’ producers. Confronted with both the genre-blurring format and the repeated emphasis on an ‘intended’ reading in third-party articles on the series, this thesis is interested in the interpretative strategies viewers themselves employ to explain, validate and frame their love for the series and its main protagonist.

1.3 Methodology Twitter becomes a productive platform to take a closer look at viewer practices surrounding media objects: Organized around openly visible and searchable hashtags instead of closed (fan) communities, these tweets allow for an analysis of how viewers are navigating their love for ‘hateable’ characters, both to themselves as well as the broader (online) community. Using an open-source archiving tool, tweets posted between December 2019 and April 2020 were extracted from the social media platform. This time frame corresponds to the release of the second season of the series on the streaming platform Netflix, which in turn sparked an increased interest in the first season through both marketing and critical discussions of the series. To limit the scope of the results, only tweets in English using either the hashtag #NetflixYou, #YouNetflix, #YouSeason1, #YouSeason2 or the names of the main characters #JoeGoldberg, #GuinevereBeck and #LoveQuinn were analyzed2. The hashtags as selection criteria were chosen for practical reasons, but also as an emphasis on the community aspect of the discourse: Within the Twitter universe, hashtags function as a filter, thus allowing viewers to find relevant tweets and connect with others within the broader community of Twitter users. The hashtags analyzed for this thesis can be considered the most ‘obvious’ choices for viewers wanting to connect with others to discuss the series. At the same time, Twitter does not limit the amount of hashtags per tweet, allowing viewers to use a variety of series-related hashtags – arguably making the inclusion of either one of the hashtags mentioned above likely. Following Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin’s urging for “alternating between collecting and analyzing data” (1990, 46), the open coding of the tweets led me to include the comments posted underneath the respective season trailers on YouTube as a form of verification for my

2 After an initial search query, the hashtag #You was excluded from the analysis due to the generality of the term.

7 initial hypotheses. Considering the different organizational logics and levels of anonymity of Twitter and YouTube, the inclusion of YouTube comments allowed for a provisional testing of the themes developed through the coding of comments posted on Twitter. While tweets are limited to a length of 140 characters, Youtube does not restrict the length of comments, which I supposed would lead me to include longer explanatory comments. However, most of the comments collected from YouTube were equally short and concise, thus hinting at an understanding of the comments on both platforms as short discursive statements not necessarily ‘needing’ longer explanations within the online community. At the same time, an understanding of the interpretative repertoires as not just platform-specific, but representative of a broader cultural phenomenon becomes strengthened through the combinations of these two data sources. As the streaming platform Netflix mostly promotes new series and seasons within their interface (which does not provide a commenting function), the official YouTube channel could be understood as the site for both existing and potential subscribers to discover and discuss new Netflix series/seasons. For this thesis, a total of 8.915 comments underneath the trailer for the first season, published on December 13th, 2018, the recap video of the first season as lead-up to the launch of the second season, published on December 19th 2019, the teaser for the second season, published on December 5th 2019, and the official trailer for the second season, published on December 16th 2019, were collected in addition to the aforementioned tweets. As the trailers appear to function both as preview and review, the comment sections connect viewers who have already watched (one season of) the series with potential viewers. Additionally, these official YouTube videos – in contrast to reviews and discussion videos posted by both professional and amateur critics – can be considered as ‘neutral’ information on the series, thus providing a blank canvas for viewers to express their thoughts. The comments collected on both platforms were then analyzed in a grounded theory approach to discourse analysis, connecting the approaches of Wetherell and Potter (1988) and Strauss and Corbin (1990). Understanding grounded theory as the “constant comparative method of analysis” (Glaser and Strauss 1967, 101), a first round of open coding of the Twitter comments was followed by an open coding of the YouTube comments, which led to the provisional labelling and categorizing of the combined viewer comments (see Fig. 1). These labels included, amongst others, the search for approval, the moral judgement of the character and his actions, the connection to personal experiences, varying degrees of self-reflexion, physical descriptions and references to the actor and his previous roles. In a second round of axial coding, these labels were connected and grouped into six themes: validation, knowledge, fantasy, idealization, appearance and resemblance. A third round of selective coding of these

8 themes allowed for the emergence of three interpretative repertoires, which were then linked back to the original comments. As both Twitter and YouTube are social media platforms that can be accessed without registration, the comments analyzed for this thesis are considered to be in the public sphere – and were therefore not anonymized. The three interpretative repertoires – Experience, Fantasy and Embodiment – which will be discussed in detail in the following chapters, represent different strategies viewers employ to understand and explain their love for the series and its questionable main protagonist. Following Potter and Wetherell, within audience research interpretative repertoires can be understood as “the building blocks speakers use for constructing versions of actions, cognitive processes and other phenomena” (1988, 172). The interpretative repertoires Experience, Fantasy and

Embodiment discussed in this thesis, then, represent the strategies viewers of the series employ to construct ‘acceptable’ models of their positive reactions to the series in the online setting.

1.4 Chapter Outline Following this introduction, the second chapter will focus on the first repertoire, which I have termed Experience. The comments in this repertoire place the fictional events of the series in relation to the lived and shared experiences of the viewers – both in regards to television

9 viewing and dating in the 21st century. Drawing on different notions of experience to arrive at realism judgements takes on a social component within this repertoire: Personal and larger cultural experience function as a vehicle to emphasize a knowledgeable position as well as to create connections with others, thus being emblematic of the belongingness afforded by television. At the same time, the shared aspect of these experiences can be understood as a strategy to both validate the private attraction to the series protagonist and deflect judgement in the public online sphere. The third chapter will focus on the Romance repertoire, which expands on the notion of shared attraction and approval by linking the interpretation of the main character to the ideal of the (literary) romantic hero. Considering the positioning of the series between romance and psychological thriller, the comments within this repertoire reflect the viewers' negotiation of the tension between contrasting genre conventions. Supported by both the romantic tropes embedded in the narrative – both in terms of aesthetics and storytelling – and the continuous voice-over through the character of Joe Goldberg, the comments within this repertoire are exemplary of a ‘selective reading’ that privileges the romantic intentions of the character while de-emphasizing his violent actions, thus providing a further acceptable explanation for ‘rooting for the bad guy’. The fourth chapter further expands the romanticization of the character’s action through the repertoire Embodiment, in which viewers highlight different aspects of the body – from physical attributes to the embodied performance of the actor – to interrogate questions of monstrosity and morality through the visuality of the body. In addition to the romanticization of the character’s interior motives, then, this emphasis on an attractive and non-threatening appearance functions as another explanatory strategy to interrogate the attraction to the questionable character following the psychological concept of the physical attraction stereotype. At the same time independent and intrinsically linked, these three interpretative repertoires highlight how viewers are engaged in practices of meaning-making that are aware of, but do not necessarily follow an ‘intended’ reading by the producers of popular culture, which will be discussed further in the conclusion of this thesis.

10 2. Of Private Attraction and Public Approval: Negotiating Experiences 2.1 Theoretical Framework: Realism “One key element of an enjoyable media experience is that it takes individuals away from their mundane reality and into a story world” (2004, 311), Melanie Green, Timothy Brock and Geoff Kaufman argue through an analogy to the experience of physical travel. In this understanding, media enjoyment is based on the transportation – absorption – into a fictional world that is decidedly separate from the everyday. Mentioning horror stories as well as melodrama, Green, Brock and Kaufman note that these fictional worlds do not need to be strictly positive: “The enjoyment of a transportation experience, thus, does not necessarily lie in the valence of the emotions evoked by a narrative, but in the process of temporarily leaving one’s reality behind and emerging from the experience somehow different from the person one was before entering the milieu of the narrative” (2004, 315). Although agreeing with the potential of narrative transportation, this chapter will propose a somewhat different connection between reality and fictionality: drawing on the concept of perceived realism functions as an emphasis of the link between transportation – and the enjoyment of fictional narratives as a result – and lived experiences. Instead of leaving reality behind when entering a fictional world, our experiences of reality rather inform and shape the experience of narratives. Using both ‘fitting’ commercials screened before or between fictional narratives as well as the use of real-world-detective norms in crime fiction, John Fiske argues that “the self-contained universe of classical realism is neither contained nor sufficient; the narrative crosses into the everyday world of the viewer and requires a connection with this world to complete it” (1990, 133). The permeability of boundaries, then, allows viewers to draw connections between the narrative and their own experience – which is in turn informed by realism judgements. Realism, here, does not (merely) imply factuality. As “complex and sophisticated processes of comparison and contrast” (Shapiro et al. 2010, 275), judging realism becomes multidimensional. According to the communication studies research conducted by Alice Hall, viewers perceive realism in media texts “as plausibility, as typicality or representativeness, as factuality, as emotional involvement, as narrative consistency, and as perceptual persuasiveness” (2003, 629), with plausibility being understood as something that could happen in reality, typicality as something that could happen to everyone, factuality as the portrayal of specific real-world persons/events, emotional involvement as the potential to relate to the narrative, narrative consistency as an internal coherence and perceptual persuasiveness as the creation of a compelling illusion. What makes Hall’s approach especially interesting for the purposes of this thesis is the adaptability of these markers of realism: Instead of arguing for

11 an either/or, these terms can be understood through a language of more/less, thus both demanding and affording a constant re-negotiation. As a disclaimer: This thesis does not focus on the consequences – in terms of persuasion or attitude changes – often related to transportation, realism or identification from both psychological as well as communication theory perspectives, but rather on the experience in itself. Drawing on Michael Shapiro, Claudia Barriga and Jordana Beren’s argument that “judgments of realism predict reactions to stories themselves” (2010, 275), understanding how viewers arrive at these judgements – and how they navigate them in private/public settings shifts into focus. This chapter will argue that viewers draw on different notions of experience – television viewing as shared experience, individual experience and an emphasis on an experienced cultural position – to arrive at realism judgements, and thus explain their enjoyment of the series discussed here. In this regard, the comments within the Experience repertoire tie together everyday experiences with fictional narratives through an active process of en/decoding. As Stuart Hall has argued, “it is this set of decoded meanings which ‘have an effect’, influence, entertain, instruct or persuade, with very complex perceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological or behavioural consequences” (1999, 509). Drawing on Marshall McLuhan's differentiation between ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media, John Fiske and John Hartley conclude “television, a cool medium, gives its audience plenty to do. This view accords with our suggestion earlier that the television message is made meaningful only at the moment when the semiotic codes interlock with the cultural awareness supplied by the viewer, whose own context will play a part in shaping that cultural awareness” (1978, 98). In an attempt to define realism in relation to television, Smith similarly concludes that “realism is both individual and shared. It is not ‘natural’; it is something that people do” (2017, 166). This notion of ‘doing’ in both accounts does not only infer an active position of television viewership, but also takes on a social component: Despite their differences, I will argue that all three links to experience to be discussed in this chapter ultimately follow the same goal of establishing a sense of connection and belonging among viewers. Realism, then, does not signify an inability to distinguish between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’, but rather the ability to read the televisual text through its resonances with shared experiences of everyday life.

2.2 “But I feel for him, ya know?” – Private Attraction as Shared Experience In an experimental study, Jaye Derrick, Shira Gabriel and Kurt Hugenberg found that “belongingness needs to elicit high frequencies of self-reported consumption of favorite television programs, and that self-reported feelings of loneliness are minimized when watching favorite television programs” (2009, 356). Television, then, can be understood as a social

12 experience as well – one that fulfills the fundamental human need of belonging – by connecting viewers with their favorite characters as well as other viewers. The adjective ‘favorite’ remains important in the study, as the results emphasize a difference between “a mere escapism via the consumption of other televised media” (2009, 358) and the effects of belonging experienced when viewing beloved programs. What is considered ‘beloved’, however, appears to be constantly shifting. Drawing on characters like Daredevil and Dexter’s Dexter Morgan as examples of a new type of anti-hero, Ashley Donelly argues that in the early 2000s, “a new line needed to be drawn between good and bad violence, thus a new fixation on vigilante justice emerged in popular media” (2012, 25). Joe Goldberg, however, does not follow this characterization as a ‘vigilante’: His actions are not necessarily directed at an objective injustice, but rather a subjective one – instead of punishing the ones who wronged society as the vigilante anti-hero does, the aggression of Joe Goldberg is directed at the ones who have personally wronged him or the ones he loves. I would argue that the absence of a larger redeeming storyline and motivation behind the character’s actions in turn fuels the viewers’ need to interrogate their private attraction. Within the Experience repertoire, this is achieved through an emphasis on the ‘shared’ experience of both viewing the series and identifying with the main character.

“Watching @YouNetflix and wondering why I’m attracted to this freaking maniac! Tell me I’m not the only one?! Gotta love a bad guy #YouNetflix” – @lauradooley_NI

“So am I the only psycho who actually likes Joe from #netflixYOU” – @EstiLyssa

“Does anyone else find joe/will attractive or do I just need help? #YouNetflix” – @MannieNorman

While acknowledging the questionability of their own attraction by calling themselves ‘psychos’ and potentially ‘needing help’, these comments are also connected through an undercurrent theme of shared experiences – of not being ‘the only one’ identifying with the main character. Jonathan Cohen explicitly links the experience of identification to an intentional design by the writers and producers of television, claiming that “unlike a purely psychological theory of identification or a conception linked to sociological notions of identifying with social groups or leaders, identification is defined here as a response to textual features that are intended to provoke identification” (2001, 251). Following this argumentation, by telling the story from the perspective of Joe Goldberg and overlaying the visual narrative with his voice-over, You explicitly invites identification with the character. At the same time, I would argue that precisely this identification – as an experience of the narrative through the narrating main character – in turn increases the viewers’ need to discuss this process in retrospect with others who have

13 made similar experiences. In Cohen’s conceptualization, “identification focuses on sharing the perspective of the character; feeling with the character, rather than about the character” (2001, 251). Juxtaposing spectatorship as a distanced mode of media reception and identification, Cohen argues that “identification is a mechanism through which audience members experience reception and interpretation of the text from the inside, as if the events were happening to them” (2001, 245), which in turn functions as a connective experience among viewers, something that has happened – or is happening – to not just the individual viewer, but can be sanctioned through the communality of this experience. In her discussion of the television experience, E. Ann Kaplan further adds an emotional dimension to processes of identification, as “along with desiring identity via identifying, we also desire emotional connectedness. Identity is constructed in the process of establishing emotional connection. We respond to being ‘hailed’ because the process of subject-formation offers both identity and emotional connectedness” (1989, 197). Asking for a confirmation of ‘not being the only one’, then, could be understood as both a strategy to contextualize as well as a deflection of moral judgement for identifying with an immoral main character. Other comments within this repertoire are less apologetically phrased, but still represent an understanding of a shared experience. Understanding identification as an imaginative process of taking on another perspective, Cohen argues that “after someone identifies with a character, he or she may be aware of having been deeply absorbed in the text and be able to assess the degree to which he or she empathized with the character and was able to understand and share the characters’ feelings, goals, and perspective” (2001, 255). Similarly, Green et al. tie their understanding of transportation to identity play – the exploration and experimentation with other forms of self, “those that individuals might become, wish to become, or fear becoming” (2004, 318). Discussing the empathetic identification with a questionable character online could then be seen as a further attempt at assessing this experience. The comments analyzed here in this regard also reflect the understanding of fandom as both private and collective: Through their comments, the viewers are struggling with their ‘private’ admiration for the character of Joe Goldberg in a (partially) ‘public’ sphere.

"If you haven’t watched #NetflixYOU your missing out ,is JOE right ? for what he does for the one’s he Ioves or is he a psychopath.” – @4Nickyy

“Don't we all need a Joe #YouNetflix” – @b_khaleeesi

“I’m falling in love with Joe! Send help!” – @DudeAboveMeIs Gay “My boy is not bad he just does not meet the right people” – @Kaito .X .otaku

“Joe is such a psychopath, but I feel for him, ya know? #YouNetflix” – @jaymshaw24

“Ik something was wrong with me when I agreed to everything Joe did ♀ #JoeGoldberg #YouNetflix” – @SoleilCherise

In their work on fandom, Brianna Dym and Casey Fiesler have argued that “there is a creeping sense among fans that private and public spaces online might be collapsing into one another” (2018). Expanding this understanding to also include casual viewers (who might not consider themselves fans or necessarily fit the implicit prerequisites of fandom) allows for a different view of public online spaces like Twitter and Youtube. As opposed to more anonymized fan spaces, for instance Tumblr or independent communities, interaction among virtual strangers with potentially differing opinions plays an important role on the open social media platforms discussed here. With a focus on words like ‘we’ and ‘you know’ and a broader direct address, it can be argued that the tweets within this repertoire are not just rhetoric tools to connect with others, but also a search for (public) approval by other viewers, urging them to either agree or ‘send help’. In the temporally and spatially dispersed post-television landscape, connecting with other viewers online thus takes on the role of the ‘watercooler talk’ as a way to reassess and re-evaluate the individual viewing experience. As Mareike Jenner argues, “these moments of socialising can happen online as one’s viewing behavior is shared on Facebook or tweeted. Thus, viewing behavior (and consumer behavior) is projected as part of one’s (online) identity and can be commented on by others” (2016, 268). As being ‘commented on by others’ implicitly also includes the possibility of being (negatively) judged in a public sphere that is online, but not necessarily anonymous, framing the private attraction for a questionable character as a shared experience thus becomes paramount to deflecting judgement. Through the repetition of similar sentiments in separate comments as well as the social interaction (in terms of likes, retweets and comments) with individual comments, the private, almost confessional nature of the examples discussed here changes into a connecting feature among viewers.

2.3. “I swear I was #beck in a psychotic relationship” – Connecting Fictional Events and Lived Reality While emphasizing the shared experience of televisual viewing, there is also a theme connecting the narrative to specifically personal experiences – which in turn are framed as part of a larger societal and cultural reality. If “the delight of the narrative is its safety: the story-world, unlike dream worlds and the real world, is above all safe and nonthreatening” (Nell 2002, 17), the comments within this repertoire explicitly challenge this clear distinction. By drawing a connection between the characters and their actions on the screen to a lived reality, the ‘safety’ of the narrative is questioned – while at the same time further underlining the perceived realism

15 of the series. In Hall’s experimental study, “personal experience not only served as evidence, but also established a standard to which specific media portrayals were compared” (Hall 2003, 631), which is reflected within this repertoire. Following the argument that “the viewer supplies the conditions, both semiotic and social, under which any specific message becomes meaningful” (Fiske and Hartley 1978, 100), the direct relation of the behaviors of the character on the screen to off-screen experiences adds additional meaning – and importance – for both the writers and readers of these comments.

“Omg I’m just now watching #YouNetflix & I swear I was #beck in a psychotic relationship” – @quiiannaa1

“i dated joe from You for almost a year and i don’t know how i didnt end up like beck #YouNetflix” – @draculuve

“So today I saw the guy that used to stalk me 24/7 in high school and my anxiety said  #JoeGoldberg” – @monica_kristal

“I should probably be concerned about my boyfriend... @PennBadgley #YouNetflix” – @stephplusverb

“When you keep falling for toxic boys #joegoldberg” – @sarahstarlightx

“Got some stalkers don’t know if I should be scared or flattered #joegoldberg?” – @pieceorea

With exclamations like ‘I swear I was #beck in a psychotic relationship’ and ‘I don’t know how I didn’t end up like beck’, the commentators appear to make sense of their experiences through the narrative – and in turn find a language to share those experiences with others. In this regard, the comments within this repertoire also blur the boundary between the (scary) portrayal of a fictional relationship and the real fears and concerns in the lives of the viewers. Interestingly though, viewers drawing on this repertoire do not just relate to the narratives by sharing their experiences as victims, but also by emphasizing their similarities to the main character of the series. As “the serial killer, arguably, is not simply someone that evokes our fears of being killed, but he/she also makes us fear the Otherness within ourselves as a society and as individuals” (Donnelly 2012, 19), addressing this fear becomes a significant process of connection among viewers.

“I suck at dating cause once i like you .. i turn in to Joe nfs  #YouNetflix” – @crownkeyy

“Not to be dramatic but being ignored realllllllllyyyy triggers my inner Joe Goldberg #YouNetflix #YouSeasonTwo” – @netflixyoumemes

“Being ignored really triggers the Joe in me.  #YouNetflix” – @neenahc2

“You know Joe from ‘YOU’ on Netflix. I be like that sometimes. #you #netfilx #netflixyou” – @berriesofficia1

16 While hinting at a somewhat critical – read: acknowledging – understanding of the problematic of this behavior, the comments within this repertoire could also be seen as part of the normalization of questionable dating behavior. As Jay Bamber argues, “You is tantalising television; sexy and sophisticated, pulpy and poetic, but where it distinguishes itself from other slick YA television is in its genuinely insightful unpacking of the ways in which threatening (male) behavior has been packaged by society as 'normal' dating practises” (2019). Independent of the individual positions of the commentators, the comments surrounding the show thereby function as a gateway to discussing broader questions of contemporary dating practices, toxic masculinity as well as notions of privacy and intimacy in a time in which everyone and everything is ‘public’ online. While acknowledging the fictionality of the narrative, what is happening on the screen seems to be real(istic) for the viewers drawing on this repertoire – especially if we understand realism as corresponding “to the way we currently perceive the world” (Fiske and Hartley 1978, 128). In an experimental study testing Hall’s hypotheses, Hyunyi Cho et al. came to the conclusion that “plausibility, the most fundamental form of perceived realism, is necessary to stimulate the audience’s emotional involvement in narrative messages in addition to perceptual quality and narrative consistency” (2014, 843). The reference to shared experiences – both in terms of personal experiences and conceptions of cultural phenomena – within the comments correspondingly reflects both the plausibility and the affective dimension of the fictional narrative:

“I know this is a fictional show but it gave me something to think about: we play a dangerous game when we fuc* w peoples emotions. #YouNetflix” – @SUNOalumni06

“The #creepy thing is that this guy actually exists in real life. Makes people rethink their #socialmedia sharing! #YouNetflix #JoeGoldberg #stalker” – @MyGirlKeto

“#YouNetflix is so messed up!! Like so messed up! Is there no normal guys out there?!!!” – @SophieKathir

“Its funny how Joe tries to pretend like hes happier in a better place w the safer, less problematic Karen but still longs for (and attempts to deny it) the skanky, slightly dishonest, troublesome Beck. How many times have we (including myself) done this in our lives? #YouNetflix” – @SUNOalumni06

“Is there a penalty for lying and manipulating to break someone's heart? I guess I suck at choosing the good guys, but I'm good at spotting the bad guys. #YouNetflix” – @ShroukE23856697

Again, the link to an experienced reality is emphasized by expressions like ‘in real life’, ‘we (including myself)’ and ‘we play a dangerous game’, thus hinting at the fictional narrative hitting a nerve in the demographic of the social media active viewers of the show. Understanding the series as representative of a larger cultural phenomenon rather than an individual experience,

17 thus appears to shape the judgement of plausibility. The repeated references to ‘guys out there’ and ‘good boys’ vs. ‘bad boys’ also hints at another shared experience among the viewers: toxic masculinity. Through both the romanticization of his actions, which will be the focus of the next chapter, and an inherent self-understanding as one of the ‘good guys’, Joe Goldberg apparently opposes conceptions of toxic masculinity – or, as journalist Roisin Lanigan puts it: "He projects the persona of the anti-fuckboi" (2019). In an exemplary scene from the first season, the character muses "Sometimes I swear I’m the only real feminist you know”, thus arguably voicing the most direct contrast to a masculinity “that glorifies stoicism, strength, virility, and dominance, and that is socially maladaptive or harmful to mental health” (“Toxic Masculinity” 2020). Ultimately, hower, the series contrasts the character’s “supposedly feminist-leaning sensibilities with his obsession", making visible "just how easily some misogynists can conceal their beliefs" (Giorgis 2019). The attempts of Joe Goldberg to dominate the lives of those he aims to ‘protect’, reflect toxic behavior both in mental terms through following, manipulating and ultimately taking over their social (media) life, as well as in physical terms by literally imprisoning them in an inescapable glass box. Although this – in all but one instance deadly – imprisonment takes controlling behavior to an extreme, the underlying characteristics of toxic masculinity nonetheless appear to resonate with the lived experiences of the viewers. Experience, in this context, is not only addressed in retrospect, but also present- or even future-oriented. As Fiske argues, “once the narrative shifts into the everyday, closure itself is called into question, for the stories by which we live and make sense of our lives are always in process: they are constantly retold and redesigned to fit contemporary needs” (Fiske 1990, 138). Recognizing the ‘reality’ of the events depicted on the series does not only function as a retrospective acknowledgment, but also takes on the form of a warning – which in turn appears to shape future experiences as a response to ‘contemporary needs’. In this regard, the comments within the show echo the realization of Guinevere Beck in the last episode: Writing about her relationship with the series’ protagonist – and her relationships with men in general – while being locked in the glass prison, she concludes: “You learned you didn’t have whatever magic turned a beast into a prince [...] Now in his castle you understand: Prince Charming and Bluebeard are the same man”. The comments within this repertoire follow this understanding of both the viewer experiences and the series itself as a cautionary tale, in which fairytale fantasies and real-world experiences might be quite different:

“2 days ago I was living my best life, carefree, a lol stress about school and shit. Today, after 15 episodes of #YouNetflix i’m becoming so paranoid and seeing everybody from joe’s perspective HELP LMAO” – @AmeliaNicholss

“Watching #YouNetflix starting to get trust issues…” – @lawboi111

“The show #YouNetflix is one reason why I stopped posting on Instagram & other social media sites” – @tiny_dancer_26

“Does anyone else keep seeing Self Storage places differently since watching #YouNetflix series 2? Every time I pass one I wonder who’s being held hostage inside” – @ShellyAsquith

“Got a text from an unknown phone number this morning. I can only assume it’s Joe Goldberg, right? #You #JoeGoldberg” – @oh_lalalivia

Framing the series as the reason for ‘becoming so paranoid’ and ‘starting to get trust issues’, these comments perceive the narrative as realistic to such an extent that they are willing to adapt their (online) behavior. While this notion of a direct learning experience might be one strategy to deal with the tension between fictional events and real experiences, especially the last comments hints at yet another approach: humor.

2.4 “I REAL LIVE said ‘what in the Joe?’” – Sharing Humor and Disbelief In his discussion of topical humor on Twitter, Tim Highfield concludes that “as a joke attracts more attention, other users may look upon these tweets as a means to receiving additional retweets and followers themselves” (2015, 2728). Within the networked logic of social media, then, humor becomes a vehicle to increase the reach of one’s comments – and thereby the connection to a broader audience. Through an emphasis on humor as a form of shared culture, the repertoire discussed in this chapter takes on another dimension. As another strategy of connection and shared value creation, the comments placed within this interpretative repertoire also encompass content fitting an understanding of meme culture. In their discussion of spreadable media, Jenkins, Green and Forn claim “content spreads, then, when it acts as fodder for conversations that audiences are already having” (2013, 199). In this context, the following tweets add a humorous layer to the online discussion about the character:

“Hats are the best. Bad hair day? Put on a hat. Sun in your eyes? Wear a hat. Need a disguise to stalk your girlfriend after you just killed her best friend? Put on a hat #joegoldberg” – @Rbcca_Pwll

“Day 1764 of Being Single: I’m reconsidering my method of approach. Might try the ‘Joe Goldberg’ method ♂ #YouNetﬂix” – @jqdising

“I seem to have misplaced my favourite pair of panties. Should I be worried? Do I have my own Joe Goldberg? #YouNetflix” – @petitelua

“This dude just asked me for my address. I REAL LIVE said “what in the Joe?”  #YouNetflix” – @MissShaReCee

19 “Joe Goldberg be texting back and making phone calls while killing people. Don't settle for less ladies. If he loves you he will text you back. Lol #YouNetflix #you #PennBadgley” – @radhapriyanka4

“Joe: Anything for you Beck! Joe: Anything for you Love! Anybody to me ever: I can’t! @YouNetflix #JoeGoldberg” – @Aa_kassey

Representative of the potential appropriation of punchlines Highfield analyzes in his research (2015, 278), these comments follow the logic and structure of a variety of online memes. As humorous exaggerations, the almost too-real-seeming experiences discussed in the previous section somewhat lose their threatening nature. Instead of foregrounding the representativeness of the series for a lived reality, the potential meaning of these narratives is turned around: Expressions like ‘Don’t settle for less ladies’ and ‘Might try the Joe Goldberg method’, then, appear disarming. More than a mere ploy to increase follower numbers, I would argue that the creation and publication of online memes do not just qualify as a labor of fan love, but also function as another emphasis on the shared experience of watching – and loving – the television series and its main character. After all, these comments will only be funny to those who can relate – through a pop cultural knowledge of the series as well as an understanding of the lived experiences fictionalized within the series. While humorous exaggeration can be seen as one strategy to deflect and disarm the perceived realism of the series, disbelief appears to be another one. When judging realism, viewers draw on “knowledge of the typical ways television presents stories, as well as direct and indirect experience of the world to make realism judgments about what is seen on television” (Shapiro et al. 2010, 275). Following this argumentation, a discrepancy between personal experience and the narrative portrayed in the series as well as a discrepancy to established televisual conventions will result in viewers judging a fictional narrative as unrealistic. Here, the notion of narrative consistency in the sense of “realistic programming that is internally coherent, that doesn’t contradict itself, and leaves nothing jarringly unexplained” (Hall 2003, 636) returns. Even considering the rules and affordances of fictional narratives, what happens next – or rather what doesn’t happen – is experienced as disruption.

“How does nobody notice Joe?  #YouNetflix” – @yeeitsken

“My entire take away from this first series is the bitter irony is that she would have been completely fine if she had only bought some sodding curtains! Always get curtains no one can see through. Also, this is not a euphemism. #You #YouNetflix” – @NiceQueenCersei

“Just started watching #YouNetflix Why are her windows wide open all the time? The lights inside are too bright. If you're a New Yorker, you're smarter than this -_-” – @ArthikaK

“So #YouNetflix is basically a clumsy #Dexter that just gets somehow lucky with all the things he do along the way. 樂” – @victor_osuna

A ‘clumsy Dexter’ getting away with his crimes as well as the naive behavior of the other characters – ‘If you’re a New Yorker, you’re smarter than this’ – result in a sense of disbelief within these comments. Instead of linking the fictional narrative to a lived reality, the knowledge acquired in this lived reality rather places You decidedly in the realm of fiction, and an unrealistic one at that. In this regard, comments within this repertoire also explicitly emphasize the discrepancies between their own experiences – and a presumed contemporary experience – and the narrative. Considering Shapiro et al.’s emphasis on televisual experience as one type of acquired knowledge, the absence of clear genre definition of the series – as discussed in the introduction – comes to mind again. While “the progress of detective fiction in general is one that goes from order disrupted to order re-established” (Santaulària 2007, 55), the format of You is clearly deviating from this logic. In the most extreme response to the notion of disbelief then, viewers explicitly demand this re-establishment of order:

“F*cking ending. #NetflixYOU #NoJustice” – @FreakyrobinL

“Pls tell me there’s going to be some justice and he ends up in prison. We have enough white guys getting away with stuff in reality” – @Linda Candy

“Season three of ‘You’ should just be the Criminal Minds team trying to solve all of Joes murders #Netflix #YouNetflix” – @JustinCOnTheAir

“Honestly Joe Goldberg constantly fucks up he deserves to get caught, send Dexter in to show him how it’s really done #you #joegoldberg #dexter” – @krissie2212

“Ever wonder what #joegoldberg would look like on #dexters table?” – @podaboutnada

Linking the portrayal of violence on television to questions of social power dynamics, George Gerbner and Larry Gross argue that “the symbolic representation of violence is also communication about social relationships and human types, about goals and means, about winners and losers, about the norms of society and the price for transgression, about the risks of life, and about a variety of other messages – most of them dealing with who gets away with what, when, how, why, and against whom, and demonstrating some aspect of social typing and the exercise of power” (1974, 4). Calling for a fictionalized justice, enacted through other fictional characters – like Dexter’s serial killing main character Dexter Morgan or the forensic specialists of Criminal Minds – thereby connects the conceptual understanding of relative realism (Shapiro et al. 2012) with the shared knowledge of a television viewing audience, while at the same time functioning as a deflection of judgement for potentially liking the series ‘too much’.

2.5 Conclusion “We watch the monstrous spectacle of the horror film because we know that the cinema is a temporary place, that the jolting sensuousness of the celluloid images will be followed by reentry into the world of comfort and light” (1996, 17), Cohen offers as an explanation for our enjoyment of monstrosity in the cinema. What, then, does this mean for the experience of viewing monstrosity on the television screen – in a setting where the lights figuratively remain on and our attention is constantly divided between the actions on the screen and the ones around us? As this chapter has argued, the enjoyment of fictional televisual narratives is tied to an active and shared process of realism judgements: Viewers drawing on the Experience repertoire place the fictional events of the series in relation to their lived experiences in both personal terms and larger cultural phenomena – with the notion of ‘realness’ being an important one throughout different lines of argumentation. Through an emphasis on the shared experience of television viewership, the private attraction to a morally questionable character becomes a site for public approval. As Hall has argued, “even when audience members are watching a TV program or movie alone, they are interpreting it through criteria they have developed through interactions with others” (2003, 638). Interacting and negotiating meaning through online discussion thus becomes a strategy to assess the individual experience of streaming a series like Netflix’s You in a post-television landscape. From a social psychology perspective, Derrick et al. have argued “that seemingly asocial human technologies, such as television, can actually serve a social function” (2009, 361). Introducing the term ‘social surrogacy’, the researchers draw on an experimental study design to show how “humans can use technologies, such as television, to provide the experience of belonging” (2009, 360), which in turn potentially allows for a broader sense of belonging by connecting with other viewers – as exclamations like ‘Tell me I’m not the only one’ suggest. At the same time, the comments within this repertoire correspond to self-reflective discussions of so-called 'problematic faves' in fandom, which "provides space for fans to love a text even while admitting its representational problems" (Salter 2020, 144), through a shared deflection of moral judgements. According to Derrick et al. “television programming, particularly reliably-followed favorite programs, allows viewers the opportunity, week after week (or even day after day), to regularly immerse themselves in a narrative about a recognizable ‘social’ world in which familiar people, situations, landscapes, and events become intimate and comfortable” (2009, 353). In addition to acknowledging the shared experience of viewership, the comments within this repertoire interrogate this notion of a ‘recognizable social world’ by drawing connections between the

22 fictional narrative and their real-life experiences. Emphasizing a knowledgeable position through their personal knowledge as well as an awareness of televisual conventions thus functions as a strategy to navigate intense responses to the series. Arguing with and through lived experiences – in the sense of realism judgements – might in this regard also function as a strategy to distance themselves from their attraction. As Catherine Roach observes “to the ancient and perennial question of how to define and live the good life, how to achieve happiness and fulfillment, American pop culture’s resounding answer is through the narrative of romance, sex, and love" (2016, 3), the Experience repertoire emphasizes the complicated positioning of the series as a ‘narrative of romance, sex and love’. While this repertoire functions as an acknowledgement of fan love for ‘unloveable’ characters, the following two repertoires validate this love by providing (equally public) explanations: The romantic – and therefore morally good – intentions behind the character’s actions, which will be the focus of the following chapter, and the emphasis on physical appearance as a diversion from monstrosity, which will be discussed in the fourth chapter. Following Potter and Wetherell’s understanding that “people do things with their discourse: they make accusations, ask questions, justify their conduct and so on" (1988, 169), the way viewers draw on these different interpretative repertoires helps us to understand online discussions as a productive space to interrogate the questions of masculinity, power and emotions. If “specific emotional experiences and outcomes are also, to some degree, shaped by our ideas about emotion, particularly by our emotion prototypes and our prototype narratives” (Hogan 2003, 242), interrogating which underlying prototypes are drawn on in a shared experience of television viewing will be the focus of the next chapters.

23 3. Of Love and Hate: Romanticizing the Serial Killer 3.1 Theoretical Framework: Genre and Gender “Desire and violence often share a representational lexicon, borrowing from a register of urgency that reaches out of appetite toward satiation” (2014), Deborah Wills introduces what she terms the ‘homicidal romance’. As the introductory chapter of this thesis has argued, the serial killer as the ‘modern monster’ has not just become a staple character in literature, but also in contemporary film and television. What is novel, however, is the emerging position of the serial killer at the intersection between different genres – with comedy (as for instance in HBO’s Barry) and especially with romance. „The romance is the most female of popular genres“ (2003, xii), Pamela Regis argues on the literary genre in her historical overview, while Sally Munt (1994) interestingly notes that the psychological thriller is often regarded as a particularly feminine form (as opposed to the masculinity of the thriller). In addition to the ‘shared representational lexicon’, then, these two genres appear to have more in common: On the one hand, a predominantly female audience, and on the other hand a specific focus on emotions and emotionality. Nonetheless, there are fundamental differences between the two genres, especially in regard to questions of resolution and redemption: While the psychological thriller “concerns itself more with questions of subjectivity and the psychological basis for transgression, and makes no guarantees regarding narrative resolution” (Pittard 2012), the romance builds and depends on this resolution – the happy ending. In her overview of the romance story in popular culture, Roach claims that besides variations, the "basic plot of the romance narrative – find somebody to love, work through problems, be happy – holds true as a common storyline across all these categories and across all of the books" (Roach 2016, 4). In fact, writing on the romance novel in literature, Regis argues that the conventions of the genre are so established that “the reader often discounts, skips, or otherwise disregards scenes that the writer did include but which contradict the romance novel paradigm that the reader is using to work through the novel“ (2003, 48). Stephan J. Toner echoes this understanding by emphasizing how romantic gestures portrayed on television have become “stereotypical cultural images for romantic interludes” (1988, 1) – merely by repetition. In other words, as both literary and televisual audiences, we have grown so accustomed to conventional tropes of the romance that we can quickly recognize these tropes, even if they appear to be contradictory to other parts of the narrative. Tracking these ‘cultural images’ and ‘romantic paradigms’ in the narratives of psychological thrillers, and particularly serial killer narratives, thus allows us to further investigate the relationship between these two genres – and the ways viewers navigate the tension between the two.

24 One of the sites where this tension is most visible are the fictional characters themselves. According to Henriette Heidbrink, “fictional characters exhibit a certain ambivalence that makes them delicate to catch: On the one hand they are seamlessly integrated into the work they appear in; on the other hand they seem to be easily unhinged from their medial context and therefore possess a certain autonomy” (2010, 67). Understanding how fictional characters are both portrayed and interpreted, then, becomes relevant to broader cultural discussions. On the prototypical romantic hero Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, for instance, Janet Todd writes that he "evokes both an enjoyable masochistic dread of the overbearing male and a utopian exultation at the feminine erotic power that can bring the monster to heel with minimal effort" (2013, 153). The ‘monster’ in the romance novel, then, can and always will be tamed in the (happy) end, while the psychological thriller does not offer a similar promise. From a psychological perspective, Richard Keen, Monica McCoy and Elizabeth Powell nonetheless offer a wide variety of reasons why “normal people occasionally find themselves rooting for the villain instead of the hero”, claiming that "while some of the explanations may make us a bit uncomfortable (identifying with certain aspects of the villain or knowing we enjoy watching them commit acts we might fantasize about), others actually point to our goodness (a willingness to consider situational factors when judging others) or at least to our adaptability (getting to like things we see frequently)" (2012, 144). Especially the last two explanations, the emphasis on situational factors and the adaptability to repeated exposure, link back to the established genre conventions – and the viewers’ navigation of these conventions in determining the status of a character as either hero or villain/anti-hero. Writing from a philosophical perspective – and decidedly opposing a Kantian understanding of love – Robert Solomon argues that “nothing is more important to our evaluation of a person’s moral character than feelings, and not just because of our reasonable expectation that actions generally follow feelings” (1988, 17). In this understanding, morality and emotion become intrinsically interwoven. In an attempt to explain the public love for Dexter Morgan, the main character and serial-killer-killing-serial-killers of the long-running television series Dexter, Donnelly similarly returns to morality, arguing that “our love for the deviant other can only last if he or she kills ‘them’ and not us—that is, our recognized acceptance of the Other must further perpetuate our ideologies of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and maintain our security within our parameters of normalcy” (2012, 23). What, then, if this argumentation does not hold for other fictional serial killer narratives – and, as in the case of You, quite literally addresses ‘us’? Writing from a position between communication science and law, Douglas Walton has argued for a critical understanding of the concept of character evidence that is also useful when talking about fictional characters: “Character evidence is treated in law as on a razor’s edge. It

25 is both probative and prejudicial. It is a kind of evidence that we often need to use in trials, for example, for cross-examining a witness. But its proclivity to mislead has required drawing strict and often complex boundaries around how it can be used” (2006, xiv). Following his argumentative thread connecting Roman law to contemporary American criminal court proceedings, then, allows for an understanding of both moral and penal judgement on the basis of not just motive, but also ‘character’ – or, in other words, the ethical underpinnings of a person’s behavior. In the context of Netflix’s You, this excursion into criminal law takes on an important meaning, as the viewers posting about the series online emphasize the character’s (morally good) intentions as a counterbalance to (morally bad) actions. When it comes to violence on the screen, Alison Young argues, the narrative framework has to "provide a sense of legitimation soothing to the anxiety of watching the violent crime-image" (2010, 147). In the absence of a clear morality, then, there appears to be only one acceptable, redeeming explanation and legitimation for ‘doing anything’: love. This chapter will discuss how the romantic tropes embedded in the series and the use of constant voice-over narration allow for the reading of the series as romance, which in turn de-emphasize the parts of the series more closely reminiscent of a psychological thriller. While the first repertoire discussed in this thesis anchors the comments in reality and real, shared experiences, the second repertoire Romance is situated in the realm of fantasy, thereby further emphasizing the notion of a romantic ‘ideal’.

3.2 “I need a Joe in my life” – The Fantasy of Romance Described as “a twisted tale that fluctuates between a love story and any woman’s nightmare” (Highfill 2018), You does not only appear to blur the lines between normal dating practices and stalking – especially where checking someone else’s online presence is concerned – but also between the idealized fantasy of romance and the eery realism of the psychological thriller. As becomes obvious in formulations like “the murderous, obsessive romantic Joe Goldberg” and “the book-loving, romantic serial killer” (Jean-Philippe 2019), the notion of romance functions as a counterbalance to the violent actions of the series’ protagonist. That the show can be read as a romance is highly intentional, as the director of the first two episodes, Lee Toland Krieger, explained: "I wanted something that felt like a great New York love story, just with a very disturbed protagonist. The show opens with these luscious slow-motion shots. There’s that amber glow. It doesn’t feel like a thriller" (Reilly 2019). In contrast to television’s other two ‘favorite ‘serial killers – Dexter’s Dexter Morgan who is introduced to the viewer as a serial killer on the hunt and Hannibal’s Hannibal Lecter who has already been introduced as a cannibalistic serial killer in both Thomas Harris’ novels and their cinematic adaptations – Joe Goldberg enters the televisual screen as ‘just’ an ordinary guy. The

26 aesthetics of the series, and the use of popular romantic tropes – from a love-at-first-sight moment in the bookstore to a heroic-life-saving-moment in the New York Metro – especially in the first few episodes then arguably contribute to establishing the series as romantic:

“Maybe I'm crazy but I can't but to LOVE them together lol! #YouNetflix #youseason2” – @PhinneyVicki

“I think of Netflix's You as Dexter if it was a rom com. Just occurred to me that Joe's apartment in season 2 also reminds me of Dexter's long time pad in Miami. #YouNetflix” – @ericberlin

“That YOU season 2 ep10 type love!!! That i love u with all ur crazy fucked up parts love that bonnie n clyde type love now that's my type of love 殺藍 #YouNetflix #YOUSEASON2 #crazylove” – @nikoadry“

“Forget #BonnieandClyde... Now it's all about "Be the Joe to my Love". And yes all puns intended.殺 #YouNetflix” – @AvaleaRowver2

“This is the perfect dialogue for a romance novel ❤ 殺 ... But only if you put aside the tiny little fact that #JoeGoldberg is also perfect. Yes. He is the perfect broken soul who stalks…” – @maryvilleri

The returning references to ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ further place the series in a long line of great – if ultimately tragic – love stories. In this context, the setting of the series could also be understood as an emphasis on this tradition: With the first season centered around a book store in New York and the second season taking place in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, the series quietly references both the romantic and violent tropes established in our shared pop-cultural imagination through literature and film. The link to established, prototypical characters can also be found in the romantic self-understanding of Joe Goldberg. In one exemplary scene, the book store clerk and avid reader recommends Don Quijote to his neighbor's young son, stating "it's about a guy who believes in chivalry so he decides to be an old school knight" – which corresponds to the way Joe Goldberg frames his own actions. Furthermore, it should be noted that the comments discussed here are predominantly focused on the second season of the series, and thus show that the romanticization continues to be possible despite the violent ending of the first season. In addition to reading the story as a romance, the comments within this repertoire correspondingly emphasize an understanding of the series’ protagonist as romantic hero. Drawing a connection between the romantic ideals portrayed and repeated on television and Freud’s pleasure principle, Toner claims that “in approaching real world problems, one finds it impossible to find this perfection, preferring the fantasy lovers to human beings” (1988, 12). While this conclusion might be a bit overdrawn, the tendency of viewing the fictional character as an ideal prototype for romantic love is palpable in the viewer comments analyzed here. As Shapiro et al. have argued, “what we can imagine or infer about a story may contribute as

27 much or more to a sense of realism than what is explicitly presented” (2010, 276). This imagination, then, expands on the (initially) romantic tropes within the narrative to create a romantic ideal the viewers can fantasize about. Different from the earlier repertoire, here the focus lies on the personal fantasy of having a Joe in ‘my’ life. With formulations like “hope” and “would”, these comments are set in the realm of fantasy – and thereby explicitly distinct from the reality-oriented first repertoire.

“I really wanna get put in a box #you #Trending #JoeGoldberg” – @blasian_babyyy_

“The only psychopath I will let come near me. #YouNetflix #YOUNetlix” – @supalertok

“Sometimes I really wish l Had a Joe in my life... #YouNetflix” – @Britt__Fowler

“What's my taste in guys like you ask? Well cross Edward Cullen with Joe from YOU, and sweet baby Jesus it's probably a good thing I'm single” – @Barry Wilkinson

“if it's not joe's kind of love. i don't want it! #YouNetflix” – @TyReCheeze

“If there’s a man like Joe in real life .I would love him more than anything . He WILL kill any one who’s just wanna take advantage of me then destroy whatever I do #YouNetflix IDK why Peck choice to scape ??????” – @xxak18

“I hope Joe Goldberg falls in love with me and kills everyone that’s toxic in my life. #you #JoeGoldberg #YouNetflix #NetflixYOU” – @brocksdrunkhoe

“Why is joe a hopeless romantic #YouNetflix” – @UnfazedGem

“I don't understand Joe. He's a psycho, maniac, abusive, stalker, killer, pervert, insane. But i still think hes cute. Why heart? Why?♥ ♥ #YOUSEASON2 #YouNetﬂix #JoeGoldberg #PSYCHOPASS #stalking” – @NoobSedex

‘Joe’s kind of love’ – although potentially violent and dangerous – becomes the aspired romantic ideal in these tweets, following an understanding of the character as doing what he does for the ultimate and superior motive of love. In his research on universal narratives, Patrick Colm Hogan argues that “in the case of romantic love, we compare the person’s actions and expressions with our prototype for actional/expressive outcomes of love” (Hogan 2003, 240). In the case of Joe Goldberg, this prototype is influenced by previous romantic portrayals in popular culture. As a case in point: The repertoire of courtship in the romance novel depends "upon a suitor's persistence, his unwillingness to take no for an answer" (Hinnant 2006). In You, this romantic notion of persistence becomes challenged through the threatening and invasive stalking of a character who certainly will not ‘take no for an answer’. In an interview with Vice, Penn Badgley emphasized the intricate ways the show draws on – and attempts to criticize – these established prototypes: “I think it helps us to see that we have some really strange and

28 distorted ideas about love and relationships that seem more like lust and possession than actual love. But we’re inundated in pop culture with stories of love that have nothing to do with love. And we have been as long as there’s been pop culture, so I think the fact that the show makes us think about these things is actually really great” (Zaragoza 2020). In this context, a certain distancing within this repertoire should be pointed out. By labeling the character as ‘stalker’, ‘broken soul’ and ‘psychopath’, viewers are arguably acknowledging the problematic aspects of their romanticization. This hints at an awareness of the tension between the romantic tropes embedded in the narrative and the violent actions of the ‘romantic hero’, as "much like Joe manipulated Beck into loving him, so did the show trick us into adoring Joe" (Reilley 2019). Arguably, the use of emojis in the comments, especially on Twitter, playfully emphasizes this awareness throughout all three interpretative repertoires. In the online sphere, where transgressive opinions could be judged negatively, emojis function as

 signposts for a variety of emotions ranging from self-awareness () to shameful confessions ( ) – and thereby further reflect the viewers’ struggle to both understand their private attractions and frame them in the public sphere. This ongoing negotiation between contradicting interpretations and images of (male) behavior is in line with the contemporary interrogation of toxic masculinity – as Lanigan writes: "until recently, we’ve romanticized and idolised the male character who tries, tries and tries again to convince the girl of his dreams that he’s right for her, and it’s led us into a murky world where we’re unable to separate archaic ideas of romance and chivalry from the actuality of stalking, gaslighting and emotional abuse." (2019). What can be considered romantic, then, becomes placed on a sliding scale between the romantic fantasy of persistent wooing – rewarded with the happy ending – and violent, abusive behavior, with the events of the series ultimately pointing towards the latter. Nonetheless, besides potentially being aware of their non-applicability, viewers apparently return to established prototypical roles and concepts to explain their attraction for the character. At the same time, understanding the appeal of romance fiction “through an examination of the multiple and relational ways individuals use romance novels to escape from, connect to, and build their social worlds" (Moody 2014, 2) and the serial killer as a cultural category that "belongs to the realms of both reality and fiction" (Allue 2002, 7), the decoding of the series between experienced realities – as discussed in the previous chapter – and romantic fantasies becomes a productive form of meaning-making. At the same time, there is an additional theme within this repertoire, which complicates this ‘aware’ interpretation of the series. By posting direct quotes from the series, especially on Twitter, the tension between romance and psychological thriller, romanticization and violence, is lost:

29 “The first step to fix something is to know no matter how destroyed it seems, it can always be saved. #quotes #relationship #YouNetflix” – @Gaabs911113

“All I want is You #YouNetflix #Netflix” – @Philadiasophia

“Once at the time i belived in love Sure I been hurt before but i learned from that. #YouNetflix” – @ShroukE23856697

“If we don't have trust, we have nothing. #you #YouNetflix” – @ShroukE23856697

“You’re mine and I need to protect you #YouNetflix” – @someone090893

“Sometimes, We Do Bad Things For The People We Love. It Doesn't Mean It's Right, It Means Love Is More Important- Joe Goldberg ❤ #NetﬂixYOU” – @Mubink9

Standing on their own, these quotes could have been taken from a variety of romantic novels, films and television series. Taking out of the context of the violence on the screen, the comments are emblematic of both the way the series plays with established tropes and the selective focus of the viewers on the positive (romantic) actions of the series’ protagonist. In this regard, the shared selective reading of the series as romance echoes Stuart Hall's argument that "‘selective perception’ is almost never as selective, random or privatized as the concept suggests" (1999, 514). It should be noted that the majority of these quotes is not taken from dialogue, but from the protagonist’s interior monologue (which will be the focus of the following section). As accomplices to the intimate thoughts of the main character, the viewers are privy to the romantic intentions of the character – more so than the other characters on the screen. How far the romanticization of the character and his exclamations goes is nicely visible on the Do-it-yourself-Website Etsy3, where fans are selling (and presumably buying) Valentine’s Day Cards with selected quotes from the show as well as their own adaptations. In the context of the show, greeting cards with cliché phrases like “It’s always been you” or “You are my favorite stalker” gain a new layer of meaning.

3.3 “In my eyes he’s not guilty ... doing it all for love.” – Romantic Intentions and Voice-Over Narration Drawing on both cultural research and social psychology, Kelly Bergstrand and James Jasper argue for a concept of ‘deflection’, that motivates people to act in order to maintain meaning in everyday situations. However, “when such meanings are disconfirmed, this produces uncomfortable tension or stress that motivates action to restore the meanings” (2018, 234). The emphasis on the inherently good intentions – if not necessarily good outcomes – of the actions of Joe Goldberg could in this regard be seen as an attempt to

3 See https://www.etsy.com/de/search?q=Netflix%20you

30 restore meaning. In her extensive analysis of male roles in television, Amanda Lotz argues that the new abundance of series led by an anti-hero character “also probe the circumstances and conditions that have led them to transgress the bounds of propriety, and these series depict them struggling with their responses to circumstances not entirely of their making” (2014, 63). Providing viewers with both a (psychological) background for his actions and an emphasis on his romantic rationale, Joe Goldberg becomes exemplary of what Donelly refers to as pop culture thriving on “explanation as a way of abating fears of violence and fears of Otherness” (2012, 21). As long as the intentions are romantic, the romanticization of the character is considered acceptable for these viewers: Joe Goldberg is killing to ‘protect her’, he is ‘doing it all for love’ and consequently ‘not a bad guy’:

“Binge watching YOU on Netflix. In my eyes he’s not guilty ..... doing it all for love. #YouNetflix” – @mizzsarahhean

“He may have killed a few humans, but he's not a bad bad guy... I still love him  #You #YouNetflix #Netflix #Joe #JoeYou” – @TheRealNelly90

“Today, I completed season 1 of Netflix original series YOU. I really liked the concept and the story . Joe did everything for love . He even killed her close ones just to protect her . This is an amazing psychological thriller. @PennBadgley @ElizabethLailBR #you #NetflixYOU” – @nihgrwal

“He just wants to love someone like everybody else. Minus the stalking, the manipulation and the killing, he actually a good guy.” – @Fai Cry

To arrive at this interpretation, the use of voice-over throughout the series undeniably plays a crucial role: In addition to allowing for identification with the character, as discussed in the second chapter of this thesis, the voice-over narration – in combination with the aforementioned romantic tropes embedded in the series – functions as a gateway to a ‘romantic reading’. As "people have a tendency to overestimate the importance of personal or dispositional variables and to underestimate situational or environmental variables" (Truchot et al. 2003, 202), the constant interior monologue of the series’ protagonist becomes the site where these personal variables are being emphasized. By rationalizing his actions and underlining his (good) intentions, the interior monologue functions as a counterbalance to the violence on the screen – in other words: “Badgley’s voice is a momentary distraction from the horrors unfolding" (Murray 2019). In an exemplary scene from the first season, the voice-narration emphasizes Joe Goldberg’s protective intent – "Everything I do, I do to protect you, Beck. Peach, Benji, they left me no choice. They were dangerous. I think you might be in danger again" – while the character follows Guinevere Beck's psychotherapist (and presumed love affair) through a darkened corridor, sharp letter opener in hand. Drawing a direct comparison to its literary predecessor, David Heinemann argues that the unreliable narrator in

31 audiovisual media, “where the voice is not mediated by the written word but linked in a variety of ways to the indexical image, its power to convince is multiplied" (2003, 67). In the first season, the series departs from the original novel by Caroline Kepnes, which is entirely told from the perspective of Joe, to allow for another voice-over: At the beginning of the fourth episode of the first season, Guinevere Beck, Joe’s love interest, surprisingly becomes the voice of the narration. In an interview with Vulture, series creator Sera Gamble described this divergence from the novel as a way to emphasize the status of Joe as an unreliable narrator: “There’s nothing more compelling than hearing someone’s honest thoughts. And then, [we] start to move to her point of view so you can compare and contrast the truth. Sometimes he’s right. Sometimes he’s wrong” (Fernandez 2018). However, the inclusion of another narrating voice was only a short excursion, rendering the ‘compelling’ power of narration quickly back to the series’ protagonist. Writing on cinema, Heinemann argues that "In cinema, oral narration informs. It also seduces. The timbre of the voice and the often confessional nature of this intimate form of address" (2003, 67), then, are part of the affective cinematic experience. Considering the second-person address of the series – the You in the character’s thoughts – and the setting of the televisual in the private sphere, this intimacy could be considered even more intense for televisual viewing. If the “the power of the voice is not to be underestimated” (LeFèvre 2013, 11), the affective potential of using "Netflix’s smoothest baritone" (Murray 2019) to narrate and interpret the images on the screen should be noted:

“Addicted to his voice” – @Cherry Wine

“He creeps me out but in the same time he is so calming.. His voice is so good” – @Damiän Van Berkel

“Watching @YouNetflix so much that when I think to myself, I hear it in @PennBadgley’s voice... #You #PennBadgley #JoeGoldberg #WillBettelheim” – @DavidHu48713917

In this regard, the combination of the voice itself, "like smooth jazz in a minor key—the melodies and cadences are so relaxing that you forget that there’s something extremely off about the whole thing" (2019) as the journalist Iana Murray notes, and the content of the voice-over narration increases the persuasive power. Being privy to the thoughts, fears, and hopes of Joe Goldberg, then, arguably allows – and even encourages – viewers to identify with the series’ protagonist. This identification is “likely to increase enjoyment, involvement, and intense emotional responses” (Cohen 2001, 260), which in turn increases the need to interrogate these reactions afterwards, especially for characters that are not clearly marked as heroes. As Keen et. al argue: "As we learn about a bad guy, we shift from making snap

32 judgments based on internal attributions, to assessments that take external factors into account" (2012, 131). Following the series from the protagonist’s (interior) perspective tells us why the character is doing what he does, thus fostering understanding and empathy. Mosty narrating in the present tense – and neither foreshadowing the future nor interpreting the past – the voice-over narration provides insights into the character’s thoughts in the moment, and thereby functions as "as a means of winning the viewer's understanding and identification" (Kozloff 1989, 63). In a show that without Joe Goldberg’s constant narration “would be nothing but awkward silences and stalking of women” (Murray 2019), the voice-over becomes fundamental for a reading of the series and the protagonist as romantic. At the same time, the second-person address of this voice-over narration, the “You” that simultaneously addresses the characters on the screen and the viewers in front of it, potentially fuels the romantic fantasy running through the comments discussed here. In a series of Instagram posts4 published on the official account @younetflix as part of the promotion of the first season on Netflix, the affective potential of this direct address is taken to an extreme. "Hello, I'm Joe", the character tells the camera. "But the real question is... who are you?" Considering the cross-media reach and discussion of the series, this play with the fantasy of being the object of ‘Joe’s kind of love’ – as discussed in the previous section – should nonetheless be underlined, although this breaking of the fourth wall does not take place within the narrative itself. Ultimately, for the viewers drawing on this repertoire, the readability of the series as romance appears to come down to a question of balance: As long as the positive actions and good intentions of the character outweigh the negative (read: violent and abusive) actions,

‘rooting’ for the character remains acceptable:

“I hate him but I also want to protect him cuz of how nice he is SOMETIMES” – @HalleHearsEars

“I want to punch this creepy fuckin guy in YOU in his stupid face annnd then he does something good like save a girl from being date raped. So conflicted right now. #YOUSEASON2 #YouNetflix #YOU” – @liquorthinkin

“Am I the only person who low key wanted Joe and Delilah to get together? Yk, like apart from him murdering some people he seems great and I feel like they would be good together lmfao idfk #you #YOUNetlix #younetflix #JoeGoldberg #YouSeasonTwo” – @KaceyWHAT

“Kinda scary when you love the bad things about someone as much as the good ... maybe even a little more. #YouNetflix” – @lffaa_

“#YouNetflix I should be against this guy that kills for love , but here I am feeling like I understand. Lol I don't like things that confuse my integrity ” – @Tamz_L

4 See https://www.instagram.com/p/BsGqp7ShP9-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

33 Described as ‘conflicting’ and ‘confusing my integrity’, the effort of this balancing act becomes visible in these comments. At the same time, this balancing emphasizes that the violent actions of the character do not automatically disqualify him from a position as romantic lead, as ‘like apart from him murdering some people he seems great’. Both the romantic tropes and the focus on the character’s good intentions through his constant voice-over foster the reading of the series as romance and the character as romantic hero – or at least as someone trying to be. Also framed in media reports as a man “willing to do whatever it takes to make damn sure that love triumphs over everything” (Highfill 2018), the character follows a popular trope of romanticizing aggressive (male) behavior in literature, film and television alike. As Keen et al. have analyzed, “the villain in many romance novels and movies attracts the female with their swagger and dangerous persona, only to morph into devoted loving husbands and fathers by the end of the story” (2012, 143). Within the serial format, the hope of a redeeming end remains. Interestingly, in the absence of a voice-over narration – as entry point to identification – the response to Love Quinn, the main female character of the series’ second season, is met with a very different reaction. While the majority of the comments posted on earlier episodes either romanticize the couple or compare the character to the first season’s love interest Beck, the reactions to the second season’s final episodes – which reveal that Love did not only kill her former nanny, but also Joe’s neighbor Delilah and his ex-girlfriend Candace (both threatening to expose his actions) – underline that the romanticization of the serial killer only works as an explanatory strategy for male, but not female transgressions.

“Even a show devoted to delving into the mind of a male psychopath cannot escape the one inescapable, undisputed fact that...bitches be crazy? #YouNetflix” – @Whoootiz

“Love craziness makes Joe looks like an innocent puppy  I can't believe I'm rooting for a serial killer to escape ♀ Run Joe, run away... far far away!! #YOUNetlix #YOUSEASON2” – katnisz_aristo

“Did expect anything less from Love. She had crazy written all over her face  #Sheprettythough #YouNetflix #Season2” – @yeeitsken

"Episode 10. Whoa. Whoa. And whoa. Why is it that when Joe kills people, it makes sense, but when Love does, you’re like “eeww, psychopath”  #YouNetflix" – @iamlhop

Especially the last comment makes the double standard fairly obvious – while the romantic reading of the male protagonist allows for transgressions, similar behavior by his female counterpart cannot be tolerated – particularly in the ‘feminine’ genres of the romance and the psychological thriller. In his discussion of the romance novel, Jonathan Allan argues that the genre bases masculinity on ideas of dominance and superiority (2016, 30), however,

34 these ideas do not extend to excuse the behavior of Love Quinn. While the voice-over narration arguably plays a role in this, the references to ‘having crazy written over her face’ and ‘the indisputable fact that bitches be crazy’ explicitly connect the different reactions back to gender, thereby underlining Lizzie Seal’s argument that “women who kill trouble the masculine/feminine gender binary by transgressing its boundaries” (2010, 1). In contrast to the comments on the male protagonist, the comments on Love Quinn do not follow the ‘crazy but…’ logic, but are rather representative of a clear, moral judgement of the character:

“Love, wow - what a crazy bitch.” – @xxokaren_

“Love is crazy as fuck #YOUSEASON2” – @babysalma122

“I called it from episode one. Love is crazy. #YouNetflix” – @yo__charli

“Love is 500000% more crazy than Joe. Jesussss hell #YouNetflix” – @big_m00d

“At least Joe wants to be uncrazy but that Love embraces it! Joe doesn’t know how to handle this lol #YouNetflix” – @montreal_16

“So I knew Love was crazy but I didn’t know she was THAT crazy. She didn’t match his energy. She completely out-crazied him #YouNetflix” – @baddiexbeyy

For the female ‘crazy’, then, there is no redemptive argument: While Joe ‘at least wants to be uncrazy’, the unapologetic embracement of Love Quinn of her own transgressive actions is in turn rejected throughout these comments. In the context of romanticization, it should be especially noted that both characters – Joe Goldberg and Love Quinn – explain their violent actions through the same argument: Protecting the ones they love. For Love, however, the ones needing protection are male characters: Her younger brother Forty, who was sexually abused by their nanny as a teenager, and Joe himself, who could be exposed by both Delilah and Candace. Following Allan’s understanding that romantic narratives reveal “a great deal about masculinity, especially in terms of ideal (and desired) masculinities that conform to the expectations of readers and society alike" (2016, 29), the actions of the female protagonist could be read as disruptive to this ‘ideal masculinity’ – and thereby disruptive to the romance as a whole.

3.4 Conclusion As Dym and Fiesler argue, “online fandom is a space that is at once both very personal and separate from all things personal, as people bring with them to fandom the parts that might not be welcome in their daily lives while also leaving behind connections to their real identities”

35 (2018). Within this repertoire, the romanticization of Joe Goldberg remains firmly in the realm of fantasy, distanced from the daily lives of the viewers. According to Roach, for women living “in a man’s world”, romance narratives correspondingly function as a "fantasy safe space that addresses these anxieties and has them all work out. This imaginative space provides resources for thinking through the conundrum and for feeling its contours differently" (2016, 15). Nonetheless, interpreting the series and its main protagonist as romantic reflects the need to find valid explanations for ‘conflicting’ reactions to the series within the publicness of online spaces. Highlighting certain aspects of the narrative, while de-emphasizing or even blatantly ignoring others, reflects what Regis calls selective reading: “This selective reading results from the genre expectations that readers assume once they have become familiar with a given genre such as the romance novel. These expectations permit a reader to weigh some events in the narrative more heavily than others“ (2003, 50). Although the overlooking of the violence within the series might be the most extreme version of this, the tendency to ‘read selectively’ can nonetheless be tracked throughout the comments within this repertoire. In this regard, not only the familiarity of the viewers with the conventions of the romance, but also their identification with the main character in the serial format inform the assessment of the series at the intersection between genres. Similarly, Richard Logsdon argues that it is precisely the viewers’ familiarity with the character of Hannibal Lecter that allows the showrunners of the television series Hannibal “to create conflicting impressions of this insidious character, a certain prototype of the devil, and in so doing to leave the viewer with the sense that the cannibalistic doctor is capable of a gentleness, a sensitivity, a compassion, even a loyalty that make him admirable, even worthy of adoration" (2017, 50). Similarly, the use of a voice-over from Joe’s perspective makes seeing the portrayed situations from the character’s perspective – and understanding his intentions and potentially sympathizing with his actions – undeniably easier. As Keen, McCoy and Powell have argued from a psychological perspective, “questions about motivation, past experiences, and consequences all figure into deciding whether someone is seen as bad” (2012, 129). The voice-over from a first person perspective, in this regard, "can greatly affect the viewer's experience of the text by ’naturalizing’ the source of the narrative, by increasing identification with the characters, by prompting nostalgia, and by stressing the individuality and subjectivity of perception and storytelling" (Kotzloff 1989, 41). As this chapter has argued, it is precisely the subjectivity of the voice-over narration that informs the viewers’ responses to the series You: The interior monologue of the series’ protagonist in combination with the established, recognizable romantic tropes embedded in the narrative allow for a reading of the narrative as a romance – rather than (only) a psychological thriller. Instead of emphasizing the bestial

36 intelligence behind attractive serial killers, as psychological thrillers in literature frequently do, the interior monologue of Joe Goldberg reveals his naivety, and renders the character thereby more human and less threatening. To highlight this point, Netflix recently published a video with scenes from the second season with the voice-over edited out. Drawing out the awkward silences and emphasizing the piercing looks of the character, the video description fittingly raises the question “How is it possible that anyone could ever find Joe/Will/whatever his name is charming?” (Netflix 2020) – at least without hearing his thoughtful narration. Furthermore, the second-person address of the series arguably aids in this experience of romantic fantasy: According to a social media post by Netflix Australia/New Zealand, the word "You" is said 3.857 times in the first two seasons of the series (Instagram 2019). While the “You” within the narrative addresses Guinevere Beck and Love Quinn respectively in the first and second season, the decontextualized quotes from the series emphasize that “You” could be anyone watching the series (and thus listening to the character’s thoughts). What, then, does this ‘fantasy’ of being addressed by the serial killer as romantic hero mean in a broader cultural context? As Keen et al. conclude: "One thing is for certain: as long as we continue to be drawn to the bad guys, those who create the entertainment of our popular culture will continue to provide us with sexy, complex, gorgeous men to cheer for—even if they walk on the wrong side of the law" (2012, 144). The connection between behavior and appearance is also taken on by Iana Murray in her discussion of the series, arguing that while Penn Badgley’s "presence spurred some unintentional consequences, it also signaled one of the show’s key themes: the innate willingness to look over the problematic behavior of attractive white men" (Murray 2019). As the brief comparison between the comments about Joe Goldberg and Love Quinn emphasize, romanticization is also inherently gendered: For the male protagonist of the series, both his inner monologue and his embodied appearance as a white, heterosexual man appear to foster the selective reading of his actions as romantic. The distinctive borders between romance and psychological thriller, then, also become a question of visibility. Quite symbolically, the most violent scenes of both seasons take place inside the character’s glass box, thus being both highly visible and invisible. Detached from the outside world through a thin layer of – nonetheless indestructible – glass, the violent behavior of Joe Goldberg becomes likewise detached from his romantic and romanticized actions and interactions outside of this box. In the second season, this detachment is further emphasized by placing the glass box not in the basement of a bookstore – the site of fantasy and fiction – but inside a storage unit, which has become synonymous with a site for hidden and hiding horrors in crime and serial killer fiction. As an allegory, then, the glass box arguably represents the positioning of the series between the conventions of the romance narrative and the psychological thriller – an

37 intersection where viewers can literally ‘see through’ the romanticization of violent actions, which nonetheless have the potential to remain hidden and separated. The next chapter will further expand on this notion of visibility by taking a closer look at the significance of the body in the viewer interpretations: In addition to the emphasis on romantic actions and intentions, the physical appearance of the – male and white – body of the serial killer functions similarly as a site to navigate feelings of attraction.

38 4. Of Monsters and Men: Physical Attractiveness and the Appearance of Monstrosity 4.1 Theoretical Framework: Monstrosity “We live in a time of monsters” (1996, vii), Jeffrey Jerome Cohen introduces his anthology of contemporary approaches to monstrosity in literature, film and television. However, as this chapter will argue, monstrosity has become increasingly difficult to recognize. As “the word monster is linked to the word demonstrate: to show, to reveal” (Gelder 2000, 81), monstrosity is inherently linked to not just visual appearance, but to an idea of making the hidden, the “monstrous version of humanity that reflects the hidden or camouflaged desires of so-called ordered society” (Carroll 2015, 44), visible. Understood not just as a staple of the horror genre (and its close relatives of crime and thriller), but a cultural concept, the question of how monstrosity is portrayed and framed in literature, film and television also reflects larger societal and cultural changes. As Jeffrey Weinstock claims: “When our monsters change, it reflects the fact that we – our understanding of what it means to be human, our relations with one another and to the world around us, our conception of our place in the greater scheme of things—have changed as well” (2016, 275). In this larger theoretical framework and historical understanding of monstrosity, a new type of monster has gained increasing popularity in both fiction and non-fiction genres. “Transgressing, subverting, finally rendering meaningless the socially constructed divide between Reality and Fiction” (Schneider 2003, 3), the serial killer has arguably become the contemporary embodiment of monstrosity: “As a monster, the serial killer also functions as a showcase gallery of the individual and social evils that he epitomises and reflects back to us, a function that is contained in the etymology of the word 'monster' itself.” (Santaulària 2007, 60). The serial killer subgenre, as Mark Seltzer explains, has "by now largely replaced the Western as the most popular genre-fiction of the body and bodily violence in our culture" (1998, 1), while at the same time representing the limitations of rendering monstrosity visible. Both acting and appearing mostly inconspicuous within society, the serial killer becomes representative of a “contemporary disconnection of monstrosity from physical appearance” (Weinstock 2016, 275). At the same time, this changing appearance of monstrosity challenges our own positioning in relation to what is considered monstrous, as “an objective ‘us versus them’ view of human against monster leads to a misunderstanding of the monster and an inability to spot the monster-among” (Carroll 2015, 59). Drawing a connection from the sympathetic portrayal of monsters in film and television to the use of metal detectors at airport security checkpoints, Weinstock argues that “we are subjected to these visual prostheses because vision is not enough to separate out the monsters from the rank and file of humanity. We no longer recognize a monster when we see one” (2016, 282). In the absence of the visual signifiers of

39 monstrosity, the monster could be anyone, anywhere, anytime. How, then, do we distinguish the ‘monstrous’ from the ‘human’? Raising a similar question, Isabel Santaulària emphasizes the ordinary appearance of the body – and behavior – of the serial killer, that is nonetheless disrupted through visuality: “Invisible and almost omniscient, serial killers lead outwardly ordinary lives and look like ordinary individuals. Yet, they are repulsive nonetheless, a repulsiveness that manifests itself or is brought to our attention in various ways” (2007, 64). As a site for this manifestation, the body of the contemporary monster – the serial killer – still remains the focus of attention. Patrycja Sokolawska for instance claims that contemporary media draw on a gothic understanding of the 'monster' to describe serial killers in true crime narratives: "The emphasis on the monstrous aspects is often rooted in the appearance. Frankenstein’s monster is emblematic in a way which is inaccessible to most monsters of the true crime genre; however, the language used to describe serial murderers is often such that they seem to gain additional features, turning them into lurking stalkers who are almost shadow-like in their appearance." (2019, 113). Portrayed as both a (literal) stalker and serial killer in the series, Joe Goldberg then becomes the perfect example to interrogate Sokolawska’s understanding of the contemporary monstrous body. Moreover, the concept of the body and the monstrous are not just linked to the visual, embodied appearance of the monster, but also to the physical, embodied experience of watching monstrous characters, because "the monster awakens one to the pleasures of the body, to the simple and fleeting joys of being frightened, or frightening – to the experience of mortality and corporality" (Cohen 1996, 17). As this chapter will argue, these ‘pleasures of the body’ also include a physical attraction as expansion of the previously discussed romanticized understanding of the questionable characters. In this regard, the viewers’ responses to the character Joe Goldberg again appear to be framed in a larger cultural context, where “it is generally taken for granted these days that monsters at least deserve our understanding” (Gelder 2000, 82). The question of visibility of monstrosity in the psychothriller also links back to the visibility of masculinity in the romance as "the hero of popular romance is, at bottom, a spectacular representation of masculinity" (Allan 2016, 25), thus connecting masculinity and monstrosity through the visuality of the body. Where the previously discussed literature approaches the body of the monster as a cultural concept, psychological research has focused on the perceived links between attractiveness and attraction – in other words: The absence of visual monstrosity as psychological cue and explanation for physical attraction. Drawing a connection from the ‘obvious’ villains in Disney animation movies to anti-heroes like Danny Ocean in Ocean’s Eleven, Keen et al. claim that “when attractive villains are cast, we assume they possess more positive qualities than the less attractive good guys in the show, so,

40 unsurprisingly, we prefer them” (2012, 135). Hoffner and Cantor draw on a variety of social science and psychology studies to argue that physical attractiveness plays an important role in influencing our perception of fictional characters: “Research has shown that physically attractive people are perceived as possessing more socially desirable traits than unattractive individuals” (2013). In the context of criminal behavior and punishment, the physical attractiveness stereotype takes on further significance, as a study by Michael Efran (1974) concluded that physically attractive offenders were not only judged with less certainty regarding their guilt, but also received less severe punishments in jury simulations. In juridical terms, then, the inference of monstrous behavior appears to be inherently linked to a physically unattractive appearance. The body, in both the cultural and psychological perspective, thereby becomes the site where questions of morality and monstrosity are being negotiated. As this chapter will argue, viewers drawing on the Embodiment repertoire likewise highlight different aspects of the body – from physical attributes to the embodied performance of the actor – to navigate their attraction for the series’ protagonist. Focusing on the attraction – instead of the underlying monstrosity – might in this regard also be a mechanism viewers employ to address the anxiety surrounding a monstrosity that cannot be visually identified, instead rendering the body decidedly into a site of romance.

4.2 “Okay, Joe Goldberg is hot. I think I have some issues.” – Physical Attractiveness as Diversion from Monstrosity As an extension of the previous chapter, this section will argue that the romanticization of the actions and (presumed) intentions of Joe Goldberg is also intrinsically linked to the embodied presence of the character. Following Hoffner and Cantor’s (2013) argumentation that an attractive appearance and a less attractive character are often perceived as conflicting, physical attractiveness then arguably becomes a diversion to recognizing monstrosity. In other words, casting Penn Badgley complicates the audience’s perception of his character as a villain, or as Kaitlin Reilley argues in an article in Refinery29, “because Joe is wrapped in a charming, Penn Badgley-esque package, it can be hard for fans to see him as such“ (2019). In the comments, this becomes visible in an emphasis on the physical appearance of the character:

“This man ❤  #YouNetflix” – @umerr188

“I’m late to the #YouNetflix party. I’m really enjoying S1, lots of twists and turns and it keeps you guessing. Joe is eye candy too ” – @SocialButterfl3

“Okay, Joe Goldberg is hot. I think I have some issues. #YOUNetflix #JoeGoldberg #whatswrongwithme” – @mariett72172837

"Let's watch sexy Dexter."  Seen "You" on Netflix yet? #YouNetflix” – @ShellsDecals

Juxtaposing the ‘monster’ in Gothic literature with the ‘serial killer’ in contemporary film, Hantke suggests that different to the “directly, unmistakably, palpably, visibly shocking” (2003, 34) body of the monster, the body of the serial killer today “tends to be inconspicuous, average, and thus distinctly unspectacular” (2003, 37). Following this line of argumentation, Hantke concludes that the body of the serial killer lacks the affect of horror the ‘visible’ monster elicits in the viewer, until “every once in a while, the mask of normality slips, revealing the face of evil underneath” (2003, 38). In You, however, these glimpses of evil remain sparse. Instead, the place of a bodily signifier for monstrosity is not just taken up by an appearance of normalcy, but one that is considered by fans as ‘eye candy’. At the same time, the character diverges from a visuality that Janice Radway refers to as "spectacular masculinity” (1991, 128): For most parts of the series, the masculinity of the character is not a threatening one. From his (physical) inability to keep up with one of his jogging-enthusiastic victims to an embarrassing first sexual encounter between the character and his first-season-love-interest Guinevere Beck – “What was that – eight seconds?” as Beck muses in one of the rare moments her thoughts are used as voice-over – the masculinity of the character in these scenes remains distinctively ordinary, while at the same time fostering empathetic reactions. When it comes to the visuality of monstrous behavior, the comparison between the protagonist of You and ‘Sexy Dexter’ is especially interesting. In contrast to Dexter Morgan, the likewise serial killing main character of the Showtime series Dexter, who "does what his colleagues at the Miami Police Department cannot do by virtue of the rules of civil law enforcement" (Green 2012, 580), Joe Goldberg is missing a larger moral code as socially acceptable explanation for his violent actions. The link between these fictional characters, then, becomes their inconspicuous appearance as white, heterosexual men in their mid-20s. However, the ‘slipping of the mask’ of normalcy Hantke describes is fundamentally differently portrayed within the two series. While "Dexter’s embodiment as the serial killer is signified by a special kill costume and personal tool kit" (Green 2012, 582), Joe Goldberg’s violent actions are less ritualized and thereby also to a lesser degree visually announced. The only visual signifier remotely comparable to the aforementioned ‘kill costume’ is a dark blue baseball cap the character dons whenever he is stalking another character. Simultaneously inconspicuous (as a fashion item) and conspicuous (as a flawed disguise), this masking-as-unmasking has become a running gag among viewers5 of the show. Rather than highlighting the character’s monstrosity through visual cues, the baseball cap emphasizes the humanity and human flaws of the

5 See also Chapter 2.4

42 character. The objective insufficiency of this masking of monstrosity, then, links back to the second chapter of this thesis and the disbelief voiced by viewers on the character’s successful evasion of the law. In this regard, it should be emphasized that the whiteness of the body of the serial killer – in Dexter, Hannibal and You – plays a crucial role in hiding monstrosity. Writing on what she terms the 'extra-ordinarily ordinary serial killer', Nicola Rehling argues that "the killer's unremarkable appearance is afforded through the universal, anonymous status alloted to white middle class masculinity" (2009, 240). The "maleness and whiteness of serial killing" (2009, 228), then, becomes elementary in the performance of the character’s invisibility. Both the series and the viewers also implicitly and explicitly comment on this connection:

"Episode two of #YOUSEASON2 and when will says nobody ever suspects a white dude and joe hits him with a brick that’s the show beating us over the head with the message. Very clever" – @Shadysense1995

"How far are we willing to forgive a white privileged man.. mind blowing" – @Liv B

Returning back to the Experience repertoire discussed in the second chapter of this thesis, the calls for a re-establishing of (law and) order are also connected to white masculinity and the apparent role whiteness plays in the evasion of consequence – both on and off the screen. As Rehling argues, this notion of being visible and visible especially in terms of monstrosity, ultimately "underscores the ongoing ability of contemporary white heterosexual men to represent themselves as both everyman and no man, as both ordinary and extraordinary – a violation of binary oppositions that only an identity with the privilege of acting as the universal term can wield" (2009, 245). Stressing the connection between whiteness and masculinity, David Safran claims that “gender is always articulated through race, through possibilities opened up by particular racial identities” (1998, 8 – emphasis in original), which in turn allows for an understanding of the character Joe Goldberg at the intersection of the affordances of both his gender and his race, which “are not a product of any individual effort or ability but are built into the structure of society” (Caliendo and McIlwain 2011, 26). In the discussion of the body of the caracter, the viewers are potentially also interrogation their own complicity in the construction and acceptance of white, heterosexual masculinity as “what has been considered the most ‘ordinary’ and therefor the most invisible – identity” (Regis 2009, 1). At the same time, the comments within this repertoire appear to be highly self-conscious in their discussion of the physical appearance of the character – and the inherent overlooking of the character’s monstrous actions in favor of his desirable look:

“Ok can I just say Joe is definitely a creepy stalker and probable serial killer but he is soooo hot  #YouNetflix” – @skier_girl88

43 “where can i get a stalker that looks like #joegoldberg  #Youseason1” – @RockgirlFiona

“Book Joe is definitely far less easy to accidentally like... #YouNetflix #JoeGoldberg” – @TheOpenShelf

Framed as an ‘accidental’ liking and explicitly mentioning the character’s actions as those of ‘a creepy stalker and probable serial killer’, the majority of comments within this repertoire make sure to relate their physical appreciation and attraction to the character back to their understanding of the questionability of his actions. Taking another serial killer as example, Carroll argues that when it comes to the portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in the novel Red Dragon “one does not spot monstrosity, one recognizes it” (Carroll 2015, 49). This notion of being aware of monstrosity even – or especially – in the absence of its visual cues of Otherness could in this regard also hold true for the comments discussed here. In the words of another viewer:

“Just because a guy is hot, doesn't mean he's not creepy #YOU #YouNetflix” – @AakritiSubedi2

At the same time, understanding Joe Goldberg as an attractive monster puts the character in a long line of monsters who “incorporate fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy”, but also “always dangerously entice” (Cohen 1996, 4, 19). Following Cohen’s argumentation, the monster – independently from its embodied appearance – always has the potential to represent and stimulate seemingly contradicting bodily responses: fear and desire. Nonetheless, especially in the context of the modern, human monsters as discussed here, the relationship between body and behavior becomes essential. Discussing the psychopath and the terrorist as examples of (post)modern monsters, Weinstock argues that their actions “make visible the internal lack of humanity obscured by their human facades—they are monsters on the inside.” (2016, 280). In line with this argumentation, Alice Eagly et al. have further elaborated on the physical attractiveness stereotype by arguing that it might not be as simple as ‘what is beautiful is good’: Rather, there are some personality traits connected to perceived physical attractiveness, while others are not. According to their findings, physical attractiveness is linked to social and intellectual competence but has a “relatively small effect on inferences about intellectual competence and an even weaker impact on integrity and concern for others” (1991, 113). Interestingly, in You this notion of concern is emphasized through the aforementioned voice-over in which Joe Goldberg rationalizes his actions – for instance, his violent actions against Guinevere Beck’s on-and-off-boyfriend Benji – as an effort to protect her from the negative influences in her life. Emphasizing the social concern thus arguably de-emphasizes the limitations of the physical attractiveness stereotype when it comes to integrity and morality. Within this context, it should be noted that the attraction to the character is not in all comments

44 explicitly and exclusively linked to the physical appearance. But – corresponding to Eagly et al.’s argumentation – the comments might be connected to the romanticization of the character’s actions as discussed in the previous chapter, which in turn link back to the shared experience of interpreting the character as attractive. The following section will add a third layer to this complex entanglement of notions of attractivity by interrogating the embodied relationship between the character and the actor.

4.3 “Penn Badgley is hot, but his character is a fucking psychopath” – Reading the Character Joe Goldberg through the Star Text of the Actor Penn Badgley When talking about the physical appearance of a character in audiovisual media, the actor – as quite literal embodiment of the character – has to be taken into consideration. In the context of monstrosity, this holds especially true for the serial killer as a monster “whose monstrousness only becomes visible through his actions” (Weinstock 2016, 280), but also one whose monstrosity continues to be defined and searched for in visual cues. As Jean-Philippes writes on the connection between actor, body and character: “Since Badgley took on the role of Joe Goldberg / Will in You—the book-loving, romantic serial killer—some have taken the character's combination of good looks and a ‘well-intentioned’ murderous manifesto as a recipe for their dream guy” (2019). While the journalist’s opinion of this attraction becomes fairly obvious in the tone of the article, it remains nonetheless interesting to discuss how the viewers themselves navigate their favorable response to the character. While the previous chapter has focused on the romanticization of the character’s actions – this understanding of a ‘well-intentioned murderous manifesto’ – this section will expand the discussion of the physical (in)visibility of monstrosity by including the actor as embodiment of the character. On the one hand the tweets within this repertoire blur the actor Penn Badgley and the character Joe Goldberg as well as the actor’s previous roles, while on the other hand specifically stressing this distinction through an emphasis on the performance of the actor and generally the ‘act of acting’. This follows Richard Dyer’s understanding of the star-as-text, a composite construction that is “made out of media texts that can be grouped together as promotion, publicity, films and criticism and commentaries” (1998, 60) and thus hints at an interrelation between the actor and the character, the person and the image. As the most dominant cue of the blurring between the actor and the character, the respective names Penn Badgley and Joe Goldberg are used interchangeably in this repertoire, especially but not exclusively within the hashtags as organizing and filtering feature of the online discussion. While this could be understood as a way to include the actor – as the object of fan

45 love – into the conversation, especially on Twitter, the synonymous use of the character’s and the actor’s names nonetheless hint at a focus on the body as connecting element:

“So I'm watching Easy A, and I can't help but see Penn Badgley as creepy  #youseries #joegoldberg #pennbadgley #CreepyJoe #easya #woodchucktodd” – @KatyLawson05

“FINALLY got into that show #YouNetflix and biiiiiitchhhhh im angry about falling for a psychopath so damn quick! like excuse me @PennBadgley .....rude” – @isabel_ferber

“So hypnotised by #YouNetflix and I ended up stalking Penn Badgley's instagram. This is awful!” – @faturrs

“Me lurking around the library hoping Penn Badgley notices me so he can get to know ... me  #younetflix” – @almajean_

“ALERT, LADIES I SAID ALERT  I am here to ruin your @PennBadgley dreams, HE IS EXPECTING A BABY! I can’t even wait to see the baby on YOU! 藍藍藍 #YouNetflix” – @voluptuousleah

Especially in the last comment, the extent of the blurring between the real life of the actor and the fictional life of the character should be noted: As the pregnancy of Penn Badgley’s wife coincides (although only temporarily) with the pregnancy of Love Quinn at the end of the just released second season of the series, so apparently does their perception by the audience. Further confusing the actor and the character, ‘the baby’ in this tweet seems to be the same one in the real and fictional world. Not only the personal life of Penn Badgley but also his previous career as the character Dan Humphrey in the television series Gossip Girl should be considered within the context of this repertoire: On the CW teen drama, the actor played the role of an (unpopular) outsider that ultimately ends up with the (popular) girl of his dreams after six seasons, which undoubtedly follows the romantic fantasy of persistence leading to a happy ending. Applying the psychological phenomenon of the false attribution error (FAE), previously mostly studied in the context of interpersonal relationships, to the audiovisual medium, Nurit Tal-Or and Yael Papirman found that viewers “ascribe the traits of the characters in fictional movies or television programs to their actors” (2007, 333). Following this line of argument, the breakout role as “proverbial nice guy Dan Humphrey” (Larson 2019) shaped the public image of the actor Penn Badgley, which in turn might have influenced the viewers’ perception of his next television role as Joe Goldberg – at least in the first episodes of the series. This corresponds to Dyer’s emphasis that “the star is effective in the construction of character” (1998, 126). Between these two roles – as the romantic lead on Gossip Girl and as the romantic (with a question mark) lead on YOU, Badgley has been mostly focusing on his music career, thus not offering many other widely known roles as reference. Instead, “most of the Badgley buzz pertained to

46 his highly publicized romances” (Larson 2019), linking the character’s perception back to Tal-Or and Papirman’s finding that viewers “tend to base their impression of the actor on the last role he or she played” (2007, 342). Thus, the actor, his previous role and his current role are blurred in the perception of the viewers, as becomes especially visible in these comments:

“Getting into #YouNetflix and I’m having a really hard time shaking Penn Badgley’s John Mayer vibes. And by “hard time” I mean I’m really into them” – @EGallery06

“I'm watch this on repeat. @PennBadgley is so cute  #YouNetflix” – @JustMyLife1004

“If you’re a GG fan you’ll understand why @PennBadgley is a perfect Joe! #YouNetflix” – @mrss_c

“Is Dan gonna kill Beck ♀  ♀ .. he's gonna kill her innit #YouNetflix” – @riri_uk

In these quotes, the distinction between ‘Penn Badgley’, ‘Dan Humphrey’ and ‘Joe Goldberg’ is not made explicit. The uninterrupted format of streaming full seasons of a television show, common to platforms like Netflix, might contribute to the experience of “being transported into a narrative” (Tal-Or and Papirman 2007, 234), which according to Tal-Or and Papirman contributes to the fundamental attribution error. Asked about the reactions to his character, Penn Badgley has replied that “while flattering, fans’ thirst was misplaced” (Larson 2019), which in turn motivated him to join the online discussion with the tongue-in-cheek comments mentioned in the introductory chapter of this thesis. For the actor “steering clear of the discussion didn’t feel like an option” (Larson 2019), which reflects a reading of these comments as the aforementioned blurring. However, the absence of a clear distinction could also be seen as an emphasis on the viewers’ knowledgeable position concerning the show, the actor and popular culture in general. Only other fans who know both You and Penn Badgley’s previous role as Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl will be able to understand the reference to ‘Dan killing Beck’. Taking this understanding even further, a range of tweets within this repertoire not only blur the characters – as embodied by Badgley – but also the wider narrative contexts of You and Gossip Girl. In a Forbes article about the launch of the first season of the show on Netflix, Rachel Paige argues that its surprising success – after an only moderate viewership in the original run on Lifetime – was “probably helped by Badgley's recognizable face, since thousands of millennials were suddenly reminded of their Lonely Boy6 crush, circa 2007” (2019). Framing the storyline of Joe Goldberg as a logical extension of Dan Humphrey’s narrative arc, these comments further emphasize the visual and behavioral connection between

6 “Lonely Boy” is the nickname given to Dan Humphrey by the anonymous source of broadcasted gossip on the television series Gossip Girl.

47 the two characters, which in turn links back to the romantic and romanticized understanding of their actions:

“Oh Serena, you must've messed up Dan really bad to turn him into Joe, lol #YouNetflix” – @Hopie_Dopey

“@YouNetflix @PennBadgley So THIS is where it all began... with @gossipgirl season finale #YouNetflix #danhumphrey #JoeGoldberg” – @papROCK_n_ROLL

“#DanHumphrey grew up to be #JoeGoldberg.” – @MercyMutemi

“Joe is just Dan Humpfrey finally moving on from Serena #YouNetflix” – @jojobinks943

“I went from knowing Penn Badgley as Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl to then Joe Goldberg in You. And now I’m rewatching #GossipGirl and it feels almost like Dan is the prequel to Joe... #YouNetflix” – @inmytvfeelings

“I find Dan Humphrey creepier than joe, strangely enough.  #YouNetflix #YouS2 @youwriters @YouNetflix” – @9marimari

At the same time, this notion of having been ‘turned into Joe’ and the reading of Gossip Girl as ‘where it all began” could also be seen as another instance of self-awareness: Instead of considering the ‘happy ending’ of Gossip Girl as final, these comments expand the narrative – towards the darker, but also arguably more realistic events portrayed in You. The comments within this repertoire also approach the question of embodiment from another perspective that can nonetheless be seen in the tradition of the previously discussed ones. By applauding the actor and the ‘act of acting’, the physical performance of a predominantly invisibly monstrosity becomes emphasized:

“Just started watching #YouNetflix. @PennBadgley is really good. you wanna trust joe, but he may also mallet you in the head. Granted I’m only on season one 藍 #youseason1 #YouNetflix” – @bellarosrae

“I just wanna say that Penn Badgley deserves an Oscar for his role as Joe Goldberg. He was born to be Joe Goldberg.  #YOU #YouNetflix #You2 #youseason2” – @SenoritaDalal

“@PennBadgley is such a good actor #YouNetflix” – @Angelo_Varilla

“Finished watching season one of #YouNetflix and it’s awesome. @PennBadgley is epic creepy but what a great actor.” – @TheFunkyTwinkie

“#YouNetflix ok for real though. That very relaxed, taut, careless, careful, effortless-hard work thing @PennBadgley does....masterclass. It is goddamned HARD to do what he does in this show. His LAYERS have layers. Awards shows need to pay attention to his grounded ephemera act.” – @SarahImesBorden

“Penn Badgley was convincing in #YouNetflix season 1 as this creepy stalker that one might like or resent at the same time, just like how it was with Dexter.” – @MisterDryan

48 By acknowledging the ‘masterclass’ and ‘convincing’ acting of Penn Badgley, viewers are at the same time taking on a more distanced position in regards to their attraction to the character: The character is not (only) attractive due to his physical appearance but rather thanks to the multi-layered, oscar-worthy bodily performance of the actor which overpowers the violence of his actions. In this regard, these comments could also be seen as an extension to the repertoire discussed in the earlier chapter, where the concept of romantic fantasy is employed as praxis of deflection and moral disengagement. Taking this understanding of a both distanced and knowledgeable (pop) cultural position even further, comments within this repertoire also employ physical attributes to critically place the television show in a broader societal context:

“These are my stream of consciousness thoughts on You, now streaming on Netflix. I enjoyed the show but I feel conflicted about the character Joe and how much Americans enjoy movies and TV shows about white men who murder people. #YouNetflix #NetflixYOU” – @exHappiness

“Why tf are women crushing on #joe from #YouNetflix?? Yeah @PennBadgley is hot, but his character is a fucking psychopath ” – @_d_belli

“I’m only one episode in, but why on earth do people think Joe in #YOUNetflix is sexy? Dear lord.” – @junereadsbooks

Specifically mentioning the problematic nature of the attraction to Joe Goldberg and questioning ‘how much Americans enjoy movies and TV shows about white men who murder people’, tweets like these stress how viewers are using pop cultural references as well as an accentuation of the ‘act of acting’ to distance themselves from a negative reading of their fannish expressions for a questionable character, while at the same time expressing both an awareness of and need for larger societal debates about masculinity, whiteness and relationships.

4.4 Conclusion Although Weinstockein emphasizes the “cultural shift that aligns monstrosity not with physical difference, but with antithetical moral values” (2016, 276), monstrosity still remains an embodied concept and indeed inseparable from the body, as the author continues: “monstrosity thus is reconfigured as a kind of invisible disease that eats away at the body and the body politic, and manifests visibly through symptomatic behavior” (2016, 276). Focusing on the physical attractiveness of the character on the one hand and highlighting the embodied presence and skill of the actor on the other hand, viewers drawing on the Embodiment repertoire discussed here similarly interrogate questions of monstrosity and morality through the visuality of the body. Understanding the concept of the monster as “transgressive, too sexual,

49 perversely erotic, a lawbreaker” (Cohen 1996, 16) and at the same time increasingly “decoupled from physical appearance” (Weinstock 2016, 280), the body of the “murderous, obsessive romantic Joe Goldberg” (Jean-Philippe 2019) emphasizes the challenges of a monstrosity that cannot be visually identified. In connection to the other interpretative repertoires discussed in this thesis, this emphasis on a simultaneously non-threatening and attractive appearance of the series’ protagonist strengthens the interpretation of the character as idealized romantic hero, which in turn conforms to an established understanding of televisual conventions. Discussing the shifting significance and appearance of the monster, Carroll has provokingly asked: “But when we begin to see the monster as a lover, a spouse, or even a friend, how do we proceed?” (2015, 59). In the context of Netflix’s You, the response to this question appears to be an emphasis on physical attractiveness as diversion and distraction from monstrosity. Through the psychological concept of the physical attractiveness stereotype, this chapter has argued that this notion of being distracted from monstrosity is indeed aided and enabled by the physical appearance of the character, which is in turn marked ordinary through the invisibility of white masculinity. On the figure of the hero in the gothic romance in literature, Christopher Yiannitsaros writes that the “genre at large is essentially a pleasure/danger symbiosis manifested in a preoccupation with the perpetually half-transgressed boundary between the abhorrent and the desirable in relation to masculinity” (2012, 292). Understanding the gothic romance as a literary genre arguably quite similar to the intersection of romance and psychological thriller as discussed here for television, this boundary between an ‘abhorrent’ and ‘desirable’ masculinity becomes not just a question of intentionality, but visibility as well. Additionally, the blurring between the actor Penn Badgley and the character Joe Goldberg further expands the meaning of embodiment. Focusing on the body, then, becomes not only relevant to examining (in)visible cues of monstrosity, but also the significance of the actor as embodied character for the viewers, as “the actor’s body has to respond to the need to communicate clearly with the spectators who peruse it. In this respect it is required to signify meaning, intention, presence and resonance” (Evans 2009, 99). On the one hand, the absence of a clear distinction between the actor and the character could be interpreted as a strategy viewers employ to provide an explanation for their attraction to a fictional serial killer. On the other hand, both the missing and the explicit distinction between Penn Badgley and his role(s) could be understood as an emphasis on the knowledgeable – and hence somewhat distanced – position of viewers. Highlighting the body of the actor, his previous performances and his convincing acting skills in this repertoire fits within the broader theme of this thesis, as both readings provide viewers with a public reasoning for the attraction

50 for the morally questionable character Joe Goldberg. As extension of the previous chapters, the comments discussed here follow a trend towards “not just sympathizing but empathizing with— and ultimately aspiring to be—the monster” (Weinstock 2016, 277), although the notion of ‘aspiring to be’ the monster in the examples discussed here rather resembles an ‘aspiring to be close’ to the monster. Initially talking about humor, Cohen’s claim that “the co-optation of the monster into a symbol of the desirable is often accomplished through the neutralization of potentially threatening aspects” (1996, 18) in this context could also be understood as the emphasis of the desirable body of the romantic hero in combination with his equally desirable romantic actions as discussed in the previous chapter.

51 5. Conclusion Anti-hero narratives, those “increasingly popular stories featuring protagonists whose conduct is at best morally ambiguous, questionable, and at times unjustifiable” (Janicke and Raney 2015, 485), have become a staple of contemporary culture, as not just Netflix’s You, but a wide variety of other, highly successful series underline. At the same time, the series discussed here takes on a unique position in this televisual landscape, by blurring the genre conventions of the romance and the psychological thriller throughout the narrative and, maybe most importantly, through the embodied presence of the main character. In comparison to Dexter’s Dexter Morgan, who exercises his execution-style killings with the highest degree of preparation and skill, the actions of Joe Goldberg appear to be especially ‘in the heat of the moment’. In both series, the voice-over further underlines this difference: The rational planning of Dexter Morgan on the one side, the improvisation – sometimes even bordering on panic – of Joe Goldberg on the other side. In contrast to the “virtual human cyborg” (Green 2012, 580) Morgan Dexter, then, Joe Goldberg becomes more human – and arguably more relatable. As Badgley has elaborated in an interview with the New York Times: “We can’t get away from Joe. I think what he’s meant to be is an embodiment and a portrait of the parts of us that can’t escape rooting for Joe. In a more just society, we would all see Joe as problematic and not be interested in the show, but that’s not the society we live in” (Stanford 2019). The society we live in, then, has to negotiate its attraction for a television character that seems ‘unloveable’ on paper – as do the viewers. Drawing on an understanding of the fan as someone ”who is enraptured by a particular media object“ (Booth 2017, 19), the online discussion of the character of Joe Goldberg functions as an example of a site where this sense of enrapture is navigated. While this thesis does not provide an answer to the question “How is it possible that anyone could ever find Joe/Will/whatever his name is charming?” (Netflix 2020) – or even attempt to do so – the interpretative repertoires discussed here shed a light on the strategies contemporary viewers employ to explore personal and collective perceived limits of attraction. At the same time independent and intrinsically linked, these repertoires approach the attraction viewers feel (and publicly proclaim) for the serial killing character from different directions: The Experience repertoire emphasizes the shared aspect of televisual viewing (even in the streaming age), while at the same time deflecting moral judgement in the public sphere by emphasizing the viewers’ knowledgeable position both in relation to the realities of dating in the 21st century and the ‘realism’ of television. Drawing on both the romantic tropes embedded in the narrative and the voice-over narration as a point of identification, the Romance repertoire continues with this notion of a shared love for both the series and its protagonist, while carefully placing this attraction in the realm of an idealized romantic fantasy. Highlighting the ‘romantic’

52 intentions of the character at the same time appears to be a highly gendered strategy, as the comparison between the reactions to male and female transgressions stresses – and which in turn questions the self-aware understanding of the series as a commentary on toxic masculinity. The third repertoire, Embodiment, extends this gendered romanticization by drawing on Penn Badgley’s physical appearance and previous roles as innocent romantic lead in the teenage drama series Gossip Girl. Considering the romantic idealization as a whole, the ambitious objective of both the author and showrunners of the series to ignite conversations around issues such as privacy and (toxic) masculinity appears to have failed. Seen from this perspective, the challenging ambiguity of the series and its main character are apparently disregarded in favor of a predominantly romantic reading. Watching the – attractive, white, heterosexual – serial killer as romantic lead on television, then, also appears to fulfill a certain voyeuristic pleasure. Mary Ann Doane argues that the use of voice-overs also has an affective dimension for “a spectator who overhears and, overhearing, is unheard and unseen himself” (1980, 43), thus placing this act of hearing as a parallel to the voyeuristic experience of watching images on the screen. Through both the narrative and aesthetics, the series continues to play with voyeurism: Most notably, the second season ends with Joe – now apparently living the picket-fence ideal of romance as husband and father – spying in on his female new neighbor, only for the camera to turn around and thus reveal the voyeurism of the audience which takes pleasure in spying on the spyer. A body that is coded as both inconspicuous and ordinary, male and romantic, and ultimately representative of a hegemonic ideal of masculinity becomes the focal point of this voyeurism – and of the viewers’ attempts to navigate their contradicting affective responses to watching the series. Correspondingly, Katherine Morrissey encourages us to understand romance and the specific storytelling format of romance “as a lens into gender, sexuality, and culture” (2014, 2). Especially considering the positioning of the series You at the intersection of different, and potentially contradictory, genres, this call becomes even more urgent. As Stuart Hall has argued, “new, problematic or troubling events, which breach our expectancies and run counter to our ‘common-sense constructs’, to our ‘taken-for-granted’ knowledge of social structures, must be assigned to their discursive domains before they can be said to ‘make sense’” (1999, 516). Taken together, the interpretative repertoires discussed in this thesis built a publicly accessible network of argumentative strategies employed by viewers to explain, validate and frame their love and admiration for Joe Goldberg – in other words: To make sense. At the same time, the comments analyzed here perform a self-awareness of these strategies in the public online sphere – as becomes emblematic by the contradictions within the repertoires, the use of emojis as playful markers of conflicting emotions and the specific labelling of the character as

53 ‘stalker’, ‘psychopath’ and ‘serial killer’ even in instances of romanticization. Returning back to Stuart Hall, these performative acts could then also be understood as an acknowledgement of the affective reactions to the series as a ‘breach of expectancies’ in themselves. Drawing on Franco Moretti’s discussion of the detective genre, Christopher Yiannitsaros argues that research should also take into account the function of particular genres “within wider social organizations” (2012, 288), which I have attempted with this thesis by connecting the viewers’ comments on the series to larger discussions of romance and masculinity. Although the research conducted for this thesis only focuses on one specific series, both the global success of You on Netflix and the referral to established concepts and conceptions throughout the repertoires discussed here underline the importance of this research. Potentially, this could be taken further by a more in-depth comparison between the audience reactions to Dexter and Hannibal, especially as these two series can arguably be understood as pioneers in the televisual portrayal of sympathetic fictional serial killers and have been predominantly discussed through textual analysis. Considering that You is based on (but partly deviating from) a now best-selling novel, a cross-media analysis of reactions to both the novel and the series could also be an avenue for further research, providing additional insights into the effects of (literary) first-person narration versus (televisual) voice-over narration, imagination and the role of visualized aesthetics. As the comments analyzed for this thesis mention both the similarities and differences to the books, conducting interviews with fans of both the novels and the series could expand the findings discussed here. As the interaction between Penn Badgley and one of the series’ fans via Twitter described in the introduction of this thesis underlines, "meanings are produced in complex relationships between texts, paratexts and audiences" (Albrecht 2020, 15), especially in a publicly accessible online sphere where audience reactions are in turn taken up by journalists in interviews and articles. Precisely because the series does not provide easy answers to complicated questions, the series arguably pushes viewers to interrogate both their reactions to the series and the larger conceptions employed to explain these reactions. From this perspective, then, the series can indeed be understood as a contribution to public discussions around questions of privacy, intimacy and gender, thereby at least partially fulfilling what the showrunners set out to achieve. Understanding the romanticization of the series as an active and continuous form of meaning-making in this regard highlights the complexity of contemporary audience-text-relations. Connecting the actions and characters within the series to both reality and phantasy hints at an increasingly knowledgeable audience position, where viewers are constantly re-negotiating their reading of the series. At the same time, following an understanding that “romance is either present or possible in most of the media we read, watch, and interact with: a

54 narrative that appears across media, physically pleasures us, and that, at some point, many of us try to enact in our daily lives” (Morrissey 2016, 2), the shared negotiation of what is considered romantic also takes on cultural, and potentially political, significance. The negotiations within the repertoires discussed here are in this regard especially interesting, as 1) the creators of the series intended precisely this reaction, and 2) the viewers are self-aware of their questionable attraction, but still draw on recognizable conventions and the shared notion of this experience to validate their fannish love. Connecting the creator's awareness of the problematic of this portrayal to the awareness of our own potentially problematic reaction, also potentially undermines criticism both directed at the series itself and the enthusiastic fan community. In an article on the ‘tortured soul’ as the new anti-hero, Diane Holloway quotes television scholar Horace Newcomb with one potential answer to the proliferance of questionable characters as (somewhat) relatable series’ leads: “That’s typical of TV, in the sense that once certain boundaries are broken, somebody’s going to push it as far as it’ll go. It stops when the audience stops watching. It’s about finding that cultural limit” (2006). As it seems, audiences are not going to stop watching soon: In January 2020, Netflix announced a third season for its hit show You coming in early 2021. But after all, we all need a #Joe in our lives, right?

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