Sigh

What in wewereonabreak hell is going on with Jennifer Aniston? Because playing a stalker on 30 Rock, playing a woman desperate to get married in He's Just Not That Into You, and playing a woman desperate to get pregnant whose best friend switches donor sperm with his own in The Baster, a film actively seeking female extras just to humiliate them, just isn't enough collusion with the patriarchy [/Renee], her next film, for which Shaker Eileen saw a trailer this weekend and emailed me a heads-up, is this heap of misogynist shit:


For those who can't view the video, it's a trailer for Management, a film reusing the tiresome plot of a woman trapped between two men who must be the only two men left on the planet, because they are both assholes (though in different ways) and both totally wrong for her, but she is nonetheless struggling to choose between them.

Only this film is extra awesome, because one of the men is wooing her by stalking her—first in her room at the hotel where he works, then at her job, and then by following her to another state where she's moved to be with her equally objectionable boyfriend. None of which prompts a call to police, for the same reason it never does in Hollywood films—because stalking is adorable when men do it.

(As for what it's like when women do it, hold your fire. Spudsy's got a post on that coming up.)

Ben Stiller has played several of these characters, as well as starred in an archetype of the genre, There's Something About Mary, the full title of which, if honest, would be the (victim-blaming) There's Something About Mary That Drives Men to Stalk Her, since Mary (Cameron Diaz) is stalked by no fewer than five men, including Ted (Stiller), Dom (Chris Elliott), Healy (Matt Dillon), Tucker (Lee Evans), and professional football player Brett Favre. Stalking, you see, is a compliment (just like rape). Adorable!

Even when it's not adorable—as in As Good As It Gets when Carol (Helen Hunt) screams at Melvin (Jack Nicholson) for showing up at her apartment, only before eventually falling for him—love will win out in the end.

And even if love doesn't win out in the end—as in Dumb & Dumber when Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) fails to successfully woo Mary (Lauren Holly) after following her across the country—there are no consequences for the creepy stalker. At least in Dumb & Dumber, the tactic wasn't tacitly endorsed, which is more than one can say for most of these films, like the classic "stalk-and-conquest" film The Sure Thing, in which Gib (John Cusack) doesn't get the girl of his wetdreams (Nicollette Sheridan), but instead gets the girl of his dreams (Daphne Zuniga), despite the fact that she has accompanied him on his stalk-trip for another woman—and somehow manages not to feel like a consolation prize.

Off the top of my head, I thought of about dozen more "romantic comedies" in which some element of stalking and/or grave deception (a la Overboard) serve as a key plot device—and I'm sure there are dozens more.

Because people keep making them. Like Jennifer Aniston. Who apparently hasn't been informed, or just doesn't give a shit, that conveying to film audiences the message that stalking is the way to a woman's heart is neither original, nor funny, nor responsible.

Related Reading: The Onion—Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested.