Can we please stop glorifying abusive people/relationships in entertainment? Especially in young adult subject matter? Geez, in real life, if some creep like Edward Cullen snuck into someones room to watch them sleep, they wouldn’t find it charming or intriguing they would call the police and dreamy Mr. Cullen would find himself in jail. Same sort of thing with the Joker and Harley Quinn. When you think about it, the Joker not only manipulated Harley, a successful doctor, and basically made her crazy, but he treats her like this weird prize which is disgusting. Also if you read into the comics the Joker isn’t just emotionally abusive but also physically abusive. Do not even get me started on the love Snape still gets for being a whiny baby who finally does something noble after being completely horrible to his young students for literally his whole career.

You might be thinking “Oh, what does it matter? It is just a movie, it is just a book, just a comic,” but the thing is, who reads and watches these? Young impressionable people. Because of the normalization of these sorts of relationships in popular entertainment, the normalization of the same things in real life become a real problem. Young people, especially young girls, see the Joker being overly rough with Harley (not to mention she literally wears a collar, not something that is okay) and Edward literally stalking Bella and breaking into her house as… romantic. Clearly this is not okay and yet new Joker and Edward types keep coming into play. I am not saying to cut abuse out of all entertainment, I am saying to show it for what it really is, horrible, not as just over protection or some ‘cute’ way they show affection.

If you take anything from this jumble of words, let it be that ‘entertainment’ is not just ‘entertainment’… not when people start thinking abuse is beautiful.