Romanticize the stalking

Facebook is one of the most popular social networks we use every day because it could help us to know what our friends are doing and feeling. It is also famous for the understanding of customers when keep improving and adding many functions for users to optimize their benefit when using it. One of the special functions of Facebook is the Close friend list, which helps you to keep track of what those in the list are doing on other Facebook pages, from a "like" to any comment of them to public posts. This act of keeping track may be considered as a kind of showing care to your beloved people when you do it with a good purpose, but let imagine if whatever you do on Facebook now is known by your haters or anyone with bad purposes, you might fell annoyed, hostile or scary of what could hapen to you, right? In this case, Facebook is helping people to do such things called “Stalking” which is a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact or any other course of conduct directed at a specific person.

Actually pop music has used the troupe of stalking in a long time and marked this action as “romance”. But there is a fact that pople who are “followed” by stalkers do not see that action as sweet and feeling good about it at all. Recently,  Robin Thicke has been criticized for his new video as a kind of stalking to his ex-wife (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/25/robin_thicke_s_get_her_back_video_why_the_blurred_lines_singer_looks_like.html). However, the action of stalking is still considered not a dangerous thing in many movies and such actions even usually are "romanticized" in films. One of the typical example is “Wall-E” cartoon of Pixar Animation.

From the first time Wall-e and Eve met each other, audience could see Wall-e fell in love with Eve, and what he does after the first-met is exactly “stalking”. Let’s take a look at the script of the film:

LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "LA VIE EN ROSE" PLAYS

         

          Eve scans through the market.

          Wall-E follows from a safe distance.

          A stray puppy-dog.

          (…)           

         

          EXT. BNL REFINERY - NIGHT

         

          Wall-E perched on the roof.

          Patiently watches Eve fly.

          She scans the ground below her, like a searchlight.

         

          Eve comes in for a landing below.

          Shuts down for the night.

          Wall-E waits.

          Quietly sneaks down the refinery fire escape.

          Accidentally trips. Tumbles to the ground.

          Eve doesn't wake.

          Wall-E creeps up to her.

          Opens his arms wide...

          ...and measures her.

(…)

                                                              

         

          EXT. BNL REFINERY - NEXT MORNING

         

          Eve powers up again.

          Does a double take.

          A TRASH SCULPTURE OF EVE stands in front of her.

          She hovers away, unimpressed.

          Doesn't notice Wall-E hiding behind a PILE OF PIPES.

          (….)

         

Pixar Animation has created the scenes of Wall- E’s stalking as a romantic one when using the “Lavie en rose” songs and make the audience see how embarrassed Wall E is when he does not dare to approach Eve. The problem here is that by “romanticizing ” the stalking action, Pixar Animation are now reinforcing the norms that people engaging this behaviors are admirable, desirable, romantic, persistent or excusing for that action as just falling in love. Additionally, this male the seduction and abuse become indistinguishable. With the accumulation of acceptance of "stalking"through films overtime, the action might become acceptable in some ways in real life. When making a cartoon film, Pixar Animation of course know that a main part of their audiences is children in general and girl in particular, which are still naïve and know little about the world. However, in real life, seduction and abuse is really popular and could become a danger to any girl, and the action of promoting such kind of conduct implicitly like that is not really good at all. 
What if any abuse or seduction happened to any girl who is the watcher of the film because she does not notice that the action of anyone following her in real life is dangerous, due to what she has seen in cartoon movies like “Wall- E” ? If that happens, will Pixar Animation and their fame be “safe” when parents realize the negative impact of the film to their kids? While parents suppose the producer to make a movie with meaningful and good lessons of life for their kids, what Pixar Animation did here is in an opposite way: they portrayed a dangerous action in real life as a sweet expression of love in their movie. This could makes parents dissatisfied with that film in particular and many Pixar Animation in general so that Pixar Animation sales could be reduced by losing their current customers when parents do not want to let their children to watch Pixar Animation films. 

Now Pixar could do nothing to change the “Wall E” film, but they could take action to avoid “Stalking” in next cartoons. This sounds difficult because love is always the best theme for films and the image of a man try to approach his girl is really popular which seems to be unavoidable. The suggestion for Pixar now is that they could change the scene of “stalking” to other ways of showing love such as the image of the men thinking about his crush, or coming to talk to her. The point here is to promote the idea that love could still be sweet when emotion is expressed and people all know about it. True love is not just when "being- in- silence". The  long-term solution to Walt Disney is that they should make a good balance between what is in reality and what should be “romanticized” to be used in any product. Once again, the problem of portraying the truth in media should be carefully taken into account.