Frankie and Johnny: harassment as a romantic plot in the 90's

 I picked up this VHS from the thrift store, "Frankie and Johnny."

It has Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover, they look working class. I thought it was going to be a cute, heartwarming romantic comedy. Instead, it was an excruciating 2 hours of feeling uncomfortable, triggered, disgusted. What the fuck were writers in 1991 thinking?? The whole movie is a plain rape culture apology. The only interesting part of this film is the class subtext about pre-gentrification New York. 

If you look it up on IMDb, the movie's plot is summarized like this: "Johnny, a former convict, gets a job as a cook in a local diner. There, he falls in love with Frankie, an emotionally wounded waitress whole love he is determined to win her love." So basically, when they say "determined to win her love", it means even without her consent. In fact, watching this film almost unbearable as Frankie spends most of the movie looking annoyed and uncomfortable and telling Johnny that she wants to be left alone, tells him to fuck off, cries, calls her friends, has several nervous breakdowns. Despite all this, Johnny literally harasses her (in ways that would be plainly illegal today, like snooping into her punch card to find out where she lives) and finally forces himself into her life. The creepy thing is that what is supposed to make this plot so romantic is that he persists, regardless of her rejecting him, until she breaks her down!!! We learn later that all these rejections were not be believed as she was just SCARED of love. Frankie's character is presented openly as feminist (she corrects a really old patron about calling "girls" and "ladies" just "women"), she thinks of herself as an independent woman who is planning on spending the rest of her 30s watching VCR movies by herself and occasionally her gay neighbour. Johnny, who is a decade older, represents "old school love" and chivalry, he wants to marry her and have 5 children. 

The writers' male fragility and lack of any remote understanding of consent would not fly today, after MeToo. I can't even imagine the generations of creeps learning that this is romantic (or even remotely acceptable) behaviour, and admiring Al Pacino's character determination in manipulating this woman to accept him. Ewwww. 

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