Stalking

Is "stalking" just defined too broadly now? When I first heard the term, it seemed to imply just what its original meaning implies - following someone around with the intent to harm that person.

anyway, I was just think thar films use obsession to signify that the character is capable of some kind of pure emotion, innocence, or true love - and the fact that the woman isn't interested is beside the point... it's much more about "wow cool this guy is special to have these special feelings" (= EMO!).

I'm thinking about the Graduate and Rushmore in particular but I'm sure there are many others. Whereas these characters would be considered scary nutjobs in real life. I mean the kid in Rushmore climbs through her window and climbs in her bed. Amelie was a bit of a stalker too...

(please note that I'm aware that there are many films where the psycho nutjobbery of stalkers is represented as such - the whole Fatal Attraction bit... but aren't those usually psycho Gurl fans, right? )

On the other hand, I don't agree that a piece of art is bad because it shows behaviour that would be objectionable in real life.

Is Robert Crumb's art racist & sexist or is it a parody of racism & sexism? Maybe it's both, maybe it's neither. What about NWA, Valerie Solanis, Jim Goad, de Sade? I'd argue most good, vital, interesting art starts arguments, not settles them.

But I don't think art is beyond criticism either - which is why I thought your initial point about the Graduate was so worthy of discussion.

It's hard for me to see The Graduate fits that category, but there is definitely an interesting discussion to be had about what it is really saying about men and women beneath the romantic 60's idealist veneer.

I'm not being smug or patronizing at all! I thought we were having a discussion here. for christ's sakes I just started the thread because I LIKED YOUR POINT on the other thread. You're the one who came into this thread saying "I can't believe I have to explain this to you people" and now you say I'm patronizing you?

Enya! Good to have you on board.

Thenwhat if the audience starts cheering the 'wrong guy'? The director says 'No no - obviously the guy is doing wrong, that's the point - I'm charting his moral decline' but the knuckle headed audience thinks what he does is cool and cheers a rape scene or something. Do we let the knuckle heads decide what films are morally unsound and which aren't? Or is it the film makers' fault for being too ambiguous?

(b) Theory: stalking is less frightening in filmic narrative in particular because film metaphorically erases the notion of privacy from the get-go -- I mean, we as viewers are already peering uninvited into the characters' private lives, so it's a bit difficult to get a sense of violation when the characters do it to one another.

(c) Trying to set up strict rules and frameworks for what art is and isn't "allowed" to do is futile: isn't the whole purpose of criticism and discourse to evaluate this on a case-by-case basis? Need there really be definitive standards for what makes a film sexist or racist or otherwise disagreeable? Can't we just bring all of our critical powers to bear on the things we see and draw our own conclusions, conclusions we can hopefully explain and defend when someone else disagrees?

(d) Why are people constantly trying to draw lines around the ideas that art can be both reprehensible and aesthetically enjoyable? Why should it be so perplexing that it can be both? Our responses to art needn't be up/down good/bad, convenient as that is: why not say "this is reprehensible yet well-crafted and resonant," which covers the art issue and leaves you with solely the moral one to work your way through?

The thing is, if you have experience with a particular thing : be it sexism, racism, what have you, it's not so easy to take the amoral high road (or low road) and blithely argue that 'art has no responsibility to me'. That is a marker of privilege and yes, it is smug. .

But what about Annie Hall!?

I am trying to make a top ten of movies with "stalking" as a main thme. Can you help me. There need not be a sexual component to the stalking (see Cable Guy) So far I've come up with:

The Cable Guy (1996) - Ben Stiller
The Story of Adele H (1975) - François Truffaut
Play Misty for Me (1971) - Clint Eastwood
Body Double (1984) - Brian De Palma

Please list your favourite stalking movie. And thanks.

Bit of a weird one this. Friend of mine is being mistakenly stalked. The actual target of the stalkers, who appear to be right wing nutjobs, is some political tweeter. For some reason the stalkers think this person is my friend. She isn't. But they've started up FB/twitter/youtube/etc etc profiles in my friend's name with all sorts of crap on them about this tweeter.

I guess until this point it's just an unfortunate case of mistaken identity, but it's not a particularly common name and now they've found where she (i.e. my friend, not their actual target) works and have started on that.

Twitter are not interested, is there anything she can do about this?

Just goes to show that people who get too angry over political opinions are not to be trusted. I mean opinions as opposed to situations like war or inequality or even high taxes.

It's been a weird week, around where I work some other nutter has pasted up a load of posters (usual illuminati/lizard crap) and now this.

I think at this point you may have to call the cops.

Not sure if that would help, tbh. A friend of mine was getting harassed on Facebook via a sort of similar case of mistaken identity, except she was being mistaken for another girl who slept with someone's husband. Anyway, after a few days of scary and threatening Facebook messages she called the cops, who promised to "look into it" but never bothered to do squat.

cops are fucking useless.

you still need to call them tho - go through the motions so you can say you did when you wind up blowing someone away in self defense.

sorry for that hyper-cynical post. been having problems with the cops here.

nope that's otm

This happened to me a few years back with the whole mistaken identity thing. They even went around various forums I post on to tell people I was a "real piece of work" and signed me up for a bunch of porn sites with insulting user names. They seemed convinced my name was "Melanie" and to this day I don't know what it was all about. It lasted for over a year but they seem to have forgotten about it now. I'm always a bit afraid that there will be a resurgence.

Someone I know had harassment both on Facebook AND on the phone, apparently from the same nutter. You should notify the police whether you get results or not, who wants someone like that in their community.

I'm disturbed that people like this live.

I thought that the revive might be for this;
http://jezebel.com/5842038/worst-boyfriend-ever-anonymously-stalked-his-own-girlfriend

markers to thread

xposts

Yeah I told my friend to call the police but she reckons (probably quite rightly) that they won't do anything about it.

i dunno where exactly in the world you are but i can assure you from personal experience that u.s. police dont give a flying fuck about stalking cases until a crazy actually breaks into your house or attempts to kill you.

but yeah, starting a paper trail immediately never hurts, and can only help if shit really does get bad.

Well, ordinarily yes, but there was a case in the news here (UK) recently about someone getting jailed for posting sick trolling on FB about people who'd just died, "malicious communication" or something, so I dunno. I think they'd used their real name though, no idea who this person is.

"cops are fucking useless."

so true. :-(

there was a case in the news here (UK) recently about someone getting jailed for posting sick trolling on FB about people who'd just died, "malicious communication"

That would never ever ever happen in the US unless someone actually was irl physically attacked or killed as a result.

My friend had a stalker who would leave stuff outside her door - in a high-rise apartment building no less. It was obvious he was doing it. The police were nice about it but she didn't know the guy's name or address. Building manager was nice about it too.

cops are fucking useless. this is more a constitution/law thing though right? the law is fucking useless is probably more the reality than the cops themselves. Such a delicate balance between rights though.

No, I pretty fall squarely on the side with the majority of the problem being with the cops themselves.

"pretty much"

i don't know. interpretation of someone's intent has to be really provable before anyone can do anything right?

Longtime Minneapolis radio personality Mary Lucia (Paul Westerberg's sister) is taking a leave of absence from her regular DJ weekday shift at 89.3 The Current because of someone stalking and terrorizing her for a year

stalkers are THE WORST
sorry to hear this

nobody is that important! get a life, stalkers

I recently read a couple of books on stalking, and it is amazing who stalkers will fixate on, who is a celebrity to them. I have one cousin who married a celebrity and another one who married into a celebrity's family and it's really opened my eyes to how many people have a disturbing attitude toward public figures. For example, people who will hang around Facebook groups and pages in hopes that someone close to the "celebrity" will see them. With the Internet, all kinds of obsessions are on display - a stalker will use it to gain as much information as possible about their target. The media has never done a good job at discouraging or demystifying obsession. It's important that we as an Internet community don't make the same mistake.

decent and

i dunno where exactly in the world you are but i can assure you from personal experience that u.s. police dont give a flying fuck about stalking cases until a crazy actually breaks into your house or attempts to kill you.

and even then:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/helen-dewitt/diary

apologies if this has been posted before itt - on phone.

decent and

that's one of the scariest things about being stalked
not only is it completely mortifying to be watched all the time (or worry about being watched) but it's not taken seriously by the people who make and enforce the rule of law
the reverberations of being stalked last years, if not forever ime

Stalking is a form of abuse. Stalkers are abusers. By which I mean that it's misleading and annoying to separate "stalkers" into some separate category of actors when it's all part of a continuum abuse.

ALSO it does a huge disservice to stalking victims to cast stalking as something that's just done to celebrities when the vast majority of stalking victims are women who have left abusive relationships and are being stalked by their abusers. Which isn't to say that celebrity stalking doesn't exist and isn't terrifying and dangerous, but that it's a very very small percentage of stalking cases (and the types of stalking cases that get all of the attention and resources). Also the abuse to stalking to murder escalation is very common.

Fun fact: I taught a law enforcement procedure course ¯\_(ツ)_/¯a couple of years ago and stalking got two pages, and it was entirely about celebrity stalking. In fact, there wasn't a domestic abuse chapter in the fucking book at all. I had to put one together myself.

Stalking is a form of abuse. Stalkers are abusers. By which I mean that it's misleading and annoying to separate "stalkers" into some separate category of actors when it's all part of a continuum abuse.
otm

also otm re celebrity stalkings

The most recent season (S19) of podcast Something Was Wrong focuses entirely on stalking. The first set of 5 episodes revolve around one case of violent and wide-ranging cyber stalking where, shockingly, the stalker serves jail time.

Every season of this podcast has something to recommend about it and something that drives me crazy, but on the whole I think it's quite a public service to tell this many stories of interpersonal violence and abuse in a way that focuses on the survivor. If true crime content can be ethical, this is what it looks like. I realize it's not for everyone and can be immensely triggering.

Still, this particular story resonates because of the insidiousness of the stalking and the surprising outcome. Curious if anyone else listens to this podcast or has listened to these eps?