When the psychological thriller series YOU debuted its first season in 2018, the titular character Joe Goldberg’s love interest, Guinevere Beck, received hate to no end. I feel uneasy even using the phrase “love interest” to describe what Beck was to Joe — because what transpired between the two of them was the furthest thing from a love story. Beck was Joe’s victim. But, to many YOU fans, what Joe did to Beck was justified, because she committed the ultimate sin: being an “annoying” woman. Not being the “perfect victim.”
Over the course of the first season, Joe violates Beck in every possible way. He stalks her, puts spyware on her phone, and (graphically) kills anyone who stands in the way of their relationship. Beck is unaware of the extent of Joe’s obsession until she stumbles upon his box of… shall we say, “mementos.” When Joe realizes Beck has uncovered his true nature, he strikes her, knocking her out, and holds her captive in a glass cage. While trapped in the cage, Beck, a poet who has struggled to find her motivation to write all season, finally finds it in Joe’s abuse; penning a raw, heartbreaking poem she calls “BlueBeard’s Castle.”
Beck writes,
“From every boy masquerading as a man that you let into your body, your heart, you learned you didn’t have whatever magic turns a beast into a prince. You surrounded yourself with the girls you’d always resented, hoping to share their power, and you hated yourself. And that diminished you even more. And then, right when you thought you might just disappear, he saw you. And you knew, somewhere deep, it was too good to be true. But you let yourself be swept, because he was the first strong enough to lift you. Now, in his castle, you understand Prince Charming and Bluebeard are the same man. And you don’t get a happy end unless you love both of him.”
For a long time, I struggled to understand why everyone adored Love Quinn, the object of Joe’s affections in the subsequent season, yet hated Beck with such a burning passion. I mean, Love Quinn was a literal murderer. What did Beck ever do that could even hold a candle to that? Now, as I transition into adulthood, I understand.Â
We hate Beck because she holds up a mirror to us. We can divorce characters like Love from reality because we don’t see ourselves in them. They’re just that: characters. Beck, on the other hand? She exemplifies what it means to be a young, 20-something-year-old navigating a tumultuous period in their life. Everything she describes in her poem is painfully accurate. Continuing to allow people who have hurt you over and over again access to your life just because you’re scared to be alone. Seeking validation in environments you know will destroy you because you’ve been surrounded by toxicity for so long, and it’s all you know. Sinking into something you know isn’t built to last, ignoring all the signs, because you just want to stay in that bliss for a little longer. Thinking romance is the antidote to all your problems, that if you just meet the right guy, everything will be okay. Entertainment is supposed to be our escape. But Beck forces us to look intrinsically at all the truths we don’t want to admit to ourselves.
Beck was flawed, no doubt. She made mistakes— she cheated, was avoidant, and impulsive. But so are all of us. We’re all messy human beings doing the best we can. I didn’t think this needed to be said, but being imperfect doesn’t mean you deserve to be murdered. In the show, Joe kills Beck by strangling her. In the books, he kills her by shoving pages of The Da Vinci Code -which she had tried to use to escape- down her throat, until her eyes bulge out of her head. It makes me wonder, is that what viewers needed to see for it to finally register in their minds that Joe isn’t the victim, Beck is?
Am I overanalyzing this? I mean, it’s just a TV show after all. Or is it? Does the media we consume have no effect on us? Does how we interact with fictitious content not impact how we perceive real-world situations? I think it does. Believing that Beck deserved to be a victim of femicide because she had personal shortcomings sets a very dangerous precedent for how we examine real-life instances of gendered violence.