ROM-COM GENRE RESEARCH - Glorifies stalking?

Several feminists and other theorists feel that romantic comedies can glorify stalking, and give audiences false perceptions that everything will be surmounted by their faith in true love, which for example was the subject for a study by Heriot Watt University.

Your favorite rom-com is actually super creepy von thewashingtonpost

This video in particular looks at There's Something About Mary, and also raises the issue that while men's stalking is portrayed as heroic and romantic, women's is portrayed as creepy, weird and out of place, such as in Hello My Name Is Dorris, Fatal Attraction and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Also, in Bollywood for e.g: Raanjhanna the romantic stalking perpetuated by infatuated young men is taken even further to the extreme, which also is seen as mirroring a patriarchic structure of Indian society that has relaxed views on stalking.

This was also a criticism directed towards the Twilight franchise, especially with its huge female teen audience, that it glorified stalking through a handsome dark stranger of Edward.

These fears are part of the hypodermic needle theory, which sees the audience as passive and very easily influenced by the media, like a drug influencing the body negatively, as said in the video below  it is a linear communication theory.

The romantic debate, where the rushing in on the wedding trope is seen as a sexist representation of woman who can't decide on true love unlike men who will make the final, right choice for them and sweep them away on their feet

A recent article criticising Love Actually:

"there’s a plotline about how all American women are dying to sleep with nerdy Englishmen, because that’s a leitmotif in Richard Curtis’s films."

POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

If my film were produced to a full feature film, then I wouldn't have it end with the two girls, Billy and Rachel, coming together, to not promote an ideal of true love being unconquerable, and to portray Billy's stalking as slightly pointless. However, it wouldn't end on a gloomy note, as also romantic comedies that end badly are not financially successful, the reason why the ending of Pretty Woman was changed to the couple getting together after all. I would have Billy and Rachel, after realising they cannot get together because Rachel simply isn't interested in the female sex as Billy is, they would still end on a friendly note, similar to the ending in Rushmore. Then the final scene would be Billy and Jake dancing happily despite not coming together with their crushes, like in My Best Friend's Wedding but with the hetereosexual girl dancing with her gay best friend reversed, the lesbian outsider dancing with her straight outsider best friend.

The message I would thereby be sending to my audience would be not to completely obssess about unrequited love and to try and seek more life-affirmance in friendships.