Abduction as Romance

Jonathan McIntosh has cornered the market on identifying and critiquing odious audiovisual tropes. His YouTube channel Pop Culture Detective has called out movies and tv shows for carelessly using stalking behaviour as a plot device, and he even coined the new term Born Sexy Yesterday for one particular trope.

 

This video essay again pinpoints a storytelling trope that is ripe for retirement: the use of abduction as a starting point for a romantic relationship. McIntosh gives an impressive list of examples, spanning decades of film history, of storylines where violent and abusive men abduct women only to be rewarded for it with love.