“Love Actually” in the Age of #MeToo
Tis the season…to watch holiday movies. While many are bemoaning Netflix’s decision to drop Love Actually from its catalog, the streaming service might be doing viewers a favor.
Love Actually has been described as a modern Christmas classic, but when it was released in 2003, it received mixed reviews. While some reviewers panned it for its unruly storytelling and simplistic portrayal of love, Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon was one of the few to call out the blatant sexism of the movie, which is filled with British men who want “hot chicks who fetch them tea, put up with their dalliances, and don’t speak English.”
The nine braided stories in this film include many more disconcerting portrayals of women — sex kitten, porn actress, dumb slut, tease, fat housewife, supermodel. Even more troubling are the storylines involving male employers and their female employees given the spate of revelations of sexual harassment and assault in recent months.
The set up for each “love” story set in the workplace involves a male superior (almost always a decade or two older) and a subordinate female employee. Male bosses regularly ask their female employees about whether they have boyfriends or husbands. The female characters prepare tea, plan holiday parties, and in one case strip down to their skivvies and dive into a lake to rescue a boss’ novel. The women are never asked their opinion on work matters, but they are responsible for preventing their own harassment, as they are advised to watch out for co-workers and bosses who might get handsy with them.
In the most cringeworthy storyline, a young domestic employee named Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) becomes the love interest of the British Prime Minister, David, played by Hugh Grant. Key moments in the narrative should make any Human Resources Department flip out — and audience members, too, who may well have glossed over these violations in previous viewings.
From the first encounter, Natalie’s beauty and charm are “inconvenient” to David, who is clearly attracted to her (despite relentless comments by other characters about her weight). Later, he pumps her for information about her marital status because “it seems elitist and wrong” to work in such close proximity while knowing so little about her. Soon after David’s gracious effort to break down class barriers, Natalie is the subject of “locker room” talk by the president of the United States (Billy Bob Thornton), who is on a state visit to 10 Downing Street. David laughs like a nervous Billy Bush. Later, when David steps out, Natalie finds herself trapped in a room alone with the leader of the free world, who nuzzles her ear and tries to kiss her just before David returns, interrupting the assault. Only in Hollywood, right?
David promptly “redistributes” Natalie and advises his chief of staff not to ask why or read anything into it. It is unclear whether David reassigns Natalie as a sort of honor killing or because he is jealous. Finally, instead of filing a complaint, Natalie apologizes twice — once in writing, and once in person. Her apology is coupled with a declaration of love, which David eventually reciprocates.
This seemingly innocuous tale of a young, low level female employee and her boss, the head of state of a major industrialized nation, appeared in theaters not long after Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. In 2017, as we learn of widespread sexual harassment and assault in a range of industries, including the film and government both in the U.S. and abroad, it no longer seems harmless. The enduring popularity of this film reveals society’s tolerance and even appetite for stories that denigrate women and tolerate sexual harassment, all in the name of “romance.”
That the movie was written and directed by a man is not so surprising. These are the characters and storylines that men have shaped for viewers, a celluloid house of mirrors that distorts the truth and makes women complicit in their own harassment. What feels true in Love Actually are Natalie’s apologies. Women have tended to blame themselves for what has befallen them — they wore the wrong clothes, sent the wrong signals, or were naive to think a man would be interested in their professional expertise.
This Christmas, perhaps it is time to see this movie with fresh eyes. To recognize that not only is the American president’s sexual harassment of Natalie wrong, but so is the love story that unfolds between her and her employer, the Prime Minister of England. David’s voice-over at the beginning of the movie about the ubiquity of love might ring truer if the line read, “If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling that sexual harassment actually is all around.”
