Joe Goldberg, from the Netflix show “You,” is a bad guy – a terrible one even. He is everything we should fear – a stalker, a manipulator and a killer. Yet, with every new season we can’t look away. Some fans even seem to like him. Was this always the show’s intention or does this say something about us? Or both?
Time and time again Joe commits these horrible acts, and audiences still feel connected to him. Some of this has to do with the show’s clever storytelling, but the majority of the reasoning lies in our culture’s obsession with a charming and attractive anti-hero. “You” is a show that blurs the line between condemning and being complicit in one’s actions.
This story is told through the eyes of Joe, which is the first way the writers invite viewers to explore the narrative in a different light. Because we are inside of the mind of a killer, our subconscious begins to justify his actions just as he does. Though his logic is twisted, we begin to empathize with him because we see him as human, even though logically we know he is in the wrong. By being told the story through his eyes, we become almost supportive of his horrible maneuvers.
Penn Badgley plays Joe Goldberg, which was an intentional casting by directors. Badgley is an objectively attractive man, and when you add that together with Joe’s charming personality, we become blinded by the concept that people who look and talk like that just can’t be bad. This is intentional. The whole point of the story is to shed light on society’s glamorization of murderers.
Take Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. How many people did you see making TikTok edits or wearing provocative Halloween costumes that were almost fantasizing about a serial killer? It’s a strange obsession we have as a collective. When someone who commits heinous acts just happens to be attractive we glamorize instead of condemn. It’s strange.
I understand loving an anti-hero. But it gets to a point. And where I draw the line is when it bleeds into real life. Shows like “You” are not the problem – we are. As an audience we are drawn to characters who operate outside the rules and follow their own twisted moral code – especially when they’re hot. We aren’t just tolerating it, we are fascinated by it.
Joe Goldberg should not be liable – yet he is. That contradiction speaks volumes about our willingness to accept morally bad characters and our ability to fall for charm. “You” is fascinating because it forces us to acknowledge the fact that we will root for a villain just because he looks and sounds like the good guy.
