There's no question that popular media, specifically films, reflect a great psychological experiment on the human condition. What is currently being analyzed is the phenomenon of a rotting, grotesque vampire with major attachment issues stealing the hearts of women around the globe.
The reception of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu has wowed audiences everywhere, receiving an average 3.9/5 rating on Letterboxd in its first week in theaters. Women online have expressed intense feelings regarding Bill Skaarsgard's portrayal of Count Orlok, many of which fall in line with intimate desire and romance. But what about men? On popular social platforms like X and TikTok, women openly desire dominant, aggressive, even bad boy-ish characters, despite being cognizant of the moral misstep those feelings might suggest.
Conversely, men tend to lean into the ball court of characters from male-lead films like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho or the Joker from The Joker, and other popular "sigma" characters who are supposed to teach viewers a lesson on immorality and the error of toxic thought processes. Looking through a heterosexual lens, women's and men's perceptions of immoral characters in media is simple: The two groups fall on opposite ends of an innate patriarchal structure and similarly, both sides cannot escape their predetermined fate in a world seemingly stuck inside a black-and-white understanding of human hood… Let me explain.
The reception of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu has wowed audiences everywhere, receiving an average 3.9/5 rating on Letterboxd in its first week in theaters. Women online have expressed intense feelings regarding Bill Skaarsgard's portrayal of Count Orlok, many of which fall in line with intimate desire and romance. But what about men? On popular social platforms like X and TikTok, women openly desire dominant, aggressive, even bad boy-ish characters, despite being cognizant of the moral misstep those feelings might suggest.
Conversely, men tend to lean into the ball court of characters from male-lead films like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho or the Joker from The Joker, and other popular "sigma" characters who are supposed to teach viewers a lesson on immorality and the error of toxic thought processes. Looking through a heterosexual lens, women's and men's perceptions of immoral characters in media is simple: The two groups fall on opposite ends of an innate patriarchal structure and similarly, both sides cannot escape their predetermined fate in a world seemingly stuck inside a black-and-white understanding of human hood… Let me explain.