TMS Discussion: Blake Lively and the Myth of the Perfect Victim
(Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures)
On August 9th, 2024, Justin Baldoni’s It Ends with Us, a movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling 2016 melodrama novel, was released following the most gossip ridden press tour since Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling (2022). What started as some fans noticing the two stars, Baldoni and Blake Lively, not interacting with each other at events, ended with a complete media takedown of the actress and her supposed bad reputation off camera. But then, on December 20th, 2024, Lively not only accused Baldoni of sexual harassment, but maintained very real texts exchanged between the actor-director and two women he hired to seep into social media and sabotage the blonde as a way to make himself seem like the good guy in this story. Now there is a legitimate court battle on the rise. Lively has a subpoena she maintained the texts through, as well as a filed complaint to the California Civil Rights Department, and an official lawsuit against Baldoni for inappropriate work behavior. Baldoni in response is suing The New York Times for reporting a ‘false narrative,’ maintains he is innocent and that we should focus on Lively allegedly taking finally cut of the film away from him as a producer. When all these revelations blew up in the news throughout the past two weeks, I sighed and instantly thought, “Here we go again…”
Look, it’s only been two and a half years since the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard court fiasco and there still isn’t a public consensus on who the ‘real’ victim was in that case. I personally think it was way too convenient for nearly all my social media feeds and suggestions to suddenly be all about how great Johnny Depp is when he was put on trial while I’ve never followed or posted anything about the actor on my accounts. Like Baldoni, I feel it was pretty obvious Depp hired a whole team to boost up the good PR as much as possible. But the difference is not only did Lively have proof of the sabotage, but she herself already has plenty of past bad press that made it easy for someone—even someone less famous than her, like Baldoni—to make the public turn on her so fast. Suddenly there were reminders of the time she worked with filmmaker Woody Allen and doubled down on her choice to do so; how she and her husband [actor Ryan Reynolds] controversially had their wedding on a real Civil War era slave plantation; her claims that she has a humble, ordinary background even though everyone in her immediate family works in Hollywood; Blake & Ryan using the promo of both It Ends with Us and Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine to try and make their own ‘Barbenheimer.’ It was very easy to see all of Lively’s downfall as organic.
(Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures)
Here’s the thing though. While Baldoni had a public rep for being progressive and a ‘feminist ally,’ and seemingly focused on the domestic violence theme of It Ends with Us more than anyone else in the cast; it’s hard to deny the published texts make him sound like a huge creep and comes across as someone looking for a power trip. In retrospect, no one siding with Baldoni while the movie was being marketed should have been a big clue, and it’s an even bigger clue now that Lively presently has a ton of support from people in the industry. No doubt this isn’t the first time a supposed ‘male feminist’ has faked support for his own gain either. I’ve never been a fan of Lively and still think her acting range is limited, but she did the right thing maintaining proper legal proof of her mistreatment at the same time she went forward with her accusations. Her past actions aren’t relevant to her current predicament and shouldn’t be. She did what every woman is told to do by society if she wants her accusations to be taken seriously. And yet…
What bothers me most about cases like Johnny Depp-Amber Heard and Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively is that there isn’t any nuance or grey area. At this point I expect misogynists to see cases like this as an excuse to hate on women, and there’s been plenty of that happening if you look on the usual corners of the internet. But then there’s the opposite by liberal women, where the pendulum swings too far in the other direction, and the female victim has been completely maligned and has never done anything wrong in her life. And if you point out her flaws, you are part of the problem and aren’t supporting the victim. This is rampant on alleged feminist pages of Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram, etc. It’s actually one reason I stopped using my Reddit account and completely abandoned LiveJournal [yes, I was still frequenting LJ in the 2020s]. I don’t believe a serious episode like this has to be black and white. In fact, I think it’s pretty disingenuous to prop every female victim up as flawless, an impossible quality to actually achieve, just as much as it is to victim blame and call a woman a liar for not having enough evidence. If you ask me, instances like this are why I think it’s taking forever for gender politics to progress, sadly. At first, I thought I was ‘team no one.’ But now I’m team Blake should win, and I’m team lets use our brains about how we form opinions about important topics.
