Actress Blake Lively’s controversy takes the stage after film release
The controversy surrounding Blake Lively’s “It Ends with us” film has revealed a heated past with film director Jason Baldoni’s inflated ego and glamourization of abuse.
You wouldn’t suspect the actress Blake Lively to have much in common with actress and comedian Rosanne Barr. However, Lively could find herself being the victim of cancel culture as Barr Rosanne once was in 2018. Lively finds herself as the internet’s latest target due to several accusations relating to her recently released film, “It Ends with Us” in which she plays the main character Lily. The film is based on a book by Author Colleen Hoover.
The book details the relationship between a young girl named Lily who is ready to start her own life after graduating from college. After moving to Boston, she meets a guy named Ryle who connects with her quickly. As sparks grow, they become more involved and eventually are entangled in a romantic and abusive relationship. One that covers topics like mental illness, alcohol abuse, rape and self-harm.
According to Hoover, the book was based on her parents’ abusive relationship she witnessed while growing up. It reflects both a victim and survivors’ point of view, specifically how Lily interprets Ryle’s abusive behavior. Rather than leaving, she stays in hopes that eventually he will change and grow into a more caring, responsible person. Although Ryle repeatedly fails to do so, Lily chooses to see the best in him. Despite his “flaws,” she believes that there is more good than bad to him.
Since the movie’s release, some fans have criticized the film adaptation for not accurately portraying these issues and instead romanticizing them. In shorter versions of the trailer, the film doesn’t necessarily reflect an abusive relationship, but rather a misunderstood love story between two flawed individuals. The trailer shows Lily and Ryle first meeting and then quickly becoming intimate with each other. It does not make it clear that this story covers the topic of domestic abuse and the vicious cycle it entraps victims in.
Furthermore, people have speculated that the film’s marketing campaign has become much more of a Livley infomercial of all her products. The film was originally set to be released on Valentines Day but was pushed back to June and then August which was just days before Livley’s haircare line “Black Brown” premiered. On Instagram, Livley also promoted the film using her pop-up store in New York Betty Blooms as well as her beverage brand Betty Buzz and Betty Booze. Many believe that Livley has coerced the media tour to self-promote herself and her brand.
In contrast, the film’s director and actor who played Ryle, Jason Baldoni was speculated to have been involved in the controversy but as a victim of Livley. According to a Forbes article, Lively commissioned her own cut of the film from the same editor who worked on her husband Ryan Reynolds film “Deadpool & Wolverine.” There were videos posted online of fighting between Baldoni and Livley yet neither one had commented nor confirmed it. During promotion, Baldoni was asked in an interview with ET Entertainment if he would ever consider doing a sequel film with Livley, to which he responded with, “I think there are better people for that one. I think Blake Lively is ready to direct, that’s what I think.”
Numerous articles by “The New York Times,” “Forbes” and “Vox” have come out since the controversy with articles titled “Why is everyone mad at Blake Lively?” “The Blake Lively Backlash on TikTok explained” and “It Ends with Us’: The Press Tour Drama, Explained.” Lively has been seen only briefly in public since the controversy yet has officially done no more marketing for the film since. While she has not been officially canceled, many believe she is on her way to becoming blacklisted from Hollywood and having her image tainted as being a snotty, selfish brat.
The power of social media and the internet has chipped away at the thin barrier between celebrities and the public for years. Influencers who bring a new voice to popular culture have contributed to this recent phenomenon called “cancel culture.” Essentially someone who may or may not be guilty of committing an offense that is considered heinous by some will be blacklisted from gaining any career opportunities in the public eye.
Rosanne Barr, for example, was a focus of interest back in 2018 when she referred to Valerie Jarret, a former top aide for President Barak Obama during his term in office as a racial slur. In a series of tweets, she degraded the former top aide to President Obama and said that “if a Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby that would equate to Valerie.”
Not too long after she tweeted that, she was fired almost immediately from ABC for her use of a racial slur even though it was on her personal twitter account. Her show “Rosanne” was taken off the air. Barr tried to apologize to Valerie, but the damage was done, and she was cancelled by the internet for good. For years, she could not get a job. She was even denied the opportunity to go on air on the network to apologize.
In her 2018 documentary “Rosanne, interrupted: Here’s What Barr’s Life Is Like Now” posted on YouTube by VICE News, she said that “I’ve been removed from the process of my life’s work. It’s like the worse thing they could have possibly done to me was to fire me from my own show and let other people write my life’s story.”
Although Lively has not publicly commented on the controversy, it’s clear she’s at least aware of how the public views her right now for her social media accounts are flooded with negative messages referring to her film’s controversy.
One Instagram user online named “chiame_momin98” wrote on Lively’s most recent post on August 8, “her caption proves how much she wanted this movie to be her barbie moment.” Another online user named “ivy6767676767” commented “so instead of owning up your attitude and behavior, and the whole situation surrounding the movie, you instead just run away and hide behind Ryan?”
The heat hasn’t stopped on social media. An online interviewer named Kjersti Flaa who interviews several celebrities like Kristin Stewart, Jennifer Lopez, and Will Smith uploaded a YouTube video titled “The Blake Lively Interview that made me want to quit my job.”
The video, which has more than 5 million views, shows Lively repeatedly ignoring the reporters’ questions and speaking only to her co-star nearly the entire interview. The interviewer Flaa sits with an uncomfortable smile watching them speak over her as she waits to ask them questions and do her job.
Flaa said in a video following the original Lively interview that went viral that she got contacted by a reporter who experienced a similar situation. “I thought it’s not okay to behave like that and it needs to be called out! It made me nervous to interview people over it and I blamed myself for a long time because I thought that I did something wrong. I understand why the video has gone viral like it has, and I think it’s because of how people can resonate with this situation. It’s that mean girl’ energy or feeling of being left out. As you can see from this video, it still happens when you’re grown up too.”
How does the hatred for Lively form and continue? The interview published by Flaa was originally conducted in 2016 when the film “Café Society” Lively promoted came out.
People have still since tried to bring up past information that would put Lively in a bad light, but many don’t consider Lively completely blacklisted from Hollywood yet. It is clear that while cancel culture is a cultural phenomenon intended to bring accountability to those that need it, the internet has a mind of its own.
Too often, it has been wrong or spread misinformation about those who are mere victims. While Lively isn’t entirely innocent of being a supposed mean girl, the lengths to which people will go to uncover negative part of her past are boundless. Only time will tell whether Lively returns to the internet unscathed.
If you would like to judge the film for yourself, you can visit Fandango to view which theatres are showing the film.
https://www.fandango.com/it-ends-with-us-2024-236076/movie-overview
