What happens when Hollywood is struggling with coming up with new ideas? When profit is prioritised over deep and meaningful stories?
Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You is the newest YA adaptation to hit cinemas. It advertises itself as an emotional rollercoaster of love and loss. One that takes place in the backdrop of a small urban town; a mother and daughter navigating through their respective relationship problems as they come to terms with hard truths.
Unfortunately, this is not the reality. And I have some thoughts.
Regretting You represents all the worst sides of ‘BookTok’; from the romanticisation of emotional abuse to the thrill of a toxic dynamic. Despite being such questionable tropes, they all hit the specified requirements for a ‘good’ piece of literature. ‘Booktok’ emerged as a sub platform in 2019. Just before the outbreak of the global pandemic, readers found a new way to interact with like-minded people remotely through their screens. Popular BookTok books such as ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ and ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ contain fantastical elements which draws us out of everyday life, into a reality where the same rules do not apply. A reader suddenly becomes the chosen one; one thrust into a position of authority whilst enjoying the benefits of being the ‘main character’. While this can feel exciting and stimulating for readers, especially under a global pandemic, it may turn dangerous to our perception of reality when taken in larger doses.
Instead of being a creative space for authors, BookTok has become an endless cycle of repetitive doomscrolling. Creativity is notably absent; replaced with a manufactured criteria that authors are expected to fulfil in order to sell for the masses. “Does this book have an enemies to lover’s plotline? If not, then I don’t want it.” Such expectations defeat the purpose of writing. If audiences only read to consume requested content, why not use AI to write multiple stories with the same central plot points? Would one not be satisfied with that instead? This is a direct result of the decline in creativity and originality we are seeing across popular culture, media and other industries.
The glorification of social media and BookTok as a primary source of entertainment threatens cinema, and thus, it responds by attempting to sell the same content to a larger audience. Regretting You checks all the right boxes; an angsty teenage love story accompanied with betrayal and heartbreak. Not to mention, the misunderstood female protagonist who wants to escape her everyday situation. Sound familiar? That is because it is quite literally the same plotline found in every other YA story. Certain creatives are cynically taking advantage of their teenage demographic; disregarding stories with meaningful lessons to instead sell corrupt and anti-social behaviours as the adolescent norm.
At its core, the purpose of this piece is not to attack BookTok. It is to encourage the spotlight on more niche corners of the community. There are many independent authors who continue to still push their own creative ideas forward. When adapted to cinema, the repetitive content of the BookTok genre is thus simply being spoonfed in a different font. Therefore, filmmakers should examine whether the source material would be truly suitable rather than prioritising the fulfilment of potential sales.
Engaging with our favourite genres and literary tropes is certainly not bad in moderation, but it is also important to read critically from time to time.
