Extra Credit Blog: Me Before You

Yesterday afternoon I watched a movie called “Me Before You”. The primary theme of the movie was a love story between a man and a woman. Although the relationship was heterosexual, there are a number of ways that I am able to apply our class concepts to the film in order to look at it from a feminist perspective.

                First off, I plan to explore how the social construction of gender plays a role in the movie. I feel as though the movie sticks to the idea of a “gender binary”, and each character is socialized to follow these norms. For example, the main character, Louisa is a young woman whom takes a job opportunity that requires her to care for a young man that had recently been paralyzed. This applies to the concept of the social construction of gender because caregiving is primarily a female role. Not only that, but Louisa’s father ends up taking a job for the same family that deals with being a maintenance man. Jobs that require building things, working with hands, and using tools are usually socialized to be masculine jobs. Lastly, looking at Louisa’s mother, it is easy to see that she falls into a stereotypical gender role as well. Her mother is primarily a stay at home mom that tends to the family’s needs such as cooking and cleaning.

                Another thing I wanted to explore about this movie was ways in which the characters were privileged and oppressed. For starters, Louisa’s family appears to be lower middle class, possibly even below middle class. It is obvious that the family is struggling to make money to pay for certain expenses. Louisa’s father had recently lost his job before getting the maintenance offer later on in the movie. Not only that, but Louisa herself mentions multiple times throughout the movie that she keeps her caregiving job merely because she needs the money, not because she enjoys it. With that being said however, her views do eventually change as her and the young man she is caring for become more fond of one another. Will on the other-hand, the young man she is caring for, comes from an extremely rich family. Will used to be able to take all sorts of extreme and exotic vacations (he pretty much had the world), but it all came to and end when he became paralyzed. Thus, he is privileged because he is rich, but is oppressed because he is not able-bodied anymore. This oppression also brings out his stubbornness. There are many things Will cannot do, but he insists on trying, or refuses to ask for help because as a fit young man, he does not like being dependent on others.

                Early on in the movie, Louisa finds out that in six months, Will has chosen to go the route of assisted suicide because he fears being a burden to others, and he claims that he wants all of his pain and suffering to end. He used to be on top of the world and now he barely finds the motivation to get out of bed in the moring. His family is not happy about this, and neither is Louisa when she finds out. She dedicates the rest of her time caring for Will to giving him all sorts of fun life adventures in hopes that he will change his mind about the suicide. (She does not inform him that she knows). The two end up going to horse races, a birthday party, a wedding, and lastly even on a full out vacation. During this time, Louisa and her current boyfriend break up because he realizes that she is falling for Will. She claims it is just work, but it is obvious that feelings are involved. In the end, they both have an incredible time together and Louisa does an amazing job at showing Will that he cannot let his disability keep him from living his life.

                Out of respect of the people that haven’t seen the movie, and maybe would like to, I am not going to go into detail on how it ends (I don’t want any spoiler alerts). I can say that it is a beautiful love story in which a young woman is willing to sacrifice her “normal life” in order to care for someone with a disability. Her love for Will becomes so strong that she is willing to take care of him for the rest of her life if she has to. It is incredible to see someone with this kind of courage, strength and love even though it was a fictional movie. It is also interesting to look at how each of these character’s lives intersect with one another to determine the experiences they have throughout the movie.