Surprise,He's Innocent: The Character Trope of the Wrongfully Accused White Man in the #MeToo Era

In 2019, Netflix released the crime drama limited series Unbelievable, which focuses on survivors of rape and abuse as well as the role of law enforcement procedures and behavior in the reporting of the same. The nuanced portrayal seemed clearly informed by many of the issues that were finally brought to the fore due to and during the #MeToo era. In particular, the prevalence and harmful effects of rape myths are exposed by focusing on the impact of disbelief on the victims or survivors. Two years later, the same streaming platform released the limited series Clickbait and the feature film The Guilty that both feature white male characters that are wrongfully accused of sexual assault, domestic violence, and/or femicide. The character trope of the wrongfully accused man is certainly not new but has been a staple in popular film and television for decades. Films such as The 39 Steps (1935), The Crush (1993), The Fugitive (1993), Wild Things (1998), The Life of David Gale (2003), and Gone Girl (2014) all revolve around a white male character being framed for a crime he did not commit. Similarly, a number of television series, particularly police procedurals such as the Law and Order and CSI franchises but also, for instance, Baywatch (1989–2001) and Dexter (2006–2013), feature individual episodes whose plot relies on this trope. Not rarely is the alleged crime in these narratives sexual assault and gender-based violence more broadly, which is why this trope takes on a new meaning in the #MeToo era.

However, this article is not an attempt to reread such films and television shows from before the #MeToo era through this new lens but will focus on the two 2021 Netflix releases. For hopefully obvious reasons, this analysis excludes media texts such as Ava DuVernay's When They See Us, which depicts the actual wrongful accusation and conviction of the “Central Park Five,” now known as the “Exonerated Five.” The history of innocent Black men being accused of raping and/or murdering white women in the United States is equally long as it is tragic, and the present article in no way suggests otherwise. ¹ Instead, it seeks to explore the character and narrative trope of the wrongfully accused white man and argues that specifically Clickbait's and The Guilty's use of them is almost entirely created by drawing on certain harmful rape and domestic violence myths. Even more so, I will demonstrate that the film's and limited series’ overall narratives show striking parallels with what Jennifer J. Freyd (1997) coined as DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), a strategy increasingly used during the #MeToo era by accused men to defend themselves in public as well as increasingly even in court. Thus, I will not only show how The Guilty and Clickbait promote rape culture and, more specifically, contribute to rape and domestic violence myth acceptance but I will also situate these two media texts in the broader context of “popular misogyny” (Banet-Weiser, 2018).

In order to do so, I will first provide a brief review of the literature on media effects and explain the most important rape myths. Next, I will show how the concept of rape myths can be fruitfully expanded to include false beliefs about domestic or intimate partner violence since they share many characteristics. The critical framework of my analysis is informed by feminist media studies with a specific focus on how the #MeToo movement has shaped fictional media texts—positively as well as negatively—as well as Sarah Banet-Weiser's work on the dynamics of popular feminism and popular misogyny. In a close reading with a particular focus on the construction of the twist endings and the depiction of female characters, the rape and domestic violence myths on display as well as the DARVO strategy employed in The Guilty and Clickbait will be identified. Thus, this article contributes to scholarship focusing on a critical issue that Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad consider lacking in the discussion of #MeToo and the Hollywood industry, namely, “the huge role played by film [and television] … in naturalizing and normalizing violence against women” (2018, p. 1320).

The media's impact on our perception of the world has been analyzed and documented rather extensively and been tackled from various vantage points in the past decades. Most pertinent to the present article are the numerous analyses that examine the connection between the depiction of an issue in individual films and television shows and how their viewers perceive these issues and/or how they even influence their behavior in the real world, for example, how science fiction films impact student's understanding of science (Barnett et al., 2006), how political Hollywood films change the audience's view of the government (Pautz, 2015), and the media's role in affecting youth drinking and smoking behavior (Beullens et al., 2011 and Wakefield et al., 2003, respectively). As Gretchen Sisson and Katrina Kimport summarize, a number of studies have demonstrated the impact fictional depictions of medical care, such as abortion, organ donation, and cancer treatments, have on the public's views on these issues in real life (2017, pp. 57, 67). A large section of media effects analyses also deals with aspects of interpersonal relationships, for example, how fictional media content impacts romantic ideas (Kretz, 2019), attitudes toward sexual orientation and nontraditional families (Mazur & Emmers-Sommer, 2003), as well as sexual behavior (Brown et al., 2006).

These and so many other studies attest that the media are meaningful agents of the socialization of their consumers. As Joanne Morreale puts it succinctly:

Television, like all forms of social discourse, helps to shape not only beliefs, values, and attitudes, but also subjectivities, people's sense of themselves and their place in the world. Television portrays “appropriate” and “inappropriate” social relations, defines norms and conventions, provides “common sense” understandings, and articulates the preoccupations and concerns that define particular historical moments. (2003: xi; also qtd. in Scheunemann, 2010, pp. 105–106)

For the present article, the media's perpetuation of so-called “rape myths” is of primary importance. Simply put, rape myths are commonly held beliefs about the victims, the perpetrators, and the circumstances of rape that are not born out by facts and yet stubbornly persist. Since all these myths work against the victims and benefit the perpetrators, they can do great harm to the victims. Various rape myths have been identified since the concept was first introduced in the 1970s (Payne et al., 1999, p. 27; Edwards et al., 2011, p. 761) but, overall, they have not really changed over time. One of the earliest contributions to this growing field of inquiry is Julia R. Schwendinger and Herman Schwendinger's “Rape Myths: In Legal, Theoretical, and Everyday Practice,” in which they essentially debunked the following five rape myths: “(1) rape is impossible; (2) a woman who gets raped ‘was asking for it’; (3) men rape because of uncontrollable passions; (4) an imbalance in the sex ratio causes rape; and (5) legalizing prostitution will reduce rape” (1974, p. 25). Since then, further and slight variations of similar rape myths have been identified and analyzed across several disciplines and may best be summarized by categorizing them according to who or what the myth is about—the victim, the perpetrator, and the rape itself. When it comes to the victims, the most consistently discussed are, according to Edwards et al., that women ² want to be raped, women habitually lie about being raped, and women “asked for it” (2011, p. 762; see also Cuklanz, 2009, p. 428), that is their behavior, such as drinking alcohol and flirting, and/or clothing invited it or they are “promiscuous.” Rape myths about the perpetrators claim that a husband cannot rape his wife (Edwards et al., 2011, p. 762), the rapist did not mean to rape (Payne et al., 1999, p. 59), that most rapists are strangers, and that rapists are abnormal “monsters” who are thus easily identifiable (Cuklanz, 2009, p. 428). Myths about the act of rape itself include that rape either must be violent, which is connected to the “rapists are strangers” myth (Cuklanz, 2009, p. 428), or, somewhat ironically, the very opposite, that it is not a traumatic event. Finally, two further myths claim that rape is rare and that the event in question was not actually rape (Payne et al., 1999, p. 59).

A number of studies have shown how prevalent rape myths are in the media, from the news media (Blumell & Huemmer, 2017; Sacks et al., 2018) to fictional films and television series (Cuklanz, 2009, 2000; Cuklanz & Moorti, 2007; Kornfield & Jones, 2021; Projansky, 2001). Similarly important is how this perpetuation in the media leads to what is called “rape myth acceptance.” In their study on how video games perpetuate rape myths, Victoria Simpson Beck et al. explain that “rape myth acceptance is the internalization of rape myths” (2012, p. 3018). In other words, frequent exposure to rape myths in the media increases media consumers’ beliefs in the validity of these false and harmful assumptions about sexual assault. Numerous studies have demonstrated the media's contribution (not to say complicity) in furthering rape myth acceptance (Hedrick, 2021; Hogan, 2022; Hust et al., 2015; Vance et al., 2015). While these myths are specifically about sexual assault, we can productively expand most of them to also cover domestic or intimate partner violence committed by men against women. Deborah Epstein and Lisa A. Goodman, for instance, analyzed “when, how, and why the justice system and other key social institutions discount women's credibility” so frequently in domestic violence cases (and specifically male-perpetrated violence against women). They argue:

The reflexive discounting of women's stories of domestic violence finds analogs among the kindred diminutions and dismissals that harm so many other women who resist the abusive exercise of male power, from survivors of workplace harassment to victims of sexual assault … (Epstein & Goodman, 2019, p. 1)

In their study of newspaper coverage of femicide, Lane Kirkland Gillespie et al. summarize five media frames that have frequently been identified in news reports on domestic violence:

(1) focusing on the behavior of the victim, including blaming the victim or excusing the perpetrator; (2) normalizing the event as commonplace; (3) suggesting the incident was an isolated event; (4) indicating the victim and/or perpetrator are somehow different from the norm; and (5) asserting that domestic violence perpetrators are “disordered” and should be easily identifiable. (2013, p. 227)

The similarity of these frames to rape myths is striking and demonstrates that the gender as well as victim-perpetrator dynamics play out exactly the same way. These media frames as well as rape myths always benefit the (usually male) perpetrator and are to the detriment of the (typically female) victim. Shoos, too, found frequently used narrative tropes in past and more recent domestic violence films that are reminiscent of rape myths, such as the depiction of “the abuser as ‘abnormal,’ often a raging monster, and the implicit blaming of the victim for her ‘bad choice’” (2017, p. 64).

What the crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence also have in common is that the perpetrators frequently use the so-called DARVO strategy. As briefly mentioned in the introduction, DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender and was originally defined by Jennifer J. Freyd in the context of her work in betrayal trauma therapy (1997, p. 29). In this and subsequent writings, she and her co-authors have laid out how perpetrators often do not “just” repudiate the accusation but go on the offensive by questioning the accuser's credibility and portraying themselves as the actual victim (Harsey et al., 2017, pp. 645–646). Even though Freyd first coined this strategy in the late 1990s, it became more prominent during the #MeToo Era that saw not only a rise in public accusations but also defamation lawsuits brought by the accused against the victims. Many plaintiffs and their lawyers used DARVO rather successfully. As Sarah J. Harsey and Freyd write:

DARVO is a tactic used to urge observers to believe that the only real wrongdoing is a false accusation—a terrible injustice brought on by someone pretending to be a victim. […] By eroding trust in victims, DARVO's purpose is to enable perpetrators to deflect at least some blame and responsibility. (2022, p. 482, emphasis mine)

While the specific relationship between perpetrator race and DARVO has not yet been explored, a considerable body of research shows that perceptions of perpetrators are not race-neutral but are significantly shaped by racial bias, particularly in relation to credibility, culpability, and punishment. Research on juror decision-making shows, for example, that Black defendants are more likely to be judged guilty and receive harsher outcomes than white defendants, particularly in racially homogeneous jury contexts (Anwar et al., 2012; Levinson and Young, 2010). In the context of sexual violence, studies further indicate that both victim and perpetrator race influence attributions of blame and responsibility (George & Martínez, 2002), with Black defendants more likely to be perceived as culpable and white defendants more likely to benefit from leniency (Hymes et al., 1993). Analyses of criminal justice data have found that Black defendants receive more severe outcomes than similarly situated white defendants, including a higher likelihood of incarceration and longer sentences (Rehavi & Starr, 2014). From a theoretical perspective, this pattern can be understood through the lens of epistemic injustice, a concept developed by Miranda Fricker (2007), which describes how credibility is unevenly distributed in ways that reflect existing social hierarchies. Fricker argues that members of marginalized groups are systematically assigned lower credibility due to identity-based prejudice, making them more likely to be disbelieved or discredited. Applied to race, this framework suggests that white individuals are often afforded greater epistemic credibility, while people of Color are more likely to experience credibility deficits, shaping how responsibility and blame are attributed. These findings are directly relevant to understanding DARVO, which relies on persuading audiences to reassess credibility and victimhood. If white perpetrators are more readily perceived as trustworthy or less culpable while Black individuals are more readily associated with blame, then DARVO strategies are likely to operate unevenly along racial lines. In this sense, whiteness is not incidental but helps structure the conditions under which DARVO can successfully reverse victim and offender positions.

This structural advantage is also reflected in broader cultural responses to #MeToo, where DARVO can be interpreted as a manifestation of “popular misogyny,” a term coined by Sarah Banet-Weiser (2018). She defines it not just as “mere” hatred but “a systematic devaluing and dehumanizing of women. Popular misogyny is also, like popular feminism, networked, an interconnection of nodes in all forms of media and everyday practice” (Banet-Weiser, 2018, loc. 249). She observes that popular misogyny rose around the same time as popular feminism. Similar to earlier backlashes to (perceived) progress for women, popular misogyny appears to be an attempt to fight feminist gains that are considered attacks against men (2018, loc. 296–311). Importantly, these counter movements are frequently expressed in popular media. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, popular culture responded to more women entering the workforce by creating films and other media that pointed to the dire effects that occur when women express any form of independence. Films such as Fatal Attraction and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle spelled out how literally murderous it is if women happen to be successful in their careers (Banet-Weiser, 2015).

Banet-Weiser and Kate M. Miltner further explain that popular misogyny aims to reclaim the space taken up by the increase in popular feminist expressions in the media (2016, p. 172). Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that, as Margaret Tally reviews, the way films and television shows (or single episodes) incorporated themes of the #MeToo movement varied greatly from progressive to reactionary (2021, loc. 948). Surprisingly, she found that many featured abusive women rather than men, such as in the NBC series Great News (2017–2018). The show's creator argued that this gender role reversal was meant to highlight the absurdity of victim-blaming (loc. 1773–1794).

A number of scholars have analyzed film and series in the wake of #MeToo (Dango, 2023; Durham, 2021; Funnell & Beliveau, 2022; Lloyd, 2021) and come to similar results. Some detected progress in how more storylines frame sexual assault and harassment as well as domestic violence in ways that criticize rape culture and victim-blaming and give voice to feminist activism (Kornfield & Jones, 2021, pp. 2, 5, 12; O’Brien, 2020). Series such as Big Little Lies (Hogan, 2022), Unbreakable (Moorti, 2023), I May Destroy You (Banet-Weiser & Higgins, 2022; Benson-Allott, 2020), and the already mentioned Unbelievable (Banet-Weiser & Higgins, 2022; Everbach, 2022) have been lauded as progressive (if imperfect) representations. However, many scholars have also already identified a misogynist backlash. For example, Sarah Kornfield and Hannah Jones found that some television episodes about sexual violence still reinforced rape myths, particularly by asserting that allegations are frequently false (2021, p. 12). Banet-Weiser and Kathryn Higgins focused specifically on the depiction of believability of women who accuse men of sexual violence since this appeared to be a main issue not only in television productions that referenced the #MeToo movement but also the #MeToo movement itself (2022, p. 128). They argue that, after a brief wave of support to believe women, resistance to that notion became noticeable almost instantly, with some people claiming that women are believed too easily and quickly now. As they explain this view, “truthful speech is not something women do, but rather, something women earn. Believability is a commodity to be worked for, paid for, secured—and a commodity of unstable value” (2022, p. 129).

The believability of women (or lack thereof) is also a central point of contention in The Guilty and Clickbait. The present analysis will, therefore, focus on this issue as well as on the notions that false accusations constitute the only real wrongdoing and that perpetrators are typically strangers. The following close reading of The Guilty and Clickbait will demonstrate how their twist endings reinforce these myths and rely on the same elements that make up the DARVO strategy, thus contributing to rape and domestic violence myth acceptance.

The Guilty and Clickbait: Credible Accusations

Both The Guilty and Clickbait spend most of their running time convincingly accusing and even attacking the presumed perpetrator, thereby laying the groundwork for the shocking reveal of their innocence towards the end. The Guilty takes place exclusively in a 911 control center where the suspended cop Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) has to work as a 911 operator. Throughout the film, the viewers hear people talking to him on the phone but never see them. About 12 minutes into the film, Emily Lighton (voiced by Riley Keough) calls 911 for the first time from inside a car. She pretends to talk to her child to disguise who she is really speaking to. Therefore, Joe deduces that she has been abducted. Joe manages to identify her and tries to rescue her from what he comes to believe to be her violent ex-husband Henry Fisher (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), who injured their baby and kidnapped her. He assumes this after talking to their 6-year-old daughter Abby (voiced by Christiana Montoya). Everything she says suggests that her father has been violent, which is confirmed when Joe finds out that Henry has “a history of assault” (Fuqua 00:26:10–30). Sometime later, Joe calls Henry's number. He insists that he does not know where his wife is, even though Emily is audibly whimpering in the background (Fuqua 00:39:55–40:40). Clearly, Henry lied about the whereabouts of his wife and does not change his story even when he learns that he is being accused of kidnapping. Since the police continue to be unable to locate Emily, Joe calls her again and tells her to cause a car accident so that she can escape. She survives the crash but does not manage to get out. In two subsequent phone calls, the audience again experiences her as absolutely terrified:

I don’t want to get locked up. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. […] I just wanna go home to my kids. They shouldn’t be alone. […] He put me in the back of the van and I can’t see anything. I don’t know why he's doing this. He's gonna lock me up. I don’t want to die. (Fuqua 00:52:28–54:09)

Towards the end of this phone call, about an hour into this 90-minute film, Joe and the audience learn what really happened.

Clickbait, too, spends much of the show persuasively accusing a white man of horrible crimes. Almost at the beginning of this eight-part limited series, Pia Brewer (Zoe Kazan) watches an online video of her brother Nick (Adrian Grenier), apparently kidnapped holding signs into the camera that read “I abuse women” and “At 5 million views I die” (Ayres et al., 2021a, 07:20–07:40). She alerts the authorities, who start an investigation, but Nick is found dead in the second episode. Throughout most of the first six episodes, the evidence against Nick piles up as the viewers find out more about him. He apparently had several online dating profiles under his and fake names, with many photos of him and women he had affairs with. At least two confirm to the police that they had an affair with him. One of them, Emma Beesly (Jessica Ann Collins), even seeks out Pia and Nick's wife, Sophie (Betty Gabriel), to tell them about her affair with Nick. The viewers repeatedly see flashbacks to Emma and Nick being together, kissing, and having sex. She also visits another woman he had an affair with and they commiserate together. Another woman, Sarah Burton (Taylor Ferguson), died by suicide after he broke off their relationship. It is later revealed that it was her brother Simon (Daniel Henshall), who abducted Nick and posted the videos to avenge his sister.

Shortly before Nick disappeared, he left Pia a voicemail, which worries Pia enough to keep it from the police, and Sophie agrees that it makes him look guilty. We learn that Sophie had an affair with Curtis Hamilton (Motell Gyn Foster) and that Nick was injured in a physical altercation with him. When Nick asked his sister to tend to these injuries, he lied about their origin. When a detective asks Sophie whether Nick ever abused her, she denies it, but the viewers also see a short flashback to when she confessed her affair to him. Nick cries and then aggressively kisses her and pulls up her dress. With that, the flashback abruptly stops, leaving open the possibility, even suggesting, that he was in fact violent with her then (Ayres et al., 2021b, 19:52–20:54).

Unlike The Guilty, Clickbait allows for some uncertainty throughout the series, mostly in the form of Pia's reluctance to believe in her brother's guilt. But given the mounting evidence against him, even she doubts him time and again.

The Guilty and Clickbait: The Twist

Once guilt seems sufficiently established, the actual events are revealed in a drawn-out twist ending. In The Guilty, the true story is that Emily attacked her baby with a knife—believing due to her mental illness that snakes were in his stomach—while her ex-husband was present and her 6-year-old daughter was in the next room. Instead of calling 911 to get medical help for his baby and wife, Henry leaves his daughter home alone with the mutilated baby and forces his wife into a van to get her to a psychiatric hospital. Emily, however, believes to have been kidnapped and calls 911.

The events eventually presented as true in Clickbait are even more absurd. Dawn (Becca Lish), the administration manager at the college sports center where Nick worked, catfished several women. Since she set up his office computer, she gained access to his photos, among others, that she used to create online dating profiles and start relationships with women. The photos of Nick together with these women that the police found were photoshopped by Dawn. In other words, Nick had no affairs, let alone sexually assaulted or killed anyone. It was Dawn who broke up so cruelly with Sarah that she took her own life, which prompted her brother to kidnap Nick and post the videos online. Nick escaped and, since he had figured out that Dawn was the culprit, runs to her house to confront her. In an act of desperation, Dawn's husband kills him to save his wife.

In order to create these stunning twists that reveal the innocence of the white men after spending most of the running time laying out their culpability, The Guilty and Clickbait use the DARVO playbook almost to the letter—importantly, not on a story but on a narrative level. In other words, it is not the accused white male characters and their supporters that use these tactics to defend themselves and retraumatize the female victim of the crime they stand accused of within the story world. Instead, the strategies used to make the twist plausible (or, at least, possible), that is, the new information provided in the end to “correct” the story, starkly resemble those of DARVO. Both deny the white man's guilt by revealing that they were accused of a crime that did not happen: No “real” kidnapping took place in The Guilty and no woman was sexually assaulted or murdered in Clickbait. They were also accused of a different crime that was actually perpetrated by a woman. Emily almost killed her baby and Dawn catfished several women and contributed to Sarah's death. Both The Guilty and Clickbait reveal the innocence of the man as a stunning twist that casts them as the actual victims. This surprise ending primarily hinges on attacking the credibility of the female victim and witnesses. To put it bluntly, the twist heavily relies on the fact that women simply cannot be believed.

In The Guilty, Emily turns out not to be the victim but the perpetrator of domestic violence and even though she is not deliberately lying, she turns out not to be credible due to a mental illness. This, of course, also reinforces two other “myths,” that is, stereotypes: that women are “hysterical” and that people with a mental illness are frequently violent even though they are much more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of crimes (Ghiasi et al., 2023).

In Clickbait, it is several women that turn out to lack any credibility. Perhaps most importantly, Dawn lies to the women she catfishes and also to Pia, Sophie, and the police to cover up the part she played in Nick's kidnapping and subsequent murder. As mentioned earlier, Pia lies about Nick's voicemail and Sophie had an affair with her coworker Curtis, in itself a deceitful act. She also lies about it to the police even after they show her a surveillance video of him and Nick having the altercation at a bar. Jenny Henson (Mia Challis), a volleyball player at Nick's college sports center, nervously tells Sophie at Nick's memorial that Nick “was close to some of the girls” (McTighe & Anderson, 2021, 39:11–39:19). She also insinuates (wrongly) to a reporter that Nick had a sexual relationship with or even abused another volleyball player (Winters et al., 2021, 09:54–10:18). Finally, Emma continuously lies about her having had a physical relationship with Nick—to her best friend, the police, and even to Sophie and Pia, the grieving widow and sister. For example, in episode two, she tells Detective Roshan Amiri (Phoenix Raei) during an interrogation, “We were in love. We were lovers. He was my soulmate” (Scrivner-Love & Freeman, 2021, 00:40–00:43). While she describes her relationship with Nick, the audience sees a brief flashback to the two of them being physically intimate. This is not the only instance in which her falsehoods are reinforced by so-called “lying flashbacks,” that is, scenes of intimacy presented without any indication that they are imagined rather than remembered. While not uncommon in film and television, their use in Clickbait is completely inconsistent with the series’ internal logic. No other flashbacks are later revealed to be mere fantasies.

It is also conveniently concealed (until episode 7 when the truth is gradually unraveled) that all other women Dawn catfished never met Nick in person or had video calls with him either. Additionally, none of the catfished women found it disturbing to be sent photoshopped pictures of them together with Nick or point this out to the police during a murder investigation. On the contrary, these photos are presented as evidence that these affairs happened. Other aspects remain unexplained while smaller details prove to be mere coincidences—these examples are too numerous to discuss individually here. Taken together, these elements strain the audience's suspension of disbelief. Nonetheless, all these lies, coincidences, and twists are depicted as something probable, even reasonable. In typical fashion of the “whodunnit,” the revelation of the truth is presented as puzzle pieces falling into place. The image now displayed is that of poor Nick, who was wrongfully accused and thus kidnapped and killed. The false accusation is presented as the (only true) tragedy. Sexually abused women are not the victim; they do not even exist. Nick is the real victim during and, in fact, of the #MeToo movement, the era of the unforgiving online mob, cancel culture, and wrongfully accused men. Just like in The Guilty, after attacking the credibility of women, this reversal of victim and offender completes the DARVO strategy.

The problem is intensified by the fact that the presumed perpetrator, who is ultimately shown to be wrongfully accused, is white. By portraying the white man in this way, the narrative not only reinforces their presumed innocence but also implicitly suggests that white individuals are less morally blameworthy and more trustworthy. This inversion amplifies the DARVO effect as it shifts sympathy away from the actual victims and positions the white man as the one wronged, shaping audience perceptions of guilt, credibility, and justice in ways that uphold existing racialized assumptions.

The Guilty and Clickbait: Post-#MeToo Narratives or Misogynist Backlash?

Even though the #MeToo movement is never explicitly referenced, the limited series seems to be informed by the tenets of its critics. As the title already suggests, the power and danger of the internet and particularly social media is a central aspect of the narrative. Simon posts the videos of Nick confessing to crimes to avenge his sister's death and at least claims that he would use the number of views to decide whether or not to kill him. The well-known viciousness of comment sections is highlighted, for example, by having words and phrases such as “Burn in hell,” “Rapist!!,” “Monster,” and “He did it!” superimposed around Pia as she reads the online comments below the video of his kidnapping on her phone (Ayres et al., 2021a, 15:46–15:59). When Detective Amiri has dinner with his family, his sister, Ziba (Eva Hatzicostas), tells him: “Everyone's talking about Nick Brewer at school. It's cool, like … like a feminist revenge movie or something.” Upon this, her mother, Leila (Neveen Hanna), scoffs: “Ah, you and your feminism!” (Ayres & White, 2021, 16:58–17:04). Within a 10-second dialogue, feminism is both derided and directly associated with a violent kidnapping and death threats.

Clickbait also reinforces the rape and domestic violence myth that actual abusers must be “monsters.” While in many domestic violence films, as Shoos observes, this is done by portraying the perpetrator as “stereotyped monster, thereby negating the normality of abusers” (2017, p. 67), the limited series shows that an actual abuser cannot possibly come in the guise of a handsome white well-liked husband and father by eventually revealing his innocence. This, of course, flies in the face of one of the most important revelations of #MeToo, namely, that the way men behave in public or even with colleagues, friends, and family is no reliable indicator of whether or not they are abusive of others.

And yet, the wrongfully accused white man in the context of sexual assault and domestic violence has remained such a popular narrative gimmick that this trope cannot simply be “shrugged off” as such. As Cuklanz and Moorti observe about the prime-time crime series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), “the fact that SVU storylines position several survivors as false claimants of rape makes this a provocative and weighted strategy, one that cannot be dismissed as a twist intended to produce a ‘fresh’ angle” (2007, p. 312). Kornfield and Jones make a similar observation: “when episodes frame disclosures as patently false attacks against … innocent men, it generally reinforces the myth that reports are usually false and should be met with disbelief” (2021, p. 8). The same holds true for The Guilty and Clickbait. And yet, contrary to what the high prevalence of false accusation in scripted film and television suggests, numerous studies and meta-studies have shown that actual women (as opposed to fictional female characters) do not routinely lie about being sexually harassed and/or assaulted. The exact numbers vary slightly but are consistently low, somewhere between 1% and 9% (Weiser, 2017, p. 46; Stabile et al., 2019, p. 81; Gunby et al., 2012, p. 90).

This begs the question why Netflix, a streaming platform that has spent years curating their image as progressive and inclusive company, would release such productions. Several scholars have commented on the fact that an important part of Netflix's branding, in the United States as well as globally, has been its strategic alignment with narratives of women's empowerment, gender equity, and the centering of female-driven stories (Asmar et al., 2023; Bucciferro, 2019). As Evan Elkins emphasizes in his chapter on Netflix and its connections to politics:

While the platform's corporate owners often deny that the service has an overt, stated politics, Netflix nevertheless appears to be self-presenting as a responsibly liberal and cosmopolitan actor in a world that is veering toward right-wing nationalism. This is true not only textually, via the kinds of programming the service chooses to highlight, but also paratextually and institutionally, through corporate PR and lobbying and philanthropic practices. (2021, p. 154)

Júlia Havas and Tanya Horeck, too, point out that “[i]n its marketing and self-publicity on social media sites such as Twitter, Netflix strategically promotes itself as ‘feminist TV.’” Their chapter focuses on two series they consider prime examples of what they call “Netflix feminism,” namely, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2019) and the aforementioned Unbelievable, which both deal with rape of girls/women perpetrated by white men (2022, p. 154). Besides analyzing the series themselves, they also examine how Netflix marketed the shows. For example, a promotional clip for the pilot episode of Unbelievable, circulated on social media platforms, positions viewers as ethically engaged subjects, suggesting that watching the series will clarify how to appropriately respond to survivors of sexual violence. By linking to RAINN and other support resources, the video extends beyond marketing to adopt an explicitly educational tone, exemplifying Netflix's socially conscious branding (p. 164). The entire clip uses non-diegetic captions over a montage of scenes from the series to convey its message: “The pilot of Unbelievable is incredibly hard to watch. … And what happens after [the rape] shows how important it is for victims to be believed. … So the most important thing a victim can hear in those first few hours is ‘I believe you’” (Netflix, 2019a). The promotional video foregrounds a key issue identified by the #MeToo movement: the persistent questioning and dismissal of victims’ accounts. Similarly, the official trailer on YouTube ends with these lines from the series spoken by a rape victim: “Even with people that you can trust, if the truth is inconvenient, they don’t believe it” (Netflix, 2019b).

A mere 2 years later, the same company released two productions whose narratives hinge almost entirely on women who lie and, therefore, cannot be believed, which creates a central contradiction in Netflix's branding. While the platform positions itself as inclusive, feminist, and socially conscious, Clickbait and The Guilty construct female characters whose (moral) failings—lying, scheming, and fabricating (deliberately or due to a mental illness)—become the central source of drama and suspense. This tension between content and branding highlights the commercial logic driving Netflix's production choices: Sensationalized depictions of deceitful women are narratively compelling and attract viewers, but they also risk reinforcing harmful stereotypes that contradict the platform's professed commitment to gender-conscious storytelling. By centering female deception while maintaining an overarching image of progressive values, Netflix simultaneously asserts moral awareness and produces content that undermines it, revealing the complex interplay between corporate branding, audience expectations, and the politics of representing women in contemporary media.

In her analysis of Netflix's diversity strategy, Mareike Jenner argues that the platform frequently relies on visibility politics—quantifying the presence of marginalized bodies on screen—as a metric of diversity and inclusion. This approach, she contends, leads the company to equate visual representation with meaningful progress, emphasizing numerical indicators of difference rather than addressing the structural and narrative dimensions of inequality (2024, p. 1486). Some of Netflix's press releases referenced earlier lend support to Jenner's claim. Claudia Bucciferro also reminds us that offering a diverse range of content may primarily serve to attract a wider audience and maximize profits, rather than genuinely promote social change. Netflix, for example, initially catered largely to male viewers and continues to feature substantial masculinist programming. A viewer's history could consist entirely of films and series centered on tough, predominantly heterosexual, cisgender, white men, with narratives that reinforce patriarchal norms and marginalize female characters. Because the platform's recommendation algorithm suggests content similar to what has already been watched, viewers may never encounter more diverse or socially progressive programming (2019, p. 1055). Orianna Calderón-Sandoval et al. further argue that the forms of feminism, inclusion, and diversity promoted by global corporations such as Netflix are inherently unstable as they are shaped primarily by commercial priorities rather than a genuine commitment to social change (2025, pp. 12–13). And so perhaps those priorities have already shifted: Now, narratives that align with anti-#MeToo sentiments may be more profitable, suggesting that what makes money may dictate which social messages are amplified or sidelined.

Shoos argues that one concept that has shaped the portrayal of abuse in film is what she calls “domestic violence ‘post-awareness,’” which she defines “as our conviction that, especially since the extensive media coverage of Nicole Brown Simpson's 1994 homicide, we are now cognizant of domestic violence as a universal problem and that we have made great strides both individually and collectively in our efforts to help abused women,” an assumption that is not borne out by facts (2017, p. 62). Perhaps, this can be extended to the #MeToo movement. Due to the heightened visibility and more frequent and open public discussions of sexual harassment and assault, Netflix may believe that society is now sufficiently aware of these issues so that there is no harm (anymore) in using the wrongfully accused white man as a mere narrative gimmick even in the context of these specific crimes.

Understanding Clickbait and The Guilty as already “post-#MeToo narratives” is likely the most benevolent interpretation. However, it can also, and I would argue should, be read in the context of popular misogyny and, more broadly, reactionary impulses against feminist advances discussed earlier. In other words, The Guilty and Clickbait can be viewed as a response to, rather than an expression of, the #MeToo era. As Banet-Weiser explains, “popular misogyny takes on a range of forms, from live-tweeting sexual assault and rape cases to … an increase in global sex trafficking of women and girls” (2018, loc. 829). I would argue that films and series that perpetuate rape and domestic violence myths are such a form, too. In fact, Banet-Weiser believes that the issue of rape culture is a core conflict between popular feminism and popular misogyny. Exposing rape culture and the harm it causes has been an essential part of popular feminism, which has led to a popular misogynist backlash. This can, for instance, take the form of men's rights organizations question the validity of rape statistics (2018, loc. 1217–1233) but also plays out in The Guilty and Clickbait.

Several film/television critics, too, have commented on some of the problematic tropes prevalent in the two media texts. The Guilty, which is an adaptation of a critically acclaimed Danish original released only 3 years prior, received mixed reviews, with several questioning its very necessity and arguing that its close adherence to the source material leaves it without a clear justification for existing (Gonzales, 2021; Srihari, 2021). According to Gyllenhaal, who acquired the rights and served as one of the producers, one of the primary motivations behind the remake was to raise awareness about mental illness (Siegel, 2021). However, many reviewers contend, as this article has highlighted above as central to the film's problematic framing, that the film ultimately does the opposite. It reinforces harmful stereotypes by portraying mentally ill characters as dangerous and violent rather than offering a more nuanced depiction (Johnson, 2021). Louis Skye (2021) calls it “a popular plot twist in Hollywood” that should “go away.” Similarly, some reviews commented on the narrative's reliance on the trope of women as inherently distrustful, effectively confirming that these problematic patterns are evident to viewers. As Kylie Cheung (2021) puts it,

Emily … becomes yet another example of a woman who isn’t to be trusted or believed … At a time when the thriller and horror genres are increasingly subverting stereotypes and sexist writing of ‘crazy,’ hysterical or mentally ill female characters, The Guilty feels like a step backwards. Why must we have another movie perpetuating the harmful stereotype?

Her observation is correct. According to Stacy L. Smith et al., of the top 100 films of 2016 and the premiere episode of the highest-rated television series from the 2016–2017 season, “46% of film characters with a mental health condition were perpetrators of violence” (2019, 4).

In this sense, the gap between intention and reception becomes particularly striking. Notably, Gyllenhaal and the director, Antoine Fuqua, chose Netflix to retain complete creative freedom (Siegel, 2021), a decision that made their representational choices particularly consequential, as they reflect the filmmakers’ own vision rather than external constraints. At the same time, this freedom removed internal oversight that might have mitigated harmful portrayals. However, given that these issues were already present in the original, Netflix must have been aware of them. For the streaming platform, then, this remake may have seemed like a low-risk way to attract viewers and capitalize on an already successful story, with the decision driven primarily by commercial considerations: a famous actor in the lead role who also served as a producer, an acclaimed director at the helm, and an intriguing premise likely seen as capable of drawing audience interest.

Critics’ reviews of Clickbait similarly echo some arguments advanced earlier in this article, drawing attention to both narrative and representational issues. A number of reviews observed that the film presents a narrative that defies logic, with the central twist in particular proving implausible (Gajjar, 2021; Hadadi, 2021). Some critics also emphasize the problematic portrayal of women (Keene, 2021). Adrian Horton (2021) additionally believes that the series scolds their viewers: “Clickbait pedantically suggests we’re in the wrong for assuming, with evidence, that a guy's decency is suspect.”

Both Clickbait and The Guilty reflect a DARVO-style reversal: During a time when the focus of attention was finally shifted to the experience of the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, their narratives return to the notion that the actual problem is lying, mentally unstable, attention-seeking, and criminal women rather than the fact that white men can harass and assault women with impunity. At the very least, these two Netflix releases clearly demonstrate how the fear of white men being wrongfully accused and/or having their lives ruined by allegations against them is privileged and prioritized over the many actually abused women. As Banet-Weiser puts it succinctly: “In the contemporary context, patriarchy is perceived to be threatened in specific ways by feminism, in which the ‘injuries’ dealt to masculinity and whiteness are seen as in need of repair and recuperation” (2018, loc. 813). The Guilty and Clickbait are a manifestation of this repair as well as how worth is assigned to the lives of some people but not others.

In a piece for The Atlantic, Catharine A. MacKinnon, who was instrumental in establishing sexual harassment as a legal offense, highlights the many positive developments brought about by the #MeToo movement and recalls how female students who accused a male student of sexual assault were treated before:

Even when she was believed, nothing he did to her mattered so much as what would be done to him if his actions were taken seriously. His value, personal and political, outweighed hers. His career, his reputation, his mental and emotional serenity, his family—all his assets counted. Hers did not. (MacKinnon, 2019)

The Guilty and Clickbait do just that. The impact of the accusation on the accused is front and center and appears to be the motivation behind creating such streaming content. Of course, the two Netflix releases attempt to “pull a fast one” on viewers and justify it all by revealing that the white man was, in fact, innocent. In other words, these fictional narratives can do what “reality” (normally) cannot: First, present somebody's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and then reveal, that is, prove, their innocence.

Conclusion

Whatever the producers’ motivation and intentions, as my analysis has demonstrated, the two Netflix productions do, in fact, reinforce rape and domestic violence myths by employing the character and narrative trope of the wrongfully accused white man. In many ways, the absolute inanity of the storyline of both Netflix productions, as laid out above, takes rape and domestic violence myth acceptance to a new and even worse level. In essence, both tell the audience that the most preposterous set of circumstances including women consistently not telling the truth, partly in farcical ways, is still more plausible than a white man (with a documented violent past) committing domestic violence and/or sexual assault. All the compelling evidence these narratives present to support the men's guilt and the incredulous way they are proven innocent takes the important legal principle of “beyond a reasonable doubt” into absurd realms. And this brings us back to DARVO since this strategy, too, relies heavily on storytelling used to manipulate the public's perception of who the actual victim is and make them side with the accused rather than the accuser. As Harsey and Freyd emphasize: “The presence of this alternative and oftentimes compelling narrative put forth by an alleged perpetrator can generate confusion—who is really to blame? Did the abuse even happen?” (2022, p. 482). Even though Clickbait's and The Guilty's narratives may not exactly be “compelling,” they are constructed the same way and achieve the same goal.

The analysis also highlights the importance of whiteness in the contemporary iteration of the wrongfully accused man trope. Although race is not explicitly addressed in either production, the characters’ whiteness functions as an unmarked norm that shapes assumptions about innocence, credibility, and audience identification. Recognizing this dimension helps situate the trope within broader structures of racialized representation rather than treating the race of the wrongfully accused as incidental.

As Shoos explains about her study of domestic violence films, it is not this article's intention to “advocate for one ‘accurate’ film” (2017, p. 14), to prescribe one correct way of depicting rape and domestic violence in fictional film and series. Neither does it endorse the notion that all that should ever be produced are simple “man equals guilty/woman equals victim” narratives. Obviously, complex fictional discussions of these issues are to be had. However, filmmakers, showrunners, and production studios more broadly should certainly strive to avoid contributing to rape and domestic violence myth acceptance. Using the generally troublesome trope of the wrongfully accused white man in this specific context and pairing it with the largely clichéd depiction of female characters as hysterical, delusional, and deceitful, among others, perpetuates harmful stereotypes that can have detrimental consequences for women in real life. Therefore, The Guilty and Clickbait, at best, highlight the #MeToo lessons not learned, which suggests that there has, in fact, not been a true reckoning in how popular streaming content depicts domestic violence and sexual assault that, as the #MeToo movement has shown, affects so many. At worst, Netflix, too, is now actively contributing to the popular misogynist backlash that strives to undo any feminist progress made.