People Are Calling for Netflix to Remove 365 Days From the Streaming Service
Man stalks woman. Man kidnaps woman. Woman falls in love with man. Not exactly the premise of what I’d consider a romantic movie. Yet if you’ve scrolled through Netflix’s Top 10 list recently, you’ve likely come across 365 Days. On the surface it looks like a sexy thriller: The artwork for the film shows a man looking at the camera while gripping a woman’s breast (subtle). But read the description: “A woman falls victim to a dominant mafia boss, who imprisons her and gives her one year to fall in love with him.” Um, what?
The movie, 365 Days (or, 365 Dni) is based on the first novel of a trilogy written by author Blanka Lipińska. After the movie adaptation’s success in Poland, Netflix released the film internationally and it became enough of a hit that it reached the aforementioned Top 10. Some have compared the trilogy to the popular Fifty Shades of Grey franchise for its use of BDSM, but there’s a major difference between the two: While Christian Grey is problematic in his own way, he never holds Anastasia Steele against her will.
Netflix did label 365 Days as “controversial” on the title page, but many viewers are calling for the streaming service to go even further, petitioning for the movie to be taken down altogether.
“365 Days on Netflix is glorifying kidnapping, sexual/physical assault, and Stockholm syndrome,” adds another. “There is nothing romantic or sexy about this movie at all.”
Singer Duffy recently spoke out against the movie in the form of an open letter to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. “I just can’t imagine how Netflix could overlook how careless, insensitive, and dangerous this is,” she wrote. “[It] glamorizes the brutal reality of sex trafficking, kidnapping, and rape.” In February, Duffy revealed that she had once been drugged, raped, and held captive for several days.
