The surprising success of ‘Obsession’ and ‘Off Campus’ has everything to do with the manosphere

One is a campus romance, the other is a horror film. Both show that what many men and women think constitutes a good relationship today is increasingly divergent

Women are sick of the manosphere. And many want out — even if it is into a fantasy where men treat them with respect and speak the same(ish) language. The explosion of one show and one movie, both about desire and women’s agency, in the last month is evidence: Off Campus, adapted from Elle Kennedy’s book series of the same name, and Curry Barker’s Obsession. Made on shoestring budgets and poles apart tonally, both are surprise hits that have audiences hooked. While Off Campus portrays the fantasy of romance, Obsession is its most horrific representation. Through these exaggerated portrayals, both aim to address reality.

Off Campus is the story of a handful of college students and their trysts with love, friendship, family, and ambition. Viewers — especially women — are eating it up. It is another in the long list of media that constitute the on-screen romance renaissance; recent years have seen a significant surge in romance shows and movies in the West after a massive dip. But why?

In Off Campus, the main draw is the men. They are college students and hockey players, yet there is no “locker room talk”. In a time when an alarming (and growing) number of men are congregating in the “manosphere” and mistaking misogyny for masculinity, these male protagonists are caring and attentive partners and people, in touch with their own feelings and others’.

For many men and boys today, the strongest influences are figures like Donald Trump and Andrew Tate (both under investigation and/or convicted of sexual assault). The “alpha” males seem to be taking over the wider culture. This does not bode well for anybody. The echo chambers of the “manosphere” amplify the delusional narrative that young boys and men are somehow both perpetual victims and inherently more powerful than women. Qualities like sensitivity and respect are derided, cutting off the most organic routes to connection, the lack of which drives many men into the manosphere in the first place.

The success of shows like Off Campus, Heated Rivalry, and Bridgerton also seems to suggest that these standards are hardly being met by men today. This is why the bare minimum has become a fantasy. The “romance renaissance” reflects what is really a lack of agency, respect, hope and compatibility for women. What many men and women think constitutes a good relationship today — or even an appropriate performance of gender — is increasingly divergent.

For most women, the world is a scary place right now. Violence against them is on the rise, young men today are more likely to lean conservative than many in the generations before them, there is a rollback in legal protections globally, and it often seems as though young women and men are living in different realities. No wonder there is a desire to escape into fantasy.

Which brings us to Obsession. The movie, a horror film focused on incel culture, deals with the deficit of empathy and the spike in male entitlement — the manosphere and its discontents. It captures how harmless and routine this attitude can look and how it escalates. Look closely at the film, and you’ll notice: The violations were always there. Even when Bear (Michael Johnston) seemed to be just a “nice guy” with a crush on a girl in his friend circle, his obsession with winning Nikki’s (Inde Navarrette) love had everything to do with him and nothing at all with her. This is why he feels comfortable, right from the very beginning, in denying her agency and, in the end, any mercy — all while playing the victim. When any section of society is raised to think of another as secondary to their needs, this is the result: Rejection becomes unacceptable, unrequited love becomes humiliation. It becomes impossible to develop a healthy attitude towards romance.

When the credits roll, it is to the wails of a bleeding, traumatised woman. The damage is apparent; it also does not discriminate — the entitled, the alphas, suffer and break just as hard as the women and people they subject to violence.

In the hardening of their attitudes, many men risk losing their humanity. While that is a worrying reality for women and society, it leaves the men depleted, too. There is no escaping the manosphere. The best we can hope for is a mass exit into reality. Until then, it will keep ending this way — with no winners at all.

The writer is sub-editor, The Indian Express. [email protected]