Sofia Carson Responded To Purple Hearts Backlash
Many fans are upset about the movie's racist and misogynistic themes.
It seems pretty fitting for a movie like Purple Hearts to get such a drastic reception. The Netflix romance about two people with polar-opposite viewpoints coming together did huge numbers for the streamer, but that success has been tarnished by a tidal wave of criticism. A couple weeks after the military drama premiered, star and executive producer Sofia Carson responded to the Purple Hearts backlash, explaining that she wanted to portray the country’s political divide “as accurately as possible.”
Purple Hearts dropped on Netflix on July 29, quickly topping the streamer’s “Top 10” charts. Based on author Tess Wakefield’s 2017 novel of the same name, Purple Hearts tells the unexpected love story of Cassie (Carson), an idealistic waitress and singer, and Luke (Nicholas Galitzine), a troubled U.S. Marine. The movie’s title is meant to play on the two characters’ opposing political leanings, as the liberal Cassie agrees to marry the conservative Luke in order to afford health insurance after being diagnosed with diabetes. Though the marriage begins as a sham, it becomes real as they start to actually fall for one another and their hearts — one red and one blue — become one.
Sounds like a nice little love story, right? Well... not exactly. The film has been widely accused of racist and misogynistic themes. In particular, viewers have called out an early scene in which one of Luke’s fellow Marines proposes a crass toast regarding killing members of a certain ethnicity. When Cassie tries to confront the Marine for his racist language, Luke brutally shut her down. Luke’s seething anger toward Cassie, a Latina woman, comes out several times in the movie, another element that had viewers pointing to his clear misogyny and racism.
The backlash reached the ears of Carson herself, who defended the movie’s depiction of a racist conservative man as a romantic lead in an Aug. 12 interview with Variety.
“Why I fell in love with the movie is that it’s a love story but it’s so much more than that,” Carson said. “It’s two hearts, one red, one blue, two worlds apart, who are really raised to hate each other. Through the power of love, they learn to lead with empathy and compassion and love each other and turn into this beautiful shade of purple. We wanted to represent both sides as accurately as possible.”
It certainly doesn’t seem like the Purple Hearts controversy is dying down anytime soon, as viewers are just as divided as Cassie and Luke were at the beginning of the movie. However, unlike that pair of enemies-to-lovers, it doesn’t seem like this conflict is going to come to a lovey-dovey conclusion.
