Five Flicks that Ruined Me
Type
Self-Initiated Work
Tags
Editorial Design
Layout
Risography
Year
2025
Five Flicks that Ruined Me, or Why Romance is as Harmful as Pornography when Put to Film is a tongue-in-cheek zine that I made for a class in risograph printing, offered by the studio If By Magic in Helsinki. Like many of my projects that aren’t made for clients, it’s deeply rooted in my lifelong quest to better understand both the human condition in general and my own particular expression of it.
This project explores the impact that romance, as it’s depicted in movies, has had on my life. People often talk about how porn presents sex in unrealistic ways and creates harmful assumptions about women, their bodies, and their sexual enjoyment for those who consume vast quantities of it. But what about love stories? What have we to say about their harmful effects on our expectations for our romantic partners? A while back, one of my close friends gave me pause by stating that romance media is what’s ruined their (love) life, not porn.
As a romance fanatic, that thread seemed like an interesting one to pull on. This zine explores it further by presenting five films that I think have impacted my, now highly idealized, wishes for a future love connection: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Titanic (1997), Clueless (1995), Amélie (2001), and Before Sunrise (1995), in the order in which I watched them.
Five Flicks
that Ruined Me
Type
Self-Initated Work
Tags
Editorial Design
Layout
Risography
Year
2025
Five Flicks that Ruined Me, or Why Romance is as Harmful as Pornography when Put to Film is a tongue-in-cheek zine that I made for a class in risograph printing, offered by the studio If By Magic in Helsinki. Like many of my projects that aren’t made for clients, it’s deeply rooted in my lifelong quest to better understand both the human condition in general and my own particular expression of it.
This project explores the impact that romance, as it’s depicted in movies, has had on my life. People often talk about how porn presents sex in unrealistic ways and creates harmful assumptions about women, their bodies, and their sexual enjoyment for those who consume vast quantities of it. But what about love stories? What have we to say about their harmful effects on our expectations for our romantic partners? A while back, one of my close friends gave me pause by stating that romance media is what’s ruined their (love) life, not porn.
As a romance fanatic, that thread seemed like an interesting one to pull on. This zine explores it further by presenting five films that I think have impacted my, now highly idealized, wishes for a future love connection: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Titanic (1997), Clueless (1995), Amélie (2001), and Before Sunrise (1995), in the order in which I watched them.
Five Flicks that Ruined Me
Type Self-Initiated Work
Tags Editorial Design, Layout, Risography
Year 2025
Five Flicks that Ruined Me, or Why Romance is as Harmful as Pornography when Put to Film is a tongue-in-cheek zine that I made for a class in risograph printing, offered by the studio If By Magic in Helsinki. Like many of my projects that aren’t made for clients, it’s deeply rooted in my lifelong quest to better understand both the human condition in general and my own particular expression of it.
This project explores the impact that romance, as it’s depicted in movies, has had on my life. People often talk about how porn presents sex in unrealistic ways and creates harmful assumptions about women, their bodies, and their sexual enjoyment for those who consume vast quantities of it. But what about love stories? What have we to say about their harmful effects on our expectations for our romantic partners? A while back, one of my close friends gave me pause by stating that romance media is what’s ruined their (love) life, not porn.
As a romance fanatic, that thread seemed like an interesting one to pull on. This zine explores it further by presenting five films that I think have impacted my, now highly idealized, wishes for a future love connection: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Titanic (1997), Clueless (1995), Amélie (2001), and Before Sunrise (1995), in the order in which I watched them.
