Written in Partnership with Amir Bakian
We’re currently in the midst of a romantic love revolution.
This is love in a time where people are living as fully as possible with newfound freedom and updated terms (and conditions) of endearment. Our expectations for our partners have never been loftier, but at the same time we’re no longer bound by financial tethers or traditional gender roles, resulting in confusion over who ‘should’ be doing what. If love was ever dizzying for you in the past, welcome to thrilling new heights. While these liberating developments are positive overall, the question remains: how can we know what to expect from our relationships when the media doesn’t provide enough examples of individuals defining love for themselves and what their lives actually look like.
Enter Evie Joy and her docuseries Rewriting Romance, a groundbreaking effort to discover different kinds of romance that are capable of thriving outside the box of traditional concepts of love. At the heart of this innovative series is Joy’s belief that we all must come up with our own definition of love. Furthermore, she emphasizes that everyone has the power to find and build true love. Supporters of this progressive vision can support Joy’s ambitious Kickstarter project by visiting the Rewriting Romance website.
Convinced that true love is now more accessible than ever, Joy also insists that love is a skill we can improve with practice and understanding. She hopes her documentary will provide multiple models and strategies for building healthy, fulfilling relationships. The pioneering producer explains that her goal with Rewriting Romance is to “change the world’s concept of love and provide a solution to the problem that Disney helped create by showing only one idealized version of love.”
Joy’s initial motivation for Rewriting Romance stemmed from her complicated lifelong relationship with love. Her sister’s death when she was four years old left her with severe PTSD and a fear of abandonment and intimacy. While love stories, especially Disney fairytales, rescued her from a childhood filled with fear, they also fueled unrealistic expectations of what romance should be. After several failed attempts at romance, Joy decided in 2020 to research other people’s relationships to better understand love.
The results have been nothing short of enlightening. After spending the past three years filming 39 interviews on love across 14 countries, Joy has produced a series full of conscious and thought-provoking perspectives. Rewriting Romance features couples in diverse partnerships, relationship scientists, neuroscientists, gender experts, love philosophers, and those who’ve survived or are currently enduring heartbreak.
One of Joy’s most significant challenges while working on Rewriting Romance has been the pre-production costs associated with capturing her 80 hours of 6K footage. She has invested $50,000 and worked 100-hour weeks to fund these costs. It takes days to sort through footage, and a professional video editor costs upwards of $500 for every 5-minute chunk. As a result, Joy started her Kickstarter campaign to fund the editing of the docuseries while building a diverse group of those who want to see different models of love portrayed in the media.
Rewriting Romance is a brave and inventive attempt to broaden the tired, traditional narrative of love. In a world where we must all define love for ourselves, producer Evie Joy is determined to provide the tools we need to find and grow true love. To join the inspired community she’s building and support Joy’s Kickstartercampaign, visit the Rewriting Romance website.
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