Romantic Comedies are Ruining the World:
By Alexandra
Cinema enlightens us. Like great works of literature, music and national geographic before us, they allow us to experience aspects of life we would normally be unable to experience. But there is a dark side. And that dark side is the romantic comedy. Giving us unrealistic portrayals of love and life, making us see the merit in personalities that are detestable and leading to rejects of love through misinformation of its true forms, they are tearing apart the beauty of modern romance.
Love is as important an aspect of the human experience as easting, sleeping and paying taxes. It is one of the traits of man we feel makes us unique. But let us look at the typical romantic comedy and its attempt to depict this evolution. To Romantic comedies the evolution of love follows a story arch that suggests more pain and humiliation then any human should be meant to endure. Take they typical story arch:
Boy meets girl, boy and girl are happy together, some unfortunate event tares the apart (premising scheme revealed, etc) boy then goes to an extreme length to get her back subjecting himself to humiliation and pain. (ex: 10 things I hate about you, say anything (phil Collins)
The message is clear, if you want someone to love you and you are a women, they have to endure a gauntlet on some kind to deserve this affection. And if you are a man, you don’t have a chance of attaining love unless you are willing to take on such a trial. In what is a rehashed fairytale princess premise, we fulfill a girls childhood fantasy of being rescued from a tower, years after her maturity when such a puerile desire should have been outgrown. Rather then furnish any idea of merit in attaining your desires at your own hand, we are asking the modern women to bypass her own initiative and reward their potential mates for their affection with a slew of near impossible obstacles. Why punish someone for liking you? why is worthiness in need of proof? And is this an accurate test? Such behavior discourages the affection our cinematic counterparts would want us to believe it furnishes, the result detrimental.
In addition to these unrealistic hurdles, romantic comedies also want us to “fall in love” with people that are repugnant. Take an example to this point. See any romantic comedy staring Meg Ryan and you will see this female character: flightily, unreliable, prone to outbursts of mania, jealous, irrational. And all of these traits are meant to be viewed as charming, when in fact the real world counterpart is just annoying. I venture to say that no truly desirable women has ever been presented in film in any other capacity then the girl you leave at the alter for Meg Ryan despite that fact that she is dependable, nice, and financially secure. In this cinematic move to demonstrate that you need excitement and that breading and other seemingly innocuous traits don’t really matter, two things are accomplished. One is that truly desirable traits are downplayed as boring, setting up the assumption that in real life they are worthless as well despite the fact that they lay the groundwork for successful interpersonal relationships. And second, in some instances they seem to wage war on the desirability of head strong grounded women, who tend to be left behind for their more flightly co-stars.
And lastly, the romantic comedy seems to present love as an enigmatic force that changes lives, is worth fighting for, worth dying for etc etc. however, there are minimal depictions of relationships that are simply satisfying. In fact these relationships seem to be an example of distaste in the romantic comedy, the kind of relationship to be avoided. End message, you are not supposed to relax in relationships. Calm = not fun =bad.
So why the open hatred. Because I feel women of the world are suffering from the images that these films present. The so called “chick flick” is actually portraying an interest contrary to the one that should be in our consciousness. And it manifests itself regularly. Women who want the fairy tale are focusing too hard on making a Dawson’s creek life for themselves, and are of the mind that the scenario presented in most romantic comedies is what they should want, or worse, expect. Movies are were we turn to experience what we don’t know, or live a life that is not ours. We look to the movies for guidance, and these films should respond by making real love in film accessible to the youth of the world so they don’t spend years of their life laboring over a false pretense or worse, in relationships dealing with relationships that fit the requirements of a ficticious ideal.
Bypass these failures and check out these films instead:
Metaphoric portrayal of the nuance of interpersonal relations see Secretary
For a film about the power of love overcoming pain see Cherry (it is nauseatingly cute but well worth it’s candy coating)
For a film about your first love see Welcome to the Dollhouse (your first loves reality in all its pimpled dork srunchie wearing glory)
For a film that depicts finding love in unlikely places see Reality Bites (just don’t look hard at the wardrobe …it was the 90’s)
For a film that shows love that is good despite its flaws Eternal Sunshine f the Spotless Mind
For a film that follows the common RC plot line and is still successful Garden State.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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