Friday, April 9, 2010

Why Relationships and Romantic Comedies Shouldn't Mix



For years, it’s been the same old story. Guy and Girl meet, exchange witty banter, and realize they share some kind of strong connection, which can go one of two ways: either they will acknowledge a mutual attraction right away, or each will claim to find the other insufferable (even though the audience equates their dislike for one another with sexual tension). Guy and Girl hit a few bumps in the road, until one does something that the other finds inexcusable, but in the end, he or she will make it up to the other one with some grand gesture, all culminating in a big speech. “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” Harry tells Sally on New Year’s. “I believed in you. I just didn’t believe in me,” Blane says to Andie in Pretty in Pink. And who can forget Kat’s tearful reading of her poem in 10 Things I Hate About You, when she tells Heath Ledger’s character that, “I hate the way I don’t hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all”?

The speech always does it. Because no matter what one character has done to the other - no matter what they’ve been through - as long as his or her heart is in the right place, then things will be okay in the end. We root for them to end up together because that’s exactly what we want for ourselves. We want the people who have hurt us most to realize their mistakes and come crawling back to us, bouquet of roses in hand, with an elaborate apology and passionate plea for forgiveness. And we want to forgive them. After all, Sally forgives Harry for his indiscretions, and just months later they are happily married.

The sad part is that although so many of us look to these romantic comedies for insight into our own love lives, the movies themselves can actually be a poison. Because the characters are falling in love while screwing each other over, we think that everybody who does this to us in real life is eventually going to make things right. The movies are pure fiction, made for our entertainment, but we treat them as a how-to guide for relationships, and then we wonder why we keep getting hurt.

This isn’t to say that people don’t change for the better, or that people don’t learn from their mistakes. Some of them do, and it’s important to recognize when that happens. But we have to separate our lives from the Hollywood endings we crave, because the guy who took that bet to turn you into the prom queen isn’t always going to fall madly in love with you. The journalist who dated you for an article on what not to do in a relationship isn’t necessarily going to quit her job to protect your integrity. And the person you cared about that was always sort of ambivalent about commitment probably isn’t going to suddenly change his/her mind and focus on being with only you.

It’s okay to give second chances, but when fact starts to blend in with fiction, it’s time to press “stop” and move on to something new.

2 comments:

  1. awwww! val i love this. you've always had a way with words. (no duh, eh?)
    keep writing. i'm very entertained.

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  2. Thank you, darling <3 I will most certainly keep writing. I hope you keep reading! :)

    ReplyDelete