Romance

Scholars at Heriot Wyatt University in Edinburg are claiming to have found that romantic comedies “spoil” viewers’ love lives with unrealistic expectations. The study provoked much discussion by fans of the genre. The following reactions are from a comment page at Buzzsugar.

Firey observed:

“They definitely normalize unrealistic ideals. Even the most logical person would still by influenced, if just by a little, by romantic comedy’s fantasy storylines if they’re exposed to the same themes over and over again.”

Billyart adds:

“Romantic gestures often come from compensating for weak points in the bond. Instead of talking about the problem, you do something ’sweet’ or ‘thoughtful,’ so the real problem persists, temporarily ignored.

“Focusing on the problem and even discussing it isn’t necessarily effective as doing so – especially without third party assistance – may reveal a partner that either wasn’t that committed to you in the first place or isn’t willing to change, or may make the problem worse by focusing only on the difficulties.

“Romance is for real, mature people with real expectations, who are actually genuinely in it for the love of the coolness of this other person, and not because they’re filling a void in themselves with this other human being, who probably has his or her own unmanaged baggage.”

BeataB74 wrote:

“I had a boyfriend unexpectedly fly across the country to be with me on V-day, without telling me. He planned the whole thing in romantic-movie style.

“I dumped him a month later.”

Others fell back on the distinction between fantasy and reality, reading the research (probably fairly) as an attack on their preferred entertainment. 

Modernspartan:

“Truth is, both men and women need to find that common balance between reality and fiction. Romantic movies should be seen as nice thought provoking ideas on how to add a little more romance to your relationship, but … when all reality is removed, then you will drift apart because everything will appear fake or grow old.”

Insight314 put it more bluntly:

“This is ridiculous! Just keep blaming all problems on television and movies, that’ll fix it. Everything from violence to obesity to, now, poor romantic relationships are blamed on television and movies. What about personal responsibility and the choice to decipher between reality and fiction? The only bad effect of television and movies is it creates stupid people who choose to believe an inanimate object’s projections for their reality. The television and movies themselves do not cause these problems, stupid people choose to cause them for themselves.”

One commenter disagreed with the entire discussion, defending the rom-com philosophy itself.

Pish miyad:

“You guys really believe that there aren’t any couples in this big world who have a relationship like couples in romantic comedies in the movies? Who ever believes that isn’t romantic themselves, and probably won’t ever have a relationship that romantic!

“I often see old couples on a bench looking at each other with the most romantic, ‘in love’ look and smiling! If that ain’t like the romantic comedies, I don’t know what is!”

So, what makes up the philosophy on love in romantic entertainment? I made a list of the claims cited by commenters on a few blogs, then aggregated and boiled them down. Here’s what I found:

1. Feeling “smitten” ought to last forever.
2. Good relationships require next to no work.
3. Romantic gestures are very important.
4. Communication between lovers should be preternatural.
5. True lovers are soulmates chosen by destiny.
6. Ideal relationships often begin with a rescue.
7. Failing that, the next best thing is a perfect courtship.
8. Love is glamorous.

Highly unscientific my method may be; I was nonetheless surprised at the finished list. I was expecting a lot more inconsistency. Laid out like this, you can imagine how each of these precepts implies and is implied by the others. For example, if feeling glamorous is a good test for romance, then winning love ought to be a cut-and-dried thing – you might marry the first guy who bought you a limo ride. You might also expect that if you weren’t yourself very glamorous, then your odds of making it with a soulmate would be pretty poor.

It is my suspicion that you can know a thing is fiction and still be influenced by its mores. I wouldn’t advocate becoming a puritan, but it’s worth knowing what’s shining into your brain, even if you trust rationality to keep entertainment in its place.

The issue isn’t merely that movies depict these sorts of things happening, but rather the contexts in which they’re depicted. Here, the context is reflexive; we have a whole genre devoted to repetitious, even fetishistic depictions of the same ideal. As a matter of course, if a movie won’t echo some part of this credo, then it’s not a rom-com and won’t be marketed to that audience. It may be this self-similarity that conditions the expectations of the genre: so many people want it, so it’s a normal thing to want, so it must be a reasonable thing to expect.

Another culprit is essentialism, which is implicit in most of the precepts above. Essentialist mores hold that the good, whatever it is, is inherent at a personal level; applied to questions of love, a typical essentialism holds that you either are or aren’t a romantic character. Finding true love, then, is a matter of reflecting the outward signs of it; if you or your partner don’t or can’t, then you’re not destined to love. It’s like secular Calvinism.

Within the language of movies, the signs that describe romantic essence are used to broadcast sympathy claims about the characters. These signs make up a valuable shorthand upon which Hollywood depends for its mass appeal. For that reason, it may be unfair to attack the practice wholesale. But essentialism can be a dangerous thing for people to actually believe. It’s very difficult to apply in real life without being a hypocrite or arriving at very wrong, absurd ideas. How many people deny themselves the comforts of intimacy either out of distaste for the cliché, anxiety over their own authenticity, or the belief that others don’t love them sufficiently?

Like many notions induced by our fictions, this romantic ideology is simplistic and presents us with false dilemmas. Whether or not we believe the stories themselves, the injection of morality into the proceedings – common to Hollywood movies in general – makes them significant to us. Morality in fiction works on this principle: “What you want should be, and what should be you should want.” Even if you can distinguish fantasy from reality, can you distinguish their fantasy from your own?

Tyra

However pink it may be, Tyra is exemplary of FOX’s more explicit propagandas. In it, Tyra Banks reigns over a Kingdom of Perpetual Twilight, or possibly a Ross Dress For Less, where every day and night, aggrieved people are brought before her and made to participate in elaborate show trials. With or without phony judge attire, it’s an arbitration show at heart. There is a moral, and Tyra intends to sermonize us good.  She’s a TV priest and it’s Television’s Rightful Burden to shed positivity on every unconquered corner of our consciences.

For example, she calls the sex workers in. One brings her pimp and together they defend prostitution in the shadiest, most uncomfortable way imaginable. The next is a stripper, looking eerily like a waxworks Barbie, with a weepy, harrowing story of her inability to escape a strip joint. Tyra goads the guests toward one another, stoking the crying woman for infectious tears, and by the middle of the sob story has the audience crying too. No doubt she eventually gets what she wants: a crying prostitute and an angry pimp to shout down. And no doubt that when she does, she pulverizes him. She is on a mission.

It would be one thing to have a mission and succeed. But that can be difficult, whereas acting like an asshole is really easy.

Okay, wait. My words got away from me. We do know that Tyra is a genuinely compassionate person and not an asshole. For example, she once dressed in a fatsuit to document what fat women experience, in order that she could call their hideously reduced expectations to public scrutiny and then goad them about it. As a “fat woman,” she went on dates with three social-climbing Los Angeles pricks, all of whom Heel Face Turned when they were told  her real identity. Tyra was shocked; they so hated fat women that they would rather date famous models?

Her dates were complete muppets, chosen for maximum muppetude. So, that part’s really not shocking – just more of the usual “reality” theater.

What was bizarre was this: after Tyra regained her royal raiment and resumed the fortress to share her wisdom, and in the middle of accounting an experience in which people on the city bus didn’t bow and scrape at her like she was a famous model, she began crying. This is the life of a fat woman: a sad, gray life where horny people don’t point hundred-watt insincere smiles at you all the time. Why don’t all less-than-marketably-gorgeous people just kill themselves? It all makes you begin to wonder how well Tyra understands the world of humans.

As usual with TV, and especially as usual with FOX, the superficial silliness nearly conceals a more fundamental stupidity.

I mean, wouldn’t an audience – even assuming charitably that they were dumb as bricks and deeply into the crusade for positive energy – feel a little bit weird taking moral marching orders from someone this brassy and clueless? Normally, as I understand it, religious figures are expected to engage in some kind of authenticity claim. What’s hers? Can you think of one?