Not so long ago, I walked out of the movie, No Strings Attached feeling annoyed, but it was my own fault. I should have known better than to think that a Hollywood rom-com would have anything other than a fraudulently happy ending.
At first it was fun watching the two leads fumble around, trying to figure out how to be together, but it quickly reverted to cliché. At that point, the troubled female lead suddenly made a turnabout and was ready to commit; this despite there being nothing in the script that could explain her transformation.
Just like in all current rom-coms, the male lead was first full of hope, then fed up with his female counterpart's ambivalence and then finally decided to write her off. But then true to formula, he too, changed his feelings and took her back.
While sitting in the theatre watching the story turn to mush and waiting for the thing to finally be over, I reflected on how this was one more in a long string of Hollywood hits that bear no resemblance to genuine human interaction.
Some people might say, "What's the big deal? It's only a movie," but I think that No Strings Attached and the other rom-coms out there today are not so benign, as the false expectations they set up can interfere with our ability to have successful relationships.
Not having learned my lesson, off I went to see the movie, Bridesmaids, hoping that a movie written by and starring Kristen Wiig might not follow the same blueprint. I was wrong. Although there were a few good laughs, the love story was the standard issue.
There are a few basic versions of the Hollywood formula for rom-coms. In Bridesmaids and in No Strings Attached it goes like this: cute girl meets cute boy, girl messes up and inadvertently pushes boy away, boy gets angry and takes a walk, an improbable coincidence throws them back together, girl sees the light and wants the relationship, boy forgives girl, love ensues and the credits roll.
Sure, the Hollywood version of romance is driven by the profit motive of the filmmakers and it's not like anyone who makes these films is promising cinema verite, but no-one is taking responsibility for the way these movies distort our ideas of what a normal human connection should look like.
We as a society are so confused about how to create and maintain good relationships. The Hollywood machine makes everything worse by perpetrating the myths of the big "Aha", and moments of redemption, transformation and resolution that rarely happen in real life.
Hollywood offers a counterfeit version of human interaction in which somebody clueless one day wakes up and for no apparent reason, finally sees the light. In the movies, this person can mess things up completely but once they understand, they make everything right. To top it off, this same person suffers no consequences for their bad behaviour no matter how badly they've hurt, deceived, manipulated or betrayed their loved one.
According to the Hollywood myth as demonstrated in No Strings Attached, a girl who for years has been utterly unable to commit as a result of some deep-seated emotional trauma can suddenly become fully capable of having a long-term, meaningful relationship, and the boy who's had his heart stomped on can completely forget about what just happened and start anew with the girl. The fact that there's no psychological truth to either of their behaviours is immaterial to the filmmakers.
In real life, we have to live with relationships going unresolved. Endings are messy, people are obstinate and there are misunderstandings abound. People don't change unless they really want to. Heartbreak tends to lead not to forgiveness but to resentment and estrangement.
It's understandable that we buy into the messages these movies promote. They give us hope, false as it might be, that things will work out for us in love just because we want them to. As our own relationships crumble around us, we cling ever more tightly to the illusion of happily-ever-after.
Hollywood is undermining our relationships by fostering the expectation that if we simply practice patience, our recalcitrant loved one eventually will understand what we want and give it to us. We can waste the best years of our lives waiting for this to happen while the movies we're watching encourage us to hang on, telling us that true love indeed, will finally come our way.
It's not that we should stop going to the movies, but I think we might want to exercise some healthy skepticism while watching these romantic comedies. They portray themselves as seemingly harmless diversions but are sending out a destructive message to their unsuspecting audience, and we viewers need to take care.
We have to see through the Hollywood illusion where everyone finally gets it, everyone can change, no-one is punished for their bad behaviour and everything is resolved. As long as we're clear that our real-life relationships will never be anything like those portrayed on-screen, we can feel free to enjoy our rom-coms without risk.
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But, vapid as most rom-coms of the last, oh 50 years, are, they can be a nice escape. I'm not the target for no strings...way too old to want to see these lovely young people. I loved Calendar Girls....lovely middle aged women with moxy and yes, personal problems. Too bad the general viewing public doesn't want to see wrinkled people fall in love. Oh well, not with getting in a huff. hmm...we need a blogger here to give us a 10 best rom-com in the history of cinema. That would be fun.
this is why i dont see many movies. regardless of what the movie is about, there HAS to be a love interest. sometimes you just want a movie about superheros without having to watch who he wants to pork. which is to say, girl meets guy, likes guy, falls for guy, meanwhile guy falls for girl, but cant tell her his secret identity. she falls for both, which are actually the same, he questions who she really loves, she loves both, happily ever super after. bleh.
You mean, heroes in red spandex don't really come in an save the day in the nick of time?? Rocky isn't real? A little kid left home alone can't really outsmart two hardened criminals??
Cruel, cruel world!
"Of Mice and Men? Meh, never heard of it. What is that, sum kinda book about a maze? OMG I just saw one of those Twilight books at Starbucks and STILL haven't read them yet! I'm so going and buying them today!"
Really, there are two forces that teach children about the world, school and the media. The media tells children school takes a 100% backseat to daily gossip and what color someone's nail polish is, in seemingly every portrayal of school that exists. Maybe it should be someone's job to really, really, really show our children that materialism isn't as important as knowledge and being able to think, a lot, and outside the box. If not, they'll forever be trapped inside the box that is the media's grasp on our culture.
That meme you mention is not really so subjective any more, but you are right, it is inescapable. It is called narcissism and it's spreading like a virus in the American society, especially in your and younger generations. On the one hand, I think young people in America are more open-minded, fair, and idealistic than their parents; but, on the other, I see how they too are bombarded with the same toxic, mind-bending messages that warped their parents beyond repair.
We'll see how this develops. Given our rapid descent into a Third World status, the un-Hollywoord reality may knock on people's doors sooner than we expect.