Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy breaks girls heart, boy runs to the airport to fix it, girl accepts boys apology, boy and girl get married and........... the credits start rolling. Sound familiar? Well of course it does, this is what the majority of the movies that we watch are: unrealistic!
An uptight workaholic nightmare meets a hot hunky mess who allows her to finally let loose on life (The Ugly Truth), A woman unlucky with all things romance finds someone who can appreciate her for who she is (Just Wright), A couple thrown together in some wacky roller coaster of events hate each other but then eventually realise that, that hate is actually love (Life As We Know It), Boy and girl pretend to be together for whatever reasons (usually to make someone else jealous) and then discover that they actually love each other (Nick and Norah's Infinite Play List) and to top it off in all these movies it is guaranteed that there will be endless rounds of dramatic break up scenes, a chase scene and then a dramatic make up scene.
But how unfortunate for us that life is not a romantic comedy, we do not find the perfect person by bumping into them in the school hall, or by leaving your glass slipper at the foot of the stairs..... If only it were that easy. What these movies do (as much as I love them) is give people unrealistic and potentially unhealthy expectations about real life relationships.
problem number #uno- Perfect relationships.
Okay, as much as it pains me to say, there is no such thing as a perfect relationship. We always like to kid ourselves thinking that we may or may not have the perfect relationship, but forget to remember that the word "perfect" means flawless, and as humans we are majorly flawed, there is no escaping that one... thank you Adam and Eve. Perfect relationships do not exist because perfect people do not exist, let's just stick to loving the imperfect person perfectly.
problem number #deux- Lazy does it.
Not only do movies like Maid in Manhattan make people think that perfect relationships exist but they make us think that they happen magically, like we can just wave our magic wand and abra cadabra there is this boy standing in front of us, asking us to love him. Uhm, no. The reality is, we need to actually work at our relationships. Often I find myself saying relationships are the hardest thing that I have had to do, and its true.. no work no pay. The richest most beautiful rewarding relationships are those that took time, those that have both parties have worked to create.
Problem number #tres- Happily ever after
I blame Disney for this one, we got people like Snow white and Cinderella living happily ever after right now. Sure happily ever after does exist, you can meet the one you love, get married have kids, and boom happily ever after, but this is not always the case, or rather hardly the case. People break up.... all the time. These movies however make us feel like once we meet the one we love, that's it, we must and we will live happily ever after. With this mind set we are just setting ourselves up for endless drama and disappointment. Forever does not exist, its more till the day I die kinda stuff. That is why when you are getting married they do not say "do you [insert name here] promise to love and honor this person forever" they say "til death do you part" because they are clever they know not to give us false hope like forever and happily ever after. We would really like to believe that when you fall in love its for real and nothing will change that, but this is the real world we live in, not behind a TV screen, things happen all the time, things out of our control that could leave you single for the fifth time. Movies present a laugh-through-hardship type of love, if only. Let's make happily ever after, one day at a time.
Instead of second guessing your relationships because you have just watched 27 Dresses, rather accept your partner as they are, not the person you want them to be or should be. You may want him to give Robert Pattinson a run for his money and own a million dollar company but he is happier just being your boyfriend and working as a marketing director. Also, BE HAPPY, happiness is a choice, and instead of worrying about other peoples happiness take control of your own and don't base it on your partner. They should be one of the reasons you are happy not the reason you are happy.
Lu3Lu
xx
I think real is overrated. to be frankly frank, we little girls need the fairytale in order to survive this overly realistic world. after all the movie would never had been had someone not experienced the fairytale itself. just saying...
ReplyDeleteNo I totally agree with u Vuvu, I have a lil sister that's 5 and I am encouraging her to watch all these fairytales, I wud never take that away from her. :) I like a few fairytales myself, and still myt wish upon stars like pinnochio. I was just saying the movies we watch are nothing like what we (or atleast me) experience in real life.. Where people fall in love easily and live happily ever after, here we are struggling to find the one. If only life was like the movies.
ReplyDeleteIn my honest opinion - I think its this kind of mentality that makes it all unreal. We all now have this tendency to "go with the times" and conform to socially accepted standards. Like for example - the "bad boy" phase in most women's life. The "older woman" in men's. So much incompatibility and signs that it will not work at from the start, but we just jump into it without having thoroughly assessed the situation. Result, Fall deep in love and when reality strikes after the phase is over - poof - the fairytale is over.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for fun and all that jazz, but not at the risk of certain values. The fairytales are there to try and make everyone remember "ideally" the type of world is should be. But because we are human, have no backbone and tend to go through different phases, we make stupid avoidable mistakes at all because my older cousin's best friend father's best friend said "live your life. learn from your mistakes". How about learning from others' mistakes and avoiding this cold and lonely dark place we all go to after disappointment in love?
Life is what you make it. You set your own goals, dream, and believe what you want. After all these socially accepted standards were set by someone else. How about we create our own "social network", embracing what's truly good and honest, where dreams and fairy-tales do come true. It's not impossible, but it ain't easy either.
Truth speak though. Love the post.
RE: Forever does not exist. I must disagree. Wont get into that but here's a post I wrote a bit ago on the "Forever" concept : http://bit.ly/gdQGnc
Fell free to comment :)