Hating Love
Why I don’t enjoy romanticizing romantic love stories in today’s media.
“An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.” -Chris Jammi wrote in the book Venus in Arms.
We live in a world of harsh realities, dreaming of an intoxicating ideal life; often we consume media to live out or observe how characters would react to blessings and ordeals in the said character’s lives. We indulge ourselves in everyday media by watching movies and series on the occasional Netflix and other media platforms. This Culminates in the birth of different categories to cater to a wide variety of audience. This brings me to my point, wherein I would like to talk about the overall genre of Romance and the tropes associated with it, in today’s media.
Literary Terms have defined the term modern-day romance with two similar descriptions:
1.) “The story of a character who keeps meeting the wrong type of people in his or her relationships or has run into a problem with a current love relationship.’’
2.) The story would focus on the struggles the character faces while finding Mr. or Mrs. Right; the entire focus would be on the relationship, although the character may also potentially deal with other struggles, such as losing a job, handling difficult parents and more”.
To summarize the definitions succinctly, the focus of a romance story is on the detailing of events leading up to either finding the perfect romantic partner or fixing the current love relationship of the protagonist.
Now my issue with this genre is on its great focus and reliance on finding “the one” and on the implication on the importance of romantic love in uplifting one’s life.
“Societal portrayals of love and marriage may engender unrealistic expectations in those who are exposed to them”, (Galloway, 2013)
What peeves me is on how this specific trope is played out in any romantic media that it becomes an echo chamber of these clichés. This then becomes a major proponent of these unrealistic expectations.
People who assimilate the ideals that they frequently view or watch, would then have this unrealistic expectation for romantic love, and would have a greater effect on those people without experiences related to this type of love.
Since most romantic stories often talk about finding the perfect match or “the one”, this then creates a misattribution of weight/importance of infatuation when compared to other stages of love.
People then would stumble head first at the sight of the who they would think is their perfect match and then fall out of it the moment conflict sets in. And I believe this happens, because of the lack of exposure to the next stage of love, Disillusionment. This is the stage wherein most of the couples and even marriages fail because of the sudden change of emotions and lack of compromise.
The situation then culminates in a big storm of unrealistic expectations that might ruin a person’s perspective of romantic love in the long run.
My internal policy of viewing things as realistic as possible has sprung up this dislike in the tropes/clichés of the romantic genre. With some justification, it is easy to brand this unrealistic expectation as something that we must get rid of because of its effect on people who have them. But I believe it is actually good to be naïve with romantic matters, because there is beauty in innocence and naivete that helps counterbalance the pessimism that is afforded to us by the world. The juxtaposition of realism and unrealism is what our society should maintain, so that it doesn’t become an echo chamber of sad ideals and happy fantasies. In the end, we shouldn’t fault others for viewing things in that way. Rather, we should consider that the most valuable action we can do: is to understand each other and compromise.
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Sources:
References: Lauren F.E. Galloway : Does Movie Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations about Love and Marriage? https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2828&context=thesesdissertations
