Monday, July 7, 2014

Romantic Comedies vs. Real Life

Recently I read an article on cosmopolitan.com titled "14 Lies That Rom-Coms Tell You", and it included "lies" like "every eligible bachelor in the world is a well-paid architect" and "your best friend exists for the sole purpose of listening to you complain about your problems". Although I love romantic comedies, I agreed with a lot of what that article said. In fact, it made me come up with a list of my own.

1. Skinny girls do not eat entire pints of ice cream while listening to sad music and still stay skinny. The skinny girls I know drink Diet Coke and complain about being fat, while I resist the urge to throw a mirror at them.

2. It's NOT cool to steal your best friend's boyfriend. I've never had a crush on any of my friends' boyfriends, but even if I did, I wouldn't try to steal any of them. I am currently plotting revenge (so far I'm trying to figure out how I can get a skunk to spray my neighbors or how to make them move to Antarctica) against my neighbors for stealing my magazines. When I find something that doesn't belong to me, like a wallet or a cell phone, I give it back. So I wouldn't go several steps further and steal someone's boyfriend.

3. It's also NOT cool to break up someone's wedding. I've lost count of how many scenes I've watched where the romantic lead crashed someone's wedding, declared his or her love for the bride or groom in front of everyone, and then sprinted off with the object of his or her affection. In the movies it's romantic. In real life it's selfish, cruel, and humiliating. I think that if the person I loved was going to marry someone else, I'd accept it rather than destroy his relationship and ruin his wedding. If someone tried to do that to ME, I'd send a skunk after her or possibly all the paparazzi who think "morals" are for cowards. In the movies, being "in love" supposedly justifies these kinds of actions, but I don't think that being in love gives anyone a free pass to hurt someone else.

4. 99% of the time, your cute male friends are not secretly in love with you. In my situation, my cute male friends were either taken, gay, or secretly in love with the skinny girls who drank Diet Coke and complained about being fat.

5. It's actually necessary to spend more than 5% of your time working. In several of the movies I watched, young women either spent most of their time at work flirting with cute coworkers or obsessing over cute coworkers. Other women didn't think it was necessary to go to work every day (or at all). When I'm at work, I don't obsess over cute guys; I obsess over grammatical errors, students who don't look up from their iPads during class, and the fact that basketball players earn more money playing one game than I earn in a year.

6. People don't usually kiss in the rain, at least not here in Chicago, because they'll a) get wet; b) get knocked down by impatient Chicago commuters (one of whom may or may not be me); c) get heckled by drunk Cubs fans who will also record them on their cell phones.

7. In romantic comedies guys make grand gestures like fill girls' apartments with flowers, take them for moonlit canoe rides, or serenade them outside their window. In real life, most of the guys I've dated think that "grand gestures" usually involve texting.

I still love romantic comedies. For me, they're an "escape" and a modern-day version of fairy tales. But I know that fairy tales aren't real, and it's not okay to imitate all the behavior in the movies. The problem with movies and fairy tales is that they often create unrealistic expectations of romance and people in general. These types of stories are still told because people still want to "escape", and some of them still hope that what happens in those stories will happen for them.

What about you? What are some "lies" that you've seen in romantic comedies or other types of movies?

14 comments:

  1. Lol, yes the 'grand gesture' thing is so funny. I just think of the cost of filling an apartment with a million red roses!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Annalisa,
      I'd like to get a bouquet of roses, but not an apartment full of them...unless the roses were made of chocolate. :)

      Delete
  2. Yeahhh I'm not a big fan of the rom com (with exceptions). They tend to not be that funny to me, and always fall into the same formula - get together - big thing happens - break up - reconcile. Sigh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Gia,
      You're right about the formula; that's why I like romantic comedies that break away from the formula, like 500 Days of Summer or Amelie.

      Delete
  3. Ha! I have to heartily agree with your assessment. Does anyone realize how uncomfortable it is to kiss in the rain? It had to have been humid and in sweaty territory to make you want to stand and kiss someone. Though I have to say #4 did happen in my case. Though we were both in school and working part time, so I think a good 70% of our waking hours were spent in non-romantic comedy territory. (I can count the # of times I've received flowers on one hand too.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Theresa,
      I think the kissing in the rain scene is as common in films and TV shows as the crying in the shower scene, or the venting about guys in bars scene.
      I think it's sweet that #4 came true for you. I must admit that I've had crushes on a couple of my cute male friends, but they were never reciprocated, unfortunately.

      Delete
    2. We actually saw When Harry Met Sally just weeks before he asked me out. When they got to the part about guys and women never being able to be friends, I sank in my seat.

      Delete
  4. I love romantic comedies. They are a great way to escape reality. I am sorry you have such terrible neighbors.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Murees,
      My neighbors have received my magazines by mistake on multiple occasions and kept the magazines every single time. I tried to complain to the post office but they were really rude about it.
      I think that romantic comedies are like the modern-day version of fairy tales. I must admit that I have a whole shelf of those movies.

      Delete
  5. i totally agree! what a great list of lies!
    i would add that the happy endings take a lot of work to stay together after "the end" of the how they got together part...

    and thanks for commenting at Tammy's for my broken branch falls blog tour!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Tara,
      I've only seen a couple movies where they show what happens after the couple gets together; it's always interesting to see how "happily ever after" plays out in reality.

      Delete
  6. So true! he only time I can think of rain being romantic is if you're in the UK :-) Or you're coming in out of the rain, like in this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTTbBpyVGuU&list=PLCC9D643809533F8B&index=5

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Deniz,
    Thanks for the link! He has a nice voice (and he's kind of cute, too!).

    ReplyDelete