Nov 29
ROMCOMS AND ROMDRAMS ARE RUINING OUR LOVE LIVES
2007 | Posted under Love, Movies, Screenwriting, Something Sad |Since I’m doing my best to get some exposure, I frequent as many social networks as I can. More often than not, these Web sites have an “About Me” section with a sub-section for favorite movies. I’m always fascinated with the common threads that tie everyone together. One film title that I constantly find on female social networking profiles is The Notebook. This appalls me, not because it’s a bad movie, per se, but because the romance portrayed in the film represents both everything that’s wrong in relationships and apparently what women want in relationships.
It goes without saying that you shouldn’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
OK, so we have Noah and Allie and they’re just two crazy kids in love. We’ve all been there. It’s easy to fall in love over the summer when you’re young and silly and having fun lying in the street laughing at stoplights. That’s why, at the end of the day, Allie’s parents were right in splitting them up. What did Allie know about love? She was 17. She knew everything about passion — agreed — but that’s not love. Love — real love — is loving someone when it’s hard, when they don’t deserve it, when they’ve hurt you in the worst way. Real love does not blossom in the span of one summer.
Noah and Allie find themselves separated for seven years, during which time they live out very different lives and meet new people. They still carry a torch for each other and that’s fine. I still think of girls I knew in high school and wonder what ever became of them. It’s natural, but Allie meets Lon and he’s amazing. He comes from the same background. He’s charming, has great prospects and, let’s not forget, he absolutely loves Allie. She claims to love him back and he has no reason to doubt her since she’s agreed to marry him. This is awesome. This is what every person hopefully strives for when they seek out relationships. Yet the moment Allie sees Noah’s picture in the newspaper, everything that she and Lon built suddenly and completely goes down the toilet. Flush. No floaters.
She tells Lon that she’s going to visit the Old Town, knowing full well that she’s actually going to see Noah. Lon, of course, has no problem with her visiting anywhere because his trust in her is that complete. Allie and Noah reconnect and what happens? She lets him take her to the boneyard. Repeatedly. Astonishingly, Lon, the great guy that he is, forgives Allie and is willing to take her back. Allie declines, opting to be with the guy she knew for a total of three months, hadn’t seen for seven years and has no identifiable source of income.
Never mind that she told Lon that she loved him.
Never mind that she agreed to marry him.
Never mind the entire life she’s built with him.
Allie found “true love” and that’s all that matters.
Everything else be damned!
That brings us to today’s social landscape. Women around the world are watching The Notebook and applauding it, saying to themselves, “Yes. YES! This is proper behavior! My love life should be like this!” This movie tells women that even if they are in committed relationships with men who are good for them, they should cash these men in like a small stack of poker chips in a casino for the chance at passion. Words have no meaning and when you tell someone you love them and that you’ll marry them it should be understood that all contracts are only binding insofar as you don’t run into your ex-boyfriend.
Conversely, The Notebook tells all guys that it doesn’t matter how well you treat your girl. You can offer her financial stability, emotional support and your dashing good looks. None of that matters in the face of true love. And even if you think you’re the one she’s truly in love with, as Lon surely did, The Notebook proves that you’re only right until you’re proven wrong. Therefore, as a boyfriend, you should be as controlling as possible. Don’t let your girlfriend go dancing, grocery shopping or get the car washed, because you never know where she might discover true love. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to have your girlfriend take your Lamborghini to get washed and run into her old high school sweetheart working there. Their eyes meet and memories of remedial algebra crash into their thoughts as suds, love and violin strings swell around them. Hey, it could happen, which is why it’s never too early to become a Muslim Fundamentalist.
The point here is that, as a guy, you cannot rely on your good looks, fine upbringing, good job or wonderful treatment to keep you secure in your relationship. Furthermore, you can’t make the mistake of thinking your girl’s words are worth a damn when she tells you she loves you and that she’ll marry you. NOTHING TRUMPS TRUE LOVE.
The insidious aspect of romantic comedies and romantic dramas is that they make men sympathize with the guy who gets the girl, never with the guy who loses her. Therefore, we naturally think that we are the hero of our own romantic drama. And maybe that’s true, but only until we get the girl. Once that happens, if we follow the rules of romantic dramas, we become the villain. And as we all know, the villain can only lose the girl.
One of the few romantic dramas that I can respect is Casablanca. Rick’s decision to let Ilsa go at the end is the very essence of true love. If Ilsa doesn’t go with Victor, everyone’s lives are going to suck. Instead, they keep the love for each other safe in their hearts, because it’s not something that can survive in the world anymore. So, despite the personal anguish, Rick lets Ilsa go because it’s what’s best for her in the long run.
Heck, that’s better than true love; it’s smart love.
by mpdjr77, on December 7 2007 @ 2:50 pm
Well said and an infinity of Amen’s. I used to think that people recognized this stuff as fiction . . . then I got married. And, now, I’m not. But. I’m still hopeful.
Merry Christmas, All!
by aimee, on December 18 2007 @ 6:17 pm
I’m not going to lie, i really like this movie. But i completely agree that movies make us side with the guy who got the girl, not the one who loses her. Take Sweet Home Alabama…Andrew completely in love with Melanie, gave her the world, completely trusted her, and then she completely screwed him at the altar, and we’re supposed to be happy? I’d love to see a movie from these people’s perspective because i think it would really change our view of “true love” as portrayed in movies.
by Harry, on December 19 2007 @ 3:43 am
Wow. Well said.
by MS, on December 28 2007 @ 11:43 am
OTOH, the tropes of romantic love weren’t created by Hollywood, and are all told about eight hundred years old. The question is, do people have the confident understanding of fantasy and reality needed to interpret a story like this without expecting silly things from real life? We tend to assume they do when they watch, say, a SF or horror plot - should we give them less credit when it’s a fairytale romance? And if not, will this do more, less, or just different net damage to the collective psyche than, say, Independence Day?
Corollary question, since you seem interested in what remains of different gender cultures - how do the different social skills that many boys and girls still recieve prepare them to make this kind of interpretation?
by KPP, on January 2 2008 @ 5:49 pm
Amen. I didn’t like the movie. When every girl I knew was squealing about how I just HAD to watch it, I thought, well hell, it better be worth the two hours. Then I watched it. And I gagged. But then, that’s Hollywood for you. These days, the dramas are all so fairy tale-like that, well, girls are tossin’ whats left of their brains and letting their imaginations and expectations run wild.
by PG, on January 6 2008 @ 6:57 am
As far as I remember, in Casablanca, Ilsa left Rick and went with a man she loved. That is how they separated in the first place. And if that man were not her true love, she wouldn’t have left Casablanca at all at the end and Rick, again.
- Allie and Noah meet, Ilsa and Victor meet.
- Something happens and they separate.
- Allie meets Lon, Ilsa meets Rick telling nothing of Noah and Victor respectively.
- They meet their old flames again and go back to them, leaving Lon and Rick alone in Paris.
So, if in the Notebook, Lon and Allie meet again like Elsa and Rick do and Lon lets her go, we would have Casablanca.
I don’t know what’s better, to have your fiance run out on you or to have her lie in your arms every night and wish you were someone else. I would rather be alone than be with someone who didn’t, or who loved somebody else more than me.
Noah is right when he asks Allie not to think about others but what she wants. It’s not even about true love or something. Sometimes you want certain things that you can get only from certain people, and you want to be with them. The time you realise what you want, you have to take it or regret it for the rest of your life. I guess that’s what Allie’s Mum meant in a way. You wouldn’t ever look at your rationally chosen plantation owner husband in the same way. Like Ellen O’Hara dies screaming for Phillippe Robillard after a lifetime with Gerald.
by red, on January 7 2008 @ 7:02 am
I have to tell you, I understand what you’re saying, however, I am guessing you’ve never truly been in love like this. I met my husband while walking down the street in San Francisco. He saw me standing in front of him in a market and followed me. He remembered where I worked, called the next day and asked me out for lunch. On our third date, he asked me to marry him. He also moved in to my apartment. We didn’t do that intentionally, he just came over and never left. We were both highly educated, but poor as dirt. I had dated several very financially stable men, including one worth hundreds of millions. None of that mattered when my husband and I met. We fell hopelessly in love with one another. Besides, he is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever known, and it was more important to me to spend my life with someone that had a strong work ethic than someone who came from money.
He worked out of our home for almost 20 years just because he didn’t want to be away from me and I drive him to work in the morning so we can have that extra time together. We have raised children, argued, made up, moved and changed homes several times. All these years later, however, we are still hopelessly, passionately, madly in love with each other. We’ve grown older, but I still see that gorgeous man I fell in love with. He’s still gorgeous to me. In fact, I have to say, he’s actually become even more handsome to me and I love him more every day. He has been the kindest, most devoted, loving, wonderful husband and father I could have dreamed of. Honest to God, I hope we die together some day because neither of us can fathom a day without the other. Call us stupid, sappy, or unrealistic…maybe, but it’s all true. It is possible. I feel sorry for people who say it’s not because that tells me they’ve never loved like this. We had rented The Notebook on Netflix recently. We watched it last night, and, sorry, but, it’s us.
by René Garcia, on January 8 2008 @ 12:39 pm
7. Red:
Thanks for stopping by daily to see if anyone else has replied to your comment. Unfortunately, for as many hits as I get for this article, comments are few and far between. You might want to cut down your visits to once a week.
by Kim, on January 11 2008 @ 6:53 pm
I agree with you! The Notebook IS my favorite movie but I respect it for what it truly is, a MOVIE! This movie is calming to me and when me and my husband are having a bad day, one of us will put the movie in and next thing we know, things seem okay. I loved what you said - “Love — real love — is loving someone when it’s hard, when they don’t deserve it, when they’ve hurt you in the worst way” — I’ve lived through this with my husband and came to face some very hard decisions. But, in the end, I love him! I loved him when the times were good and I continued to love him when the times got really bad. He knows he didnt deserve me at the time but, as you said, true love is loving them when they dont deserve it. Now things are wonderful, all has been put to rest and we have moved on together. We truly do have REAL LOVE!!
by blejaja, on January 13 2008 @ 8:50 pm
I don’t understand why are you surprised that you “cannot rely on your good looks, fine upbringing, good job or wonderful treatment to keep you secure in your relationship”? Its love, its not an investment or mathematics, there is no formula that can guarantee that other person will love you back, its not meant to be ’secure’…
This movie (or other romdrams) doesn’t tell women that they should leave good man for a chance of passion. She loved Noah, he is a good man too (and his income shouldn’t really be an issue anyway)… it wasn’t just a passion, that is very clear from the movie.
Also, it doesn’t tell guys that “it doesn’t matter how well you treat your girl”. You could say that if Noah treated Allie bad, which didn’t happen in this movie. In fact, we don’t see much about how Lon is treating her but we see that Noah was treating her right, most important of all: he is really interested in what she loves to do and he is helping her be free and be truly herself (fact that Lon didn’t even knew that she loves to paint is a big deal in the story since that is very important to her). Lon was good, Noah was good, she loved both but she loved Noah more, that’s it.
This movie certainly doesn’t tell you “that you should be as controlling as possible”. You shouldn’t even aspire to control person you love, that’s for cults, dictatorships and robots. Do your best and if she loves someone else, be even better, and if that doesn’t work, just let it go. Sometimes you get lucky (like Noah), sometimes you don’t (like Lon), but that’s love and life. It wouldn’t be so fun if it was all secure.
You say that in romantic movies like this one, we become villain when we get the girl and that is very, very incorrect. Lon isn’t really a villain here and Noah truly becomes a ‘hero’ long after he got the girl, when they are both old and he still loves her although she doesn’t remember anything, but he is still there, loving her…
by Angela, on May 6 2008 @ 1:28 pm
When I first saw this movie I had to admit that I would have chosen Lon. My sister and most of my friends thought I was nuts, but I actually felt sad that she chose Noah. And quite simply because of what you stated - he loved her even though she didn’t deserve it. I think he loved her more passionately (at least that’s how he was portrayed in the movie - not so in the book). I want the type of man who Lon was - he exhibited true “strength under control” - He didn’t judge her, even when she wronged him in the worst way you could ever wrong a man. He reasoned that he didn’t want Allie because she just didn’t love him enough. He didn’t blame “the other man” or shake his fists at God. He let her go, simply because he didn’t have her to begin with.
I do realize that I’m in the minority in choosing Lon over Noah, but I do feel that Lon was by far the “better” man. And it had nothing to do with his money but has everything to do with how he loved her. When she walked in on his meeting - everything else stopped for her. He didn’t choose work or anything over her. And I do believe that had he (his character of course) met her when she was young and was in the same social class and situation as Noah - he NEVER would have let her parents drive them apart. And he certainly wouldn’t have waited 7 years to contact her or wait for her to contact him.
Noah’s character depressed me. Damn - didn’t he realize that someone was intercepting his letters? It wasn’t as if he was on such great terms with Allie’s parents. Wouldn’t the light go on for most of you? It did for me. And you don’t have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to realize this. For crying out loud - he went off to war. I’m sure he grew up a lot. Now why didn’t he take his little trip out to see Allie before 7 years - before she ????
And as far as Allie is concerned - I wouldn’t have spoken to my mother for doing less than what hers did. Why did she wait until she had someone who loved her to go seek out her old flame? I guess for the same reasons why people seek out a new love before they leave their present one. It makes things easier for them - plus it must give the ole ego an nice little boost.
I would like to see a sequel - of Lon’s life and the person he ends up with. And, I don’t see him as a victim - but of someone who escaped a life of hell with a real selfish egocentric woman.
And yes, I’m a female and quite the romantic, and yes I’ve loved like that. And yes, I’ve been hurt by a young love.
But after many years I went on and married the man of my dreams. A man so much like Lon (except for the money part - LOL) - and we’ve been married for 15 years and we’re so very much in love and we hope the same as the other poster - that we die together because life apart isn’t worth living for either one of us.
I wrote this because I don’t want you to think that every woman is a pushover.
Angel
by René Garcia, on May 6 2008 @ 1:46 pm
11. Angel:
You rock, sister.
That’s all.