Love vs Hollywood

I think that Hollywood has created every single idea anyone has about love; I don’t mean warped, advanced, or shaped it, I literally think that Hollywood has created the only love people know. People blame the media for desensitizing one’s perception of drugs, violence, language, etc., but I blame the media for turning love into an unattainable objective. Now, this is only one person’s opinion, and it is far from a reliable or expert consensus, but I think the media has a direct effect on the impossible-to-ignore relationship failure rate. Just turn on the television, and you can’t help but be bombarded with dating advice, stories, and just everyday happenstances between people. Leaving the living room won’t save you, either. Just step into your car and turn on the radio, or plug in your ipod, or the throw in the latest John Mayer cd, and you are instantly placed in the world of someone else’s love story. We listen to other people’s words and watch other people’s stories, hoping that they will touch us. That somehow, they will humanize us. That if someone else out there is looking for the same thing we are, or has, God willing found it, then our desires aren’t unrealistic. What I’m beginning to wonder, however, is if we’re all retelling a fantasy that doesn’t exist. Maybe the love we want only exists in other people’s words because their words aren’t real. Maybe love as the ideal has been so engrained into us for so long, that with no real proof or reason, we have set intangible targets as the standard. Not even as something to strive for, but moreover the bar for which everything else is compared.

I just got home from watching The Holiday. Personally, I am, have been, and most likely always will be a sucker for the romantic comedy- the “Chick flick” if you will. So, unsurprisingly enough, I loved every second of the film. I don’t know why, but the whole Person A meets uncommonly attractive Person B, falls in love, has some sort of minimal conflict, and resolves it all neatly within ninety minutes platform really appeals to me. In fact, I get mad when studios vary from the template. I like my romances wonderfully predictable. I want Molly Ringwald to end up with Jake Ryan (Sixteen Candles). I ache every time Rose jumps back on to the good ship, runs to Jack and says the immortal words, “You jump, I jump, remember?” (Titanic). Chills run up my arm when Richard Gere climbs the fire escape to rescue Julia Roberts from her undeserved prostitute existence (Pretty Woman), and it absolutely infuriates me when the guy and the girl don’t get together at the end of the movie. Like I said, I’m a sucker; along with most of the other women I know. And because of this predictable idiocy, apparently we all must pay.

My all-time favorite movie is When Harry Met Sally. The reason for this probably lies in the fact that falling in love with my best friend embodies every ideal I have ever created about love. The epic climax of the movie comes when Billy Crystal (Harry) in a brilliant revelation on New Years Eve (come on, it had to be New Years Eve, did you expect any less?) realizes that he is, in fact, unbearably in love with Sally (Meg Ryan, his estranged best friend). In fact, not only does he love her, he suddenly realizes that he’s always loved her and that he can’t live one more second without her. This epiphany results in Harry running through the empty streets to a party where Sally is (predictably) having an awful time, and telling her exactly how he feels about her just before the clock strikes midnight: “I love you… and it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Years… it’s because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible”. Seriously, just writing it makes the estrogen pump a little harder, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I don’t even want to stop it. I want to feel crazy. I want to believe that someone is running through the streets right this very moment to tell me that he wants the rest of his life to begin as soon as possible. Problem is, is that I know there isn’t, and even with that knowledge, I’m still disappointed. I’m disappointed in a situation I didn’t even know I was disappointed about. Harry met Sally. They were destined to be in love. They indirectly created in me a yearning for a circumstance that may not even exist in real life. These two fictional characters probably had a lot more to do with the last two years of my life than I care to admit.

I stand strong in the belief that every person wants epic love. Every person lives their life for that one defining moment when they realize “this is it”. This is the it I’ve dreamed of since I was born. This is the it that makes all the other its in the world seem insignificant. Problem is, is that I’m beginning to worry that the it I envision hasn’t come from my own standards, experiences, or beliefs, but rather from what I’ve absorbed over time. I don’t have a realistic expectation of love because the love that I want exists within a box. It exists within a set script of things that have to happen. There is always going to a resolution to the problem, and if there isn’t I’m dissatisfied.

My life changed the fateful day one of my girlfriends called me and told me she was taking me to see a movie that I quote/end quote “needed to see”. I had no real desire to go to the movies, but I didn’t have any other plans that seemed appealing, so I went with her to see The Notebook. Now, if I thought I was discontent with the day-to-day monotony of love, it didn’t even hold a candle to the way I felt after exposing myself to that movie. I really believe that Nicholas Sparks sold his soul to the devil, and in return Ole Lucifer handed him the manuscript to The Notebook and told him that upon release, he could have anything he wanted from any woman he wanted for the rest of his life. That story instilled such an unreasonable expectation of love, that even though I knew it was completely out of the realms of reality, every bone in my body ached for Noah Allie love. The Notebook single-handedly obliterated any thought I may have had that the love I wanted was irrational. It didn’t so much alter what I wanted from love, but rather solidified what I wanted was completely achievable. Hell, Noah wrote Allie every day for a year with no response, is a phone call to tell me about your day too much to ask? I think not. Noah built Allie a house with blue shutters because he knew at his core that one day she would come back to him, and I can’t get you to take me out on a date every once in a while? I mean, come on now, Noah read to his wife every single day even when she didn’t remember who he was or what they meant to each other in the hopes that for one second he would catch a glimmer of the woman he had loved. Why can’t you be more like Noah? If I’m a bird, I want you to be a bird, dammit.

Not only do I worry that this apparent absorbance of movie love has severely lessened the probability of any actual relationship I may have in the future, I’m beginning to wonder if the relationships I see really exist, or if they’re just the human example of two people playing parts. Elizabeth Ashley once said that, “In a great romance, each person plays a part the other really likes”, and I wonder how much fact rings true in that statement. Do people do things for the other person because they want to, or is done out of some sense of propriety? Lloyd Dobler stood outside of Diane Court’s window holding a radio over his head blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” (Say Anything). How many replicas of this scene have been created over the course of time to prove someone’s love? More interestingly, how many ideas has this sparked for other wildly romantic moments? Without Hollywood, would these moments even exist? I have wished, achingly, for someone to come sweep me off of my feet. But do I even have realistic measures for which feet should be swept? Would the “romantic” things people do even exist if we didn’t have something else to compare them to? Does the importance to create an elaborate show cause things of actual importance to get thrown by the wayside? Am I so busy waiting for Patrick Swayze to come get me from my corner, that I’ll never be happy with anything less?

The Plain White Ts wrote a song called “Hey There, Delilah”, and a verse of the lyrics reads, “A thousand miles seems pretty far, but they’ve got planes and trains and cars, I’d walk to you if I had no other way. Our friends would all make fun of us, and we’ll just laugh along because we know that none of them have felt this way. And you’re to blame” The first time I heard that song, my exact words were, “I want someone to feel that way about me”. I know that I’ve always wanted someone to feel that way about me, but when I hear it, does it give my desires validity? And if so, is that validity a good thing? I spend so much of my time writing down my feelings, and paying attention to the meaning behind what people say, and dissecting the nuances of a look or a moment, because I want everything to mean something. But maybe not everything has to mean something. Maybe epic love exists, but the epic isn’t what I think it is. I fear that as a society, we become so set in the belief that great love results from writing your name and phone number on a five dollar bill and riding an elevator just to see if you end up on the same floor (Serendipity) that we’ll never be satisfied with what’s actually possible.

I think that love exists. I think that real, last forever love exists. I’m just not sure if it exists in the confines of a script. I worry that at some point we’ll become so consumed with the pandemonium ending that the real stuff won’t be appreciated. And by trivializing the every day, one day it won’t exist. Reality won’t be an actual thing, but rather a series of calculated moments all leading up to a climax and resolution. Nothing will be done out of the desire to do something nice, but rather to put on a show. Love won’t be defined by actual feelings, but rather how one displays those feelings. Intimacy will be nothing but a four-syllable word talked about by other people. At the end of the day, I want to believe that the show means nothing, but rather it’s the thought behind the show that carries the weight, and I can’t help but wonder how long it will take before I start reversing that. When will the day come where I believe that anything less than someone running into a press room full of people professing to have been a “daft prick” (Notting Hill) be settling? When do the priorities switch?

No one wants to feel the ache of settling, but isn’t everything to some extent an act of settling? If you spend your life chasing the next best thing, you’ll end up with nothing. I believe that love is the same way. It just gets iffy when there’s this constant barrage of things you should expect. Bottom line, I think the only successes in love comes when both people expect nothing, because when you don’t expect anything, nothing will disappoint you.

I’m never really good at ending these little philosophies on life, so I’m going to stop trying. This was nothing more than another insomniac rant, and there will be many more.