From the moment we are born, our parents tell us fairy tales and folk stories, and tuck us in at night with the warming words of a happily ever afters. Our little blank brains, ready to devour anything put in front of us, happily gobbles up these fantasy tales of love and adventure, and slowly but surely, based on these tales, we form our understanding of life and love. When I say humans are easily influenceable beings, this should come as no surprise. We’ve all heard of moms in cookie cutter homes whispering to each other about how rap music will turn their kids violent, and although that isn’t technically true, our media consumption does have an effect on us.
To me, the dazzle and charm of romance movies and how they create and alter our views of love is an important aspect to consider when talking about media influence. Researchers at Herriot Watt University in Edinburgh observed couples at their therapy center and noted that most of their conceptions of love, romance and relationships came from misconceptions presented in Hollywood romance films. It’s sad to think that the enchanting glimmer of romance on screen has set a time bomb in our heads, waiting for our own created sense of love and romance to destroy us when our expectations don’t match our reality.
Film depicts the most perfect of life situations and life struggles, and in the end, everything ties up in a pretty bow, ready to be emotionally feasted upon by the viewer. Romance, like all other aspects of film, represents only an almost impossible and highly unrealistic version of love, and as we watch these stories unfold, and characters fall madly in love, we are made believe that this is true romance. At no point do we think “Well maybe this is a bit unrealistic to expect” when watching Heath Ledger sing his love to Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You, because although we are warned not to violate the copy right laws of the film, we are not warned to watch out for the over exaggerated version of love presented to us on a silver plater.
I remember being seven and sitting down with my mother to watch the George of the Jungle movie. There’s one scene I still remember perfectly, where George’s romantic interest Ursula expresses how she had always dreamt that her first kiss with her soulmate would be so magical that immediately, she would know he is the one. She described her magical moment as the soft song of church bells and the spark, sizzle and explosion of fireworks. This is a moment in my childhood I’ve always thought back to, because for the rest of my life, I dreamt of the spark and sizzle of an explosive kiss just like Ursula had described. When I reached high school and all my friends were having their first kisses, I waited patiently, excited for my own magical moment. Instead, my first kiss tasted like beer and pasta sauce.
I think discussing the influence of media in development is a very important matter that is rarely taken into consideration. Youths are thrown into life with no knowledge of the world around them, and in this modern century, the main way they discover it is through media and television. A toddler knows nothing about what true love is, they only develop a concept of it through watching other people in love, and nowadays, their examples are mostly scripted, filmed, edited, and completed with a killer soundtrack.
Disney is a multimillion dollar industry whose movies are targeted towards young audiences with developing brains. Disney movies are always about grand adventures, full of life meaning and epic battles between good and evil, but embedded within their storylines is always a love story, and the ultimate quest is to find true love. Although, due to criticism, Disney has made an effort to refocus their stories into a feminist mindset, any film made before 2010 still promotes their old values of love before all. Because Disney films are made specifically for young audiences, children don’t have the critical thinking skills to question the values their favourite princesses are trying to spoon feed them, so they gobble it up, trying to recreate what they see on screen within themselves. But these old-fashioned values don’t stop once we’ve grown out of princess films, romance films continue to follow us and try to reinforce their values on us as we keep growing up.
There are multiple tropes presented in Hollywood romance films that seek to alter our perception of love. For example, true love’s first kiss is a famous one. We’ve seen it in countless movies, and awed and gushed as the protagonists immediately fall in love after a single kiss. Or even love at first sight, when our protagonists simply lay eyes on each other and suddenly know they’re in love. If I have to explain why these tropes are unrealistic, you’ve probably never been in love. Love is not instantaneous, love is built, love is earned, love is not felt for every single person you’ve ever been attracted to.
There are many other representation of love presented in films that are quite problematic, but some for different reasons than others. If you’ve watched enough movies, you’ve probably seen a romance storyline based on obsession. By this I mean, a character who, even though has been turned down multiple times, keeps trying to get the attention of the object of their affections. The problem with this type of romance storyline is that it often promotes extreme behaviour like stalking and deems it romantic, or encourages over the top romantic gestures, and even if the subject of these romantic passes might love these gestures of so called affection on screen, it doesn’t mean a real life person will be comfortable with them off screen.
There are millions of tropes found in films that when transferred into a real-life love story, are nothing but detrimental. Films often depict stories of bad boys meeting the perfect girl next door character, and within the 95 minute run length, she’s managed to change him, and he comes out a better man, leading girls to believe they can change a man if they really put their heart into it, and boys to think a girl can fix them.
This brings us to character tropes often portrayed in film. In recent years, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope has become a joke amongst film enthusiasts. Coined by film critic Nathan Rabin, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is quirky, eccentric, different from “other girls”, sometimes she has a tragic backstory, but her sole purpose remains to teach her male counterpart important life lessons so he can grow further and evolve as a character. The MPDG is an object, she has no goals of her own, she is not a real person, she is simply a means to an end.
Because of my coloured-to-death hair, strange sense of style and my one dead parent, I am, apparently, a perfect real-life MPDG. This is not something I am happy about. With the rise of MPDG popularity, I’ve found that some men purposefully seek out girls who fit into this character trope. They want a pretty quirky girl to try and fix them, but as soon as they realize this person they’ve wanted so bad is actually a person and not a recreation of Ramona Flowers, they lose interest. This is the problem with character tropes, they dehumanize human people.
Another big problem that can be found in Hollywood romance movies is the complete lack of LGBTQ+ representation. I’ve heard dozens of tales, from gay friends to gay icons, depicting themselves as children madly infatuated with characters of the same sex. I think we can all agree today that there is nothing wrong or unnatural about feeling attracted to someone of the same sex, but children who have seen nothing but heteronormativity expect nothing but heteronormativity in themselves. For a small child, thinking something is wrong with them for feeling this kind of affection is heart wrenching, and often leads to years of anxiety and build-up pressure about other’s expectations and even of their own regarding their sexuality and attraction.
So where do we go from here? Am I still allowed to watch romance movies? How do I know if I’ve been negatively impacted by watching too many princess films as a child? There are no right or wrong answers! Yes, watch rom-coms to your hearts content! Just keep in mind that what you are watching is a completely fabricated tale that you will sadly never get to experience. Think hard about what you really want out of love, or if your desires are what you’ve been trained to want. Get to know yourself and your needs in life. Romance movies do not have to impact you if you don’t let them. Be aware, be thoughtful, show your kids Disney films released after 2010, and show them that love is not until the happily ever after, but should last long after the credits have stopped rolling.
Donnelly, Elisabeth. “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl May Be Dead, But Film’s Shallow Female Characters Live On”. IndieWire. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
MacDowell, James. Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema : Cliché, Convention and the Final Couple. Edinburgh University Press, 2013. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=632678&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Roach, Catherine M. Happily Ever After : The Romance Story in Popular Culture. Indiana University Press, 2016. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1190895&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Finn, Christine, et al. “Happily (n)Ever after? Codevelopment of Romantic Partners in Continuing and Dissolving Unions.” Developmental Psychology, Feb. 2020. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/dev0000897.supp (Supplemental).
Menise, Tatjana. “Fairy Tales between Transformation and Repetition: How Audiences Rethink the Big Romantic Myth through Disney Princess Stories.” Sign Systems Studies, vol. 47, no. 3/4, July 2019, pp. 526–551. EBSCOhost, doi:10.12697/SSS.2019.47.3-4.08.
Maio, Alyssa. “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Is Dead.” StudioBinder, 16 Dec. 2019, http://www.studiobinder.com/blog/manic-pixie-dream-girl/.
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