As we grow, we become familiar with the various films, styles, and plots that become more recurrent over the years. Romantic movies are easily one of the most startling types of movies in our society, mainly because of the ideas that they create in us. We constantly believe that the relationships and actions that we see in the movies and series that we enjoy every day are what will happen to us. Just as protagonists love each other and fight to face all their problems, we will do the same, or someone will do it for us. When the reality is that we aspire for something unreal. We aspire to something that, although not impossible, is difficult to obtain today. We long for what we see on screens, forgetting that everything shown is done by actors and actresses following scripts—it’s something that’s false, and although it is beautiful and inspiring, it distances us from the reality we live in.
According to Sarah Rose Werner in her article, We’ve Got The Wrong Idea About Love, real life doesn’t work the same way it does in books or movies as much as we would like it to, and life sometimes leaves. “…We are lonely, broken, and trying to fill the empty voids in our hearts,” she says. Many times, we blind ourselves to this idealization, and if we do not find a love like the one in books or movies, we become resigned or disillusioned. Some even think they are the problem and are doing something wrong because they can’t find “the ideal partner,” when the reality is that these movies do not show us the entirety or even the minimum of the struggles that people must actually go through in their daily life.
In order to better explain the way in which romantic movies have been deceiving us, I will base myself on the article published by MediaVSReality, How The Media Shaped Your Idea Of Love. They presented several types of myths that range from the most recurring ones to the ones you haven’t even thought of.
Myth 1: Soulmates “The One”
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Our first myth tells us about the belief in soulmates. Those people who are destined to be together from the moment they are born. Some believe that we all have “that person” that, no matter what happens, we will end up meeting, thus proving that we all have a soulmate.
This is also a very recurring phrase in romantic movies because I’m sure that on more than one occasion, you’ve heard the phrase “you are my soulmate” or “you are the right person for me.” There are even movies that have this word or a similar one as their title. Films like The Best of Me, A Star is Born, or even Titanic portray very well what this myth represents.
Myth 2: Happily Ever After
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The best-known and most-seen cliché, especially in Disney animated films like The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, end with the famous “and they lived happily ever after” quote, which makes us, as viewers, assume that everything that happens next is perfect in the lives of the protagonists. In the real world, it’s not like that. The beginnings of a relationship, like the ones that are presented to us as an end, is only a chapter with many more to come. Chapters that consist of continuing to get to know the other person, their experiences, their goals, and various circumstances that will test all the love and that idealization of the person that occurred in the “First Stage of Love.”
Myth 3: Love Is random
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Our third myth is the one that says that love is random. This is quite a debatable myth that will depend on each person’s individual beliefs. While some of us believe in chance and that everything happens for a reason, there are others who believe in destiny. What is the difference? If it’s by chance, you consider that you have the option to decide and change what will happen in your life. If you believe in destiny, you assume that your life is already written and that everything happens because it was meant to be. Therefore, the veracity of this myth will depend on what each person believes to be true.
However, if you’re not too sure, there are movies that represent this myth perfectly and may help you decide whether you believe in chance or destiny. Some of them are Love Wedding Repeat with Olivia Munn and Sam Claflin, or See You Soon with Liam McIntyre and Jenia Tanaeva.
Myth 4: The Grand Gesture
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Without a doubt, this is the one myth that is represented in almost all romantic films. It is called “the grand gesture” when one or both protagonists perform an action that goes beyond expectations, which ends up ensuring or giving greater weight to the main couple ending up together at the end of the film.
Some of the best-known examples are seen in action films where usually, the male protagonist does the humanly impossible to make the female protagonist happy or attract as much attention as possible. In other cases, we see it when a great gesture is represented in something that seems quite the opposite, such as a letter or recurring quality time.
In The Notebook, we can see this represented when, and spoilers ahead: the male protagonist was writing letters every day for an entire year, even though he received no response to any of them.
Myth 5: Love At First Sight
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In my opinion, “love at first sight” is the most debatable myth along with “love is Random,” although for other reasons. When we talk about love at first sight, we talk about that instant “click” that two people have when they first meet. A connection that goes beyond what only the two of them can perceive. Just as the famous movie, Hotel Transylvania, explains.
It’s that first impression accompanied by the feeling of knowing that you have just met your destined person.
Myth 6: Destiny—“Everything will work out in the end”
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This brings us to our last myth, destiny. If you don’t believe in chance and opt for destiny, then this is the myth for you. When we say that “everything will work out in the end,” we mean that no matter the adversities we have to go through, it will be worth it in the end, since destiny was already written either way.
We see this in various films, such as The Lucky One, where a soldier finds a photo and, while trying to find its owner, ends up meeting the love of his life, being united thanks to destiny and that photograph. Or perhaps in “A Lot Like Love” where fate brings the protagonists together on multiple occasions at different times in their lives.
To conclude, as Sarah Rose Werner said in her article, “They don’t show what it’s like to be in love with someone when they’re struggling with mental illness, unemployment, addiction, or even something as small as when they had ‘a bad day at work’. Which is an extremely fundamental part of any type of relationship. So there is no problem for you if you have not found the partner you want to find, your ‘ideal person’, your ‘destined person’, or your ‘soulmate’.”
We have been living with the fantasy of perfect love, making us long for the affection and the relationships shown in movies. The reality is that the constitution of said love entails many processes and actions that depend both on us and others.