The website TV Tropes, which tracks, wiki-style, frequently-used narrative devices-not just on TV, but in all kinds of fiction-has a page for this. “Indeed, they may be seen as reflecting one of the great cultural myths of romantic love: that no matter how big the obstacle, love will conquer all.” to track down your high-school prom date, as happens in There’s Something About Mary) “are often framed as unequivocal signs of true love,” Lippman writes. The grand gestures of rom-coms (like hiring a P.I. Women who watched the rom-coms endorsed these myths more if they reported feeling transported by the movie, or thinking that the movie was realistic. She had a group of 426 women each watch one of six movies that had been edited down to a half an hour: a romantic comedy where a man pursues a woman and it’s depicted positively ( There’s Something About Mary or Management), a movie where a man pursues a woman romantically and it’s depicted as scary ( Sleeping with the Enemy or Enough), or a nature documentary ( March of the Penguins or Winged Migration) as the control.Īfter the screening, the women took a survey ranking their agreement with several “stalking myths,” such as, “Many alleged stalking victims are actually people who played hard to get and changed their minds afterwards” or “An individual who goes to the extremes of stalking must really feel passionately for his/her love interest.” Those who saw the scary stalking movies were less likely than the control group or the rom-com viewers to endorse these myths. One troubling way they may do that is by making stalking behaviors seem like a normal part of romance, according to a new study by Julia Lippman, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of communication studies at the University of Michigan. But these movies still create an image of romance that leaks into the atmosphere and may subtly shape people’s perceptions and expectations of love. Reasonable people know that rom-coms aren’t what love is really like, just as reasonable people know that porn is not what sex is really like.
The Onion, as always, sums it up well: “Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested.” Oh, and hiring a guy to go out with her sister. Even the supposedly “pure” love of cute baby-faced Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cameron in 10 Things I Hate About You involves teaching himself just enough French that he can pose as a tutor and hang out with his beloved. The Love Actually sign guy was totally out of line, and honestly, Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything was pushing it with his famous jukebox.
Romantic comedies are supposed to be escapist-a jaunt into a better, more colorful world where journalists can afford giant New York apartments and no obstacle to love is too great to overcome.Įxcept that when you think about it, some of the behavior portrayed as romantic in these movies is, objectively, creepy.
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