Episode 127: Romantic Comedies!

[Gilberto]

Despite some technical difficulties talking across the world, Sean and Greg connect with Lynn to celebrate Valentine's Day with a tribute to Romantic Comedies. It starts with When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle and leads to Patrick Dempsey's Made of Honor and Gerard Butler's predilection towards bad boy roles in the Bounty Hunter and the Ugly Truth. But somehow it goes from Love Actually to horror exploitation like The Human Centipede (which has nothing to do with Romantic Comedy). Plus a little more talk about TRON: Legacy.

traffic.libsyn.com/darkcrazy/TVAMD_romcom.mp3

[lynn]

For Valentines Day you can listen to how Sean and I hate Rom-coms and how Greg hates us.
I'm sorry my audio is so poor in this one, I sound like I'm talking way too fast, as usual, but I've gotten some new equipment and am using a better computer (although it's Mac so it may be stealing my soul every time I plug in to it) so hopefully these technical issues will be fixed.

[drivebyluna]

I like Lynn's comment about how romance in movies have so much drama. The people I know in real life who act that way, who constantly break up and get back together are so dysfunctional it's sad. Those are not healthy relationship. I'm of the personal belief that if you break up with someone, there must've been a good reason to do so and you should remain broken up.

[gretl]

I'm slowly getting caught up here! Seems like even when I have time to listen, I don't get time to come back and discuss like I'd like.

First of all, thanks for the parental warning before talking Human Centipede, bahahaha!! I listened to the first part of the ep alone, then took it in the car with Thing Two ... just in time to have to turn it off. ;D We got a good laugh.

I hate the rom-com genre for the same reason I hate the Disney princess fantasy and all the reasons that Sean and Lynn articulated. No wonder we have all the "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" crap when these twisted beliefs about gender roles are encouraged from every direction.

HOWEVER .... I admit I'm not a typical female (maybe I'm from Mars too.) Thinking about Greg's side of the argument, it occurred to me that:

1) Movies aimed at boys and men are just as much to blame for insidiously building up false expectations about relationships; and

2) why doesn't that piss me off so much? Why do I dismiss the damaging effects of male and female caricatures in action movies?

We know the action part of the action genre is unrealistic fantasy. Why do we think people who prefer rom-coms aren't just as clear-headed about the romance part of that genre?

They both promote false understanding. But I bet it's the more subtle assumptions woven into the background of the other stories in our lives that really burrow into the collective subconscious and promote dysfunctional relationship behaviors.

[lynn]

So Gretchen; movies rot our brains so don't watch them? Realistic portrayals of relationships would be boring, the most exciting drama in my life is what to have for dinner, which turns debate regularly. Also, perhaps we dismiss action relationships because it's part of a whole fantasy we dismiss as so unrealistic it must be seen through. They don't pretend to be real, which rom-coms do, to a degree.

[gretl]

So Gretchen; movies rot our brains so don't watch them?

Exactly!

Wait. What?

;D

[Gilberto]

I admit that the action movie comparison is a stumper, but I think that movies that are visceral like action movies and horror don't impact us as directly because we understand that even though it's entertaining it's still negative.

Also, they're hyper-reality. I'm not going to be caught in the air ducts when a building's taken over by terrorists, so I understand that I'm not to draw situation-specific life lessons from Die Hard. So cracking jokes while shooting international thieves isn't the lesson I draw from it. I do come away with more general lessons, like be prepared. In Die Hard the lesson is BE PREPARED FOR ANYTHING. Just like in horror movies, the specifics are too specific for me to relate them to my life. But the generality of the lessons are useful: Stay alert, fight back, don't do stupid things in the face of danger. In Die Hard I don't think "okay, so I can wrap a fire hose around my waist and jump off a building", but I do came away understanding that I should be ready to mobilize at the first sign of trouble.

Romantic comedies present us with absurd extremes, but they're not outside our realm of experience. You fall in love with your friend's fiancée, or someone at work, or someone online... these are scenarios that could happen in real life. Not like they happen in movies, but they're relatable situations. So the situation-specific lessons they offer - like it's okay to dump your fiancee for a guy you never met or it's romantic to interrupt a wedding ceremony - can be emulated and are dead wrong.

It's bad fantasy. You shouldn't specifically do the things you see in horror and action films, but they're empowering in a general sense. They're about good vs. evil, overcoming fear and fighting back when threatened. Rom Coms are dis-empowering because they teach us to be clingy and adhere to conventions that rob us of individuality. They also damage our empathy on a deeper level than violent images because they give us moral justification for hurting each other emotionally and slap a happy ending on it to make everything all right.

[lynn]

On the other hand; weddings are so boring. I've always wished someone would jump up and object or something in every wedding I've been to. Because you know the groom is not going to just smile and say "That's ok, go off with that other guy while I pay emotionally and financially for this fiasco." If this shit went down in real life shit would go down. There'd be punching and stuff. That's a wedding I'd like to go to.
Also, I believe Gilbert just reiterated what I said above only in a much more verbose manner.