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Do romantic comedies set the bar too high?


I often find myself battling the Mrs. with a round of "But in the Notebook, Noah [enter super romantic gesture here," only to have to remind her that this is real life, and not a movie.

Are we being programmed to have too high of hopes because of movies? I found an interesting article (http://singlemeetingzone.com/2011/08/romantic-comedies-will-be-the-death-of-your-love-life/) which basically says everything I think about those movies, but we'll never stop watching them.

If they were more realistic movies, would we still like them as much?

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yeah I think they do set the bar too high, I have recently been broken up with by my boyfriend and have actually gotten it into my head that he will turn up outside my house (in the rain) full of apologies.
Things are going good between us but in real life it happened like this.

boy; I've been thinking.
me: what?
boy: maybe we should try and sort things out?
me: yeah, ok

lol I do so wish I had decided to leave the country and he had stopped me at the airport and begged me not to go :)

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This is exactly what I'm talking about!!
People get these wonderful ideas in their head about what life should be like based on what we see in movies, but in reality we're ruining our chances at a perfectly healthy relationship because we're waiting on something more.

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totally agree! I have such a broken heart and I can't help but blame these films that have filled my silly head with these ideas since I was a little girl.

I will never learn though i'm watching a rom com right now :P

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@ price ...
Sharyn Wolf made an interesting observation with respect to love stories in films (in her amazing guide "Guerrilla dating tactics" - which in spite of its title is equally valuable for your professional activities). It is best to simply cite her, since Wolf likes to play with meta-language. We all base the choice of our words on elusive and highly personal feelings - which is both comfortable and nerveracking for others. But Wolf is especially gifted in this aspect. On p.170 she writes: "Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark or Alien, and it's easy to be sucked into the excitement. No one need to tell you that Nazis and space monsters appear courtesy of the special effects department. You enjoy the adventure, but you don't kick yourself for not having similar adventures in your own life. Oh sure, you might decide to take up a new risk because the movie reawakened your adventurous spirit, but at the bottom of it all, your life won't resemble this movie". I guess that Wolf enjoys teasing, and is effective in using sarcasm. In order to hammer her message into your head, she continues: "We know romance movies are made up too, but they work on us in a different way. There are no monsters or explosions to constantly remind us that this is a fantasy. And for most of us, our hope of finding true love is greater than our hope of finding alien forms of life". (EB: Amazing! I guess that she dislikes pets) "Romance movies depict love like a cliffhanger; at any moment things could fall apart as two people experience rapturous sex marked by chronic ambivalence, overcoming the obstacles, fighting for the relationship, and beating gargantuan odds to be together". I suggest that you read this amazing passage at least three times. Reflect on it. With such a perspective on reality any film script must seem a banality.

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I myself have always hated Rom-Coms because they have always been so cheesy and fake, and romance films in general are the same. However i have found some romantic films that are like no other and dont have that cheesy ending in which they come back together and make it as if they never broke up in the 1st place. Makes you wonder what all the film was about.

My foreign film list http://www.imdb.com/list/z86jRjauDwE/

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They definitely set the bar too high, but so too does most film genres. We'll never find the promised redemption, we'll never have a hero to save us... I guess the difference is that romance movies more frequently feature "regular joe" characters, which perhaps makes us more susceptible to believing the fantasy.

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"Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the antidote to shame."

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