Impact of Cinema on Unrequited Lovers.
In my previous blog Unrequited Love and Cinema, I have talked about the behaviours imposed by cinema about romantic relationships and how they affect lovers in real life, making it look normal for them to pursue someone who belongs to a completely different religious, social or financial background. This leads to cases of unrequited love and heartbreak. It is important for us to see that happy ending in movies is a trick. Notice that romantic movies always leave the story unfinished. We easily fall into the trick of happy ending when the couple ends up falling in love with each other, or one of them dies, contributing to the idea of eternal love.
There are uncountable films that promote romantic prototypes. Love Story, Bringing up Baby, Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet, to name a few. One of the most recent additions to this list is the Twilight saga. Based on the Stephenie Meyer’s book series, the saga made more than two billion dollars worldwide. The movie is a story of Bella, a shy and silent high school student who moves to Forks with her father, where she meets Edward Cullen, an adolescent vampire who is good looking, polite and rich. Jacob, a dapper wolf-man, is the bad-boy who falls in love with Bella.
The funny thing is that I don’t even know why everyone falls for Bella. What makes her so special! One of the most prominent archetypes in the Twilight saga is that every man loves in a woman only the values that he represents. In this set-up, love is not the result of a conscious decision. Instead, it is a sexual urge that goes beyond the character’s will. The question is based more on the desired object than on the lover. We are not new to the (sexist) myth of the passive woman waiting to be rescued by a man. Even kids are raised with fairy tales of such nature. Snow White, a princess, does everything men ask her to do. A hunter pities her and leaves her in the forest. Then she becomes a servant for seven dwarfs and finally falls asleep after biting a wicked apple where she is rescued by a prince. I wonder how Snow White feels. I wonder which of her virtues make her so special. Nobody knows or nobody is interested!
My point here is – would the Twilight saga been as successful with the helpless human being a man and the immortal being overpowering him, a woman? Probably not.
For centuries cinema has been perpetuating the stories that we have been listening to. Narrative arts and romantic films are inspirational. We start dreaming about and expecting to go through the same conflicting emotions that we watch in movies and hope that our lives will become as transcendental as in the cinema. As I have written in my blog More About Limerence, memories of the time spent with the object of unrequited love, the experiences and effects keep returning to the lover unnervingly and occupy a large part of their mind space. If there is nothing a lover finds to connect the object of love with, for example in a movie, a situation or a song, they immediately make-up something in their minds to connect their fantasy to real-life romantic fiction. That is how cinema affects our thought process, without us realising the severity of the impact.
We need to focus on the fact that real life issues are more common, more real, and subsequently less cinematographic. A vampire is never going to come and save you, no matter how shy or silent you may be! Unrequited love, as great and altruistic as it may appear to be in a movie, is actually the worst thing to be in. It may sound romantic to love someone with your heart and soul, knowing that it is never going to be reciprocated, the truth is – it hurts. Unrequited love hurts so much that is becomes unbearable. When your heart is breaking inside with the feeling of rejection, or to see your beloved fall in love with someone else, the pain is almost physical. It is not that your heart is actually breaking inside your chest but it feels like it is crushed and bleeding. Every bit of your body aches with an inexplicable real pain. Realise the difference between cinema and real life.
Please share your experiences in the comments section. They are my inspiration.