Mad Atoms

Romantic comedies are fantasy movies, sans the orc battles and talking animals. Yet a disturbing number of grown-ass people actually view life through a rom-com filter. We hear about how the actresses in these movies give girls an unhealthy body image. What about an unhealthy life image?  

If you try to call ‘bullshit’ on rom-coms you sound like a cynical asshole (like I am currently). Well, all you unromantics out there finally have some vindication. Heriot Watt University (in the UK) has released a study blaming romantic comedies for “promoting unrealistic expectations” when it comes to love. They found that rom-com fans have a stronger belief in predestined love and often fail to communicate with their partner, believing a true love should understand their needs without having to ask.

Soul mates are a wonderfully romantic notion, but unless you’re a Calvinist, fate and destiny shouldn’t be something you seriously think about. The idea that you’re destined for one specific person is objectively about as silly as you being destined to save humanity from evil robots. People are being inspired to lazily give up accountability for their love lives.

Women fuel this genre, but men are apparently similarly affected. I don’t get that. The male roles in these movies suck.

That’s like women aspiring to be one of the useless bang-whores in an action movie. Plus, if you patterned your life after the dudes in rom-coms, you’d wind up in jail. When a girl doesn't like you, singing outside her window in the rain doesn't make her realize you're amazing and fall in love with you. It makes her get a restraining order and move.  

Despite this sour tone, I do believe in love, just not movie love. Everyone I know in a great long-term relationship has a pretty boringly pragmatic attitude towards love. It’s my ‘romantic’ friends, endlessly cycling through crappy relationships (and doing the most cheating, btw) who always passionately talk about love in big, dreamy Hollywood terms.  

Frankly, life is more like a horror movie than a rom-com, considering that most people are murdered by a spouse, boy/girlfriend or rejected lover. Are a cabin full of drunk teenagers more likely to all fall in love, or accidentally kill someone? Tough call. But if you’re a hooker your wealthy john is definitely more likely Christian Bale in American Psycho than Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.