4 Pieces of Relationship Advice Movies Need to Stop Giving
If you're anything like me, you had two parents: The Streets, and Pop Culture. When it comes to The Streets, I cannot give a higher recommendation, every kid should be so lucky to spend a few years in the school of hard knocks and so forth. As far as Pop Culture goes, however, there are a lot of irresponsible lessons being thrown around, especially when it comes to romance and dating. Lessons like ...
#4. Not Being Able to Function Socially Makes Someone Attractive and Interesting
The Thing: "If she's a wide-eyed, crazy, eccentric free-spirit, then she's actually just the gal you need to straighten your entire life out, man! Bursting out in song in the middle of dinner and not knowing how things work makes a person attractive!"
Worst Offenders:The New Girl,Garden State.
This trope has been around so long that it's actually been given a name. Film critic Nathan Rabin calls it the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character and describes it as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." It's any chick in a movie who is more style than substance, and whose free-spiritedness and unconventional approach to life is meant to cover up for her general inability to function socially. And and it's insulting to both genders.
Zooey Deschanel's character in The New Girl is probably the clearest example of this right now, as that entire show is based around how quirky and eccentric and, as a result, lovable, Zooey's character (I think her name is "Eyeface") is. Except she's not so much "eccentric" as much as she is "bad at being alive and functioning socially, in the present." One of her main conflicts in the pilot is that she has a date at a fancy restaurant, but doesn't know what to wear so she puts on overalls! Classic Eyeface! And one of the male characters on the show goes goofy-eyed and clearly starts falling in love with her instead of, say, yelling, "You're 27 years old, how do you not know how to dress and function yet? Get your shit together."
"Sometimes I poop in toasters! I'm incorrigible."
It needs to stop because guys shouldn't live their lives expecting a woman like this to exist. No guy should be waiting around for a quirky, blue-haired, horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing chick to show up and fix his entire life, because what woman would want to deal with that expectation and level of pressure?
It also needs to stop because I don't want wide-eyed gals to think they need to act like vapid morons to attract guys. Because I'm an average, twenty-something male in 2011 America, I've developed a pop-culture induced soft spot for pale chicks with giant eyes and bangs.
You! You did this to me!
And, unfortunately, Hollywood is trying to convince women who look like this that being brainless goofballs who don't understand how life works is an appealing personality type, and I just can't let that stand.
Hollywood is still teaching women that "dumb" is "attractive," they're just hipsterfying it. I don't know when it happened (maybe after Clueless?), but sometime after the '90s, "Quirky Eccentric Weird Chick" became the new Bimbo. She's just as insultingly one-dimensional as the archetypal Ditsy Blonde Bombshell Valley Girl character that was all over the place a decade ago, except now she wears vintage knee-socks and listens to The Smiths, and that's supposed to be better, for some reason.
#3. Being a Closed-Off Asshole Makes Someone Deep and Secretly Lovable
The Thing: "Who's that guy? The guy with all the tattoos who just punched that other guy in the gut and stole his car keys? The guy who called me a bitch and told me to stay out of his business? I want him to get me pregnant."
Worst Offenders:Wolverine from X-Men, Sawyer from Lost, Everyone True Blood (probably?).
As played-out as it is, this is a trope that I actually really love seeing (which is why it's so hard for me to push vehemently for its demise). I like this because, in movies and TV, the asshole character with a heart of gold is always the most interesting guy on screen. I can watch Cyclops objectively make the right choice, and fight for his woman, and help the school, and stand up as a reliable pillar of virtue and good intentions, but that doesn't matter, because Wolverine smokes, and smoking is cool.
"What's that, Cyclops, you saved an orphan? I can't hear you, because he's wearing a leather jacket look how cool!"
And there's the problem. We love those characters in movies because, in movies, a person can be a giant, manipulative, selfish asshole and also a sweet, deep, compassionate softie, because those people are actors, and most actors are capable of playing at least two different things.
If you're dealing with an asshole in real life, nine times out of 10, he's actually an asshole. And not "asshole" in the sense that he's confident and a little bit cocky, that's fine. "Asshole" here means a legitimate terrible person. Not every meth addict is Breaking Bad's Jesse -- an ultimately sweet kid struggling against his circumstances -- a lot of them are just, you know, meth addicts. In real life, the boyfriend who has been verbally abusive throughout your entire relationship won't suddenly wake up one day being kind and apologetic, because he doesn't have a screenwriter in the back of his mind writing empathy into his background.
And, yes, there are plenty of guys out there that are genuinely like Don Draper, they're legitimately kind people who are damaged enough that they throw up a wall and keep people away, but there are even more idiots out there who aren't Don Draper, they've just seen Mad Men and thought "Condescension and verbal abuse: that's what women want!" Hollywood keeps A) convincing women that every shithead is secretly poetic and amazing and beautiful, and B) convincing men that there's a lot of traction to gained in being an irredeemable prick. And there is. Right until you graduate high school, and everyone realizes how awful you are.
In the show Meduimu that isn't on the air anymore: the husband and wife had a "two well-adjusted, intelligent characters who have a mature relationship based on trust and mutual respect. They run into some problems, but they work through them together, because they're reasonable and they care about each other." relationship and it wasn't boring at all. The acting was cheese and the plot was thin but i watched every episode because of the dynamic between the already married main characters. Just sayin
ReplyJust sayin' what? That was a good show.
Nice article with salient points. The main problem is if they stopped doing these movies we'd be stuck with crap like "Jackass' and "Beavis and Butthead".
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesImplying Beavis and Butthead isn't amazing.
Not implying, openly stating.
^ You...uh, you saying Beavis and Butthead aren't amazing? Pugilism, bitch.
The movie most guilty of #1 is "Grease." Olivia Newton-John just turned into a big whore in the end.
ReplyThat's ALWAYS bugged me.
^ GAAAAAAAAY! WE HAVE A GAY HERE!
"Just once I'd like to see a Hollywood movie about two well-adjusted, intelligent characters who have a mature relationship based on trust and mutual respect. They run into some problems, but they work through them together, because they're reasonable and they care about each other."
ReplyI actually got that out of "The African Queen." (Well, I mean after Charlie Alnut stopped drinking and became a mature guy.) Which was not even a little boring. ^_^
Good article, Dan. I think you're my favorite guy on the site.
Also "The Young Victoria", which was likewise not boring. AND based on a couple who were genuinely happily married in real life, so bonus points for that.
Topping the list of "Things My Ex-Girlfriend Should Have Learned Before/Hopefully After I Left Her" is this article. Holy shit. Also, please say we can just get the whole group of us twenty-somethings to come around and realize all this bullshit we've been being subconsciously fed. I feel bad I took this long to read this, and, man, I hope I haven't tripped these too many times yet... 0_0
ReplyAmen! I read most of this article with my jaw dropped is self-recognition...I hope I'm getting better :/
#4 reminded me of the other Cracked article where they summed up the plot of Juno. "Omg hamburger phone! I'm so quirky!"
Reply... Eric on True Blood is totally that a*****e bad boy who steals the girl from the nice guy, and I NEVER REALIZED IT!
ReplyOf course, they made Bill a nice guy on the show, whereas in the books he's just as much of an a*****e, sooooo...
The moral of the story is that the reason our lifespans are usually less than 100 years and we get old and wrinkly is that if we lived longer, and stayed good looking, all the men would become terrible douchebags and all the women would become whores.
I think lots of people are attracted to energetic, happy, sometimes silly people... but Hollywood always portrays people with energy as ditzy, dumb and vapid. There is a huge difference between the two and for some reason they don't see that.
ReplyAnd Eyeface irritates me like no other. She's a good actress fine but only seems to do that one annoying, dumb, bordering on bitchy character.
Eyeface has grown increasingly stale for me too. I hold out hope that she'll play against type, soon, and do it well and blow everyones minds but the more of New Girl I saw, (I gave up at the christmas episode) the more I knew that would never happen...sigh.
It actually made me sympathise with the guy in 500 Days of Summer, just....do SOMETHING else, Eyeface, like, one new thing!
#4 reminds me of the time when a real Manic Pixie Dream Girl came into my life. Good Lord, every moment I spent around her and her craziness made me happy to be alive. The fact that she was already married made my lovesick fawning over her that much more pathetic.
ReplyNow, I find any other type of woman boring. Stability? Who needs it. Common sense? Yawn. Nothnig satisfies me anymore except a sexy, unpredictable goofball.
These movies tell men that if we murder a bunch of kids at the church, we arent really bad cause we wrote a poem about our mother and that in order to be a real man, they must loss all of there idenity, self worth, and personality just to get a woman, not only that he has to do get arrested, but then have cops just let him go cause hes so "cool" and "Edgy", that if hes a nerd he has to fight the "evil" jock/rich guy and embarrass him and have everyone laugh at him, cause nothing said "maturity" like getting revenge on someone instead of being the better person and just walking away.
ReplyThat no matter how much of a b***h his "dream girl" is it is always him that needs to fix himself for her and that the woman who really loves him for who he is doesnt "let him know how 'evil' he is for watching football on sundays or watching a drink at the bar with his friends"
They tell women, well as long as we are pretty we dont have to do absolutely nothing to be a better person. That all RICH Gentlemen are "evil" womanizing, gay, and women beaters and the other "womanizer" is good cause he makes her "laugh" and he "understands her more than anyone else"
And that the main character/female lead never has to change no matter how sociopathic they are and everyone else is the problem
*slow clap* My sentiments, exactly, sir.
Usually I'd make some smartass comment to troll, but the OP hit it on the mark there. Seriously, nice post.
Yeah,the whole message that if a guy seems like a complete ass or even a dangerous psycho it's just because he's waiting for the right girl to come along, break through his harsh exterior and redeem him with her love really needs to stop. It just teaches girls to fall for the wrong guy and that staying with that guy no matter how horribly he acts makes her brave and noble (instead of just stupid) and that his bad behavior is her fault for not loving him enough. It's basically the standard toxic relationship model.
Reply"Sometimes I poop in toasters! I'm incorrigible."
ReplyBAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Perhaps if the main tension in a romantic movie wasn't the romance, then the romance wouldn't have to be so completely stupid.
ReplyIsn't one of the things about HIMYM is that the entire cast has had difficulty in love because they're so messed up and don't like to work on their problems? In fact, that's Barney's entire character concept. "I'm going to sleep with tons of women to get over my abandonment by my dad and my neglectful mother!"
ReplyAlso, almost the whole show is told in the story Ted is telling to his kids, so it's more than a little subjective. If one is actually taking either of those as a good idea, they're the one at fault for missing the point, not the show and the movie for giving bad advice.
Barney didn't have a negelctful mother...
Why am I just seeing this article now? IT'S GENIUS!
ReplyI can't really get behind the summary of Knocked Up here, Dan. Even if Heigl hadn't been a factor, Rogen's character's life was clearly messed up and, more to the point, doomed to change anyway. For instance, he's never had to work because of a settlement with the government, but early on it sounds like the money is on the verge of running out. He was going to need to get a job no matter what, Heigl just provided the motivation.
ReplyOkay, say Dan gives you this point. Doesn't change the fact that A) Movies still tell people that changing everything about oneself is a good idea and B) most people won't look this far into the movie and will just think that changing perfectly acceptable parts of their personality is a good idea
I'm going to have to disagree with (500) Days of Summer. Yeah, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Tim? I'm bad with character names) was a bit of a douchebag for most of the movie, but then after Summer (her name's in the title) broke up with him, he moped for a while, then his friends told him to grow the f**k up, so he did. He actually spent a while figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, without thinking about the girl he wanted to spend it with. Then he met a girl that he made a date with, but he knew who he was, so there was hope for him not wrecking things as spectacularly as before.
ReplyThat being said, Summer was unnecessarily mean to him after they broke up. But that's a bit of a digression.
Even if Summer was mean to him after they broke up (I think she was more inconsiderate) I can't really sympathize, considering what a raging a*****e he was to her BEFORE they got together. He was going around calling her a b***h for not noticing his super-special feelings, even though he hadn't even made a move on her. "But I turned up my radio so she can hear me listening to the Smiths! What more does she waaaannnt!!"
I do agree that the ending injected a bit more hope about his future romantic prospects, and that personal growth was part of the plot unlike what the article is implying. Was it enough? Let's see... in one of the movie's most pivotal scenes, supposedly his "eureka" moment, he blamed the GREETING CARD COMPANY HE WORKED FOR for ruining his relationship. What. the. hell.
I really liked the article, but there was more to (500) Days of Summer than just that; Summer was already in a relationship (engaged) to begin with.
ReplyNo she wasn't.... she got engaged after they broke up and she met someone else...
No, she wasn't. The movie isn't told in chronological order. They dated, they broke up, they ran into each other months later and she was engaged.
I'm so sick of the Manic-Pixie-Dream-Gril that's been popping up everywhere. What is so adorable about a man-child wearing oversized novelty glasses and rainbow socks, who constantly rambles off in "cutesy" observations? It's an insult to the competent, intelligent women out there (I wouldn't know)
ReplyIt seems to be a connection to how women are seen as childish or childlike-- a viewpoint dating back from Elizabethan times when a man's role was to keep his woman and children in check. You see it a lot in other places too, like Japan...
Condescension and verbal abuse IS what women apparently want. Any good guy knows that.
Reply