Romantic Comedies Are Screwing Things Up For Normal People

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
1
0
Romantic Comedies Are Screwing Things Up For Normal People


Heriot Watt University [http://www.hw.ac.uk/home/] in Edinburgh says romantic comedies can actually have a detrimental effect on your love life by creating unrealistic expectations for relationships.

Experts at the university say that fans of films like While You Were Sleeping [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163187/].

"Marriage counselors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it," said Dr. Bjarne Holmes of the university. "We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people's minds. The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realize."

In one part of the study, 100 student volunteers were forced to watch the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240890/], while 100 others watched a David Lynch movie. After, the Serendipity viewers were found to be "more likely to believe in fate and destiny."

Are you catching this, ladies? Real men do not appear in Matthew McConaughey [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000190/] movies. We fart. We belch. We scratch our balls when they're itchy. We swear and we yell at the dog and we get food on our shirts and yes, sometimes we do just grunt, roll over and go to sleep. We'd also rather be mule-kicked in the crotch than watch any of the aforementioned movies, although we'll do it if we think it will significantly improve our chances at some post-theater action. It doesn't make us bad; it makes us normal.

"Films do capture the excitement of new relationships," added Kimberly Johnson, who also worked on the study, "but they also wrongly suggest that trust and committed love exist from the moment people meet, whereas these are qualities that normally take years to develop."

The project has now been extended to include an online study of media and relationships. Want to stand up and do your bit for the normalization of ass hair and beer guts? Fill out the university's online survey here [http://remark.sls.hw.ac.uk/cgi-bin/rws3.pl?FORM=Media_study].

Source: BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7784366.stm]


Permalink
 

PedroSteckecilo

Mexican Fugitive
Feb 7, 2008
6,732
0
0
I'm glad my girlfriend doesn't take Romantic Comedy's seriously...

She does however lament the fact that I'm not very romantic and am very easily distracted by shiny, videogame related objects.
 

ccesarano

New member
Oct 3, 2007
523
0
0
See, this is why I keep telling people The Fifth Element is a "man's romance movie". It has a plot, the love is not of higher priority than the safety of the rest of the world (well, until the end), and none of it has to do with that bullshit "the guy has to know JUST what the girl is thinking at all times to figure out what small mistake he made".

Oh, not to mention the fact that the movie has a plot.

I wonder what David Lynch movie? THe only ones that come to my immediate mind are Alien 3 and Fight Club.
 

dalek sec

Leader of the Cult of Skaro
Jul 20, 2008
10,237
0
0
I always knew there was a reason I hated these movies and now I know why.
 

SomeBritishDude

New member
Nov 1, 2007
5,081
0
0
I think I'm one of the few straight guys in the world who likes romantic comedys, but I'd never take one seriously.
 

meatloaf231

Old Man Glenn
Feb 13, 2008
2,248
0
0
dalek sec said:
I always knew there was a reason I hated these movies and now I know why.
There's a reason they're referred to as "girl-porn." It's an unrealistic, fantasized representation of the opposite sex.
 

Aardvark

New member
Sep 9, 2008
1,721
0
0
They're not screwing things up for normal people. They're screwing them up for retarded mongbats who can't distinguish reality from fantasy. If these asinine tools spent their time playing violent videogames instead of watching romantic comedies, we'd probably see more marriages end in violence and bloodshed.
 

sarahvait

New member
Nov 6, 2008
441
0
0
The only romantic comedy I ever liked was While You Were Sleeping, but I'd take Fight Club over it any day. Seriously, are women that deluded into thinking that sex is always supposed to be perfect and couples are supposed to be able to read each others minds? Sex usually hurts a lot the first time, and sometimes even a person experienced in sex doesn't know what every single one of their partners' particular turnons are or how they liked to be touched during sex. I tend to think that the sex problem and knowing how your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse are feeling could be solved if everyone talked to each other and both parties are willing to listen and compromise.

Huh, I'm opinionated today. I'm just a very weird 20 something girl, I guess.
 

SimuLord

Whom Gods Annoy
Aug 20, 2008
10,077
0
0
The Farker in me thinks "Chick flicks make chicks crazy. Still no cure for cancer."
 

ZeroMachine

New member
Oct 11, 2008
4,397
0
0
ccesarano said:
I wonder what David Lynch movie? THe only ones that come to my immediate mind are Alien 3 and Fight Club.
Y... you're kidding, right? That's David Fincher. David Lynch made Mullholland Drive.

More on topic, another good example of a thing in the media messing up girl's views of love is Twilight. I actually somewhat enjoyed the books, but general belief is that my last girlfriend left me cause I wasn't "Edward" enough for her. I didn't know she was that obssessed with it until after we broke up, so I guess I dodged a bullet, but still... It's pretty sad.
 

cleverlymadeup

New member
Mar 7, 2008
5,256
0
0
ZeroMachine said:
ccesarano said:
I wonder what David Lynch movie? THe only ones that come to my immediate mind are Alien 3 and Fight Club.
Y... you're kidding, right? That's David Fincher. David Lynch made Mullholland Drive.
you beat me to it, i'd have to say it was lost highway possibly

as for the topic on hand, there's a lot of communications issues just in general with ppl. a lot of ppl don't like telling their partner something is wrong and clam up and ignore them instead of sharing something with them. it's happened to me on more than one occasion
 

Galletea

Inexplicably Awesome
Sep 27, 2008
2,877
0
0
What is wrong with people? Surely you'd know not to take a film story seriously?
 

PedroSteckecilo

Mexican Fugitive
Feb 7, 2008
6,732
0
0
ZeroMachine said:
ccesarano said:
I wonder what David Lynch movie? THe only ones that come to my immediate mind are Alien 3 and Fight Club.
Y... you're kidding, right? That's David Fincher. David Lynch made Mullholland Drive.

More on topic, another good example of a thing in the media messing up girl's views of love is Twilight. I actually somewhat enjoyed the books, but general belief is that my last girlfriend left me cause I wasn't "Edward" enough for her. I didn't know she was that obssessed with it until after we broke up, so I guess I dodged a bullet, but still... It's pretty sad.
You mean "Thinly Veiled Mormon Propaganda now with Vampires"
 

Blue Sonnet

New member
May 6, 2008
203
0
0
1: I'd like to see what the results of this study would be if the subjects were re-tested after a month or so.
If you have just come out of an involving movie, or even a video game, good ones are those you can become immersed in for a little while as an escape.
If you speak to a group of people a few minutes after watching Close Encounters you can guarantee the percentage of people who think aliens might exist will be higher than otherwise.
The question is whether real life reasserts itself afterwards. All this study shows what people believe immediately after being shown the film.
It is also only one film out of a whole genre.

2: ONLY students were used, who in general tend to be younger, more succeptable to the media, and less experienced with relationships than older adults. This does not make this an objective study on people in general, only on students.

3: This is only one study. There are no others that I can locate that back up it's findings.

4: This study has not been published in a journal and has not been reviewed by peers (i.e. proper scientists who perform studies as a career, and who can examine the study for it's reliability and accuracy). In the scientific community, a study is not considered 100% reliable unless this is done.

5: "Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them." What does "many" mean? Out of 100, five could theoretically be called "many".

6: Interestingly, "students" are mentioned as the subjects, not "women" or "females". This implies that the groups were mixed.

I'm not saying that the media doesn't affect peoples perceptions, but the said media always leaps on board bandwagons as soon as the slightest study says anything that they can make a story out of, regardless of the reliability of the study. Remember, crisps cause cancer, people!

BTW You want to see unrealistic relationship expectations, try shojo manga/anime sometime.