December 17, 2008, - 2:14 pm
Important Study: Chick Flicks Are Evil; Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, J-Lo Ruin Marriages (Other Than Their Own)
By Debbie Schlussel
Among other things, Reader Ari frequently sends me stuff about how TV and movies give people the wrong idea about love and marriage (and other stuff). Yes, the concept is elementary, but the stuff Ari sends is far deeper stuff, and more funny.
And today, he sent this. Bottom line, as Ari say, “Chick flicks are evil.” Yup, Julia Roberts didn’t just ruin the marriage of her husband, cameraman Danny Moder, to his first wife. She also ruins marriages around the world–at least the marriages of those women who watch this crap (and probably worship Oprah, too). The same goes for Meg Ryan and J-Lo, and not just with Dennis Quaid, Diddy, and Ben Affleck.
Although it doesn’t say in the article–they don’t want to sound sexist and gotta be PC for you and me–I think it’s the women. Men are generally not the ones who believe in ESP in relationships. That’s the stuff of romance novels and other pop culture offerings consumed by women.
Bad for Your & Their Relationships . . .
Watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life, a study by a university in Edinburgh has claimed.
Rom-coms have been blamed by relationship experts at Heriot Watt University for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to love.
They found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner.
Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them.
Psychologists at the family and personal relationships laboratory at the university studied 40 top box office hits between 1995 and 2005, and identified common themes which they believed were unrealistic.
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 realise
The movies included You’ve Got Mail, Maid In Manhattan, The Wedding Planner and While You Were Sleeping.
The university’s Dr Bjarne Holmes said: “Marriage counsellors 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.
“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 realise.”
The study says watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life.
As part of the project, 100 student volunteers were asked to watch the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity, while a further 100 watched a David Lynch drama.
Students watching the romantic film were later found to be more likely to believe in fate and destiny. A further study found that fans of romantic comedies had a stronger belief in predestined love.
Kimberly Johnson, who also worked on the study, said: “Films do capture the excitement of new relationships 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.”
Writes Ari:
I have always said that there is nothing true in the movies. Mythbusters have pretty comprehensively proven that any and all physics in the movies is a bunch of crap. It is quite obvious that the notions of “Love” in the movies is also crap. AND it’s damaging.
He’s so right. I’d bet if they did another study, they’d find that people who watch more movies are more likely to get or be divorced, and people who watch fewer or no movies are more happy in their relationships and have more stable ones.
By the way, remember “Pretty Woman”? The hooker is the heroine who lives happily every after. Yup, sounds exactly like real life.
Agreed. All astute observations and something I never thought about in thsi context. The other day while watching Howard Stern, they had another yet young woman hooker (this one pregnant) from the “Bunny Ranch” brothel who claims she got the idea that becoming a prostitute was glamorous, lucractive and fun after watching an HBO series that featured the cat house. Absolutely pop media messages can and do corrupt people.
ObamaSlammaJamma on December 17, 2008 at 2:43 pm