Love In Movies

Ever since I was little, I’ve always watched TV shows and movies. Now that I look back on it, I have always wondered why love seems to be a main concentration in so many movies and TV shows. We have all seen the typical Cinderella relationship in cartoons and the typical love relationships in movies. Usually in those films, we see that the couple has some type of problem that they need to work out for whatever reason and there more seems so strong for one another. For example, the classic Romeo and Juliet where their love for one another is so strong that they die because they couldn’t be together. However I was thinking, since I’ve seen romance play out so much in movies, does stuff like this actually happen in real life? Do people really go out of their way and do the above and beyond simply because they are in love with someone? Personally, I have never been in love like that in order for me to do something crazy for someone else, but it seems that that love that happens in movies is so real and their connection for one another is unlike anything else. But I’ve had friends that go above and beyond for their significant other, such as spending all their time with them and their relationships almost seems like something out of a movie. So my question is, does love shown in movies exist in real life?

I wanted to find out more about this topic so I started doing some basic research online. I ended up finding an article that gave me a list of 10 truths of real love and why it’s not always like the movies. The article “10 Truths About Real Love (It’s Not Always Like the Movies)” was published by tinybuddha.com and written by Michael Moreland. In his article he talks about 10 truths about real love that make it different from the movies.

To briefly summarize the article, Moreland talks about the implications of how real life love would work compared to what is seen in the movies. For example, an implication that may arise in real life might be technology. Sometimes in movies technology might not be a major factor in a relationship but in real life it totally is. Moreland says in his article, “You may not see the harm in liking a picture of your ex on Facebook, but your partner might.” Another great example in the article was “Life has a lot of uneventful moments, and your relationship will too. No one wants to see a movie about two people spending an entire day on the couch.” Throughout his list, Moreland provides excellent examples of how real love is not always like the movies.

I found out that this article only gave me a super basic understanding on this topic. It really did not give me any specific examples of any particular movie. But this article did help fuel my interest in this topic as I knew that there is more to be uncovered.

I was stuck for a while until I came across this scholarly article which I found to be the best article for my research question. “From Love at First Sight to Soul Mate: The Influence of Romantic Ideals in Popular Films on Young People’s Beliefs about Relationships,” by Veronica Hefner and Barabra Wilson (Communication Monographs, 2013), summarizes two studies. The first study was an analysis of romantic ideals that were found in the top 52 highest grossing romantic comedies movies from the past 10 years. It was found that romantic ideals and beliefs were very much present in these films. The second study was a survey that consisted of 335 undergraduate students. They were asked to provide their beliefs about romance and romantic comedy movie watching. The results showed that the participants who watched romantic comedy movies in order to learn about romance show a stronger approach to romantic beliefs than those who did not watch romantic comedy movies to learn.

The second study consisted of a survey of 335 undergraduate students and they were asked to report on their exposure to romantic comedy films and about their beliefs and ideals about romance. The students were asked to answer questions online that pertained to romantic ideals based on romantic comedy movies. The results from this study show that exposure to romantic comedies is in fact related to people’s beliefs toward romantic ideals. The researchers found that “individuals who reported watching romantic comedies in order to learn were more likely to endorse romantic beliefs than were those who watch for other reasons, independent of actual viewing. In particular, they were most likely to endorse the belief in the idealization of one’s partner.”

Hefner and Wilson ultimately found their research to somewhat contradict previous research that others have made. They concluded that their results indicate that romantic comedies are influential in only some aspects of romantic ideals. They found that romantic comedies are actually a positive social factor when it comes to young people’s lives and the films are very much influential when it comes to young people’s lives. “Our study demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between watching romantic comedies with the motivation to learn and endorsing romantic beliefs. This supports previous work that found that people often seek out romantic content in order to learn about relationships and that consuming media in order to learn may be more influential than total amount of exposure.”

I actually found this research pretty interesting as this gives me a deeper understanding on this topic. Now that I have this information in mind, I wanted to find movies, specifically romantic comedies since that is what the scholarly article was based on, and see how romantic ideals are present in these films.

I decided to choose this movie because this was actually a movie I’ve personally seen before and I think it is a perfect example for my research as the movie has somewhat of a realistic plot that could happen in real life. “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”, directed by Susan Johnson (2018), is about a highschool girl, Lara Jean, who is a hopeless romantic. When she was younger she wrote love letters to the boys she fell in love with in the past. She never sent them to the boys because she never had the courage to tell them how she really felt. That was up until her younger sister, Kitty, sent the letters out without her knowing. However, one of the letters was sent out to Lara Jean’s older sister’s boyfriend, who she actually had feelings for at the time. In order to get over him, she avoids him and Lara does not want her sister to find out that she is secretly in love with her boyfriend. Another letter got sent out to Peter Kavinsky. Peter Kavinsky is in the same grade as Lara Jean and he recently just got out of a relationship. Peter receives the letter and confronts Lara Jean about it and they agree to fake-date each other so Peter can make his ex-girlfriend jealous and so Lara Jean can get over Josh.

Photo Copyright @ Overbrook Entertainment 2018

To really draw my conclusion I needed to interview someone that had personal experience with love and that was old enough in order to answer my questions carefully and with thought in mind. I decided to interview my former manager, Peyton, who is 28 years old. I asked Peyton five questions which were, Do you believe romantic comedies have influenced your idea about love? Do you think love portrayed in romantic comedies is realistic? When you think of love how would you describe it? What are your experiences with love? With those experiences in mind, how would you compare those to love in movies?

After conducting my interview I found my results very interesting. She doesn’t think of a movie or a movie scene and thinks that it should have been like that. Peyton said that from the romantic comedies she’s seen, they tend to show the awkward, love moments in scenes where it tends to be realistic. She believes that humans are made to love and it’s almost like a human essential just like how humans need air to breathe. She goes on to say that she believes that humans long to be in love or be in a relationship with someone. Peyton describes her experiences with love as what you put in is what you’re gonna receive. She goes on to say that in every relationship that she has been in, she would always put 100% effort into her relationship and even if she doesn’t get the same type of effort back from her partner right away, she eventually sees it later on in her relationships. Peyton eventually tells me a story about a relationship that went bad hill, but now when she looks back at it, she said that the whole situation could have been from a movie scene.

Based on all the sources that I have provided. I’ve come to the conclusion that love in movies does exist in real life to a certain extent. The scholarly article that I talked up, showed me that almost every romantic comedy has some type of romantic ideal associated with it and that younger couples are somewhat influenced by the romantic ideals that were shown in those types of films. The movie that I talked about did have romantic ideals that the scholarly article talked about, so this movie could easily influence anyone interested in love. As for my field research, I’ve concluded that based on what Peyton has gone through and her experience with love that this does follow the trend that I’ve seen based on my other resources. Although Peyton claimed that she wasn’t personally influenced by any specific movie, she does say that love portrayed in movies does seem realistic and she did have a real life experience where her relationship felt like it could be from a movie. After going over everything and all my evidence, I can say that love in movies, for the most part, does exist in real life.