Media Madness

Tim's Favorite Blogs

Chews the News
Silk Road
The Huffington Post
Media Matters
American Progress
Citizens For Ethics
Crooks And Liars
Common Cause
Sweaty Sheets

Media Matters

Blog Directories

Saturday, December 20. 2008

Love Me

Wednesday I read the funniest thing on the Internets while looking for information on a topic that’s now totally forgotten. That’s one of the great drawbacks of the Internets: one can be easily distracted. Usually, for me, it’s something of an at least mildly prurient nature; Jennifer Anniston nude on the cover of … let me go check … GQ.

She’s actually hotter now than when she first burst into the limelight 14 years ago. She’s buff!

It’s so easy to get off topic. In fact, this was being written Wednesday, for Thursday … and I got sidetracked by the big news of the day: the president is on his “Rewrite My History” tour and the vice president, in a televised interview with Martha Raddatz, admitted he and several other highly placed Bush Administration officials signed off on and authorized torture.

So, relationships, as important as they may be, got shoved to the back-burner and if your stove is like mine, the back-burners are for pots and pans you’re not gonna use but once in a blue moon.

Although, whenever I concoct a holiday dinner, I use at least three of the burners and sometimes all of them, as well as the oven. But that’s so rare, I know the Dutch oven and the 4-inch saucepan are safe and out of the way until I might find a need for either. I just gotta remember to dust them off now and then.

Turning back to the topic at hand though, one that actually implicates Anniston to some degree for being complicit in a social epidemic — alleged social epidemic — let’s get into relationships!

So, I read this article and chuckled; my first thought being to write, “I’m very realistic, I’d marry a woman that looks like any Playboy Playmate, no particular look.” I love irony. But then I started reading the comments and what I find startling is the number people who actually believe this is a widely experienced problem. I'm sure there are some who are influenced in unrealistic ways by a variety of film genres, but to state that Hollywood is ruining relationships? Puh-leeze!

You know what’s unrealistic? Trying to live up to the fantasies we are told to uphold as the “right” ways to live, especially when it comes to relationships; that we are by natural design monogamous animals, that a supernatural being created us in his own image with the male as the head of the household and we should follow the rules codified in religious texts that were first written in the Iron Age.

All the married people I know realize relationships can be difficult sometimes; the husband isn’t going to walk through the door with roses every night and the wife isn't going to be a nymphomaniac in bed every night. And those are just the broad strokes. With each couple there are myriad of other clichés that don’t apply.

If someone bases his or her romantic life on movies like Ten Things I Hate About You or Sleepless in Seattle, that’s a sign to move on.
Also, not all romantic comedies follow one — or even two — plot formulas, there are many; not all Hollywood movies about romance and relationships depict unrealistic expectations of love, romance and relationships, not even all of the romantic comedies.

The influence of Hollywood is vastly over-stated.

One of my Dear Brothers has been married for nearly 25 years — a long, long time. He is the quintessential happy and contented married man. I envy his tranquility. Now, my guess is, his life isn’t always tranquil, after all he has a wife, two daughters and, I believe, at least one dog and one cat. The dog and cat by themselves would drive me up a wall! But the tumultuous vagaries of family life don’t dissuade him from enjoying the beauty and company of his family. Nor even the expense.

It would be a stretch by any measure to suggest he and his loved ones have been heavily, or even slightly, influenced by Hollywood and they see a lot of movies. They are just so damn normal it’s hard to believe this is the same brother who … err … I should ask him if his daughters read this before I write that.

At any rate, his family is more like the Ward and June Cleaver of our clan — except that they have two daughters instead of two sons.
 Ever wonder why we never saw the extended families of the Cleavers? I’ve often wondered if Wally and the Beav ever had cousins. Eddy Haskell was almost a cousin … well, not really. Regardless, I’d like to know!

On the other hand, I’m heavily influenced by movies. Just watched Casino Royale, the newer one with Daniel Craig. A lot of women tell me I look a lot like Daniel Craig (see the above photo), unless I’m taking my meds in which case the voices in my head are blessedly silent. It’s hard to get any sleep when there’s a bevy of beauties saying, “You’re so sexy,” in my ears.

So, I’ve been trying to mimic the mindset of James Bond, the new millennium version, a better version of James Bond than even Sean Connery and that old Scot defined the character. It’s hard though when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

In the scene when James/Daniel is walking out of the water, heading up to the beach front mansion with the hot, hot woman who had been riding a horse — I don’t look anything like that really.

Popular media though, could heavily influence teenagers, easily creating unrealistic expectations of love and romance and what it means to be an adult man or woman. I joined the Marines partly because that, in my view created in part by popular media, appeared to be what real men do. Well, some real men do join the military, but other real men join the Peace Corps, go to college and become president.

It’s all bullshit of course, the “relationships” we see in most films and television programs and as impressionable teenagers we pick up on that celluloid advice and try to play it out in real life. Where it usually fails and that’s how we learn the difference between the celluloid fantasy world and real life.

Stereotypes, exaggerated to the extreme, are what sell movie tickets and advertising revenue on TV and that’s mostly what we get. As teens we want nothing less than what our favorite characters have; what teenage boy wouldn’t want to be Hayden Panettiere’s boyfriend or for girls, Daniel Radliffe’s girlfriend? We make up all types of romantic fantasies for our favorite stars … and then we grow out of them — usually. I still relish mine!

Truthfully, whatever influence we might derive from Hollywood, be it television, movies or music, is all in our heads, like the vast and myriad romances I have with the women I gaze at lovingly on the computer. Love doesn’t have to be a battlefield and women don’t have to appear in a men’s magazine to be beautiful. It just sells the best in our celebrity-addicted society.

And most of the world’s beautiful women don’t appear in any magazines. We just entertain the fantasy that the ones who do are the standard, but most adults have moved past that narrow view.

Except for me of course. I’m still holding out for Playmate Colleen Marie!

Posted by Tim Forkes in Media Madness at 00:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

(Page 1 of 12, totaling 12 entries) » next page