Romance Movies: An Appraisal

Although people give less consideration when it
comes to issue of love especially, our Nigeria parents. But the world is build upon love and caring and it is a natural phenomenon built in the heart which develops a likeness towards people of different gender.
According to Tim Dirks, Romantic films are love stories or affairs of the heart that centre on passion, emotion, and romantic or affectionate involvement of the main characters and journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Dirks also said that love movies make the story or search for love the main plot focus. Often time, lovers on screen romance face obstacles and the hazards of hardship, finance, physical illness, racial or social class status, occupation, psychological restrains, or family that threaten to break their union and attainment of love.
Romantic films often explore the essential themes of love at first sight, young (and older) love, unrequired love, obsessive love, sentimental love, spiritual love, forbidden love, sexual and passionate love, sacrificial love, explosive and destructive love, and tragic love. Romantic films serve as great fantasies for viewers, especially if the two people finally overcome heir difficulties, declare their love, and experience life “happily ever after”.
Most people do not design their life style themselves, but rather depend on what they see in the media which they regard as role model and copy it. Gerbner observed that most of what we know or think we know, we have never personally experienced. We know these things because of the stories we see and hear in the media.
Watching romance film has a great Effects on personal relationships and interpretations of romance, love and relationships. It creates an enormous amount of negative influence on the viewer’s interpretation of what love and what relationships should be like. These films give a false sense of reality in terms of marriage, dating, having children and how to manage a relationship. Viewers, all too frequently, try to relate their personal life to that of a dramatized screenplay and as left searching for that happy ending indefinitely. The viewers are using these films are a guide to life. This often leads to a distorted relationship because unnatural emotions and attitudes are being enforced.
Recently, researchers at Heriot Watt University’s Family and Personal Relationship Laboratory in Edinburgh, which studies best practices in relationship counseling, completed a study of 40 Hollywood romantic comedies released between 1995-2005. They found that problems typically reported by couples in relationship counseling at their counseling center reflect misconceptions about love and romance depicted in Hollywood films.
“Relationship counsellors often face common misconceptions in their clients “Relationship counsellors often face common misconceptions in their clients.- that if your partner truly loves you they’d know what you need without you communicating it, that your soul mate is predestined. We did a rigorous content analysis of romantic comedies and found that the same issues were being portrayed in these films,” the university’s Dr Bjarne Holmes says. The fact that Hollywood sells us an enhanced version of romance should come as no surprise, of course. But does that portrayal reflect a pre-existing expectation that film buffs hold.
As part of their research, Dr Holmes’ team had around 130 student volunteers watch the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity, while another group of the same size watched a David Lynch drama. Viewers of the romantic comedy were found to be more likely to believe in fate and destiny. It was a small study confined to one regio but, Dr Holmes argues, “it does give us some indication of the effects of romantic comedies”,
Mary-Lou Galician, Head of Media Analysis and Criticism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University, whose research in the 1990s found similar results to Holmes’ study, says uncovering conscious and subconscious romantic motivation is a difficult process, and the role of movies is uncertain.
Still, Galician, blames mass media portrayals of romance for the failure of her own early relationships – advises people to be cautious about watching too many romantic comedies, and remain aware that such movies might cause problems in their own relationships. “If there were suggestions something was dangerous for you, even if the results were in small numbers, it might not be a bad idea to be cautious,” she says.
Watching romance movies create a great false interpretation of what relationship should look like, therefore people should be aware that some romance films are just for entertainment purpose not always what happens in reality. Also films try to show how things are supposed to be, not how it is happening in reality.
Tom is an intern with The Tide.

Adama Tom