Am I the only one who gets really depressed after watching a chick flick? Movies like The Princess Bride or 10 Things I Hate About You are so perfect that they make me feel empty and sad about my life, whether I’m single or not. It’s uncanny, even hearing the Pride & Prejudice theme song makes my throat choke up and I feel unbelievably melancholy. So why can’t I stop myself from watching any happy-ever-after Meg Ryan movie or swooning to Ryan Gosling’s crazy stupid smile?
How many times have you exasperatedly sighed at the TV “All I want is a man like that,” (Mr. Darcy) or “Is that too much to ask?!” once the credits roll? Anytime this happens, we are expecting a dangerous image of love and romance that may not exist. Maybe chick flicks really are emotional porn. Traditional porn creates a false physical ideal for women’s bodies and sexuality, but chick flicks create a false emotional ideal for relationships and love.
It sounds pessimistic. Every girl wants her happy ending, and we deserve it! But chick flicks are a substitute for a real thing and used to elicit an emotional reaction, just like traditional porn is used to elicit a physical reaction. They make me think of Ray Bradbury’s “Happiness Machine” in his novel, Dandelion Wine. In this novel, the character Leo Auffman, a brilliant inventor, develops a machine that recreates all of the wonderful things in life. However, when his son and his wife try the machine, they leave it crying because it shows them all of the things that they will never be able to experience. It showed his wife the beauties of Paris, but she had never thought of going to Paris before, and yet suddenly she does. But the closest she’ll ever get is inside this machine where it’s almost as beautiful and yet she knows it’s not real.
Happiness is not in the realm of inventions. As Ray Bradbury’s character Leo Auffman says, “Some hour, someday, we all got to climb out of that thing and go back to dirty dishes and the beds not made. While you’re in that thing, sure. A sunset lasts forever almost, the air smells good, the temperature is fine. All the things you want to last, last. But outside, the children wait on lunch, the clothes need buttons.” Chick flicks might make you happy while they last, but once they’re over, you have to come back to reality.
Does this mean that watching chick flicks is a problem? No. But they become a problem when they set false expectations for real life.