The Notebook is one of the most well-known romantic drama movies of the recent past. For the few and far between that have not seen it, it was released in 2004 and stars Rachel McAdams as Allie, a rich young woman who is in town for the summer, and Ryan Gosling as Noah, a working-class local. The two meet and fall in love in a whirlwind of a summer romance, and then life comes crashing down to remind them they should not be together. A widely loved classic, The Notebook is a spin on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, as both couples are star-crossed lovers. I, however, am not a fan.
First and foremost, the infamous ferris wheel scene is atrocious. Noah has his very first conversation with Allie at this point in the movie, and asks her to dance. She has no idea who he is, so she says no. He follows up by asking why not. If someone said that to me, I would immediately think “red flag” and move on. Unfortunately for Allie, Noah does not stop there. He sees her on the ferris wheel with another guy and jumps on with them, again asking Allie to go out with him. Once again, she says no.
Since this movie takes place in the 1940s, the ferris wheel can only accommodate two passengers at a time. Once the operator sees Noah has made it, so three people are riding, he stops the wheel and yells at him. Noah gets off the bench and hangs onto the bars of the wheel, and asks Allie again, but her reply stays the same. He then says she leaves him with no other choice and releases one hand so that he is hanging from just one hand high off the ground. They go back and forth a few more times, and his hand begins to slip. He says he’s going to ask one more time (but does not bring his other arm up to hold on) so Allie is forced to say yes. Noah then finally holds on with both hands, and as payback, Allie pantses him.
If you ask someone out and they say no, leave it at that. What young, impressionable people often take from this scene is that if you ask someone to go out enough times, especially if you put yourself in danger while doing so, they will eventually agree to go out with you. While that might be technically true, you would not be winning them over, you would simply be forcing them into something they never wanted in the first place.
The next scene I’m skeptical about happens on another day (I am not sure how far in the future). Noah approaches Allie on the street and says that he had to be next to her because he was drawn to her. She laughs in response, replying with, “What a line.” He brings up their date, and she says she changed her mind and does not want to go out with him, but he keeps pushing. He says that when he sees something he likes, “…I gotta–I love it. I go crazy for it.”
This whole scene highlights how creepy Noah is. Allie has every right to change her mind, especially considering she never wanted to go out with Noah in the first place. Not to mention how uncomfortable the whole “…when I see something that I like…” line is.
These two scenes set up the rest of the icks in the movie. These include how The Notebook uses a worn-out cliché where one of them is rich and the other one is not, and therefore, the rich one’s parents do not approve of the relationship. Another is that Allie ends up cheating on her rich fiancée to be with Noah.