It Could Have Been a Wonderful Life
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[0 Comment]Imagine you are a therapist conducting a premarital counseling program. Couple number one comes in. She lives in L.A. and works the street as a prostitute wearing bright plastic clothes. He's one of America's top business entrepreneurs with a private jet with which he flies regularly to San Francisco to attend the opera. They say they are deeply in love and want your advice, though they assure you that they are going to be very happy together.
Okay, case number two. He's a divorced, cynical big-city newspaper writer with a reputation for hating women. She's a sweet, small-town gal, twenty years his junior, but who has trouble asserting her will and has had to end several relationships traumatically because she couldn't tell the men that she really didn't love them. In fact, she has broken off this relationship once already. By the way, they are deeply in love and are sure it's going to work out.
You are beginning to suspect this is not going to be a good day. Couple number three comes in. You recognize her. She is one of America's top movie stars, on the covers of dozens of magazines and gossip rags. Her life consists of international shopping sprees with famous friends, vacations on exotic islands, and multi-month-long on-location shoots all the while hounded by paparazzi. He's a British owner of a struggling, small travel bookshop in London. He's shy, passive, has a few close friends, and little ambition. You guessed it: They are madly in love and believe they will get on famously.
If you were a halfway decent counselor, you would do your best to prevent all three marriages. But this isn't real life, it's reel life, and here the rules are different. The above three match-ups come from romantic comedies starring Julia Roberts: (1) Pretty Woman, (2) Runaway Bride, and (3) Notting Hill. With matches this crossed, we should cheer all the heartier when she doesn't get the man in My Best Friend's Wedding.
Our culture takes many of its cues from movies. These modern myths on celluloid do more than entertain us, they help spread what the culture thinks is important, how we do things, what we should look like, and so on. And one of the most loved genres of films is the romantic comedy.
Many call our high-divorce society "anti-marriage," but you won't get that from our boy-meets-girl movies. Instead of anti-marriage messages, we learn that there is someone special out there just for you. No matter how mismatched you two are, love will overcome all differences. If you begin a relationship with mad, passionate love, the marriage will have no problems and you will be happy forever after. In fact, according to these movies, our fulfillment—no matter how rich, how successful, how accomplished we may otherwise be—depends on us finding and bonding with our soulmates. If we don't, well, that's the subject of a recent romantic comedy, called Family Man.
Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2001, Spring
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