The Big Lie Love Stories Tell Us
- Andrew Harmon
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- Andrew Harmon
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When I was a senior in high school, my girlfriend sat me down and made me watch The Notebook. By the time the credits rolled I was terrified.
Even the relatively inexperienced, adolescent version of me recognized that this movie had just set the bar for romance at an unreasonably precarious height. Putting aside the fact that Ryan Gosling was just impossibly good looking, he’d also just hung from a ferris wheel to announce his love for Allie. He’d handwritten her love letters every day for a year. And finally, he won her over by building her a house. The story tells us that it was the doing of all these things that made him ultimately successful. (And he does all this, by the way, despite the fact that in most of these situations she is dating another man.)
Now remember, this was my girlfriend’s favorite movie at the time. And she had already watched it no less that 6 times in the past month. So as I left her place that night, I remember brooding over just how much I hated movies like these.
“They just set completely unrealistic expectations for young girls who want to fall in love,” I thought. “You can’t build a meaningful relationship out of nothing but make-out scenes and wild romantic gestures. True love is deeper and more complex than that. And there is no way that story was the foundation for a marriage that lasted a lifetime and had the power to somehow defy the medical realties of Alzheimer’s disease. How am I suppose to be a good boyfriend if my girlfriend is being influenced by this lunacy? Curse you, The Notebook! Curse you!“
I’m not sure that I shook my fist at the sky that night, but I was a pretty dramatic kid——so there is a very real chance that I did.
The Premise
Looking back, I don’t disagree with my teenage interpretation.
The Notebook’s not so subtle how-to steps for building a deep life-long romance are problematic at best when applied to real life. In fact, many reviewers at the time were quick to point this out.
What I did not recognize at the time, and would not fully distill until far too late into my 20s, was the obvious fact that romantic stories do not just influence humans of the female persuasion, like my girlfriend. They influence men too.
(I’ll take a quick break for any of the ladies reading this to execute a well deserved eye-roll at younger me. Or whatever version of shade fits your fancy. I earned it. Proceed.)
Obviously, love stories speak volumes to men and women alike. And while films like the Notebook do tend to target a female demographic by playing up fantasies about what an untethered romance could look like, we all connect to stories of love, desire and intimacy, because the need for connection is a universally human need.
Despite this being obvious, though, it seems like much of the conversation surrounding romantic plot lines and their influence on society has still been disproportionately honed in on young ladies.
“Disney Princess movies encourage young girls to wait for a man to save them!”
“Twilight glorifies an unhealthy infatuation with dangerous men!”
Regardless of the criticism, or the overall validity of it, we as a society do seem to spend more time thinking about how love stories will shape the romantic lives of our little girls, than those of our little boys.
So, if you have a few more minutes, I’d like to take the time to explore a devious element of romantic stories that influences boys and girls alike… but really sort of mostly boys. You’ll see.
Ready? Here goes?
The Story Problem
Romantic storylines in any genre, specifically ones with with a male protagonist, tend to strip the female love-interest of her humanity and autonomy by ignoring her ability to choose
Let me break this statement down for moment, because it’s a bit of a doozie. I’ll start by laying a few ground rules to create a clearer framework for thinking about this phenomenon.
Romantic storylines in any genre…
To start, this is an issue that exists in many romantic plot lines, not just those from Romantic Comedies or other traditional romance genres.
This is an issue that usually arises unintentionally, because of the necessities of story structure and can affect any story where a protagonist chooses a love interest. Action, Sci-Fi, and Horror stories are not immune.
… specifically ones with a male protagonist…
This is not to say, that this mysterious issue doesn’t arise in stories involving a female protagonist. It can and does. However, male protagonists are still unfortunately far more common in our stories today.
We all tend to see ourselves in the characters that look like us, so men have a larger opportunity of seeing stories where they are the protagonist making key choices and a woman is the love interest.
… tend to strip the female love-interest of her humanity and autonomy by ignoring her ability to choose
It is to this statement that we are going to devote the rest of our time. And to really get to the bottom of it, we’ll need to unpack a few crucial building blocks of storytelling.
The Active Protagonist
Everyone knows that the protagonist is the main character in a story.
This is normally true, but from a story structure level a protagonist is defined differently. The protagonist, specifically an Active Protagonist, is the character whose actions and choices propel the plot forward. This character is an active force and by pursuing their wants and needs create change in the world of their story.
A Passive Protagonist, on the other hand, allows the events of the story to happen to them while their actions and choices have little or no effect on what ultimately transpires in the world.
It’s important to note that almost every memorable protagonist is an active one. Frodo may be forced by Gandalf, initially, to take the ring out of the Shire, but it is his decision to take it out of Rivendell and all the way to Mordor that transforms him into a compelling active protagonist.
This scenario is referred to as “the reluctant hero” and is a fairly common plot device. Like Frodo, this trope occurs when in the first act of a story a protagonist has to be pushed into action by outside forces. However once he or she takes action, their decisions and actions, even their complacency, cause notable consequences for the rest of story.
If Frodo’s choices did not constitute change and create conflict for the Fellowship, or Middle Earth as a whole, then The Lord of The Rings would not be Frodo’s story. He would simply not be the protagonist, or if he was the story would feel meandering and meaningless.
Following this thread on character roles, supporting characters only matter to the story in so much as their actions and choices effect the protagonist. Old Ben Kenobi only matters to the audience because his guidance is so transformative to Luke. And his death is heartbreaking to us because of how much Luke has lost by it.
Similarly, the Antagonist is simply the supporting character whose choices and action come in direct conflict to the Protagonists goals. This is how a morally upstanding detective can be the “Bad Guy” in a heist film about a bank robber with a heart of gold.
The Protagonist Lover
But what does all of this have to do with romance? How does an Active Protagonist inherently “strip a female love interests of her humanity?”
Glad you asked.
In romantic storylines, the Protagonist, by definition, is the character whose choices directly cause the happy ending. In the age-old romantic comedy trope, “Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back,” it is the boy who is ultimately the cause of both the loss and the “get back.”
The boy, acting as the protagonist, makes choices that push the girl away. She may choose to leave him, but this choice of her’s is almost always (again, by definition of character) a direct result of the protagonist’s poor actions. Likewise, at the climax of the movie, when he arrives to make amends and get her back (usually on a plane or at a train station of some kind… you know the scene), the success of the happily ever after is a direct result of his perfect apology or his execution of the grand romantic gesture.
Regardless, the girl’s decision to be with him rides on him making the right move.
The hero gets the girl if he completes the mission right.
The Love Interest Object
When broken down like this, the Love Interest quickly starts to shift from a fully autonomous person, into a reward for a fully transformed protagonist.
Like a magical box at the end of an Indiana Jones adventure, our hero simply has to jump to all the right squares, say all the right passwords and dodge all the dangerous booby traps. The love interest has left clues thoroughout the film of what she needs to be won—some overt, some more veiled behind womanly wiles.
But once our unlikely hero, solves the mystery and transforms himself into the man she wants and needs, then she will always say yes. The story gives her no other option, because it is his story. His choices lead to his success, because he is the protagonist.
Simply put, Jasmine can yell, “I am not a prize to be won,” all she wants. But when Aladdin’s choices are the only ones that matter to the outcome of the story, the movie is still telling us that she is.
Inversely, in a tragedy the hero’s poor choices ultimately lead to his failure. Tragedy love stories are pretty uncommon, but they don’t change the principle of protagonist control. If the hero fails to get the girl, it is because he failed to do the right thing. The tragic nature of the story nearly always implies that had he made a different choice, things would have worked out differently.
His choice determines the ending.
Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the most famous romantic tragedy, but interestingly is an exception to this trope. As the title implies, both Romeo and Juliet are co-protagonists in the story. We can see this because each make significant choices that ultimately lead to their downfall. (Though if we’re keeping score, Romeo still makes a lot more.)
The Antagonist Love Interest
Sometimes the Love Interest is actually the Antagonist of the story. Not because they are the bad guy but because their desires directly interfere with the main desires of the protagonist—namely the desire to be together.
If the Protagonist wants to be together, then all a love interest has to do to be the antagonist is to simply value something else higher than this. Maybe it’s moving across the country to pursue a job. Or a life of independence. Or, in the worst possible scenario for our hero, she might actually value another romantic partner more.
In a lot of stories this competing character, is a horrible person that the girl is just inexplicably attached to. Think of Steve in season one of Stranger Things or Flash Thomson in Sam Rami’s Spider-man. If the hero can convince the girl to leave the jerk, he wins. It may be her choice to leave, but without our hero’s actions she wouldn’t have done it.
It’s interesting to note that even though the jerk might be a “bad guy” here, he is still not always the antagonist. It is the love interest’s desire to be with the jerk that must be overcome by the protagonist. His actions must change her desires.
In slightly more complex stories, the competing boyfriend character might actually be a great guy. Think of any character that James Marsden played between 1999 and 2010, including the aforementioned “other guy” in The Notebook.
This character has no obvious fault. His only flaw to the audience is not being the protagonist. Again, it is the love interest’s attraction to this other wonderful guy that serves as the source of antagonism for our protagonist to overcome. Without the protagonist’s actions, there is literally no reason for the girl to leave this other man. But this is our protagonist’s story, so his choices do have power. So ultimately we hope that he does do all the right things, because when he does the girl will choose him.
Real Life Choices
In storytelling, there is a thing called perspective bias. Basically, the audience is most likely to root for the character that they spend the most time with. This is how we can root for Jesse Pinkman [massive spoiler alert!] to shoot a perfectly nice chemistry nerd in the head. In our own lives, there is no one that we spend more time with than ourselves. This automatically makes each of us the protagonist in our own story. And if this is true, then it is our actions that will ultimately influence the outcomes in our lives.
The problem is that real life doesn’t actually work this way.
Try as we might, our choices don’t always have the greatest noticeable effect on the world around us. Specifically, our actions may not ultimately affect the choices of the people around us. Because unlike the supporting cast of a story, real people are not inherently defined by their relationship to us. They are their own protagonists and their choices have weight for them, that we may not be able to influence.
This may sound obvious, but it is radical departure from what our hearts long for when we look at our lives through a story shaped lens.
500 Days of Summer
Mark Webb’s 500 Days of Summer captured this reality more poignantly than any other recent story. [Spoilers ahead] Much has already been written about the two main characters, Tom and Summer, and which of them contributed more to the eventual failure of the relationship.
But I think this debate misses the point entirely. The way that this film succeeds at so authentically mirroring real heartbreak is by abandoning the idea that either Tom or Summer is a traditional protagonist all together. Just like in real life, neither of them is capable of making a choice that can overwrite the other person’s desires. This is summed up beautifully in their last scene together.
Tom: You never wanted to be anyone’s girlfriend and now you’re somebody’s wife.
Summer: It surprised me too.
Tom: I don’t think I’ll ever understand that. I mean, it doesn’t make sense.
Summer: It just happened
Tom: Right, but that’s what I don’t understand. What just happened?
Summer: I just woke up one day and I knew.
Tom: Knew what?
Summer: What I was never sure of with you.
In a traditional tragedy this is the scene where we would learn what Tom did wrong. With a traditional protagonist, we would learn what choice he made that caused him to lose the love of his life.
Even Tom seems convinced of this. He spends this whole exchange searching for his mistake. Which lever on the Summer treasure chest did he pull out of order? Where did he go left when he should have gone right? Despite his heartbreak, an answer to this question is comforting because it would reassure Tom that his choices are the ones that matter. In the story of his life, his actions decide the ultimate outcome.
But Summer can’t give him this.
Because just like in the real world, in this story his choices do not have the power to change Summer’s mind. Her choices and desires, despite being in conflict with his, have equal weight. She chose someone else, not because Tom failed, but because her desires have the ultimate sway over her life.
Just like Tom’s desires ultimately have the most sway over his. There is no flaw in Summer that is a deal breaker for him. Her choice to reject him, even her choice to marry another man cannot influence him to love her less. His choice is to love her and she can’t change that either.
It is in this impasse that many of us can get stuck in our own love stories. “If only I had played that scenario differently they would still be here.” “If only I was different, then they would love me.” But this rejects that those whom we desire have full autonomy in their own choices.
You are absolutely the hero in your own story… but so are they.