Love, according to media

BY ASHTYN HANSARD

Digital Media Director

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching and many famous romcoms and romance novels are beginning to gain popularity again. However, I begin to question why we, the consumers, are so obsessed with love stories.

Do we try to use fictional relationships as a sort of guide for our own lives? Is love in the media portrayed accurately, or is it really just a far fetched dream that can only be achieved through fictional characters?

Think of the Disney movies you watched as a kid.

A normal but beautiful girl falls in love with a prince, and they live happily ever after.

Is it accurate to real life? No, but it’s a nice story to tell a child because it’s magical. As we get older, we start to see how ridiculous some of the characters acted and the magic of the movie starts to fade.

What about real love? Not the fairy tales and “love at first sight” stories, but the real, relatable stories that you could see happening in real life. Is there any story that can show a realistic depiction of love?

I believe that some media can accurately show what real love can look like, but it’s not as easy as you’d think.

Love itself is hard to define in its entirety, mainly since it’s such a complex emotion.

Some could argue that love doesn’t exist while others could argue that love is seen everywhere. With such a broad range of description, you would think it would be easy to make a good representation.

However, I don’t think a lot of love stories and romcoms today show a real depiction of the emotion.

If you know me, you know how much I love movies and books, but I find it really hard to get into the romance genre due to how ridiculous some of the stories are. I want to yell at the TV or throw my book because the characters just seem so two-dimensional and boring that I lose interest in the story.

As I’ve watched movies or shows and read books, I’ve noticed a certain aspect that really makes me believe that the love between the characters is real: It isn’t about the love story.

Some of the best love stories I’ve ever seen or read weren’t focused on romantic relationships, but rather a larger and more relatable plot that allowed love to be found within itself. That larger plot usually tends to be grief.

One example is the series “Fleabag.” The story follows a woman, who somehow remains unnamed throughout the series, who is dealing with plenty of personal problems while having a semi-complicated love life. However, the story is really about someone else that we never meet.

Throughout the story, the woman is trying to fully process the grief she’s experiencing after her best friend and mother have died. She uses these failing relationships and the comfort of them to keep from having to deal with the reality of her emotions and the loss of the people she loves.

Emily Henry’s novel “Beach Read” also uses grief as a main plotline. While it is a romance novel, the couple is not the sole focus, but more of an outcome of the two characters grieving a part of their lives. January, the main character, is having to navigate life after the sudden death of her father and the discovery of his secret second life comes to light.

One of the more famous love stories is “Me Before You.” Louisa falls for Will, a quadriplegic, while being his caregiver. Even as they grow close and begin to have romantic feelings for one another, Will decides to end his life through medical assistance. This leaves Louisa in a grieving state, but there’s also a bittersweet feeling of love left with it.

There’s also the entire relationship between Katniss and Peeta in the “Hunger Games” trilogy. At the end of the third book, “Mockingjay,” both characters have had their lives completely changed. Katniss’ sister, Prim, has died when she was the whole reason Katniss even entered the games. Peeta has been mind controlled to the point where he still doesn’t truly know who Katniss is.

While they’re no longer the same people they were when they first competed, they come together in the end. Peeta helps Katniss work through her grief while Katniss helps Peeta work through his grief of losing himself, the one thing he wanted to avoid.

“Wandavision,” a popular Marvel show, has a line in their last episode that I feel correlates well with the point I’m trying to make. Vision, Wanda’s late husband, says to her in a flashback, “What is grief, if not love persevering?”

While many romantic subplots use grief as an overall theme, it does not have to be limited to romance. There has been success with using it to show familial love and how grief can either bring a family closer together or drive them apart.

Take “The Haunting of Hill House” series as an example. The Crain siblings have to endure a traumatic experience of their mother dying due to suicide when they were kids. When they get older, their youngest sister, Nell, dies the same way in the same house.

The grief of losing them both starts to drive the siblings apart, but they recover in the end and grow their love for one another. Nell gives a speech in the last episode while appearing to them as a ghost, but it perfectly encapsulates the entire Crain sibling relationship.

“Forgiveness is warm. Like a tear on a cheek. Think of that and of me when you stand in the rain. I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti,” Nell said in her speech.

While the Crain siblings are a good example, some may think it’s not very realistic due to the paranormal aspect.

The movie “Bridge to Terabithia” also depicts love in a very realistic yet quiet way.

Jess and Leslie become childhood best friends and live next door to each other. It’s clear that they love each other, although we don’t know for sure if it’s romantic or platonic given they’re just kids. When Leslie dies in an accident, Jess doesn’t really know what to do and becomes angry with everything.

All these examples listed are just some of my ideas on how real love is portrayed in the media. We may not see these situations played out in real life often, but they’re able to connect with us deeply and maybe inspire us to know that some of the greatest love stories can happen in the darkest times.