Seeing American society as it is today, I think it’s fair to say that the two greatest motivations of sin in society are money and sex. A great example of this is the movies produced nowadays.
There are always a great number of romantic or sex-based movies playing in theaters. I can easily rattle titles off the top of my head: “The Vow,” “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” “Magic Mike,” and countless others.
I’m not saying those films aren’t entertaining or that I don’t enjoy watching them, because they are and I do. As humans, we enjoy watching the drama unravel, and the happy endings work out.
However, after viewing those similar plots over and over again, I believe they can create a sense of a false mindset in how people view relationships.
Teenage girls are expecting boys to be as sweet and honest as Channing Tatum in “The Vow,” or as chiseled as Tatum in “Magic Mike”—it’s even the same actors and actresses.
On the other hand, boys may expect girls to be as sexual as Mila Kunis in “Friends with Benefits,” or as oblivious as Reese Witherspoon in “This is War.”
Both genders can expect relationships to work out in ways not possible in real life. What people often fail to realize is that movies are movies. Life isn’t perfect, and happy endings don’t conclude every life storyline.
With our society being increasingly media-driven, it’s frightening to think of how future generations will view relationships. I have friends who use romantic comedies as a basis for real life relationship advice. And they do so honestly with the best intentions, which is the scariest part.
In the 2011 movie starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, “Friends with Benefits,” Kunis plays the hopeless romantic character of Jamie. At one point in the movie, Jamie says that she “wishes her life was like a movie.”
That line in the film stuck with me, because it caused me to think, “Don’t we all?” If I could have a life that panned out like Jamie’s in “Friends with Benefits,” then life would be good—or so you’d think.
What we need to realize is that it’s simply not realistic. If life were that easy, there would be no challenge. We would just be robots for some great producer, yet we as humans have choices to make.
It’s important to live life based on experience, and based on yourself—not based off of some movie made to draw audiences to gain money.
It might be easy to imagine how life would be if it were modeled after a movie. The key word is “easy.” Real life isn’t easy. It’s a challenge, but it just gives us all the more reason to live it with purpose.
My only hope is that future generations realize this, rather than taking advice from a movie character.
