Introduction
Love has been described in as many ways as there are stars in the sky or sands on the beach; it has been described as eternal, fleeting, constant, abrupt, logical, illogical, biological and even psychological, in fact there are so many concepts, descriptions, words, phrases and even piles of poetry that attempt to define love that attempting encapsulate it into a single phrase or line is to ask for the impossible (Riley, 1).
Yet the common theme for all literature and oral traditions that encompass the concept of love is that they all state that love is something deeply personal and as such is based on personal perspective. This would probably explain why there are so many definitions of the concept since if every individual is unique then the ways in which they interpret love must be unique as well.
As such, based on my personal perspective love is something that comes from seeing that special someone and wishing them nothing but happiness, for me love is neither emotional nor fallacious rather it is the willingness to cast away all logic, all feeling and even common sense in favor of truly seeing someone that you care about happy.
On the other hand my own personal experience with love is that it is a torture beyond all tortures, it is sacrificial with no actual compensation in the end and it is even at times incredibly stupid blinding a person to what is in front of them. Evidence of this can be seen in the main character of the story “Love is a Fallacy” since love apparently blinded him to the true nature of Polly Espy (Shulman, 1).
It is actually rather interesting to note that in many modern day retellings of love it is either shown that love is blind or that love is sacrificial yet few ever delve into the concept of love being cynical in fact I can even say that to love someone in reality is to understand the difference between fantasy and the real world.
It is often the case that that the popular concept of love portrayed in films and modern day literature is far from realistic and represents an ideal reality that people yearn for yet one that is nothing more than fantasy for the rest of society.
A twist of fate causing an ordinary boy and rich girl to fall in love, a young woman changing the heart of a beast to that of a man, two of the most unlikely people in the world getting together, love conquers all, and the concept of sacrifice being the ultimate expression of love are all themes seen in many of today’s most remembered and adored stories of love yet are any of these themes truly realistic? For many of us living in reality the account of the main character in the short story “Love is Fallacy” is something closer to what love is like.
You see someone you like, you try to court them and in the end they break your heart and choose someone that’s completely illogical and who doesn’t seem to truly love them (Shulman, 1).
This is the story that a lot of us have lived, with the dramatization of love seen in modern day literature and movies being the ideal that most of us wish that love was truly like. A lot of girls want to be treated as a princess, ordinary guys want to have a chance with beautiful girls, and people want to feel special, wanted and even to experience the sort of love that they only hear about.
Yet as I mentioned before this desire is connected to the concept of the “ideal” sort of love which represents the perfect possible outcome people can achieve. Unfortunately we live in an imperfect world where the ideal is often unreachable, impossible and unlikely to happen to the vast majority of the population.
As such if I were to compare present day stories such as those seen in “Titanic”, “the Little Mermaid” and “Shrek” I would say that they represent an unrealistic ideal with stories such as “Love is Fallacy” being the true nature of love wherein people make mistakes, get hurt and lose the person they care about.
In the story “Titanic” the ongoing theme of love within the movie is that it can conquer all and that true love is one based on sacrifice as seen in the scene involving Jack and Rose where he stays in the water in order to make sure that she survives. While it may be true that true love can indeed induce such a degree of sacrifice it is at times hardly believable that someone would sacrifice his life for a girl he just met and entered into a relationship with in just a few weeks.
A more realistic account can be seen in the story “Love is Fallacy” where it is shown that Polly Espy doesn’t truly love the main character since she’s only been with him for a few days. In fact it can even be seen that the main character in the story placed Polly on a pedestal and completely ignored all her faults resulting in his utter and complete disappointment later on when she chose to be with a person on the basis of him following a fad.
The basis of the formation of a relationship in “Love is a Fallacy” is similar to that of the delusion many of us attribute to our crushes where we create a perfect picture of them in our mind and create all sorts of wonderful scenarios only to have them crushed in the end.
In Titanic we see two people that immediately fall madly in love resulting in the sacrifice of one for the sake of the other, hardly realistic, will probably never happen in reality and undoubtedly would be the sort of movie many people would love to watch since it portrays the “ideal” love which they could never attain through their crushes.
In a way, the continued portrayal of ideal love in popular culture could be described as an understanding by film makers and authors that people desire for the impossible and work towards something they will never reach.
For example, the main character in the story “Love is Fallacy” aspired to mold the character of Polly Espy into his ideal woman yet from the earlier part of the story all the way till its latter half it is evident to readers that such an action is futile. In the film Titanic it is shown that Jack and Rose are madly in love yet it also equally evident to the audience that it is truly impossible for them to get together.
From my point of view people read books and watch movies on ideal love since for them they will never truly attain it, it is something that continues to torture them and the only way they can feel some sort of closure is by watching movies where the main character embodies their efforts and actually succeeds instead of failing like they had done.
One of the more ironic aspects of the story “Love is a Fallacy” is that despite the fact that Petey traded her for a raccoon skin coat Polly still chose him over someone that seemingly truly loved her. For me a fallacy is something that truly doesn’t make sense and the outcome of the efforts of the main character is rather fallacious wherein Polly accords the same value of a potentially successful young man to one that is probably destined to a life with no notable claim to fame and will probably become poor.
Despite the fallacy it is often seen that women make the worst decisions when it comes to those they love where situations such as those seen in the movie Twilight where instead of being brutally murdered and drained of blood the main character Bella actually becomes a vampire through ideal circumstances. From this perspective it can be seen that people do indeed wish for the best in their ideal love yet reality often results in people choosing the worst situations for apparently the stupidest reasons.
Conclusion
Based on the various views and accounts provided, it can be seen that the portrayal of love in modern day film and literature is often unrealistic and is nothing more than a means of appeasing the desire of people to see their ideal love.
People want and need the ideal love in their live yet accounts such as those seen in the story “Love is a Fallacy” is often what they get. As such, it is no surprise that movies and literature portraying the ideal romance continue to be so popular since they serve as a means of giving hope to people that the ideal love is out there despite the fact that it will probably never come true for them.
Works Cited
Riley, Miles O’Brien. Love : It’s An Inside Job. Alcazar Audioworks, 2008. Audiobook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web.
Shulman, Max. “Love is a Fallacy.” Asknlearn. N.p., n.d. Web.