I'm gonna have to side with bon on this one, the critique of romcoms as setting up "unrealistic expectations" implies that women are weak at reality testing.

That said, I'm not convinced women are the ones with the problem, or at least not the only ones. After all, wasn't it men who mistook "24" for effective interrogation techniques?

But most people will be in relationships with weirdly set expectations.

This would happen if fiction was never invented. It's the nature of relationships. Most people don't stab models with icepicks, but it's also not that case that violence has increased as we've been more exposed to violence (eta: in movies, VG, etc). Or marriage. Or pregnancy. I find it so weird that you, defender of nearly every genre ever invented, say that this particular one has socially undesirable effects.

Given that the vast majority of entertainment I have consumed since the age of 10 or so had contained at least one, and mostly many, murders, it is amazing that I am able to function in the world. I mean, given the apparent likelihood of my being killed, according to all (fictional) indications.

wrod.

I'm gonna have to side with bon on this one, the critique of romcoms as setting up "unrealistic expectations" implies that women are weak at reality testing.

I'm not attributing this to women, but American culture. The problem is in how the culture conceives of love/sex/intimacy. Romantic comedies aren't responsible for that; they're just a symptom of it. I think men fully participate in this myth (though in different ways.)

I'm not that concerned with people having "unrealistic romantic expectations." Partly because that's just a byproduct of the larger problem and partly because...who doesn't?

HA! There's No Salmon Fishing In the Yemen, Warns Yemen Board of Tourism

Yet another way movies (or their titles -- I haven't seen the flick in question) do not reflect reality!

Unless of course you ARE an axe murderer, Jesse... if that is your real name.

I'm gonna have to side with bon on this one, the critique of romcoms as setting up "unrealistic expectations" implies that women are weak at reality testing.

I don't think the calculation is as simple as all that, because we all watch violent media without becoming violent, and play crazy video games, and so forth, and very few people actually shape their behavior explicitly on what we see in television or movies -- or that we read in romance novels, either!

But plenty of studies have shown that media does have an effect on people's behavior: girls shown visual images of women scientists before a test do better than girls shown visual images of only men scientists. These effects don't apply the same way, with the same strength, to everyone, but they do, in general, have an effect.

So while, yeah, I know, rationally, that I'm not going to "meet cute" John Cusack and end up with him standing outside my window with a boombox, there's probably also a part of my subconscious with some expectations about what romance is like that is always going to be dissatisfied.

I don't think I can say, "Saying romantic comedies has a toxic effect on expectations denigrates women's ability to distinguish reality from fantasy," while at the same time asserting that it's important for media to provide good role models for girls and children of color. Because it's the same issue, isn't it? Media's ability to seep into our subconscious, whether we're aware of it or not. That's why we have sites like racebending.com, or feministfrequency, or whatever.

As a friend of mine on LJ says, it's always more complicated.

I think the largely pedestrian settings and nigh-universal plotlines may make rom-coms (and realistic dramas) have more of an effect on expectations than other genres. I don't see much chance of becoming embroiled in spy intrigue or a fight between alien machines disguised as mini coopers, but dating woes, family issues, etc. have a lot more relevance to my daily life rather than being pure escapism.

Not that it's always a bad thing. I credit Fluffer with giving me an epiphany about a one-sided infatuation dynamic similar to that between the lead characters that I was mired in when I saw it. And the realization it brought on sparked a "fuck this noise!" reaction, helping me stop wasting time and get on with my life.

What Consuela said.