On Screen vs Off Screen

“I’m just a girl standing here, in front of a boy asking him to love her.”- Notting Hill.

Now tell me, how many people have you ever heard say that in real life?

Not convinced, let me try something else-

Take off your glasses and go to school. Now tell me, how much changed?

Okay, I’ll try one last thing- Riverdale? (Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought)

I’m not trying to be cynical because I honestly love Notting Hill and I am a sucker for romance movies and cute TV shows but sometimes it leads me feeling more empty than happy.

I want to talk about this topic that I slightly touched upon in the previous blog. Every now and then I stop to think about this question-

I love watching movies and television shows and I love keeping up with pop culture and looking into the deeper meaning of movies and watching movie commentaries but I always wonder- why do movies depict such a perfect life when ours is so far from it?

I have come up with two possibilities-

Number one,

Escapism?

So, you must be wondering- what is escapism?

Well, according to Google- ‘The tendency to seek distraction, and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.’

Honestly, I get it- life can be so hard sometimes, and maybe if our world isn’t perfect, the one we are watching can be. We romanticize having the perfect life we see in the movies and even the movies which use this topic as satire often depicting an even more unrealistic event than the movies they are making fun of.

Can escapism be a good thing?

I mean, to a certain extent of course it can be a good thing. Sometimes your thoughts are just too loud and your head feels so noisy and all you need is a distraction- so no matter the movie, you just need to stop thinking for a while.

But, something to keep in mind- escapism can be more harmful than it can do good. Falling too deep into the house of escapism might make you realize that there are no windows and you are trapped there. Movies show us these unrealistic situations which we often romanticise and classify as normal. It can leave us feeling hurt and disappointed, it is important to know where to draw the line. Sometimes- movies are just movies.

Number two,

It’s all just entertainment and I could be thinking too deeply into it?

Sometimes, the goal is not to make us feel bad about ourselves and show us what our life should be like, it is just for pure entertainment. Our lives can be boring and living vicariously through a fictitious character can be harmless as long as it is not taken too seriously. Sometimes, we are just meant to appreciate the cinematography and the aesthetics of a movie than read too deeply into it. Sometimes things are just pure fiction.

Some unrealistic things I’ve picked up from movies:

1. It’s not always a happy ending

It’s not always, the girl gets the guy and everything else just magically falls into place. I believe that you get what you work for and things don’t just magically fall into place. I don’t understand why every movie has a happy ending, I appreciate movies that end in a more realistic way. In the middle. It doesn’t end in the happiest way or saddest way- there is always a middle

2. Breaking out into a song

I wish I could just break out into song and all the characters behind me automatically know the moves that I am about to bust out and it’s a cute little musical number, every time something goes wrong in my life.

3. ‘I hate everyone but you’ trope is not that cute

It might be an unpopular opinion but I do not like the ‘I hate everyone but you’ trope. I feel like if you are nice to me, shouldn’t you be nice to everyone? You never really know what is going on in a person’s life and wasting your time being mean to everyone just doesn’t seem feasible

4. Waking up looking like that?

I think this one is just for fun but how do people wake up with a full face of makeup, I will never understand

5. The ‘me too’ phenomenon

You know the part in the movie when the main character drops this monologue and everyone in the audience suddenly changed every thought that they have had throughout the movie and participates in what I can only term as a ‘group epiphany.’ I just find it a little discouraging to realize that everyone just believes the main character without a second thought and everything else seemed pointless (You know which movie you are)

Well, I know this was a little different from my usual writing style but I really wanted to cover this topic. I might do a slightly lighter topic next week!!!

Thanks for reading,

Xx mahika

(Ps: follow my Instagram: @blogbanterandbigwords where I share polls and put teasers for my upcoming blogs, you might also find some nice quotes in there)