Romanticism ruined by anti-mainstream ideals?

Consider a movie with a really cheesy, romantic dialogue. The dreamboat male lead says something completely heart-tearing (thanks, Alanis, for that gem) to the female lead, and we hear her full-throated, slightly cautious response right before they throw caution to the wind and kiss.

Our reactions to this cliche scene aren't what I'm analyzing. Our reactions don't really matter; we can laugh because we're cynical, we can cry because we're emotional, we can have no response for a variety of reasons, et cetera. What matters in this analysis is how we perceive this kind of movie-made scenario outside of the theater.

How many times have your peers accused you of living your life like a movie? How many times have you accused people of living their lives like a movie? If we forget movies and move onto other avenues of popular media, we can stretch these questions to include the spectrum of popular TV show genres, and my point -- my rhetorical analysis of the situation -- remains the same:

What is wrong with "living life like a movie?"

Now, before you stick dynamite in my argument, let me plug up a few visible holes. For this analysis to work, we need to stick to the logical, entirely-possible genres of film or television; types of media that producers try to make as life-like as possible. Romance films, romantic comedies, realistic dramas- pretty much anything that COULD happen. Feel free to discount The Grudge and any of the Bourne movies and anything directed by Tim Burton.

I'm not advocating that we "throw caution to the wind," to quote my example, for every film-like situation that happens by. I'm suggesting that, because films are so enmeshed within our American lives, and because there is a palpable stigma against the "mainstream," we are losing the ability to recognize when some of these cheesy moments are entirely normal -- and not just imprints on our imaginations, courtesy of Hollywood.

Generations ago, when our ancestors lived on farms on other continents and when castles weren't just crumbling monuments tourists wandered through, moments from my example were entirely plausible. No one stopped themselves from enjoying a real life moment to giggle because it reminded them of The Notebook when the two lovebirds were caught making out in the rain.

Pull out a novel by Emily Bronte or William Makepeace Thackeray. Hell, even Marcell Proust had a few touch-and-go moments between his characters that would make cheesy romance directors think, "That'd be perfect for my love story!" These writers weren't influenced by a mainstream idea of what love is, and they weren't immediately accosted by their peers for writing about love cliches (Bronte may or may not have been a good example... but my point still stands).


Anyway. I could write an essay using popular magazines and newspaper clippings that snipe at romance for its cliche and Hollywood-made accoutrements, but instead, I'll wrap things up by hoping, praying, even, that if you're ever faced with a moment where your significant other leans in to tell you he loves you, or worse still, if your friends judge you for some of the "Julia Roberts-esque" things you do, that you go for it. Throw caution to the wind (cliche alert- this is, what? three times in one piece?) and let your life go where it will, movie similarity or no movie similarity.

It isn't our fault that Hollywood capitalized on real human emotion. We shouldn't let it marginalize what we're allowed to feel.