Love & Other Drugs

by Racheal Rauch

L.O.V.E – four little letters that mesmerize us human beings. It’s probably in the top two along with money (if you’re in the developed world – food, if you’re in the third). I’m a part of the Facebook group called “Disney gave me false expectations about love”. Because of Disney films of our childhood, there comes a time when all us girls who once twirled around in our princess costumes, realise that if we choke on an apple and die, a prince won’t be there to kiss us back to life.

Disney’s new princess movie Tangled, in it’s opening weekend grossed $21.5 mil at the Box office in the U.S, knocking Harry off the pedestal. That’s pretty impressive, considering princess movies don’t really pack that much punch anymore. But princess movies (like all movies obviously) are made for the audience at the time and so princess leads of the 50s and 60s, which spoke to those generations, you would think, wouldn’t be as much loved by girls of the naughties. Those princesses had manners and respect – they were ladies. A concept which is quickly becoming a joke today. So while we grew up thinking that we’d be swept off our feet by charming gentlemen, their horse, castle and chiselled jaw, (of if your Aladdin, then genie, which equates to the same thing) we realised this wasn’t the case when guys at school started pulling our hair and throwing things at us.

What Pocahontas and Mulan started, Tangled is continuing – this whole kick butt, take matters into your own hands approach. Which I think is a good message to give to girls. I certainly wouldn’t wait it out, stuck in a tower waiting for the guy to get his act together and come rescue me. Like many females in this day and age, we’d tie those bed sheets together and climb out the window ourselves. Or just call 000.

As glad as I am that Disney is trying to reinvigorate the princess movie, and the new age message they send, I don’t care what anyone says – it’s not going to top the old princess movies. Yes our princesses were dependant, passive, weak and they did a whole lot of waiting around but generation after generation just won’t give them up. My toddler/kid cousins know all the princesses; they have copies of Sleeping Beauty, Aerial, Jasmine etc and know all the songs. Just the other day they were swinging around my lounge room dancing to “Once Upon A Dream”, I didn’t discourage this, maybe I even joined them. Every few years Disney release remastered copies and they go flying off the shelves.

Room has been made for the Mulans and Pocahontas’ who take the initiative, but the Aurora’s and Snow white’s who had a nanna nap while the prince got into White Knight mode aren’t going anywhere. These weaker, dependant princesses won’t be tossed aside, so maybe there’s something important we should listen to after all.

Maybe we should put our bar back up and expect the guy to put in some effort first. If you’re a good catch, then why shouldn’t he have to make himself stand out and defeat all the others? I’m not sure what the modern equivalent of slaying a dragon is. Getting our drinks so we don’t have to face that epic line at the bar perhaps? At this stage I’d even settle for whacking on a nice shirt and doing your hair before you go out. It’s bad enough that females have to spend hours curling/straightening, plucking, pampering, tanning, trying on countless outfits and accessories, then struggle with shoes that hurt all evening and guys won’t even take 5 fricken minutes to pick a nice shirt – what is that!

At the other extreme is what Love and Other Drugs preaches. It’s about two people, who don’t want relationships, start sleeping together and apparently fall in love, amidst a whole batch of obstacles – one of which is Parkinson’s disease. So while that’s a tad different the film is PREDICTABLE. Something I really cannot stand in a film. I loathe being able to guess what happens next. Especially if you’re someone like me who has studied scripts and the heroes’ journey, you can pretty much sit there and tick off the various stages that the film goes through. However, this seems to be the going thing, I know more couples that have come to be like this, as opposed to the guy doing something to really win the girl first.

So I really don’t know which is worse, or what we should think nowadays. Do we sit around and wait? Scrubbing floors, playing with forks under the sea and patting out tiger in the meantime? Or do we take the initiative – disguise ourselves, defy our fathers? Or do we take Anne Hathaway’s newest approach, close off our emotions, reciprocate the ‘using’ part and then throw him out the door? For someone with an opinion on everything, I actually don’t know.