Love, Performance, and All That Jazz

There are many problematic tropes in Cinderella, but my main frustration lies in the fact that the screen goes blank at the most intriguing part of the film. The prince and the princess sink into each others arms and kiss, drifting off into the distance. Fin. Exeunt… no more to be said for their love story. This ending convinces and feeds our human addiction to narrative to believe that this is how stories end. There is no point even thinking beyond this moment. 'All you need is love' they said. 'Loving is easy'. So we are told. Are we supposed to assume that Cindy and Prince Charming live 'happily ever after'? Well I suppose on some level we are. And maybe they did... I mean, a love based on a guy meeting a girl at a ball, thinking she's fit, having a boogie and then finding her shoe which she lost are irrefutable signs that they are MeAnT To bE. 

Is there a reason why Disney saved us from the sheer disappointment of watching them have their first fight, pay their first mortgage, file for divorce? Well sure, that would make it realistic, God forbid, and the comfort we find in fairytales is how far from reality they take us. I’m not a cynic, I promise… in fact I’m quite the opposite. The most cruel part of romantic films or fairytales is that they set up the starry-eyed folk for disappointment. 

I am dangerously and sometimes self-torturingly guilty of confusing real life with cinema, to the extent to which I often find myself living in a what is nothing short of a rom-com. Love then becomes a business for which the likes of Nicholas Sparks, Richard Curtis, and Disney are primary investors. I silently but surely trickle into living a cinematic life that I’ve only ever come across, and only have reference to, from the films and books which have impacted me. Analysing characters is the best way to analyse yourself and your friends, they are our most common point of reference. 

I am not saying that adding fresh basil and maybe a splash of vodka here and there to your otherwise bland pink-sauce-life doesn’t make for the most incredible experiences, but there is a line and it must not be crossed. (Not sure if that analogy worked, live and let live… but vodka infused pasta sauce is big fat yes.) 

I mean to say: when it is a disorientating 18 degrees in February and you spontaneously decide to go to a rooftop bar and order an Aperol spritz at 1pm in your otherwise mundane university town, this absolutely must be cinematised; place yourself in the Gaie Marais in springtime, and with one big whoosh of warmly welcomed escapism, you’re there.

BUT, here comes the but. I like big buts, they really cannot lie… there are limits to this candy-coated life. 

All the world is in fact not a stage. Take my word for it. My word over Shakespeare’s, a no brainer. (Even though his intentions were ironic, so actually we are on the same page.) Kapow.

The performative aspect of love has been the demise of my romantic life thus far. Typing these words finalises my convictions. Save the performing for the stage… (and for the 20 minute showers during which I know a rendition of the entirety of ABBA Gold/my Academy Award acceptance speech shall be perfected, only bidding adieu when the hot water runs out.)

‘Real life can be pretty great too’, a good friend of mine recently told me. A few days before I had told him that I was in love with him, even though this wasn't the case. Let me *try* and explain myself. I simply couldn’t understand what compelled me to say these words without meaning them. I do admittedly speak in hyperbole and I’ve *on multiple occasions* said ‘I am literally in love’ after the first date, but this was different. I actually said the words ‘I am in love with you’, to one of my closest friends, without remembering that I said it, huge shoutout to alcohol. I had to be told by him that I said this. That was a fun conversation. I can choose to be embarrassed about this, or I can choose to put it down to an exclamation, hugely misplaced but nonetheless, of love. 

What compelled me to say these words, was wholly my idealisation of this straight, male friend. This ideal drifted away into a deep, dark and dangerous ocean of romanticisation. My brain morphed him into a character for my character to fall in love with and I couldn’t see anything with clear vision. I only saw things through my lens. My cracked, steamy, warped lense. It’s a basic film script in itself. Could I be more of a cliché? ‘When Harry met Sally’ is a film for a reason, it is meant to be unapologetically if not hugely unrealistically feel-good. What Rob Reiner didn’t tell us, is just how much this idealistic portrayal of friendship-turned-romance can distort an innocent brain and how much influence it has on the way we interact with other humans. The minute my friend told me that I needed to stop idealising real life situations, it was the first time I heard it, and hopefully the last time I’ll have to. This time it will stick if not by will then by sheer force.  When I told my friend that I was in love with him, I realised that I had overdosed on the idealising, and that I needed to be prescribed a reality check. 

A personal anecdote for anyone who asked for it and gifted to the majority that didn’t: I went to a party a few weeks ago where I met a good looking, tall, charming boy. Our entire interaction was uninspiring. Our conversation was almost scripted. It was momentarily exciting, as it always is when meeting an attractive, charismatic person, though the bottle of pinot noir I downed hitherto without a doubt elevated my judgement. Sigh. Our conversation was not dissimilar to playing tennis badly, if you missed the ball or didn’t come up with something sexy and witty, or both, to say in time then you lost. ‘It was easy to write to Nick, but also competitive and thrilling, like a game of table tennis. We were always being flippant with each other.’ Sally Rooney’s narrator Frances in ‘Conversations with friends’, voices the inner psyche of the first few exchanges between potential lovers, capturing the back and forth nature of them, and how constantly stimulating they are. 

Nothing about my interaction with this boy was natural, even though at the time I was convinced that it was… we were playing up to what we thought we wanted to be and be seen as, consciously or not. Every look, every nuance, every tiny detail of body language was paid attention to. I felt very self conscious, but not at all self aware. This situation is by no means unique, I almost feel like I had lived it a thousand times. Even though the novelty of plain textbook flirting is fun, it is when you realise that you know exactly how the story ends, that the romantic in you starts to wilt like a rose that hasn’t been watered. After me and Mr Bombastic (much better than Mr Big, sorry Carrie) kissed for a hot sec, everything seemed to dissipate, because the futility of our connection was realised. 

We shared in what some situations is the most immense intimacy possible. I’m not being naive pretending to think that kissing someone you just met is an alien concept, I’m just questioning why this is the social norm. The basis of the flighty connection people make at a party or in a club is usually purely physical, it is rarely (but not never) a genuine, ‘I want you in my life for longer than just tonight’. How can it be if you’re basing your judgement of them on yours and their drunken and elevated state? In these dystopias, human interaction is distorted: people who you never speak to or wouldn’t even stop on the high street become your closest friend, ‘let’s do coffee soon!’....mmmmmkay. These socially warped environments are in no way an accurate way of forming opinions of people. I find myself baffled and amazed at what good actors we all are. 

Picture this: girl meets a classic Don Juan, translated into what would probably be a good looking, charming boy who is painfully in denial of his Etonian roots, so he covers up his tracks with a rogue earring and/or a terrible haircut. Sound familiar? He charms her, he woos her, he Daniel Cleaver’s the s*** out of her, the very definiton of ‘f*** me, I love Keats’… until she realises that all she needs is some normality, she just needs to fall in love with the sweet, normal, nice guy. Although as ‘normal’ and ‘relatable’ as Bridget Jones tries to be, her story is in fact just another fluffy rom-com that manipulates our minds and takes our hearts for a ride. However 'tragic' she is, we all know exactly how the story will end from the beginning, perhaps the purpose of these films are to inject in use a false sense of security and hope and belief that true love is effortless; that all it takes to be happy with someone is love and nothing else. The archetypal characters are too one dimensional for the film to end in any other way than what we predicted from the start, although there is a certain comfort in this. They are feel-good for a reason. 

This got me thinking, are we all merely travesties of Hollywood rom-com characters? Hollywood has without a doubt warped our views of romantic love, so much so that I have witnessed relationships which have thrived off nothing but a narrative. It is terrifyingly easy to fall in love with an idea and not a person. It is also terrifying how easy it is to fall in love with memories and circumstance, which are independent from the person. It's all just terrifying.  

The very definition of a ‘one night stand’ is ‘a single performance of a play, show, or the like at a particular place; esp. one given by a touring company, band, etc.; a town, theatre, etc., where such a performance takes place; also in extended use’. 

A performance did you say? I’m intrigued. Once this idea sunk in, it was completely mind-blowing but simultaneously made absolutely perfect sense. It’s opening night, the curtains are drawn, the ones on stage and in the bedroom. You flash your best smile, you play the role of the dreamgirl, the protagonist, the clichéd version of who you think you are and who you want to be in this moment in time, and… action. Badabing and just like that everything you say is a sweet nothing, you are a real life animation. It feels nostalgic before it’s even over: the amount of times the storytelling aspect ends up being the most exhilarating part is uncountable. It’s dramatic, it’s compelling, it’s fueled with narrative and description to the extent to which you can’t tell whether you are telling an anecdote or a film synopsis. In Notting Hill, another film whose problematic nature is overlooked because of its undeniable charm, Julia Roberts’ character says “Rita Hayworth used to say, ‘They go to bed with Gilda; they wake up with me.” Going to bed with a character and waking up with a real person sounds almost painfully familiar. 

‘And he was crossing the street at the exact same time that I was, and we stopped in the middle and kissed’… ‘Oh my gosh that sounds just like a movie.’ Non, ma biche. You just happened to be crossing the road at the same time, it’s really not that strange. Where to draw the line between fantasy and reality? Go too far on one end of the spectrum, and you are lacking in grounding or clarity, but too far on the other and your life is colourless. The common comparison of saying someone is ‘just like a character from a film’ is evidence in itself that when someone is a slightly saturated version of what is considered ‘normal’, they can only exist in reference to characters because we are taught to believe that real life is less exciting and glamourous. Throw on a trench-coat, red lipstick and a cigarette and boom all of a sudden it’s Holly Golightly. 

I believe that dreaming, especially day dreaming, are important and necessary and I think escaping into the world that exists only in your head is an incredible thing to be able to do. I would also like to reiterate that cinematising life is sometimes harmless and even exquisite: e.g. walking around Montmartre, of course you are going to dip your hand in a bucket of grains in the greengrocer and feel the sensational texture which Amelie thought was one of life’s most simple pleasures. Or being on a boat in Greece, it would be wrong to not pretend you are Donna Sheridan. Or being a single girl in New York City, do I even have to say it.

I saw La La Land for the first time in a little cinema in Paris, and when it was over and I stepped back into reality. The soft streetlights flirted with the cobblestone street that was glistening from the rain with such effortlessness, and the Seine looked so beautiful and for lack of a more perfect word, perfect, that this simple experience of leaving the cinema almost felt cathartic. Paris can so easily become a cliché, but it really is everything they say it is and more. It is also a normal city and one can live a very normal life there but every so often arise moments of stillness and appreciation and they should be welcomed with open arms. Having just seen a film that fluttered between being heartbreakingly real but also quintessentially Hollywood, I felt a rush of hope and excitement and tranquility. Life is amazing, even when it’s story doesn’t end on a perfect note. It doesn’t even have to, it shouldn’t have to. 

Roland Barthes quite rightly argued that the very phrase ‘I love you’ is highly performative. It is said with the desire for a reaction, it is said with the expectation that the person to whom it is being directed returns this sentiment. It is centred around you not them. It should be said as an end it itself, tell someone you love them just because you love them, not because you want the validation of you them saying they love you back. You can’t force emotions onto people, and there is no pride lost in showing love. Barthes said, ’I-love-you is without nuance. It suppresses explanations, adjustments, degrees, scruples. In a way - exorbitant paradox of language- to say I-love-you is to proceed as if there were no theater of speech, and this word is always true (has no referent other than its utterance: it is a performative).’

Blair Waldorf, another profound French theorist, said, ‘Three words, eight letters, say it and I’m yours’, when her being with Chuck was at stake. 

The very possibility of being together depended on whether these words were said out loud. They were felt, but they had to be verbalised in order for Blair and Chuck to be in a relationship. 

Labels and All That Jazz come from an ingrained insecurity that ones relationship must be defined in order for it to exist. When people label their relationship, they make it ‘official’.  “Official: having the approval or authorization of an authority or a public body.” Why do we put so much emphasis on having other people know our relationship status? Why do our 500+ Facebook friends need to know if we have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Why do we care so much? Labels are for other people, hardly ever for oneself. 

I've often found myself coming back from a first date and feeling like I’ve just been at a job interview or an audition. With red wine and more cleavage. How much can you convince me that you’re the person you seem to be. How long will I have to wait for you to message me… what shall I wear? And how will this affect  how I’m coming across? A first date is a performance, if it goes well there’ll be an encore, if not then I guess you have to just keep on at it. Swipe, swipe, tequila and swipe some more. 

CONCLUSION… not sure, let me know if you think of one!