Re-Lay-Shun-Ships

This is how relationships were conducted in a previous generation. Boy: Sir, I would like to request permission to court your daughter.Girl’s father: Honey, bring me my shotgun!

Boy: Sir, my intentions are pure, I shall work myself to the bone to make your daughter happy.

Girl’s father: I want to see a statement of assets and liabilities and have a conference with your parents. Meanwhile you must feed my chickens every morning and pave my driveway. Then I will decide whether you may take my daughter out to merienda accompanied by a chaperone — her aunt who made it to the third round of the US Open, men’s singles.

Boy: Thank you, Sir, you have made me a very happy man.

Scary, harshly regimented and ritualistic, but the old system had the advantage of clarity. Everyone knew where they stood, hence there was a lot less stalking. Compare it to the way relationships were conducted in my generation:

Boy: I’ll pick you up at 7:30, we’ll go to the Smashing Pumpkins concert, then we’ll meet up with the others at the pizza place and from there we’ll go to Booger’s party.

Girl: Is this a date?

Boy: Um, uh, I don’t know, what do you think?

Girl: ‘Cause, you know, if we’re always hanging out, people will think… I mean, you can’t blame them if they see us together all the time…

Boy: Well, uh, we always have such fun, it would be a shame if we ruined it by labeling...

Girl: Therefore if we want to keep seeing each other we should see other people.

Boy: Right, because we can’t have our friends think we’re interested in each other.

So they withdraw, hurt and disappointed because the other person didn’t say the things they would never admit themselves. 

The other day I saw a romantic comedy about how relationships are initiated and maintained in this generation. 

Boy: Wow, you’re really good at this video game. Wanna go back to my place? I have a bong, a Top Gun poster and a crazy roommate.

Girl: You don’t look like an axe murderer, so okay.

(The next morning):

Boy: We like each other, so we should exchange numbers.

Girl: And maybe tell each other our names.

(That afternoon):

Girl and Boy: Let’s date.

Of course, romcoms operate in the alternate cinematic universe and should never be considered manuals for how to behave in relationships. Consider one of the most successful romcoms at the turn of this century, Notting Hill with Julia Roberts as a big movie star and Hugh Grant as a dorky bookshop owner. The one where Julia presents Hugh with an original Chagall and says, “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” In real life this would be stating the obvious because every guy secretly believes himself the equal of any woman — by virtue of his being a guy. You have a Nobel Prize in physics, you solved global warming and your net worth is a hundred times mine? Well, I’m a guy. 

However I am inclined to believe that much of Going the Distance, the new romcom starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, is faithful to present-day reality. For starters they look almost like regular human beings — cute but not spectacular. And they have the same concerns as regular people in a recession: how to find a job when everyone is downsizing, how to stay sane when you hate your job but need it in order to survive, and how to manage a relationship when you’re so tired.

Hollywood romcoms are notoriously oblivious to economic reality: I remember watching the early seasons of Sex and the City and wondering how the heroine could afford her lifestyle by writing a weekly column in a tabloid. (In contrast today’s Filipino movies are constantly reminding the audience of economic reality — the heroine who gives up her own dreams in order to put all her siblings through school, the father who goes berserk at the hospital because they won’t admit his wife without a deposit, and so on.) 

Going the Distance is not a future classic, and it glosses over many of the problems the lovers face (otherwise it wouldn’t be a comedy), but it’s honest about the choices people have to make in an environment where they don’t have many choices. Her school and her job are in San Francisco, his job and his life are in New York — airfares are expensive, and they can’t find work in the same state. Sure there’s SMS, Skype and live chats, but they live in different time zones and keeping in touch is exhausting. I felt tired just watching them.

Romcoms often place huge obstacles in the path of true love: in one of my favorites, the dorky paleontologist must recover an escaped leopard, get a research grant from someone he’s given a concussion to, convince the police that they have the wrong man, and tell his killjoy fiancée that he’s met someone else. 

It’s almost depressing to think about how little the lovers are asking for in Going the Distance. They just want to get jobs in the same general neighborhood.