The Disney Fallacy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-disney-fallacy-of-relationships_us_5893ed14e4b02bbb1816b8f3

When approached with the Disney Fallacy, many people heavily endorse that the version of life we see on screen is highly skewed. As pointed out in this article, Hollywood has long told us that our "dating lives can be wrapped up neatly in the course of 90 minutes" which, by all accounts, seems to be pretty far from the truth.

However, Disney probably gets more brunt of the criticism than most companies because, as Devon Kerns points out, it imbeds this "love comes without work" trope into children, long before we know how inaccurate this picture is. I do agree with the point that Devon Kerns is making, but feel the blame might be incorrectly placed. Disney is not the enemy.

With the invention of books and movies came the invention of marrying for love. For most of history people married for logical reasons - to guarantee the patriarch's property have a namesake, to fulfill the promise of whatever God you were serving, etc... But, when people were able to push forth the idea of romance through books and movies (love as the goal of marriage and not logic), the idea of what was expected out of marriage changed.

Disney pushes forth this ideal of romance strongly. Very few Disney movies hold anything other than a man and a woman (or a boy and a girl in some cases) meeting, falling in love, and then, if not marrying, smiling very widely with the notion of marriage being imminent. I think that as children we watch this and we grow up, even if we try to tell ourselves otherwise, hoping for this.

But, I think the problem is not that Disney is idealizing the future to children but is the type of romance that Disney promotes, which, coincidentally, is our western notion of love. This is a romance void of logic. A romance that the perfect person exists and will complete the other person and marriage will bottle any happy feeling and result in a permanent joyous feeling.

I think if we shift this perception, that great romance is a kind of permanent state of bliss, without logic and work, than we can fix the Disney Fallacy that Devon Kerns speaks of. Disney will no longer be the villian.

I truly do think that the goal of a media company is not to present a realistic view of the world like some people claim. I think Disney's job as a company is to give a happy ending to children. However, if a media company wants to push forth an "idealized" view of the world, I think we as a society need to shift the foundation we build marriage on. We should recognize the idealized form of love is one that doesn't bottle a permanent feeling the moment you experience a proposal. It is a relationship with active work. Perhaps you will find another person as if by accident, but that together you will maybe not be perfect or even happy all the time but you will be together.