I am not Legend
I was excited to be in the first real romantic relationship of my life. The guy I’d had a crush on for years wanted me, we were “in love” and having fun, and I was sharing orgasms with someone for the first time. If I’d known the telltale signs to watch for that belie the bliss and give an ugly whiff of future abusive behavior I’d have run away screaming, but at the time I thought that things were going pretty well.
Not so Reginald. To him it was a persistent and serious problem that I wasn’t Lily. Almost as unbearable was the fact that he wasn’t, and never would be, Jack.
To me, Legend was a mediocre ’80s fantasy movie that I’d never heard of until the cute Mormon boy I had tentatively, hugs-only dated a couple years earlier had eagerly showed it to me. It was less dazzling than Willow, less imaginative than The Labyrinth and less captivating than The Princess Bride, I thought. But it seemed to have some sort of power over these two guys. It was Reginald’s favorite movie.
The protagonists, Jack and Lily, despite being portrayed (in my opinion) with all the personality of a sprouted mung bean and a pile of toenail clippings respectively, are fabulously happy together and can party with unicorns because of their unsullied innocence. Then things go awry because Lily decides to ignore Jack’s warnings about touching the unicorns, and then Tim Curry is awesome for a while. Then stuff happens and the boring people win, as they very often do in stories of this type. And there’s something about True Love™ conquering all at the end, I think. To be honest, it’s been a while.
To be really honest, I would like the movie more if it hadn’t been such a source of drama. As it was, their love, informed in the movie rather than shown, was a cynosure to him. It must’ve hit him in the exact right way at exactly the right point in his psychosocial development, because everything was compared to Jack and Lily. When things were going well, they were never going well enough because there were no unicorns asking Reginald and me to hang out with them. When we were fighting or he was bored, Reginald would literally cry because we didn’t have anything like the True Love™ featured in that Ridley Scott movie. Whatever we were doing, if it wasn’t accompanied by an original score by Tangerine Dream, it would always fall short.
In an essay entitled “This is Emo”, Chuck Klosterman basically says that he once had this girlfriend, until John Cusack stole her. Not even John Cusack, but Lloyd Dobler, John Cusack’s character in Say Anything. It seemed at first that Chuck had the edge, being both real and present. This girl was very likely never going to meet John and was absolutely fucking not going to meet Lloyd Dobler. But the fact was that he was never going to measure up to a movie, and she was never going to forgive him for it.
Love exists. It’s a beautiful, transformative force. It can inspire words and deeds and works of art. It can drive you insane or make you feel finally still for once in your life. It’s powerful, but it’s never perfect. It doesn’t look like the manufactured, scripted love you see on screens and read about in fiction. Real love is never True Love™.
When you’re in True Love™, exciting shit is happening all around. conflicting forces are in play, destiny is invoked, and everyone involved is a very special snowflake– not just to each other, but probably on a much grander scale. In a True Love™ universe, everyone gets one [1] soulmate. Or if everyone doesn’t, at least you sure do, you special snowflake.
Because that’s how stories work. In a story, everything is significant. Even throwaway details are symbolic of something important. People aren’t shown showering, or driving to work, or doing anything at all unless it advances the plot. There’s no filler, no tedium, no silences that aren’t meaningful and no dialogue that hasn’t been reviewed and tweaked and edited. A story, like True Love™, is an escape from reality, not an example of what reality would be like if all the slags around us would just cooperate.
Real love isn’t always breathtaking and spine-quivering. It won’t be all heady declarations and grand gestures. True Love™ would get exhausting; real love is comfortable and secure. There’s time for lingering in bed and cuddling because the fate of your world isn’t threatened all the time. You’re allowed to have problems individually or as a couple without it meaning that the relationship has failed. It’s okay that real love is imperfect because it’s between people, not ideals.
Having some kind of fantasy of what love is supposed to look like is responsible for more than just hurting one’s own relationships. It’s also part of the impulse to “protect marriage” from frightening homosexuals. It leads us to obsess about people we barely know rather than pursuing healthy partnerships. It makes you less adventurous, less interesting, less loving. In short, it makes your story duller and it makes you less of a hero in it.
Yeah that idealized love conquers all thing gets on my nerves. As does “this is the formula for love, follow it exactly.”
To the guys out there: roses are cliche, if you buy her candy sometimes a Fun Dip is better than a box of chocolates, and when it comes to jewelery buy for HER not for the imaginary love of your life.
To the women, all I can say is, get your dude a present, just because. We don’t do that nearly often enough, I think. And as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t matter if it’s a new rolex or that nifty flashlight he was looking at the other day. So long as it’s something that shows you’re thinking of him, it’s all good.
FarmGirl:
Cliches are cliche. Some girls like roses. :-)
You give the women better advice. Pay attention to what your partner wants, rather than what you think they should want.
QP, I think you’re a bit harsh on the “true love” thing. It’s clear you don’t intend to be, you go out of the way to distinguish between fantasy and reality, but you do seem to be railing against its role in fantasy here, as well.
I guess what I’d like to see here would be a call to parents to teach love education. Everybody is all about sex education, but nobody seems to catch on to the fact that there’s a real absence of -relationship- education in our society; the sexual equivalent of what most kids get in terms of relationship advice would be to tell your kid “Well you screwed up, don’t do it again” after they got pregnant/got someone pregnant/got an STD. We should be giving our kids advice before they need it, instead of castigating them after they’re emotionally invested in a horrible decision, something they’re not likely to listen to even when it is good advice.
First, bravo, QP. I agree with this post in so many different ways.
A very close friend found that his wife had idealized love as being like that between Bella and Whuzhizname in the Twilight series. He found that he could never be that guy, and they could never have their love be like something written in a book aimed for the most part at the hearts of teen girls. They came so very close to divorce that they separated, and though they’re back together now, it will never be the same. My friend tried to “fix” the relationship (there were kids involved), and failed. Finally, he quit trying, and decided to work only on himself, to try to make himself a better person. He did a lot, and is frankly a fair bit easier to be around (I’ve known him for a quarter century or more). She stayed on, I guess realizing that, for the time being, a Good Man that she had loved and made babies with was worth attempting to find love with. But it may never be the same, because of her vision of True Love™.
Second, let me point out something that’s going to step on some people’s toes, here: There is not just One True Love™ for you, out there. Get over that. You will very likely find true love. But the fact that you’re only going to genuinely know a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand people in your lifetime, out of the BILLIONS of other people on this planet, means that there must be a log of true loves for you, potentially. That’s not to put down your own true love. Not at all. This is the one that you have chosen. You will die before getting to meet a tiny fraction of the others, even if they had all be pre-selected, and queued in a line to come meet you. We only have so much time on this earth– get busy loving.
Intellectually and theoretically, the idea of poly marriages or relationships makes sense to me as an ideal. In reality, however, I know that emotionally they don’t work, typically. So it’s best to find your true love, treat him or her right, and enjoy your lives loving each other.
Loving is something that we do, and every day, our relationships need work. Many times, people either don’t know that, or have forgotten that fact. And they ask themselves “Why is this so hard? Is it supposed to be this much work?!?” The answer, quite often is, Yes, it is supposed to be work, but work that you want to do, because it’s for the person you are loving. It is hard today, because of the backlog of work that you have to do.
If we can quite idealizing, and start looking at real life with our own two eyes, we will appreciate the beauty of what is actually in front of us.
Great post.
I love that movie… and my romantic mind always seeks the idealized love.
It always will. I enjoy the fantasy and never want it to stop.
For me the trick has been to be real most of the time and look for those special moments.
Those moments can be tiny little forevers.
I love this post. Have I ever commented on your blog or have I just been lurking for a loooong time? I’m not sure.
Yeah, profound post or whatever, but how can you not love Legend? Nevermind the fact that the entire cast nearly choked to death on all the glitter that seemed to cover every surface. Forget about Tom Cruise turning into a first-class whacko. Ignore that terrible, cheesy ’80s song during the ending, too.
Two words…TIM MOTHERFUCKING CURRY!!!
I know the movie’s bad and cliche and stupid and corny, but I like it anyway…. You may now insult me freely.
P.S.: I also like Howard the Duck.
@FarmGirl I agree that it’s a good idea to give thoughtful “just because” gifts, even if you’re a female and therefore would be violating The Rules by spending money on your guy. If I remember correctly, that The Rules book (which my Grandma helpfully bought for my older sister when she graduated high school) suggests that women express generosity by producing theater tickets that they claim to have been given by a nameless third party. God forbid we admit to buying something for him!
@Orphan I don’t intend to criticize anyone for fantasizing about romance. My problem is when people let their fantasies inform their expectations of reality, and especially other people.
There truly isn’t enough discussion– especially that reaches us in adolescence– about healthy relationships and realistic expectations about love. At that age and with so little experience it’s too easy to blur what’s real and what’s a fairy tale.
@Matt G Twilight. Just, ugh. Of all the portrayals of love to idealize! I’m glad their working it out, but a series that defines love as abusive, obsessive, and utterly arbitrary (“I’m just magically drawn to you…”) is a really unhealthy one to fixate on.
@Inferno I think that’s the right way to do it. Moments can be romantic and earth-shattering. Years cannot. It would get exhausting.
@Melissa I think this may be your first comment, but sometimes they slip by me. Anyway, I’m glad you’re reading!
@Brock F’in Samson I think maybe the fact that I didn’t see it until I was 16 or 17 may have brought it down for me, along with the huge build-up of “THISISTHEBESTMOVIEEVER!!!!” before I did see it. Either way, it was just kind of a standard, middle-of-the-road eighties fantasy movie to me. But I realize that a lot of people really love it, and it’s possible that I would love it too if I’d watched it at the right age and under the right circumstances.
But would I under any circumstances want to model my concept of a great romantic relationship after it? Nope.
Tim Curry is the best part of the movie by far. I have to admit he’s pretty awesome as Darkness.
While I did really like the movie, that doesn’t detract from your points at all, QP. The idea of someone using it as a guide to a romantic relationship is scary. There are LOTS of great movies that are full of stuff that’s a terrible idea in the real world. Probably most of them.
And yeah, build-up is a real movie killer.
@Mousie762 If someone hounds me into seeing something and sells it with tons of hype, it automatically makes me not only less inclined to watch it, ever, but it also often makes it less enjoyable if I actually do. I try to avoid letting my enthusiasm do that to other people, but sometimes “you HAVE to see…” just slips out. Understandable when you’re all exuberant over something and dying to share it, but kind of a kiss of death.
Orphan…. if she loves roses, by all means, get her roses. I’m just down on the cliche “get roses because they’re what you get for the girl you’re with romantically” … I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’d rather be daisies and amethysts to my guy than roses and diamonds… because I know he thought about those daisies and amethysts.
I think you can have that extremely deep connection with someone, it’s just not going to magically fix everything like it does in fiction. There is no magic wand for happiness, just like anything else in life, you have to try for it and work at it… the great thing about love is that there may come a point where you get that happiness just by turning your head and realizing that for some crazy reason, this fantastic other person has decided that they want to be with you.
If you can find that, its worth working to keep it.
This post reminds me so much of the abusive relationship I was in in high school. My then-boyfriend had these same impossible standards, and whenever something fell short (like, you know, when I commented that an actor in a movie was kind of cute) I had sullied our True Love. I spent two years being punished for not living up to this standard before he decided he’d made a mistake, another girl was actually his One True Love, and dumped me.
I wonder if he saw this movie at some crucial point in his development, too. Maybe. Maybe not.
Fantasies of what exactly love is supposed to look like are a bit ridiculous. However, I wouldn’t say that true love is always exhausting. Sometimes it’s exactly what we need. Sure, we need regular, comfortable love too – and more often than true love, probably. But we ARE people, not ideals… And because of that, we need excitement. We need passion. We can’t always be sitting around comfortably in bed, because that gets dull too.
Love requires balance. It requires both “real love” and “true love.” A healthy relationship needs love that has plenty of both of those components, even if one is usually more present than the other.
@Lucy Jane I would almost be worried that maybe you’d fallen into the grip of Reginald at one point, but if you had, you would definitely know about Legend.
I think impossible standards and a warped idea of love can contribute to an abusive dynamic. Lots of people who have fantasy ideals don’t hurt their partners, but I think the frustration and feelings of betrayal sometimes push a person that much closer to crossing the line. The good news is, you’re rid of him.
@Serena Dante I completely agree with you. I was trying (perhaps clumsily) to draw a line between fictional love that is always fraught with tension and conflict but conquers everything magically before a fade to the credits and a power ballad, and real love that isn’t so dramatic and dire all the time. But I also wouldn’t want a relationship without excitement. I’m not the most romantic person, so my preferred excitement is often sexual. But however it comes, yes yes yes: excitement needs to be there or the “in love” part will fade and at least one partner will probably be massively unsatisfied.
It’s totally a middle-of-the-road fantasy movie. I sure loved it when I was a kid, though.
I bought the DVD when it came out and remember being amazed at how underwhelming the movie actually is. I still like it (TIM MOTHERFUCKING CURRY!!!), but it’s mostly just nostalgia–the movie is mediocre at best and it presents a ricockulous, cotton-candy fantasy of what love is.
No one should model their relationship (or their ideas about what a relationship is) around it (unless, you know, everyone involved wants to do that, but I reserve the right to think that they’re being immature).
BTW, I really DID think your post was insightful–my first comment was entirely tongue-in-cheek. Re-reading it now, I realize that it may not have come off that way…sorry if there was any misunderstanding.
I love that the unicorn horns kind of bounce and wobble around on their heads, but we couldn’t see that on VHS viewed on low-def TVs. It’s only now with DVDs and Blu-Rays and higher res sets that we can see the crap special effects that were good enough back in the day. Much like the glass between Harrison Ford and the cobras in Indiana Jones. I know. Off topic. But, still. If I have to draw it back to your point…
If we base our relationships on fantasy, they will not stand the test of time. In time, they will be revealed to be cheap and fake. Fun for a minute or two, but of no real substance. Yeah. That works.
I LOVED “Legend”. LOVED it. I’ve always been a total romantic, even if I’m somewhat in the closet these days. (It’s not COOL, you know? Especially at my age…) Anyway, even though I’ve always loved romantic tales, whether in book form or movie, I was always able to distinguish fact from fiction. I never put that kind of pressure on a partner, thank heavens, and never had it directed towards myself. And Twilight is just *faugh*! (Or “ptooey”, if you prefer.)
I was always one to give my partner random, “I’m thinking of you” gifts, I even semi-regularly brought my husband flowers, just because.
The first Christmas my very first boyfriend and I were together, I got him this stunning art print he had admired at a gallery, framed and everything. He gave me monogrammed hand towels. I should have taken note…it was a SIGN.
Now that I’ve blathered on somewhat incoherently, let me finish by saying I love this post, and I love your blog. You nailed it perfectly, and I wish I had a fraction of the writing talent you have in your pinky. You rock my socks.
It’s funny, when I first read through the archives here I wondered if somehow Reginald was my ex, your story was so familiar. The times and places don’t match up, though, so it just looks like there are two eerily similar abusive guys running around out there.
@Evyl Robot This is absolutely spot on. And I love eighties-movies-to-life analogies.
@Brock F’in Samson Tim Motherfucking Curry should be in every Tom Cruise movie for obvious reasons.
@Christina LMT Why are you so awesome?
@Lucy Jane I’m so sorry you have an ex like that too. I have heard this far too many times for me to be comfortable with the state of the world. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Reginalds.
It’s a shame there isn’t some way to mark your Reginalds as a warning to other women.
@quizzical pussy
Because I read your blog? ;)