As Valentine’s Day is approaching, I thought it would be timely to write about all the wonderful examples of love in the entertainment world. I then realized that there are loads of good and bad examples of love, particularly love songs, chick flicks, plays and horror movies. Yes, horror movies. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
In plays, there are examples of love gone awry. In “Oedipus Rex,” Oedipus took the place of the deceased king and married the queen. As it turns out, the queen was his mother. He ended up losing his eyes. In Shakespeare’s well-known play “Romeo and Juliet,” Romeo loved Juliet and they ended up “getting jiggy with it.” Then Juliet proceeded to fake her death, causing Romeo to kill himself. Juliet then killed herself when she discovered that Romeo had offed himself next to her. But they were star-crossed lovers, so it depends on which way you look at it.
In horror movies, love always seems to lead to death. Consider all the horror movies you’ve seen. “My Bloody Valentine” is a dead giveaway. It has the word “valentine” in the title. And it revolves around a massacre that took place on Valentine’s Day and the events that followed. In the “Friday the 13th” series and horror movies in general, people who consummate their relationships tend to either cause death or end up dead. In the first film, it’s revealed that Jason (to whom I have no relation, although Stephen King once asked me if I was Jason Voorhees) drowned when two of his counselors were screwing while he was swimming in the lake. I, personally, haven’t seen too many horror movies, but from what I learned from “Scream,” one of the rules of horror movies is sex equals death. Needless to say, there are a few examples of that in “Scream” and other well-known horror movies.
But why do these movies make it sound like love, or sex in this case, is so bad? Could it be because they’re trying to instill a belief that having sex before marriage will kill you? Or could it be a warning that pre-marital sex will royally mess things up, a la “Juno”? Frankly, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter to me. But, thankfully, I know that if I’m ever being stalked by an escaped convict wielding a machete, I will not be “getting jiggy” with anyone.
But then again, there are all these love songs, chick flicks, chick novels and romantic movies that aren’t chick flicks. The love songs range from sappy to touching to romantic to timeless to ones that go on forever and never seem to stop. Yes, Meatloaf, I’m talking to you. The chick flicks tend to follow a familiar pattern: girl meets boy, they have a period of romance, they break up and, in the end, the two get together again and get married. Or something like that. But I haven’t seen too many, so don’t judge me. They aren’t my kind of thing.
Regardless of what you think about love, sex, raging ax-wielding murderers and love songs, have a pleasant Valentine’s Day. Have breakfast in bed. Send roses and cards to your loved ones. And if you hear about an escaped convict on the radio or television, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.