I have been told, that unless it is a soft no (I can’t Saturday, I am…") men should take NO for a answer.
Sure. But then why all the “romantic” films and TV shows where it is considered highly romantic for the man to keep chasing? BobAbisola for one, but many, many others. And women find them romantic.
The rom-com category of films is basically emotional pornography, and Tom Hanks is essentially the Ron Jeremy of the genre. Like porn, you should not use it as an example of how to do things in real life.
I don’t think anyone considers Bachelor Party to be a rom com. I’m thinking movies like You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle are romantic comedies.
American popular culture also almost universally depicts police oversight authorities and Internal Affairs units as overly-bureaucratic meddlers and departmental regulations and even laws as aggravating red tape that just prevent Heroic Maverick Cops from delivering Justice to Bad Guys.
Also, cars explode when shot, guns never run out of ammo, repeated blows to the head result in temporary unconsciousness and no after-effects more severe than a transient headache, and so on and so forth.
Rom-coms aren’t remotely realistic. Neither are bodice-ripper romance novels. That’s the entire point.
There is often a very different set of standards we apply to fictional characters. I call it the Dan Fielding Affect after the bullying sexually harassing character from Night Court. Can you imagine being friends with someone like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory? I can’t because he’s an awful human being. But I don’t mind watching him or the antics of Dan Fielding once a week for 22 minutes.
Sure. And Alias is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. That doesn’t mean I would have actually have wanted to work with someone who acted like Sydney Bristow when I was in Military Intelligence. And the CIA interrogator I knew was nothing like Jack Bristow, and if he had acted like Jack Bristow, I would have been horrified and immediately reported him. Jack Bristow is still one of my all-time favorite fictional characters.
So your point is that you (@Drdeth) are confused to learn that women’s taste in fiction differs from women’s taste in real life? Or more precisely, you’re confused that Hollywood’s interpretation of what will sell as women’s taste in fiction differs from women’s taste in real life?
That’s a reasonable question coming from a 14 yo. For someone with a bit more life experience less so, IMO.
Also, I consume a lot of entertainment with audience-identificaton-protagonists who get into sword fights with inhuman monsters. I play a lot of games where I pretend to be someone who gets into a lot of sword fights with inhuman monsters. That doesn’t mean I actually want to get into a sword fight with an inhuman monster.
Some women sometimes enjoy consuming fiction where a hot guy relentlessly pursues a woman. That doesn’t really have much to do with how they actually want to be treated in real life by real men.
There’s a big difference between what people may want in fantasy and what they may want in real life.
As has often been pointed out, with movies like Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, etc. - the male lead would be considered a creep and stalker and loathsome if he were anything but the billionaire/handsome/charismatic guy that he is in the movie. It’s not real life and it’s not meant to be real life.
And many woman want to be pursued hard by someone that they like. The problem comes when someone they don’t like is pursuing them hard.
Although there are a lot of women out there who are disappointed that their dating partners aren’t as exciting as leading men in romantic comedies. I recall one ad by a woman who dressed up like Julia Roberts on the movie poster with the title, “I want you to treat me like a Pretty Woman…”, and I remember thinking, you want me to hire you to be an escort?
Most romantic comedies are pretty distributing when you actually think through the implications. I mean, Tom Hanks basically destroys Meg Ryan’s family business, and like some kind of victim of domestic abuse she fawns over him. And then there’s Sixteen Candles…
Right - fiction is “safe” and one can get a vicarious thrill from things that they would absolutely hate if they were real.
In fiction, the relentless guy can be assumed to be a good guy, because he is one by definition. This holds true even if the only reason he’s considered good is narrative convention - a lot of these “heroes” are actually awful people, but they’re still safe because they’re fictional, so how they act, even in story, doesn’t matter that much.