A New Perspective

I realize that I haven't written much of consequence in the past couple of weeks, and I'm not sure that this blog will be able to make up for that. But in the absence of any real inspirations, I thought that I might indulge myself in a kind of retrospective blog. Basically I've come to realize that I can no longer watch movies or read books without connecting each of them to the concepts of romance that we have been discussing in class. Every time I turn on the television or work my way through the pages of a story, the five keys of romance pop into my head and I begin to analyze the film or text for each of them. Is there a revelation? Is there a happy ending? Is a story told? Is there a quest and, most important to my own perspective recently, is there an apparent death? To my surprise and, I have to be honest, somewhat to my discomfort, everything does indeed contain romance. That is not to say that I dislike the fact of romance within everything. I find it refreshing that so much hope can be unearthed in even the seemingly most despairing.

Today, for example, though I am not completely proud of this fact, I watched three different movies from what would be considered three different genres. The first was a romantic comedy and can be stricken from the record of examples simply because of its category. We expect such things from a romcom as it were. The second, I cringe in typing this, was The Matrix Revolutions. Watching that movie through the lens of romanticism that I am now able to apply allowed me to see not only the path of death which the hero had to travel, but also the revelation, the happy ending, and even the apparent death. All were present in some form or another. Yet the movie that caught my attention most was probably Dracula II. As anyone who has seen the movie, or anyone who is familiar with the genre, will attest, the ability to argue for this version of Dracula as a romance is nothing if not a stretch. Yet, if we look at the appropriate characters, the romance becomes apparent. I will not bore you with the details now. Suffice it to say, I'm tired, and I just got done typing an eight page paper for another class, but I hope to prove in my next blog that a film that many people would label as "horror" is nothing more than romance in disguise.