The message of (500) Days is that a person can idealize love so completely, he has no idea who he’s in love with. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom falls head over heels for Summer because she likes The Smiths, sings mean karoke, and is as cool and cute as Zooey Deschanel. He’s so smitten, he fails to notice that maybe she’s not. This set-up could be rich territory for a romantic comedy (about reciprocity, expectations, power, kindness), but as rendered in (500) Days, it just results in a horribly drawn female character, because the filmmaker’s sympathy is so fully with Tom (and the audience’s as well—JGL is, as Dana says, a stone fox and a movie star to boot). There’s no critique of the fact that Tom is totally oblivious to Summer’s inner life, emotions, issues. He’s sweet! He’s in love! How could she not love him back? She really, really should! The fact that she doesn’t love him back (plus a late developing, implausible plot twist) makes her seem unknowable and heartless, even though Tom has never tried to know her—he’s been too busy being in love with her. Even worse, when the film ends, Tom is doing exactly like he always did: falling in love with a new girl because she likes something he likes. He hasn’t changed at all. He’s going to idealize this chick too; the only difference, we’re manipulated to hope, is that this woman will love him blindly back. They’ll be happy in delusionland together, and Tom will never have to learn to be clear-eyed while in love—because, really, that’s just not romantic.
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500 Days of Summer looks better than the average romantic comedy, but it’s as silly as all the rest (via robot-heart)
I am so sick of this shit. I’ve been that girl. I’ve been the one who’s not as into him as he is into me, and had everyone I know rooting for the guy to “get the girl” (i.e., me) because when a guy is pining after a girl, it’s considered romantic, no matter what her actual feelings are.
I am so sick of things written from a guy’s perspective that don’t acknolwedge that maybe the girl has her own desires, and they don’t include being with the guy, and that doesn’t make her a bitch or unfeeling or cold. It just makes her a person.
Have these people not read Paper Towns?
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