English 313H
10/13/09
You Belong with Me, but Do I Even Know You?
Selfish, unrequited love is nothing new in mainstream society. Books have been written and songs have been sung about it. Everyone has loved someone for the wrong reasons, whether it be social standing, money, looks or just plain immaturity. Humans fall in love without thinking it through all the time. But if you never knew the person to begin with, is it truly love? Can you fall in love from afar? It is most likely a fantasy that Hollywood reinforces in the wrong way. Reagan economics provides the perfect setting for the hands off approach that drives the characters to partake in destructive activities without appropriate consequences. In the 1980’s novel “The Rules of Attraction,” Ellis examines unrequited love in a self-serving way. Due to the political philosophy and emergence of MTV, his characters are driven by the hunger to fill voids in their souls created by lives of excess fueled by sex.
Centered in the 1980’s, “the decade of greed and glitz,” Americans are falling into the economic trend of the Reagan era (West 1). Reagan’s laissez faire ideas set the stage for parents to give their children liberties they’d never had before. The young adults of Camden reflect the lives of decadence around them. The Reagan years were “a spiritual impoverishment in which the dominant conception of the good life consist[ed] of gaining access to power, pleasure and property” (West 2). The kids of Camden College only knew how to live by overindulging, and due to the fact that college provided exploration, they chose to partake in an obscene amount of drugs and sex just to stay afloat. With MTV gaining steam and Madonna rolling around in a wedding dress, the 80’s encouraged young people to yearn for what they wanted, not what they needed. Sex was immediate and parents were into the laissez faire mentality, especially the elite parents featured in Ellis’ novel. They did not enforce consequences, resulting in voids in their children’s souls for stability and love in all the wrong places and ways.
In Ellis’ novel, all of the relationships are one sided due to the fact that no one truly gets to know the person they want to be involved with. Each character fantasizes about their “love” without ever sharing true honest feelings. They build the other person up to be what that character needs at that moment. Ellis presents the fantasies as completely self-serving. This group of young adults lives lives of excess that create voids in their souls. For example, instead of pursuing healthy relationships, the men and women of Camden create what they desire in another person. Sean idealizes Lauren to be the perfect girl for him, angelic and flawless. However, the truth is that she never was to begin with. Lauren fantasizes about every moment with Victor due to the fact that he is away and she needs comfort and stability while her young life unravels in front of her. Paul builds up his relationship with Sean as a spontaneous hook up that turns into a full fledged affair with two unlikely people that are destined to be together. What happens with all the relationships is, of course, nothing. No one gets who they want because they never knew who that was in the first place. Ellis presents each person as simply a body that the other clothes in his or her desires and yearnings for a potential lover. He presents love as immature and selfish, yet all too real and vivid for the readers of his novel.
Society reinforces self-serving, unrequited love in pop culture on a daily basis. Taylor Swift, one of the most popular singer/songwriters of the moment, had a recent hit song titled “You Belong With Me.” She sings about a popular boy who she is “dreaming bout the day when [he’ll] wake up and find, that what [he’s] looking for has been here the whole time” (Swift 1). Now, teenage girls across the country will believe that if they write a song about a guy not noticing them, not only will he fall for them, but they can be hit songwriters too. The music video does not help the matter, with the popular boy telling a geeky looking Taylor Swift that he loves her at the school dance. She also wears a cliche Cinderella gown to seal the deal.
Just like in Ellis’ novel, the two characters barely know one another, but in this case, Taylor fantasizes about a guy and wins his heart. Taylor wants the handsome guy to fall for her and he actually picks her instead of the popular cheerleader. Does that ever happen? No. Why? Because the cool football player never gets to know the geeky girl, and thus a fantasy comes alive in Hollywood that would never occur in real life. Ask a fifteen year old in Indiana who reads Anime comic books and has coke bottle glasses if the quarterback on the football team even knows she is alive and the answer will most likely be no. Everyone has been to high school; the big man on campus falling for the dorky girl would definitely be monumental to a seventeen year old. Social status rises and the duck turns into the swan. Does she even know him? No. But the immature take on unrequited love happens in front of lockers, football fields, and Camden-like college campuses every day.
The MTV generation was born in the 1980’s around the time that the kids in Ellis’ novel went to college, but the effect is still rampant today. Now, young adults want everything with the click of a mouse or the button on a remote. Sex garnered massive media attention on September 14, 1984 when, at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna put on a wedding dress and gyrated on the floor to her hit song, “Like a Virgin” (USA Today). Wealthy parents, such as Mrs. Denton, were using a hands off approach, and pop culture was encouraging hands on!
Incredibly spoiled and over privileged kids are bound to look for love in all the wrong places. These kids obsess over what they cannot have because they have acquired everything else in life so easily. Just like Taylor Swift, they want to be noticed and loved. Unfortunately for them, love is too mature for the quest they seek. Love is not about a chase but rather a real life relationship between two people who (shockingly) actually know each other. Until the youth of America realize this, “You Belong With Me” will continue to be sung by lovesick girls with their hairbrush microphones, fantasizing about that guy who does not even know their name.
Works Cited
Clark, Cindy, Jayme Deerwester, Taryn Hartman, Korina Lopez, Whitney Mattheson, and Alison Maxwell. "Moments of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll." USAToday.com. 27 July 2006. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. <http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-27-mtv-cover_x.htm>.
Swift, Taylor. “You Belong With Me.” Fearless. Big Machine, 2008. CD.
West, Cornel. "The 80's." Newsweek 3 Jan. 1984. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. <http://www.newsweek.com/id/111587>.
