Love Story

Back when pigtails was my default hairdo, I would not only pout and whine my through those steamed carrots and multiplication tables but also always ask my mom if I was adopted (I am not), just in case she was my evil step mother and I didn't even know it. This suspicion was almost as deeply engrained in my mind as the notion that I'm going to be a princess. With the Cinderella picture book always opened in my lap, "I see the lights, see the party, the ball gowns/ See you make your way through the crowd/And say, "Hello"/Little did I know..." Okay, I won't get carried away with Taylor Swift here, but there is a point to be made: princess fantasies knows no age limits and neither does idealism. However, shaped by our reality and molded by time, our idealism has endured but also changed with our human experiences to obtain their places in our lives today.
Although contemporary romantics may have traded in white ponies for sleek Mercedes, romanticism and a few age-old acts of chivalry still remains. For example, the gentlemanly act of giving up one's jacket is still respected today, (303): Awww. A guy on the train just took his coat off so his girlfriend could throw up into it. Who says chivalry is dead?
It's not. In fact, it has transformed alongside our culture and way of life (443): I'm a gentlemen, chivalry is what i do, i'll open the door, pull out your chair, buy your drinks, i'll even go down first, but when it comes to mario kart, i draw the line. I'm sorry but i just can't let you beat me at mario kart.
More importantly, romanticism is only one of many manifestations of a broader idealism. Americans have a special relationship with this idealism in that we embrace it as much as doubt it. This contradiction not only continuously provides material for humor, but has also given rise to a classic form of humor: good news/ bad news jokes.
(620): He just helps fat girls get exercise. One walk of shame at a time.
This follows the good news/bad news formula because a walk of shame humiliating (and usually accompanied by a headache) while exercise is beneficial. Though this is by no means a just representation of contemporary romantic relationships, it does evokes the reality of many college campuses as way of undermining the Disney notion that every girl will be saved by a knight in shining armor. Yet we can't help but laugh. This confirms Jessie Bier's claim in The Rise and Fall of American Humor that Americans tolerate and even embrace “so much cruelty in our humor" that has become a defining characteristic. At the same time, this also goes back to the not-so-secret pleasure we derive from laughing at "suckers." It's like we enjoy being inside the bubble of fantasy. But if we're not inside, there's nothing that we love more than bursting it. However, not all of the jokes in this genre follow the form as closely, "(636): The doctor said 'youre the 2nd youngest person that ive seen with this condition. Thats probably not the silver medal you were looking for today.'" This one features a slight variation since it also incorporates sarcasm, which adds a whole new dimension to the joke. In this case, the bad news is not the punch line as it is in the walk of shame one above. Within the second line itself, there is another juxtaposition between the good and the bad that makes the statement more stinging and more poignant. But why does the last line, in which bad news so overt beneath the sarcasm still evoke a chuckle? Are we marveling at how we can make something so horrible sound so nice? In a way, the attempt to look on the bright side of things is just us laughing at our own idealism. The inherent incongruity in this is that while it is a laughter, it represents a way of coping.
The fact that Cinderella (the Disney version) has become as much of a classic as Othello and that good news/ bad news jokes still appear in different forms today means that we still believe. It doesn't mean that we are naive and unaware of the reality of the world we live in. Sometimes, we just want to suspend our disbelief. We're not ostriches burying our heads in the sand pretending that we live in a happy-go-lucky world. The truth is that we need this idealism as much as we need the brutality of realism to keep us in check. Because if we let go of this idealism, this fantasy to look up to, what have we got to keep us going?
No wonder Taylor Swift's Love Story gets so played so many times.