Reflection #4: what is love?
On the power of media in framing love.
Disclaimer: this is a potentially controversial post. Within this post, I talk about Sanremo Music Festival, I want to make it clear that I support the protests that have been happening against Rai and Sanremo, because silencing the people and the artists speaking out against the genocide happening in Palestine is disgusting, especially when its done through censorship and violence.
TW: violence against women
Let me confess something, right from the get-go: this piece is heavily influenced by my mom, who tainted my favourite low-effort-reading genre on one far away morning, a couple of months ago.
She was reading “The Fourth Wing”, providing a funny and detailed commentary on the levels of horniness exhibited by the main characters. Half-way through the book, though, she asked:
“Don’t you think the love he shows for her is quite violent? I mean, she talked about being ravished, destroyed, he keeps telling her she’s his and his alone. It’s so possessive and aggressive, it makes you feel strange knowing young girls are reading this”.
I thought about my mom last night, when I turned on my Kindle and read the first chapter of “Bride” by Ali Hazelwood, an author that I very begrudgingly adore. It’s like being able to buy fanfiction from the supermarket, something I could have only dreamed of at 15. But starting from her last book, I noticed she has an issue with writing male leads that are assertive to the point of being controlling. Her broad-shouldered, tall, firm love-heroes all start off by being cold, dismissive and condescending of the girls they very evidently love from the very first page. It’s reminiscent of the play-ground dogma of “he pulls your hair because he’s into you”. Granted, I’ve only read a chapter and a half of her newest novel, but the introduction to the brooding hottie made me groan out loud.
It also made me think about love.
In 2019, I began my “love training”, as I affectionately call it. Back then, I could not watch or read romcoms without feeling physically sick.
I had gotten back together with the boy I had been yearning for the past three years, and I was hit by a subset of OCD that made all of my certainties crumble. I discovered rOCD – romantic OCD – a type of obsession that makes you focus on your partner, and check your feelings for them, and whether or not you feel them all the time and if you feel them, what is exactly that you feel. I don’t like talking about it, but it is important to mention it, because out of this experience came the best outcome possible, one I could not have possibly predicted. I had to embark on a journey of self-discovery, I had to face the fact that the beliefs I had about love were all heteronormative and distorted, because they came from stories and not from real life.
Though losing my confidence in romcom love was hard at first and I would not wish OCD on anyone, I am incredibly grateful that my therapists held my hand through the process and made me crave something good, something real.
I know it made me wish we could have spoken and speak about what love is more openly.
So I was pleasantly surprised when the cast of Mare Fuori [i.e. the most popular series on Italian TV at the moment] went to Sanremo [i.e. the biggest musical festival in Italy, which airs for a week for abour 7 hours each night], where they spoke about violence against women performing a piece about love.
The speech went like this:
“Listen, it is the first word. A woman who speaks to you, trusts you; never treat her with condescension or annoyance. There’s a difference between complaining about you and complaining to you.
Welcome is the second, no one deserves the violence of having to adhere to expectations of others. To be considered too much or too little. Not yet or no longer; let them feel welcomed for what they are.
Accept is the third, love does not always last; after being together, we might have to have to break a heart in order not to break ourselves. We are in the world to flourish, not to wither in the shadow of relationships that we no longer recognize ourselves in. Loving means accepting that people are happy without you.
Learn is the fourth: love is a job and learning it is perhaps the most important thing for which we are here. It deserves a daily effort, you teach your words, she teaches hers; until you invent your shared language.
Truth is the fifth: let us abandon the stereotypes of the real man and the real woman to aspire to be true men and true women. Real men and real women live and love in the world, they welcome their own differences and those of others as resources, knowing that differences make them free.
Side by side is the sixth: a couple is not based on assigning roles but on sharing them, on being close. Sometimes it's even about waiting, even accepting moments of silence when you feel like nothing is happening. But that waiting is only what prepares you to be the best and that silence is only what testifies your love.
No, it is the seventh, a hard word but one that we must be able to pronounce and that others must be ready to receive. Love must never enter into the territory of possession; that is why sometimes 'no' is the highest declaration of love one can make.
Together is the eighth. A word that may seem out of fashion especially today in which men and women live as opponents. That is why this word is the most precious, the one that helps us invest in the future. What matters is that we start looking at each other again. What we choose to see will depend on us.”
After hearing it, I went on Instagram and was a bit bummed that the reception from Italian feminists I like and admired was overwhelmingly negative. I thought the text was well written and – most importantly – well conveyed. True, some things I also did not like: it was written by a man (a debatable choice), the last paragraph smelled too much of centrism and puritanism, feminism and the patriarchy should have been mentioned in the last few sentences, and it was wrong to frame this as a stance solely against violence because it focused on love. I disagreed – however – that is should have been an expert of gendered violence to be invited to the stage to talk about the topic.
As a marketer with a focus on customer insights, I thought it was a good message for the audience it was intended for.
The show Mare Fuori depicts teens in a juvenile prison, all dealing with camorra, murder and life-or-death relationships. The love they show is rarely a healthy one, because that is precisely what the narrative needs to successfully carry on the message that a life of crime is not a life worth living.
The actors are hugely famous and the audiences are very young.
To deny them the voice to speak on this matter, because they are just actors and not experts, is to deny media the power that it has.
If the young fans are dressing like them, listening to the same music as them, identifying with them and their pain, why shouldn’t this be the right way to get to the hearts of the viewers?
A study done in Italy in November showed that school-aged folks do not recognise violent behaviours in relationships and that 52% of them has experienced some kind of violence in their past relationships.
This is shocking data.
We know the power that representation in media has, we know – though we (me) may not like it – the power that celebrity culture has. Due to the nature of the internet, I am sure that those who are fans of the show will have seen excerpts of the performance on their TikToks, even If they had missed the live show. I think there’s potential in there, in using young people’s passions to deliver messages that they may not be keen to listen to at school, when they are being lectured.
I guess my battle began because I was once consumed by romance and what it should look like, but all I had was a crumbling mess of jealousy and soulmates, fighting until they kissed and then the movie was over. Though my family helped me recognise red flags and avoid certain behaviours, and my only relationship has been with a man who thankfully does not need teaching, media is inescapable, especially if you are as interested in pop culture as I am.
I understand that there’s a big difference between violence against women and poorly written romcoms, but the latter is a symptom of the same twisted culture, and that is something I truly believe. Media has given us a horrible image of what we should want, and has made us too reliant on declarations of love vs. acts of love. Instagram couple content that is as toxic as it gets is unavoidable, and songs about love are often quite shocklingly reliant on the feeling of ownership. Having a crew of famous actors spell out what love can be, even if clumsily, is not – in my opinion – anyone’s loss.
I am not an expert on violence against women, that is true. But I know what good communication can do, and I have seen how media reflects and shapes our culture.
To go back on my mom, she has recently also stopped liking the term “belonging” when referred to relationships. She has decided that, even if we have give the term a positive connotation, belonging still signifies ownership, which is never a sign of love.
Once again, I think she is right.