I Heart Xclusion
Valentine’s Day is a day that, like all good cynics, I take issue with for all the usual reasons:
- Why should we only pay special attention to our significant others on a certain day?
- The holiday is just part of a consumerist scheme to support the “industrial complex”
Blah blah blah. Whatever. It’s all true, of course, but I wasn’t going to post anything about it until I came across this promotional offer from XBox Live. It offers some free Microsoft Points if only you’ll watch one of the offered movies with your loved one on Valentine’s Day. Sounds like a good deal, except for the wording of the advertisement.
It annoyed me right away on a subliminal level, although it took me a bit of time to rationalize why exactly I took issue with it. At first it was the dichotomy between those who have “someones” and those who do not. I must either a sentimental sap who likes frilly pink hearts simply for having a girlfriend, or I’m some chest-pounding “manly-man” type who “don’t need no stinkin’ girlfriend! Guys rule!” Is that it?
I couldn’t possibly be a guy who is between relationships, or a guy who for the sake of career, livelihood, or personal choice, just doesn’t have a significant other? I couldn’t be a girl who is single for any of the same reasons? Or a girl who doesn’t like frilly pink hearts? I couldn’t be a gay man or woman in a relationship where such cave-painted gender roles aren’t so clearly established? I couldn’t be a person of any gender and sexual orientation who appreciates a romance movie, even watched in solitude? Maybe I’m some basement-dweller with the social skills of an empty pizza box and movies are my escape from harsh reality, in which case, thanks for reminding me of that.
Then there’s the matter of which movies are offered to either side. If I’m the romantic type, I must want to watch some trite garbage like The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past or the insufferably pointless and overrated Paranormal Activity. But if I’m not – if I’m the skull-crunching manly-man type, or the lonely lurker type – then I must want something involving drunken stupidity like The Hangover, the pulp sensationalism of Inglorious Basterds, gangsters in Public Enemies, explosions like G.I. Joe, or a healthy dose of racism like we find in The Goods - you know, because the target market probably isn’t Asian or anyone else who might be offended by Asian stereotypes.
Because all real chest-pounding manly men enjoy that kind of stuff.
As a guy in a successful heterosexual relationship, his ad was tailor made for me, right? Except that I hate most romance movies no matter who I’m watching them with, because of their hackneyed storylines and characters who are either unrealistically beautiful or exaggeratedly hideous only to – by way of magic or hard work – become unrealistically beautiful. Except that I don’t buy into the idea that ideals like love or tenderness or sensitivity or – you know, generally not being some chest pounding machismo asshole – are mutually exclusive from my identity as a man.
Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill, but the shit just annoyed me. Maybe me and my girlfriend, instead of exchanging frilly pink hearts, like to share a cocktail inside of a flaming skull right before we headbutt each other. With love. You don’t know. It’s just more evidence of how the consumer culture is so oblivious or indifferent to the many different types of ways that people can choose to interact with one another – and not just on Valentine’s Day.