Yeah, yeah, we all know about how everybody loves the skinny girl in the movies or how image is everything…This isn’t about that.

This is about the things in movies that are so ever present in them that we have attributed much of their existence to just being a part of life…when they’re not.

Be they plot points or some side detail, these things may have existed before film, but film is what made them cool. And after being exposed to so much of this, it can be tough to not have these views as default.

1. Renegade Cops

We’re all fans of this one. One man… Against all odds… will stop at nothing to find the truth…

A cop or some form of authority doing a bunch of illegal things to do what’s right. We’ll be treated to scenes of said protagonist maybe breaking in to someone’s home or violently interrogating a suspect. Maybe the suspect even says something like “Y-you can’t do that! Y-you’re a cop!” To which the officer might say something like “Exactly. I can do whatever I want.” Maybe it’s just to scare them to get information and we know his intentions are just, but in reality this couldn’t be scarier.

Often times cases of abuse involving law enforcement come from officers who either think they’re upholding the law or don’t think what they’re doing is a big deal. Take this video for example-

This is one of countless reports floatin’ ’round the Youtube displaying boys in blue “doing what they have to” so as to do their job. Notice that while the woman is unruly, her injuries and situation do not require the beating she was given. Still, you’re likely to see comments like the one below-

“She looks better beaten up LOL… if she followed the rules and stop whining this all be avoided…..”

While there is no single source to cite for such bizarre idiocy, the fact remains that movies often showcase shootouts, car chases, and every other thing cops are meant to prevent all in the name of “solving the case”…and it leaves many a young mind feeling the ends will always justify the means.

2. Relationships

While dating can be complicated and marriage a strain, movies often make the most trivial gesture of the opposite sex out to be the “make it or break it” moment of your relationship. Comedies may actually be the worst, as they’re voicing many fears people have and give leeway into thinking that it’s normal. Well, normal is one thing but avoidable and unnecessary? Sure.

I don’t mean you’re never going to fight or have problems, but take this trailer for the upcoming movie About Last Night; a couple is moving too fast in their relationship and it feels so right that it just can’t be.

He’s Just Not that Into You, The Vow, Wedding Crashers all fit the stereotypes in their own way of glorifying a type of relationship that doesn’t exist. Or at least comes off extremely different in real life in a way that people don’t often see because they view themselves where everything is justified. People usually don’t do things they think are wrong.

At around 1:20, Kevin Hart asks his friend who said “I love you” first? And then tells him that “Women approach that phrase with a tactical strategy normally reserved for an anti-terrorist strike team.”

You could replace all of this cast with white college kids if this movie were made a decade ago and you really wouldn’t have to change the story an iota.

Yes, women are complicated and men are too simple to understand, nobody here is pretending they’ve got everything figured out. But movies like Jerry McGuire and their “You complete me” garbage keep the idea going that there is a perfect person out there…if only you weren’t stuck with this boring nitwit on the couch. “If only they had said the right words at the right time, I would’ve known that he was the one…”

The airport cliche seems to be over for the most part but leaving your douche groom or bride at the alter for the “other guy/girl” actually makes you look like a big ol’ douche yourself. Does anybody do that? Waiting until your wedding is interrupted isn’t just exciting, it’s awful timing. Was the protagonist going to spend the rest of their life with a person they clearly didn’t want to be with?

I’ve never understood that one, and this includes you, Spider-Man 2.

Funny how in movies dating is exciting but marriage is dead.

3. Danger

Now this is something we’re never going to get past. There have always been men to hunt and kill their own food, always been cultures where the boy must kill a wild beast to prove himself a man (I think), and sitting around your computer just don’t count as edgy. Unless you’re hacking of course!

Come to think of it, it’s kind of what Fight Club was all about in the first place- modern man losing his identity in a world gone soft. So being in dangerous situations is something that pretty much every guy you’ve ever known that signed up for the military and law enforcement was actually signing up for. There’s something about having to murder everyone in the room to make it out of a situation that they forced you in that gets every guy’s blood pumping.

Seriously, if they record the inside of someone’s mind, would we be shocked to see how many violent fantasies flash through the brain of your “average” citizen? I’m betting everybody to be some kind of warlord in their own head. 28 Days Later apes ain’t got nothin’ on us.

And when has anyone ever needed two handguns at the same time? You can’t aim, it’s a waste of ammo, and it just doesn’t make any sense. But we love it. Danger drives a story so it’s not a surprise that it’s as present in film as it is, but for those guys who buy BudK swords and daggers? We all know you’re praying every night that somebody breaks into your home.

4. Office Work or Anything that isn’t Glamorous

I’ve made a couple comments on this subject before and how I used to look at the idea of working in a cubicle as a steady job. Oh NO! A CUBICLE! Nothing could be worse than work, work, working away in a tiny box where you don’t have a name but a number. After hearing seven different people nag you for days on end about your TPS reports, you’ll end your eight to nine hour shift to go home to screaming kids that don’t appreciate you and a spouse that also nags you.

Why don’t you just end it all now?

Office Space, The Matrix, Wanted, Horrible Bosses and countless others display a work environment that would make you want to, if you followed all of the logic step by step- and many people do. Everybody’s had the job they’ve stayed with for what feels like forever and it seems like you might be in a thankless job until the day your heart just gives out and you die there, having achieved nothing.

The only way to feel accomplished at said job is to either A. Get the big promotion, or B. Escape into a fantasy where YOU are the king and the master of your own destiny. But if you can’t be Neo and save the planet after learning to shoot every type of gun every created, well then what are you doing? GAW, what a waste of a life.

And this idea about the common workforce is so strongto the point where we even look down on others that have these jobs. It gets even easier when you slip into a job you actually like. We become condescending toward others that happen to work the job where we’re no longer employed. “Oh, Tom is still with Bastard, Bastard and Son? *Scoffs* SO glad I’m not there anymore. He should look into real estate.”

But something you’ve got to realize is that…And get ready for this, because it might make your head spin and fill your pants with crap…some people actually like their job at that place you hate.

Whoo! Crazy, right? I know. And often what you consider to be thankless, pointless and miserable is work that actually fulfills others. Not in the rockstar sense clearly, but hey it pays the bills, and afterward, they can do what they want. I’ve used the example in an MBTI video about certain types that are cut out for that work and what I used to think doing the night shift at Kroger for about a month (Amicable split, so I was told).

I hated it and thought everybody just pretended to like it. But not everybody’s cut out to be a friggin’ rockstar nor do they want to be and that work has got to get done. The only reason the job might be dead-end for you is if you really don’t want to do it. If that’s the case…get another job.

Would you want to be a farmer? No? Then shut up because somebody’s got to grow the vegetables. Your dreams of being in a multimillion dollar metal band aren’t appealing to them either.

5. Your Youth

A few years ago, after high school, Part of the reason I hadn’t enrolled in college yet was partly by how the movies made it out to be; a huge ivy league campus where losers study and frat guys do nothing but party all night and run the place by day. If you weren’t with the in crowd, you really don’t get what being young is all about!

National Lampoon movies (That’s like 100 movies right there), American Pie, Project X, and just about every other movie featuring a cast in their 20s or lower will have you thinking that if you’re not in the in-crowd- make your own!

Are you not part of the cool crowd? Do the same things they do and make them jealous! Oh, and as a young adult, there’s much emphasis on “adult;” parents are either stupid, or so absent that it’s pretty much like you own the place- and since they’re never there, it’s time for a raging party!

In reality, if you never “break out of your shell,” that’s fine. It’s not fine to stay a hermit necessarily, with no human contact and afraid to come out of your house but to never attempt to get in with the in-crowd shouldn’t really be on a list of regrets you may have. And college itself does have it’s share of parties depending on where you go but it’s usually a decision between wasting your time and (parent’s) money…or destroying your body trying to study for finals and other projects.

“Fitting in” as far as high school is concerned usually just pertains to “trying not to trip when you walk down the hall” or not unintentionally doing something to make you look like an idiot. But no matter how cool you get, you just look like a dork to someone else that doesn’t think the same things are cool.

Society’s “losers” will normally just make their own cliques; there were never even seating arrangements in the cafeteria aside from friends sitting with the same friends like all those high school movies promised me.

Sure, there are always going to be the cool kids in life but it’s really your version that you’ll be living. The only reason you might feel left out of someone’s clique is because you’re missing something in your own life, not because there’s a level of “cool” you’ve never been able to reach.

So that’s that! Now go forth with what you know, enjoy the movies and learn what you can, leaving out the stuff that’s always been put in for affect and dividing what matters and what doesn’t. Not all movies are meant to be taken so seriously but us humans just can’t help ourselves sometimes.

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