Films and television shows are not really meant to reflect reality. They can comment on reality. They can tell a story based on real events. And yet they play an important role in how people perceive reality and their place in society. They can also greatly affect our expectations of communicating with people.
Here are the top 10 facts about society that Hollywood lies to us in their films.
10. War is a glorious and noble occupation
According to Dennis Rothermel, a retired philosophy professor, the movie can give a true picture of real military conflicts if it shows “accidental violent death, submissive horror, abomination as the norm of behavior”.
This does not mean that Hollywood cinema never shows a war truthfully. There are realistic military paintings, such as Platoon, The Thin Red Line, Letters from Iwo Jima, and a number of others.
9. People have too much money
It seems that the American Dream Factory is not at all familiar with the concept of "economic crisis." Characters in television shows and films, as a rule, can afford to go wherever they want at any time, even if they work in a low-paid position.
Take, for example, the famous series Friends. The main characters sit around almost the whole day, and at the same time rent apartments in a house located in the chic area of New York - the most expensive city to live in.
And if the apartment of Carrie Bradshaw, the heroine of the series “Sex and the City”, was real, then, according to experts, it would cost her $ 3,500 a month.
Of course, technically “Friends” and “Sex and the City” are a TV show, not a movie. However, the large screen is also full of incredibly rich heroes.
8. The hero always gets the girl in the final of the film
Although times are changing, and Hollywood is gradually moving from the cliche "woman in trouble" to strong and independent heroines, male heroes still get girls at the end of the film. This is one of the most common and enduring Hollywood cliches.
And it doesn’t matter that the hero may not have common interests with this girl, and they met a couple of days ago, and this is clearly too little for the notorious love chemistry to arise. The winner must receive his prize - and the point.
In real life, a hero and a heroine would at best remain friends and see each other a couple of times a month, between work and family.
7. One of the parents is absent
In many Hollywood films, the main character or heroine does not have one parent, or even both. This is a frequent excuse for characters to act irrationally and without motivation.
It gives viewers a false stereotype that all their problems and failures could be blamed on parents who are absent in their lives, who did not give them love and did not learn in time what to do and what to do.
6. Parties are always fun
In films, youth or adult parties are always interesting and entertaining events. And if bad things happen there, they are only “plot engines”, allowing you to better reveal the characters or motivate them for further actions.
In real life, many parties are just a bunch of tired people after work who talk languidly with each other, drink alcohol, sometimes dance, and then disperse and go to bed calmly.
5. Villains - freaks, heroes - handsome
This social stereotype is not an invention of Hollywood, but it is actively promoting it. It takes its roots from the theory of the Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso, who is often called the "father of criminal anthropology." According to Lombroso, crimes are committed by people with a characteristic appearance and character.
“Native criminals,” according to Lombroso’s theory, have an irregular skull shape, a sloping, narrow forehead, an asymmetric face and eye sockets, and very developed jaws.
Although we understand that the difference in the appearance of characters in films is the easiest way to show the audience who the hero is and who is the villain, in real life everything can be exactly the opposite. A well-dressed, attractive-looking man may well be an inveterate bastard (take at least a large cohort of marriage crooks), and an ugly person can be an angel in the flesh.
By the way, there is a reverse Hollywood stamp. How to calculate a female villain in a room full of people? Very simple: she will be the most beautiful and sexy lady in this room.
4. Killing a villain solves all problems.
In a movie, the death of a bad guy immediately brings life back to normal. At the same time, everyone ignores the fact that the problems that the villain created throughout the movie remained.
For example, did the killing of Voldemort solve the problem of many purebred wizards having a negative attitude toward the Mudbloods and Muggles? Did the assassination of Sauron immediately make all his supporters kind and peaceful?
In life, even the elimination of leaders of terrorist organizations such as ISIS (banned in Russia) is not the key to the disappearance of the entire organization. So the reprisal against the villain is, of course, good, but obviously not enough for a happy ending.
3. Geniuses know and know everything in the world
Most real geniuses achieve great results in their field of study. But you won’t go to the Nobel Prize in Literature to go over your car engine?
So why does Hollywood often show us such geniuses as Dr. Gregory House, who is not only an amazing doctor, but can also speak half a dozen languages and plays the piano? Or take Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four, who is a genius in several areas at once (mathematics, mechanical engineering, physics, electrical engineering), and is equally good everywhere. In ordinary life, this does not work if you are not Anatoly Wasserman (but this is not accurate).
2. People work little at work
It seems that movie heroes are not too concerned about doing the same amount of work that an average worker in the real world does. They have incredibly large lunch breaks and no one is left overtime. And you can always ask a colleague to "cover me in front of the boss." Do you often agree to do his work for a colleague while he solves personal problems?
Any competitive modern office or factory has both processing and deadlines, so ordinary people don’t have much time for romantic adventures, unraveling mysterious cases or saving the world.
1. The enemy who has done you a favor becomes a friend
The idea of combining with former enemies is often exploited by Hollywood, being one of the most common movie cliches. A vivid example of this is the story of Khan from the Fast and the Furious franchise. He was one of the coolest characters in this movie saga, despising the laws of physics. And Jason Statham, or rather his hero Deccard Shaw, killed him.
It should be recognized that the idea of reluctant to unite the Show with the team of Dominic Toretto in the eighth part of the franchise brought a lot of pleasure to the audience. His chemistry with Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is so good that it justified the release of a separate film about this couple.
But bad luck: The show killed one of the protagonist's friends. He also blew up Dominic’s house and nearly sent his biological family to Fast and the Furious 7. But as soon as he helped the Dominic team, it canceled all the bad things that the Show had done before.
