It is over four months ago that I crossed this battle line, casually sauntering across an unmarked and unremarked 'no man's land' and not realising at the time that there was even a war taking place, let alone one that, without hyperbole, is more devastating than all of those depicted in the Star Wars Prequels combined... at least to me.
She crossed those lines with me, before returning promptly to our original position... except is was no longer 'our' position... she went with someone else in tow. I don't blame her frankly (#1).
On one 'front' the army is made up of lone, autonomous units... possibly bitter, and like as not, more hormonal and moody through lack of sexual release. On the other: families, networks and groups, backed by all governments, religions, culture, tradition and artworks ever....and I mean EVER (But most likely, still fairly hormonal through lack of sex)
Yep. On one side is the 'Couple'... the fundamental basis of the 'Traditional Family unit'. I am now on the other side. I am one of those 'single' types... (Don't worry, bitterness and sexual drought are not the focus of this ahem... 'discussion')
...and now, particularly with the 'run up to Christmas advertising binge' hammering the point with all the subtlety of George Lucas's Romantic dialogue, I realise that all culture everywhere really really hates single people. I mean it. Utterly. Hates us.
Now, I've been single before, obviously, to paraphrase that over-rated platitude fountain, Lady Gaga, we were 'Born that way'. Back then I didn't notice. I'd never known anything else, never been in a long relationship, never stepped onto that most exulted treadmill to 'House, kids, useful and productive member of economy'...
Previously I'd never had society Smile at me with motherly indulgence. I was permanently below the line of sight... at best a nagging irritation, unwilling to 'Be a winner at the game of life', which as MB so helpfully portrayed in their game, consisted of getting kids, a mortgage, a house and then dying after toiling for tedious year after tedious year.... but I was safely outside of this...
Then, suddenly, I wasn't.... I was in a relationship. I was one of the annointed ones. I was being advertised at... and I mean properly, not just by putting tits next to a soft drink and expecting me to make up some tenuous connection for myself. I started to fall into that role. I couldn't help it. Society made it inevitable.
Now I'm back on the other side.... and jeez, it really is a shock just how far society is willing to go solely to remind us that if we aren't paired up and planning on squirting our DNA into the gene pool, well, we might as well be a serial killing sex offender... who probably stuffs 'bath salts' up their bum... and... well whatever else that scares the family minded...
The strength of this intrinsic cultural loathing was laid bare to me while reading a fun little bloggers bun fight. This silly bout of 'bald men fighting over a comb' featured a wonderfully illustrative little spite-nugget. In a list of all the reasons Blogger B was a 'Weirdo' (#2), Blogger A stated, as their coup de grâce:
'Blogger B, who has never married...'
And that was enough. On that single statement hung innuendos ranging from 'being a bit of a loser' to suspect sexual preference... all the way up to paedophilia or being a nut case, dirty-mac, blade-licking kiddie-murderer
It is of course possible that Blogger B might well have eschewed marriage because he's constantly fucking multiple attractive people in marathon sessions of the kind of athletic sex that could put an eye out if performed without adequate training and simply hasn't had their mouth unoccupied for long enough to ask anyone... Maybe. But just by implying 'Single' his foe insinuates 'Loser'.
And common usage is on his side here.
Name me one film which features a strong, happily single character, but which at no point concerns itself with trying to staple them to another human being?
Go on... I'll wait.
Ok. There is *Insert name of sidekick to sassy female lead who drinks, smokes and has a 'good time' in rom com where the heroine frets about finding love with some bellend*
Congratulations if you named any one of the 400 films/characters that might fit the above statement. Now watch that film again and when the inevitable scene appears where the 'spunky sidekick chick' realises that she is living a 'hollow existence' and tells the unappealing lead that she 'envies her relationship', please feel free to hit yourself in the teeth. Perhaps with the corner of a table or something.
Ok. 'Guy movies'. Surely they aren't subject to this sort of production-line, faux-romanticism?
Obviously. This is polemnic, I don't mention contrary viewpoints, save where I can subtly undermine them with language.
Name a male lead who is happy to be single? OK. Now name one who isn't an irresponsible bed hopper that eventually 'realises' that she's 'the one he wanted all along'?
Ok. You've thought of one name... he was enjoying the single life and he never settled down... and he didn't have an introspective 'hollow life' moment.
...but wait a minute. That guy wasn't the lead was he? In fact I'm pretty sure the chracter you're thinking of was being portrayed throughout the whole movie as a total douche? ... and what was the evidence that we were given for his Stoma-douche status? Oh yeah it was his cavalier attitude to women and relationships and etc etc... (#3)
Even Testosterone crazed action movies usually feature at least one 'relationship scene' if only to show that the muscular, oiled lead with his shirt off isn't one of those 'gayists'. Oh and then her (near inevitable) death can be used as a plot point.
Rambo 3 features a particularly classic example. Being captured and tortured is obviously not quite 'personal' enough for the human bazooka, so he has to meet a 'simple peasant girl', fall in love with her and watch her die... all in under 5 minutes. Only then he can get get REALLY angry...
Of course the music world is so chock full of examples of this kind of 'single' loathing that it barely needs a mention. But here goes...
Most songs are about getting together in some way. Either for soaring emotional encounters that tilt the earth on it's axis, or for sleazy bump 'n' grinds that also tilt the earth... well less 'tilt' than rock back and forth.
But what about all the split up songs... where does the career of Adele fit in with all this? She's always banging on about being chucked?
Well exactly. 'Storytime Adele' is on a journey. It's pretty much the same one everytime, but then again, no blame there... this is such a popular narrative construction that it is endlessly applied. Seriously, see how many songs fit the dollowing structure.
She was in a relationship. Things are Good.
She Isn't in a relationship. Things are bad.
She is 'Getting strong' again. Things will be good again.
Yeah yeah... there's a lot if 'I don't need you to live my life and I'm stronger and blah blah blee blah'. The implication remains though, the relationship was the normality. Disequilibrium comes with the break up... and what is she getting strong for? Well, most likely it's to 'learn to love again'
Ok not all songs, movies, novels fit this exactly. But the vast majority of them do. When exceptions do occur, they usually entirely outside the 'conventional' narrative structure, used for artistic and subtle reasons.
So in order to see the worst offenders we have to go where art and subtlety are only used as weapons of conquest. Yes, as always the most blatant effects are in the world of advertising.
Don't get me wrong. Advertising hates couples too. They hate them plenty and bombard them constantly with reasons to split up... but that is a blog for another day. However, no matter how much Advertising despises couples, that is the mild distaste of a vicar in an old novel compared to the loathing it espouses for those worthless singles.
In adverts Single men are either useless losers, pining for the girl... or unrealistic cartoons clicking their fingers and the girl comes over. The girl is usually enticed by a teenagers jizz-scent concealer (Like Lynx) or their choice of pallid, taste free, Coffee-alike beverages (All Coffee manufacturers ever)
Women are given a tiny bit more depth, but the types are the same. Single but pining until fulfilled by a man, possibly attracted by the smell of your shampoo and not the fact that you are model-level attractive (but unrealistically shy and bumbling) or Single and enjoying life, and only content to be fulfilled by 'a man' if the guy is good enough... in this case 'good enough' is denoted by having no shirt and prominent abs. Of course in adverts, that guy always turns up to grab up our sassy heroine.
Strangely the only advert that offers even a semblance of balance is one that has a direct, financial interest in converting singles to couples. It is a dating agency. It states that being single is amazing, but being in a couple can be more amazing... and that's as close as you'll ever get from the advertising world. A world that has only a few a seconds to grab you and can only deal in broad strokes.
However, it is for this reason that advertising is probably more indicitive of societies attitude to the uncoupled than even movies or music.
Society hates singles, because as yet we are not playing their game. It has to get us in line. Making Babies, being good, contributing. How does it do that? Well by exalting 'The Couple' until it is the only natural ambition for anyone not in one, oh and making the idea of being excluded so utterly unappealing as to be unthinkable. This it can only do by constant, relentless and exaggerated attack.
And now I am on that side.
The contrarian in me believes that I should stay here. Revelling in my solo state, flicking the Vs at society and couples alike. Maybe try and be like a single character in a movie, living a life of carefree abandon, but without the manufactured 'realisation' moment...
Yeah yeah... That's what I'd like to think...
Chances are though, as soon as there is a willing hand to grab I will take it in mine and we'll both run back across 'No Mans Land'
Back to society's 'Winning Team'
...and now that I've made it sound so utterly appealing... any takers?
#1 Yeah. To clarify: The 'societal pressure' bit is emphatically NOT the reason she is 'not-single' any more. I may be an omni-douche, but even I don't have quite enough douchery to attempt to piss on her new relationship. Besides which it would come off as the bitterness of a lonely, singleton... a.k.a 'Loser'... and he's alright to be honest.
#2 Both are weirdos... out and out fucking weirdos... obviously, but not due to marital status, but because they are bloggers
3# Porn is the obvious exception to this rule. But luckily, with the internet now parcelling that out in clips, tailored to your own personal seedy proclivities, hopefully that weird anachronism that is 'Porn Storylines' will go the way of the freakshow, an antiquated curio that seemed to be all the rage with those oddballs in the past.
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