Movies have no qualms of tackling subject matter that is a real part of people's lives.
But no matter how well they are written and receive critical acclaim, they are essentially created to entertain.
Some people who resonate with certain subject matters – like cancer or suicide – depicted on screen may take issue over the fact that there is an audience grabbing their popcorn and knowing eventually everything will be fine when the credits roll.
When Indianfattie asked on askReddit, What do people need to stop romanticizing? plenty of people weighed in with examples of a social malaise they believe are subject to exploitation.
Lack Of Sleep
"Not 'needing' 7-8 hours of sleep."
"So many people treat not sleeping as a badge of honor. In reality, the science is pretty clear in this, that getting < 7 hours impairs your cognitive functioning and productivity. A lot of sleep-deprived people dispute that, but those in a sleep-deprived state aren't reliable evaluators of their own performance!"
"If you actually can't function in the morning without coffee, you're probably not getting enough sleep. And yes, that's a lot of people."
Eating Disorders
"Eating disorders. It's not beautiful and tragic, it's just a lot of gross sh*t. Like hoarding bags of chewed up food under your bed. Having dentures/implants at 30 because your teeth rotted out. Walking around in public not realizing you have vomit in your hair, which by the way, is falling out by the fistful. I remember reading one horrifying story from an ER nurse who had a patient who was literally vomiting feces because her stool was so impacted due to constipation from her anorexia. Imagine vomiting your own sh*t."
"And that's not including risks like heart failure, life-threatening arrhythmias, brain atrophy, gastric rupture..."
"There's nothing pretty about eating disorders."
War
"For real. I saw an add the other day that I thought was for call of duty at first. Turns out its for the army."
– 24520ls
"Positive Inspiration Porn"
"Chronic illness or life altering disease. People glamorize being sick in books and movies as a lesson in strength, positive outlook, and acceptance. Great values to learn but it completely ignores the constant pain, isolation, and fear that sick people face daily. People pass around feel good stories about 'inspiring' people living their lives to the fullest while terminally or forever ill to make healthy and able bodied people feel grateful for what they have. I, nor anyone else in this community that I know, don't want to be your positive inspiration porn. This life is hard and we wouldn't choose it so stop using it for stories/media that you get to be emotional over then walk away from."
Idea Of Violence
"This makes me really ashamed, but I fell down the 'Columbiner' rabbit hole when I was a young, troubled kid. Basically, it's a fandom for the Columbine shooters. I was struggling with my mental health and the idea of killing the people who were putting me through so much sh*t gave me catharsis. I even wrote a letter to Kip Kinkel, a man who shot up his high school a year before the Columbine shooting. I really poured my heart out, and explained everything I was going through. I didn't expect him to write back, but he did. He told me that he usually didn't write back to minors, but that he thought it was important to tell me that everything was going to get better someday.
He explained how he got the treatment he needed for his mental health issues in prison and even got a good education and a job within the prison, and was living a pretty good life there, despite serving a life sentence. He said that he really cared about me and wanted me to succeed in life, and asked me to reach out and get help. I was floored. No one had ever cared that much about me before. Needless to say, I left that fandom and got help, and I stopped romanticising the idea of violence. When a literal school shooter tells you that sh*t isn't cool, you know that sh*t isn't cool."
Bad Romance
"Know that unlike in math, two negatives do not make a positive. In other words, two imperfect people do not magically make a perfect relationship."
Battle Scars
"Sports Injuries."
"Like, 99% of the time it will get better but 99% of the time you won't be able to come back to where you once was as an athlete. No matter how heroically you will try to recover or fight this injury. Most of the time it will never be the same again."
"I injured my knee a long time ago, and it has never been the same ever again and everybody told me to try harder. That's just not how it works."
Obsession With People
"Stalking. In movies, if person A likes person B, it becomes ok to stalk them like crazy, showing up uninvited to profess their love."
"In reality, that's totally creepy and illegal. The issue is that people without experience doing these things in real life see the movies and emulate what they see."
Pain Olympics
"Being stressed and exhausted from work."
– xyanon36
"Or it turns into what we call 'pain olympics'"
"'I'm exhausted, I worked 65 hours this week..' 'Omg that's nothing, I worked 75 and I'm doing just fine!'"
"The worst."
Depression
"There's nothing romantic about not showering for three days and forgetting what it's like to be able to feel things."
"people treat depression as if it were a "personality trait" that makes them cool, quirky somehow. no, it's not a shiny trophy that you can show off around and be proud of. mental health problems are real and they can ruin lives."Toxic Dedication
"Loyalty to the company--it's not a good thing. My husband worked for one particular company for nearly 20 years and towards the end, they were really treating him like sh*t. He was actually scared to try and find another job because he was afraid his coworkers would hate him afterwards for leaving. It didn't help that for a period of about 2 years prior to his quitting, he'd done a sh*t ton of interviews for similar positions only to find out they were going another way, or had just entered a hiring freeze or some other bullsh*t response. My own thoughts on that were that he was TOO experienced and wanted too much money BECAUSE of that experience. With one rejection after another, it broke him down and he felt like he would never be able to find another job."
Joker And Harley
"The Joker and Harley's relationship."
"It's abusive, plain and simple. If you want a weird, quirky couple to base your relationship on, go with Gomez and Morticia. That is possibly the most healthy relationship ever portrayed in media. They clearly have a different sense of what is normal, but it is also clear that they adore each other, support each other, and communicate clearly with each other."
"You don't want Joker and Harley. You want Gomez and Morticia."
The Grind
"Rise and grind everyday lifestyle...needlessly. Ofc some people actually have to live that life to legitimately survive, but the consistent push in today's generations and romanticizing it to be this life where you're happy and rich is just so dangerous..."
High School
"I literally could not agree more,there is so much more bullshit In high school but the media decides to romanticize one TEENSY part of it. Take it from a high schooler, romance is such a tiny part of it that it's barely even recognized anymore."
Alcoholism
"I am thankful I never made it such a habit that it ever became a problem, but between the commercials urging you to buy beer and liquor, the movies and television that treat binges as always fun and always sex-filled, and the general cultural passivity with it (the fact I can drink with my parents no problem but will likely never, EVER smoke weed with them) is just painfully misleading."
"I think of the people who truly struggle with alcoholism and how much it must pain them to watch TV or even just be out anywhere it is served. Maybe someone with that sort of perspective here can correct or enlighten me, but it just seems like a very difficult world to recover from alcohol dependency."
"To clarify, I'm not anti-drinking. I used to drink on a weekly basis, whereas now it's on special occasions only. Idk, so many things about it just don't appeal to me anymore; the emotional and relational problems...the trauma drunk behavior can bring, the wake-up headaches that make your head feel split in half, the vast amount of car accidents and fatalities inebriation causes, the numbing of your emotions (for better or worse), the amount of weight it makes you gain, the number of people who feel they cannot have fun without it."
"To me it's legitimately tragic just how much society encourages us, whether culturally or economically, to drink. I would argue cigarettes in the same vain, however I think society has generally embraced the anti-cigarettes mantra much more in recent years, though it's still bad."
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