In the United States and other parts of the world, February 14th is never just an ordinary winter day. Many regard it as a day to celebrate love by buying chocolate, flowers, and jewelry for their significant others. TV specials and movies about Valentine’s Day often emphasize the materialism brought about by the holiday, and its artificiality.
Season one, episode fourteen of Friends focuses on the gang’s Valentine’s Day plans. At the beginning of the episode, Phoebe is explaining to Rachel and Monica why she is choosing to go out with a guy she once described as “creepy”: simply because she does not want to be alone on the holiday. This storyline has been somewhat overdone in TV shows and movies. In Sex and the City: The Movie, best friends Carrie Bradshaw and Miranda Hobbes end up single on Valentine’s Day. They go out for dinner together, and Miranda asks Carrie, “Is it me, or is Valentine’s Day this year on steroids?” Carrie responds by saying, “No, I think it was like this last year, we just played for the other team.”
So, no one wants to be alone on Valentine’s Day; this has been made evident by the media. “One of the major dangers of being alone in February is the tendency to dwell on past relationships. Whether you’re daydreaming about that ‘one that got away,’ or you’re recalling the fairy tale date you went on last Valentine’s Day, romanticizing the past isn’t helpful – nor accurate,” author Amy Morin once said. This certainly seems to ring true for characters like Carrie Bradshaw and Phoebe Buffay. However, it is unclear whether these characters truthfully depict how people feel about the holiday; rather, it is possible that people have been made to feel this way by consuming so many movies and TV shows that reinforce this sentiment.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the most celebrated films of the early 2000s. It focuses on the relationship between Clementine, portrayed by Kate Winslet, and Joel, portrayed by Jim Carrey, which happens to be quite a complicated one.
One detail that many overlook, however, is the fact that the love story of Clementine and Joel began on February 14th, and this is indeed a Valentine’s Day movie. At the very beginning of the movie, Joel is heard saying: “Random thoughts for Valentine’s Day, 2004. Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap.” Thus, Joel is another affirmation of the cynicism that fictional characters adopt when it comes to Valentine’s Day.
There are a countless number of notable movies that highlight the power of love, from Casablanca (1942), to Pretty Woman (1990), to Brokeback Mountain (2005) and beyond. The types of relationships portrayed in such films vary greatly, and accentuate the fact that anyone can find love. It seems that movies and TV shows about Valentine’s Day specifically have trouble capturing this. If Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, maybe the media’s angle of focus on the holiday should shift to properly represent that sentiment.
Article by MoCo Student staff writer Ayesha Shahzad of Quince Orchard High School.