A Fine Romance

So over this short Easter break I have been wathcing a lot of old movies, mainly musicals. I just moved to a new place and they have free cable. Lucky me. Anyway, as I was saying, I have been watching a lot of old musicals and most of them were starring Doris Day, the sweetheart of the silver screen. A common theme of musicals is falling in love, this may not be the main story line but it is one of the back stories that happens alongside the main plot. To me these musicals are epitomes of the perfect romance or at least my idea of a perfect romance. Not only do they contain the innocent, beautiful heroine but they also have great soundtracks! The one thing I have found that these films lack are an apparent death, at least most of them, but they have the other necessary requirements; a recognition, maybe of the lead's true role in life or a number of things, then there is the quest, a search for the characters perfect break, and finally the piece de resistance, a happy ending. So we have most of the requirements covered, now to the peripherals. We've got sex(implied of course), marriage, descent when the lead hits rock bottom and ends up washing dishes in a fancy hotel just for room and board, adoption as is the case for Bing Crosby in Here Comes the Groom when he brings a pair of French orphans back to the states, and the last one I will list is sexual innocence which is a pervading theme throughout most of the older musicals. So as I have just listed all of the reasons why I believe these Doris Day musicals are perfect romances, I will sign off and continue watching Lucky Me.

Love at First Sight

So as we have been travelling along on our journey through the ocean of stories I have noticed a thread that keeps appearing. The thread I keep encountering throughout these stories is the occurrence of instantaneous love. I don't mean love at first sight, but the realization of love that happens all at once and not slowly over time. When Daphnis and Chloe first saw each other they didn't immediately fall in love, they enjoyed each others companionship, but innocently and as a brother and sister would. Then one day Chloe saw Daphnis bathing "and he seemed beautiful to her" pg.143 and she could only think of how beautiful Daphnis was "and this thought was the beginning of love" pg.143. Later Daphnis falls in love with Chloe when she kisses him all of a sudden he could see her beauty. I guess "falling" in love is the proper terminology if we are basing it on these stories because it appears as if there is no growing period, one minute you are fine and then the next you are aflame with love and desire. Another example of instantaneous love is in the story of Quamar al-Zaman and His Two Sons. When Quamar and then Princess Budur are in turn awoken by the demons they are struck by each other's beauty and fall deeply in love with one another. In the case of Budur, when she "saw Quamar al-Zaman, she fell passionately in love with him" pg.218, though she chided herself for it because he was a stranger, she still was in love. When I read stories like these I wonder how the idea of sudden love came about. Did someone actually experience it or is it just a speeding up of the process people have to go through in order to find love?