There's a movie, Say Anything, where John Cusack's young character stands outside his sweetheart's house with a giant, 1980s boombox held over his head, blaring the message of his bleeding heart out of its speakers. I don't remember the song. I don't remember the reason for the soul-searing lack of propriety.
There's a scene in 10 Things I Hate About You where Heath Ledger's high school character utterly humiliates himself by performing karaoke in a football stadium to win back his sweetheart's affections. I don't remember why they needed winning back.
And there's a part in Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise walks into a house full of male-bashing divorcees. In front of of them all, he tells his estranged amore, "You complete me."
The list goes on and on. Some of the guys are old, some are young. Some of the the movies are classics and some are newer. But they all contain the motif I like to call... The Grand Gesture.
The grand gesture is the total surrender of pride for the sake of love. It's making a fool of yourself and exposing all of your vulnerabilities for the purpose of saying, "I made a mistake. I am a moron. Please, please forgive me and come back to me." I've been obsessed with the grand gesture for a long time. I think because it's so iconic. It's depicted throughout Hollywood's vast cinematic history, and yet no one in real life actually does these things. I often think that men could learn a lot about women by watching romantic comedies. Like Jerry Maguire, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Say Anything. That's what women want. They want the grand gesture.
No one does things like that anymore. I remember I waited weeks for my first serious boyfriend to rent a white horse and come riding up my street after breaking up with me. That looks totally delusional when I write it out, but he was the one in a million who would do something like that. Only, he didn't. Despite his chutzpah in other areas, he waited until I was dating someone new and then emailed to say, "I want you back."
Note: email, texts, phone calls... none of these are a grand gesture. These are all exceedingly ordinary gestures of "I'm testing the waters to see if there's any hope. If not, I'm not going to humiliate myself."
The grand gesture demands vulnerability. It's the extreme risk that makes it meaningful... the fact that you cannot know if it will be accepted, but you're willing to do it anyway because it might, it might be.
I made a grand gesture once. It was agonizing. But I'm a better person for having put my heart out there. All in all, I think women are looking for grandness. Too much of our lives are composed of minutea. We are all waiting to swoon.
2 comments:
Guys of the world, I'll handle this one.
The reason guys don't do this is because it doesn't work. The Grand Gesture is something that nice guys do, and, in real life, being a nice guy is often mistaken for being clingy, insecure, or inferior. Therefore, when a Grand Gesture is made in real life, the real life outcome is that the guy looks pathetic and is then treated as such. Her response will most likely be something along the lines of "You missed your shot." Or perhaps, "How many times do I have to say no? Know when to quit." However, if she already wanted him, or wanted him back, any gesture of any amount of Grandness, or lack of, will work. Including a text message. But I fully believe a Grand Gesture won't actually change a girl's mind.
Truth be told, I bet most guys would love the opportunity to make a Grand Gesture. Admittedly, I even had one planned out once - whole different story though. But here's the thing: Grandness rarely works in real life unfortunately. Too many problems (emotions, relationship history, pride) come up and you can't just do a montage with a Peter Gabriel song to gloss over all that stuff.
That being said, I still hope to pull off a Grand Gesture one day and I totally understand where you're coming from. Also, Cameron Crowe is the best (he made 2 of the 3 films you mentioned).
Yeah, that makes sense I guess. It's true that women -- and definitely men, for that matter -- don't like something that's too easy. I guess I could see how doing something like this would make a guy look like he really doesn't have anything else to be doing than sitting around planning something ... grand.
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