Weekly Written Analysis 5: Happily Ever After Ends in Divorce

Day after day people see the celebrities they look up to fall in love and commit their lives to each other. Some make spectacles of their love such as Tom Cruise’s spectacle on Oprah showing his deep love for Katie Holmes and other do it more discreetly. Either way, the public still watches. We also see them fall in love in the movies. Romances always make it seem like you can meet someone, fall in love at first sight, marry and live happily ever after. Unfortunately this is unrealistic for society today. With divorce rates on the rise, the happily-ever-after image portrayed in movies is improbable. “In the late 1990s, almost half of all marriages ended in divorce”(Gianoulis, 2009, p. 1). While movies emphasize romantic love, this romance many times does not go far in real life. Many people hope for the fantasy marriage shown in many movies, realize that their expectations were unrealistic and take society’s way out through divorce.

Society has down-sized the importance of marriage and made divorce a casual thing. According to an article from St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, “since the 1960s, rapidly rising divorce rates have placed the ending of marriage among the most common rituals of modern society”(Gianoulis, 2009, p. 1). Celebrities and media help to enforce the down-play on marriage and acceptance of divorce with such coverage as Britney Spears’ marriage to her childhood friend, Jason Allen Alexander that lasted less than 3 days and ended in an annulment then later that same year she married Kevin Federline and then filed for divorce in 2006. Media also had excessive coverage on Brad Pitt’s divorce to Jenifer Aniston and his falling in love with his co-star in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Angelina Jolie.

Divorce has impacted our culture today and for years to come. In her article on divorce, Tina Gianoulis states the prevalence of divorce has changed not only the nature of marriage, but the definition of family as well” (Gianoulis, 2009, p. 1). Many families today are not the traditional families most think of as a mother, father, and their children living in the same household. Nowadays a family is more likely to consist of one’s mother, stepfather, step-siblings, father, and stepmother. Children are also likely to not see one of their parents for days at a time and they experience much conflict between their sets of parents. The relationships children experience due to divorce when they are young will impact them in their future relationships as well.

References

Elephants on the Wall (2009). Happily Ever After. Retrieved June 15, 2009 from http://www.elephantsonthewall.com/proddetail.php?prod=341.

Gianoulis, T. (2009).Divorce. CBS Interactive Inc. Retrieved June 15, 2009 from St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100350/.