Movies of passionate love relationships between men and women have always held a special place in our cultural heritage. Movies about great love affairs have been made from the classic stories of Lancelot and Guinevere, Heloise and Abelard, and Romeo and Juliet. These classics are remembered as symbols of physical passion and spiritual devotion. Although they are most often regarded as love stories, the literary foundation of these stories is that of tragedies – and tragedies of a most telling kind.



In these stories, the heroes and heroines are remembered not because they are average members of their societies, but because they rebel against society. The lovers are most memorable because they are unusual, different from what we might imagine should be the correct, or proper form of behavior for members of their society. Their love affairs challenge both the moral and social codes of their culture, and their stories are inevitably tragic because their passion alone fails to sustain them. They are eventually defeated by the social and cultural norms of their time.

The underlying theme of the tragic nature of these fascinating love stories and their commitment to each other is a defiant response, a rebellion if you will, to anyone and everyone. The contest between culturally accepted behavior and the passionate commitment between the lovers begins when each realize that their love is not regarded as a normal way of life or an acceptable cultural ideal.

Thus, the ideal of romantic love always stands in opposition to much of history and is frequently the subject of great novels and movies. In today's popular theatre, the characters and themes may change and challenge our sensibility, but the tragedy remains. Movies such as Brokeback Mountain challenges our view of the value of gay men in what has been presumed to be a stereo-typical masculine role. Although the masculine roles in this instance could be exchanged with any other, such as a soldier, lineman, longshoreman, you name it.

The point is that movies about romantic love in today's world portray it as something that doesn't exist exclusively between male and female. Movies recognize and indeed, celebrate the individualism of the characters, with their strengths and weaknesses. They reject the ideas of human beings as bland, mindless creatures without vision or spiritual aspirations. They place in the forefront of our consciousness the ideal that romantic love is egoistic – a philosophical doctrine that holds that self-realization and personal happiness are the moral goals of life. Romantic love is inherently egoistic in that it is motivated by the overwhelming desire for personal happiness.

Romantic love has been defined as a passionate, spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person (Brandon, 1980). With the awakening and liberation of gay rights in our society, that definition is clearly flawed. It would be more appropriate to redefine this aptly as a passionate, spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between two humans with equal regard for the value of each other. However romantic love is defined, tragedy remains as a constant reminder of the perpetual clash between society and lovers, of any sexual orientation.

In the end, however, the passion that inspires the souls of lovers exists exclusively within themselves and the private spiritual universe they occupy. True romantic lovers share their private universe with each other exclusive of those that would destroy them for their belief in an archaic construct of cultural norms. Romantic lovers do not share their treasure with the outside world, although far too often the outside world attempts to pry apart their relationship to satisfy their own self-serving egoism.

Romantic lovers in the movies and in real life exhibit a special and remarkable courage to honor and respect each other for whom they are. This form of courage is a prerequisite for true romantic love and the stuff that the most memorable movies are made of.