I have two very close childhood friends. We do a lot together. We always spend our birthdays together, go to the cinema together and talk at least once a week. We are all 25.
We're so close, we basically know everything about each other. We are all girls.
But most people seem to think that if you are super close to a friend, whether it be a girl or a guy, you must "secretly have feelings for them"
Because if you open up to anyone, or show love and concern to someone... you must secretly be in love with them.
In the last decade, I have seen this explode in Hollywood films... and honestly, it is really ruining platonic bonds that people in the past had been able to form.
The term "Bromance" comes to mind when I think of this, and was really my first introduction to the whole apparently secretly "queer" aspect of friendship that we must all share.
Guys who are close in media... can't just be close friends. NO. They have to die for each other, not have any other friends that they can be close to, there can only be one BEST friend, and if you hang out with any one else in the movie or show. At least if you show you care for another friend a great deal, YOU ARE CHEATING on your best "bro"
This has been a huge issue for a lot of guy characters in recent media, and is now even starting to affect girl friendships in TV and movies too.
If two girls show that they are best friends, they MUST kinda like each other romantically. There has to be no other way.
I just think it's so sad yet funny, how the closest bond in most kid movies these days IS NOT the romantic lead, but the best bro.
I would also say the best sister (Cough cough, "Frozen") But it is truly just shocking.
It's like Hollywood doesn't know how to write deep friendships, without crossing over into awkward romantic territory. It's like TV doesn't know how to do this either, as this problem is really becoming so prevalent, it's scary.
I noticed this year, that two major animated films that came out, The Lego Batman movie and Captain Underpants, took the aspect of a rival or friendship... and just tried to turn it gay or romanticise it.
Yes, it was done for laughs, but there was a pure intent hiding underneath it. "If you are super close to someone, you are subconsciously in love"
There's no buts about it in Hollywood's eyes.
Batman and the joker? They hate love each other. They need each other more than anyone else to function.
NO.
George and Harold? They can't survive when they are apart.
NO.
What these movies are now showing is that it is healthy to have a co-dependent relationship with your best friend. That your best friend (usually male in these films) comes before anyone else, even family, other friends who could equally be as close, and your actual other half (girlfriend or boyfriend)
I actually think this way of thinking is messing up young people. Younger people are finding it harder and harder to make close FRIENDSHIPS. Most are saying that their best friend and closest friend is their other half (and sometimes their only friend, who they would actually call "friend")
This is really frightening.
When people don't form friendships that are as close in movies and TV, they get mystified and confused.
"But my best friend is meant to be there for me ONLY. My best friend can only be best friends with me! I can only have one best friend?!"
I have two best friends (three if I include my sister) and I have many more close friends. I don't consider these people the only people I can be close too, I will be close friends (and even besty over time) with anyone.
But people are afraid to let others in now, because they associate closeness with vulnerability, and vulnerability with that other emotion we are told to search for more than ANYTHING else, "romantic love"
It is just... sad.
It's sad that a lot of people are believing that people can't just be close friends, that you can't share a connection with someone without it being romanticised, and that you have to be selfish with your friendships. Because as Hollywood likes to say these days (especially in kid films) You can only have one BEST FRIEND. Not two or three, no.
You need a co-dependent relationship, and when your bestie or you do get a girlfriend or boyfriend- THEY COME SECOND PLACE.
Because that's how Hollywood works. And that's how media deforms and perverses the mind.
Not even kid films are safe I'm afraid to say.
Not even shows for three to five year olds like My Little Pony are.
And its sad, it really is.
