Last year I did a group project about love. We wanted the project to cover both scientific and biological aspects as well as emotional. It was fun interviewing people, collecting, and reviewing the surveys and seeing what college attending people had to say about love. Mostly people thought of it was a controlled emotion, you either feel for someone or you don't, you fall in love, you fall out of love... few thought of it as being biological or chemical. Without going deep into the research we found, we did discover that love is both a emotional feeling that we develop as well as chemical reactions involving oxytocin, dopamine, and hormones acting as neurotransmitters giving us the biological part of love.
In the movie Jerry Maguire, it covers a lot of life and personal choices between the relationships that Jerry has with his clients, girlfriends, fiances, wife, and ultimately himself the audience can see almost every type of love there is. So if we ask ourselves what makes love possible in any of the relationships Jerry has in this movie, we see that there are multiple factors some of which we could find in our own love life’s. First there is the selfish love that we see in Jerry. At the beginning of this film we see how in love Jerry is with himself. He loves his job, getting what he wants, himself, and his material things. Jerry doesn’t care what lie he has to tell or who he has to backstab to get what he wants... he loves himself enough that he would do anything for himself. By the end of the film, we see a change in Jerry where he starts to put others before himself, becoming more selfless then selfish.
We see motherly love as Dorothy Boyd protects and cares for her young son thinking about his safety and health in the decisions she makes both in her career and personal life, and along with that, we see family love from Rod Tidwell as he strives to provide for his family and when he is injured we see the concern from his wife and family. Another love that we see (and the main one of the movie) is the romantic love between Jerry and Dorothy. Dorothy, again, displays selfless love that that both emotional and chemical as she take a leap and supports Jerry when he is fired and stays with him as he tries to continue his career as a sports agent. Jerry however, seems to first feel chemical love for Dorothy, before it become emotional and he allows himself to fall in love with both Dorothy and her son.
Today, I think that it’s rare to find a movie like Jerry Maguire with a subtle undertone and not overdone theme of love. I feel like most movies are either about love specifically or have nothing to do with the emotional and chemical aspects or love. But here’s the thing; I believe that pop culture has transformed love into any sort of relationship we have. Work, personal, friend, family, sexual... pop culture often implies that love is a guaranteed thing in each one of those relationships. Movies, music, clothes, food, and other material things are sold in a sex advertising way which I believe has now morphed with being the same thing as love. Pop culture today takes the word love and uses it as a way to sell material goods rather then try to define or display its actual meaning. Sadly, I think that because of this newer definition of love, many have lost sight and appreciation for the meaning of love, hopefully love will be re-redefined so once again the emotional, biological understanding of love will be popular.
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