As romantic love has become so prominent in American culture as a result of the media’s representation of what love should be or what the perfect relationship is has resulted in expectations and disappointment for much of the population. These expectations or desires are not only experienced by adults but these narratives and images are now also shown to and influencing the younger generations of today. In their article “Imagining Romance: Young People’s Cultural Models of Romance and Love”, Bachen and Illouz perform a study to demonstrate that children between the ages eight and seventeen are able to associate meanings to love and romance, even though they have yet to experience it, through images and narratives produces in the media.
This raises the question of what effects postmodern culture, particularly the media, has on children including their …show more content…
Considering the children use their knowledge gained from media as their mold for understanding because they have no experiences themselves make sense that they associate consumerism with love because that is the media and advertisements goal. For the adolescents, they use media more as a resource for understanding love and romance because they have observed it in society experienced by possibly a parents, friend, etc. For this reason, they are able to associate emotional communication and domesticity to love and romance, however, they also believe consumerism plays a large role because to have a perfect relationship they believe you must have a house, car and good jobs. Overall, mass media has created unrealistic expectations surrounding love and romance which will result in many of these young people to likely be disappointed later in life because of the expectations they have already formed surrounding their love lives and
This raises the question of what effects postmodern culture, particularly the media, has on children including their …show more content…
Considering the children use their knowledge gained from media as their mold for understanding because they have no experiences themselves make sense that they associate consumerism with love because that is the media and advertisements goal. For the adolescents, they use media more as a resource for understanding love and romance because they have observed it in society experienced by possibly a parents, friend, etc. For this reason, they are able to associate emotional communication and domesticity to love and romance, however, they also believe consumerism plays a large role because to have a perfect relationship they believe you must have a house, car and good jobs. Overall, mass media has created unrealistic expectations surrounding love and romance which will result in many of these young people to likely be disappointed later in life because of the expectations they have already formed surrounding their love lives and