Are we too fond of romanticizing cheating?

By: Lorrianne Aryenz Valdecantos

Filipinos love to watch movies and one of the most watched plotlines are those that circle around a major cheating issue. Watching ‘Alone Together’ really opened up my mind to how far one can imagine cheating being okay. As I got out of the cinema, one question rang through my mind: Do we think cheating is okay?
Upon questioning the crooked ideals that we have, I decided to have a liitle movie marathon and there I concluded how much we love drama. ‘No other woman’, ‘The Mistress’, The Love Affair’ and ‘Sin Island’ were few of the striking movies we had over the last ten years. It is no rocket science to figure out what these movies are all about.

Photo Source: nytimes.com

For the benefit of the doubt, I still watched these movies and was rather surprised of how much cheating were in the screen time. It was funny how later on in these movies, at the montage of realizations, the cheating was normalized, romanticized, and somehow, justified.

It is never okay to cheat. No matter how small or big the act is, the bottom line remains: cheating is cheating and the last thing that people need is an over budget, low quality films that introduce adultery as a normal thing, much like a typhoon where the question is not ‘If’ but rather ‘When’ would it hit.

We deserve less problematic plotlines and more progressive films wherein people could see themselves as a hero or heroin in the story, a story of hope, dreams and even the most touchy subjects whether it will be political or not. Viewers do not need the validation of something to do horrendous things to the people around them.

It is just a shame to see how much can a film reflect a society, grow a cult around it and next thing you know, normalize the things they see on the bug screen.