And They Lived Happily Ever After, or Did They? Representations of and Attitudes toward Romantic Relationships in Contemporary Action Films

While romantic comedies and dramas are made to put the relationship at the forefront of the story, other film genres have their own representations and relationship tropes, which still send messages to the viewer about what a romantic relationship is supposed to look like. Through a survey of attitudes toward romantic relationships in film and an in-depth media analysis of the action film, Deadpool, this study sought to bridge the gap in the literature by understanding how action films might perpetuate romantic myths and influence how people think about their own relationships. Several correlations were run to analyze the hypotheses and research questions, and there was a moderate, positive relationship between parasocial attachments and social comparison indicating that social comparison increases as one’s tendency to form parasocial attachments also increases. The media analysis explored the romantic myths and process of the relationships between the main characters in Deadpool. The discussion highlights the survey results and media analysis, as well as strengths, limitations, and future directions