Why 500 Days of Summer is So Misunderstood

i know you think that she was the one but i don't 500 days of summer is a different kind of romantic comedy one that lets its viewers know from the very beginning that it intends to subvert some of the genre's most frequently used tropes but you should know up front this is not a love story the 2009 film attempts to challenge the genre's usual gendered stereotypes by making its male protagonist tom into a romantic the boy tom hansen of margate new jersey grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met the one summer the object of his affections is a cynic the girl summer finn of shinnecock michigan did not share this belief as tom pursues summer then loses her the film shows us what happens when romanticism and cynicism meet and all those rom-com fantasies get a cold dose of reality these cards the movies and the pop songs they're to blame for our lives and the heartache everything the filmmakers behind 500 days of summer set out to make a movie that was critical of tom's romantic attitudes one that found comedy and pathos in how all of his possessiveness and self-centered delusions would lead him inevitably to heartbreak and she told you up front that she didn't want a boyfriend but that didn't stop audiences from sympathizing with tom why did so many come away from the movie feeling sorry for tom and seemingly agreeing with him that summer had treated him unfairly a lot of people tell me i love that movie i love your character why was she so awful why did she dump you here's our take on this common misinterpretation of 500 days of summer how it plays with tropes like the nice guy and the manic pixie dream girl to show us the problems with those archetypes but also ends up undermining its own message creating a subversive romantic comedy that actually reinforces some of those same old lessons hi everyone so if you haven't heard the take finally has merch this is my favorite working from home shirt i've practically been living in our hoodie 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the link in the description below to check out our limited edition designs before they're gone [Music] tom hansen isn't just a romantic he's what film and tv would call a hopeless romantic the kind of guy who desperately believes in destiny soul mates and the one tom meets summer on january 8th he knows almost immediately she's who he's been searching for tom is what we've come to know as a nice guy the kind of love-struck man who pines after girls who are out of his league only to end up confused and hurt by their rejection i like you tom i just don't want to run away well you're not the only one to get to saying this i do too and i say we're a coach god damn it through tom 500 days of summer sets out to deconstruct the nice guy trope showing the limits and the fallacies of his rosy point of view i love how she makes me feel like anything's possible like i don't know like life is worth it as director mark webb has said we think of that as romantic but really it's just intellectual laziness when tom meets summer he's instantly infatuated everyone this is summer my new assistant and before he even gets to know her he becomes frustrated when she doesn't meet his expectations for how she should react to him you know what screw her i don't care she wants to be that way fine nice guys often complain about ending up in the friend zone and this is exactly what happens to tom i think you're interesting and i'd like for us to be friends is that all right yet he continues to pursue her romantically anyway another classic nice guy move that's casual that's what casual people do in a 2015 study conducted by the university of michigan's julia lipman she concluded that romantic comedies normalize the idea that persistence is inherently romantic that a man who puts in the time and the effort can eventually win a woman over even if she says she's not interested what no no hey pal she just told you okay okay fine i'll go out with you well don't do me any favors no no i want to throughout the film we see tom displaying this kind of problematic behavior repeatedly ignoring summer's clearly stated desires that she doesn't want to be with him or anybody i just don't feel comfortable being anyone's girlfriend i don't actually feel comfortable being anyone's anything you know even as they do move beyond the friend zone summer explicitly states that she doesn't want a serious relationship with tom i'm not really looking for anything serious still he doesn't give up i don't want to get over i want to get it back of course nice guys aren't all that nice when they don't get what they want how's your weekend it was good can you believe that [ __ ] she basically said she spent the weekend having sex with some guy she met at the gym skank nice guys create an unspoken social contract in which they offer a woman attention and kindness with the expectation that they'll receive love and sex in return they feel entitled to recognition from her because they believe themselves to be superior to other men more sensitive more honorable and more deserving he's gonna use your ass and throw you away god i would have died for you the film shows us how tom might certainly think of himself this way by contrasting him against his friends who are more outwardly sexist and misogynistic i hear she's a [ __ ] really yeah patel tried to talk to her in the copy room she's totally not having maybe she was just in a hurry as he grows closer to her tom becomes even more convinced that he deserves to be with summer because he's not like those other men i've never told anybody that before i guess i'm not just anybody so when summer ultimately decides she no longer wants to be with tom he reacts with toxic bitterness here's something that you wrote last week uh roses are red violets are blue you [ __ ] he's angry because he believes he's earned the right to be with her are you mad at me i just got my ass kicked for you oh really was that for me was that for my benefit when summer fails to validate those feelings and tom's opinion of himself that's when the supposed nice guy reveals his true nature i hate summer i hit her crooked teeth i hit a 1960s haircut i hit her knobby knees and i hit her cockroach say splotch on her neck movie audiences have long been conditioned to root for the nice guy his extreme unwavering devotion and grand gestures are usually framed as charming and romantic and more often than not the nice guy gets the girl in the end you know it was like one of those things you think is never gonna happen and then it does and it's everything you want it to be so viewers are naturally primed to expect the same for tom even though the film goes out of its way to reveal some of his more toxic aspects either she's an evil emotionless miserable human being or she's a robot this expectation is only reinforced by the way the film posits tom as a romantic and summer as a cynic which makes us instinctively root for him there's no such thing as love it's fantasy well i think you're wrong summer's insistence that love isn't real and relationships never work out is exactly the sort of obstacle the nice guy is meant to overcome we want him to show her that true love does exist that's what romantic movies are all about there's only one person that makes me feel like i can fly that's you of course tom doesn't get the girl and he consistently proves he's not all that nice but the film still seems to side with him anyway in the end it validates all his fairytale ideas about love i just kept thinking tom was right it just wasn't me that you were right about as soon as he finally lets go of summer tom even meets a new girl one who immediately reciprocates his attraction and this leads us to believe that maybe she's the one that's like my favorite spot in the city i think i've seen you there really yeah i haven't seen you you must not have been looking we're left thinking this nice guy might win after all and he'll do it without ever really examining his many flaws tom idealizes summer from the second he meets her eventually he even comes to believe his happiness depends on her i know that she's the only person in the entire universe that will make me happy his feelings however are based on a flimsy understanding of who summer truly is as a person beyond her most superficial qualities i love her hair i love her knees i love this heart-shaped birthmark she has on her neck he's interested less in who she is than in what she reflects about him summer is a walking realization of all of tom's deepest fantasies as though she exists solely as an extension of himself she likes magritte and hopper and we talked about banana fish for like 20 minutes it was so compatible it's insane on the surface it would appear that summer is the quintessential manic pixie dream girl the trope described by film critic nathan raven as a character who exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures you just witnessed a completely original moment in human history it's refreshing you should try it oh no no thanks no come on summer would seem to embody many of the tropes aspects she's quirky and she's different i love rainbow star nobody loves ringo starr that's what i love about him she has specific tastes that not coincidentally perfectly suit tom's own i said i love the smiths you've you've criticized music in many ways summer is depicted as being not like other girls from her distinct personal style to her open embrace of casual sex to her indifference about what other people think of her penis sorry tourette's penis she has this combined with zoe deschanel's general adorkable vibe has led to summer being deemed the ultimate manic pixie dream girl oh honey that's because it is delicious i made it myself bald eagle your favorite but just as with tom epitomizing the nice guy summer is meant to be an intentional subversion of the manic pixie dream girl trope as director mark webb says summer is an immature view of a woman she's tom's view of a woman he doesn't see her complexity and the consequence for him is heartbreak in tom's eyes summer is perfection but perfection has no depth the film openly interrogates tom's idolization of summer showing how little of it is based on anything real just cause some cute girl likes the same bizarro crap you do that doesn't make her your soul mate dom and it contrasts his fantasy of summer against his friend paul's relationship with a woman that he truly intimately knows robin's better than the girl of my dreams she's real we also see that not only does tom not really know summer he doesn't even seem to want to get to know her when summer does finally start opening up to him tom actually tunes her out thinking about himself instead as he listened tom began to realize that these weren't stories routinely told these were stories one had to earn because he repeatedly disregards these aspects of hurry can't control and because he can't accept that she has any agency or feelings beyond the role she performs in his life their one-sided relationship is doomed all we do is argue that is [ __ ] as screenwriter scott neustadter says he doesn't know anything about her that isn't the problem you know if he knew more about her that this probably wouldn't go so bad but he's only seeing what he wants to see in the end it's summer's desires that govern the outcome rather than tom's expectations she never truly commits to him she ends their relationship and we see that for her life goes on outside of tom she even marries another man albeit under circumstances that sound decidedly manic pixie dream girl s i was sitting in a deli and reading dorian gray and a guy comes up to me and asks me about it and now he's my husband it's for these reasons that 500 days of summer can be read as subverting the manic pixie trope even if it gave us the ultimate example of one by showing us what happens when those fantasies meet reality yet like tom we're left knowing little about summer besides these shallow and superficial qualities and this makes it all the easier to see things solely from tom's perspective 500 days of summer doesn't just show us tom's perspective it tells us his actions and feelings described by an unseen narrator whose voice offers an authoritative commentary on the film's events despite the fact that he's only representing tom's point of view for here was tom in her world a place few had been invited to see with their own eyes from the very beginning the audience is made to identify with tom and to share in his desires and frustrations because it's only his inner world that we're given access to tom's biases are relayed to the viewing audience uh and then that viewing audience sort of uh i think takes on those same biases this is also by design scott neustadter based 500 days of summer on his own life and a real breakup that he experienced she got engaged to be married months after she told me she didn't want a relationship at all which was ironic to use one word stop teasing me in many ways the entire film can be seen as an act of revenge it even opens with a title card that makes it perfectly clear whose side it's on and it's not the woman's in his book the anatomy of story screenwriting teacher john truby describes how romance movies naturally cast one character as the hero and the character they desire as their opponent even while falling in love the two act as antagonists and while in most romantic movies we're typically made to understand both of their motivations we tend to sympathize with the one who's trying to win the other in 500 days of summer that's tom i shouldn't have done that done well i've gotten mad at you i'm sorry and despite the fact that summer is clear throughout that she's not interested in being one because the entire film is told through his eyes we don't understand where she's coming from i think i'm just gonna call it a day you don't wanna get some dinner you hungry you all right i'm just tired we're meant not only to root for him to change her mind but to empathize with him and being upset that she won't i need some consistency looking back on the film for entertainment weekly zoe deschanel said i'm just so surprised when women will be like i hated your character in that movie and i'm like really she said like everything from the beginning actor joseph gordon-levitt has offered his own retrospective view urging fans who felt that summer was in the wrong to watch the film again while also publicly endorsing memes that identify tom as the true villain she never cheated on you no never she'll take advantage of you in any way no but the fact that so many viewers could walk away from 500 days of summer misreading the film like this suggests that it doesn't do enough to correct that bias perspective as ann cohen argues for refinery29 it's not enough to tell us that tom is the one at fault you have to show us and 500 days of summer simply isn't interested in doing that the film's creators have said they view 500 days not as a love story but a coming-of-age story this view reinforces that the movie is all about tom and his feelings not the truth of their relationship because we're only invested in tom's journey when he discovers that summer is engaged we too feel slightly betrayed just like neustadter clearly did by his own ex-girlfriend he never wanted to be anybody's girlfriend and now you're somebody's wife it surprised me too i don't think i'll ever understand that we're left feeling like all of summer's denials about not wanting a serious relationship or believing in love were dishonest that all her talk about remaining free and independent was just a lie you don't believe that a woman could enjoy being free and independent meanwhile we see that tom has become cynical and we feel sorry for him and we resent summer for crushing his spirits destiny and soul mates true love and all that childhood fairy tale nonsense you were right in his defense of the film gordon levitt also said that tom grows by the end but tom's growth is all about disillusionment and again it's all about him real growth might have seen tom recognizing the mistakes he made realizing that he failed to see summer as a person and coming to a more mature understanding of what love really means rather than simply dismissing it instead it's left up for debate whether tom truly learns anything we're left with that final scene of tom meeting another woman aptly named autumn nice to meet you i'm autumn and he seems primed to repeat the cycle all over again if tom had learned anything it was that you can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event coincidence that's all anything ever is autumn's name is a symbol signifying that she's destined to represent another season of tom's life and he might be in for another round of heartache and yet it's played as a happy ending anyway suggesting that he'll eventually find the right girl and what's more that he deserves to we'll figure it out we'll figure it out from the distance of more than a decade later it's become easier to see 500 days of summer the way its filmmakers say they intended it as a story about a flawed immature man who's singularly responsible for his relationship falling apart it's tom's fault i think that if you really pay attention tom's not listening to summer we've become more used to romantic comedies that question the very tropes the genre is built on and that play on them to create more balanced more inclusive ideas of how love stories should be told we've also considerably changed our view of the nice guy we no longer see his relentless persistence as charming or romantic but creepy and even downright villainous there's not a lion in the world that i wouldn't cross for you and we've become hyper aware of the manic pixie dream girl and all her contrived superficiality and began to call out those depictions to their face your whole thing with the cupcakes and the breaking for birds and bluebirds come and help me dress in the morning but while 500 days of summer also set out to critique all of these things back in 2009 it's notable that for so many viewers it only ended up reinforcing them and while some of this can be blamed on the film itself this also reflects a larger cultural problem we're used to seeing the nice guy win his happily ever after and some part of us still reflexively wants him to perhaps we cling to these notions because they reflect behaviors and beliefs that we ourselves are guilty of when it comes to romance despite our own best intentions we may expect better of ourselves but as 500 days of summer shows us there's a big difference between expectations and reality what does that even mean love you know do you anybody hi everyone i'm susanna i'm deborah and we're the creators of the take please subscribe and tell us what you want our take on next [Music] so you

Channel: The Take

Views: 722,767

Keywords: 500 days of summer, joseph gordon-levitt, zooey deschanel, new girl, the notebook, ryan gosling, rachel mcadams, there's something about mary, garden state, the nice guy, manic pixie dream girl, natalie portman, zach braff, elizabethtown, 500 days of summer tom and summer

Id: qMG_M0PFNAg

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Comments in the video are more interesting than the video. I like the fact that the movie doesn't follow the usual trope of "boy meets girl, boy chases said girl and voila they fall in love and happily ever after". An accurate description of what goes on in real life.

[u/chihiro_yoru]

Yes, this needs to be discussed well but heck, I've not watched the movie yet but just this video.