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What Are These Things Called Love? Transcript

My latest video essay collaboration with Fusion was published last week. 

Subscribers to the newsletter will know it’s been a challenging story. Here is the final version of the script (version number 7!)

What Are These Things Called Love? Words: Adam Westbrook

It’s one of the most popular and powerful stories of our time …that in a universe of immeasurable size…in a galaxy filled with 300 billion stars….on one of millions of planets that can sustain life…filled with 7 billion human beings… living in 2800 cities in 196 countries…that among all this…we will all…one day…meet our soul-mate.

And if you don’t believe it, then you’re the minority.

I saw one survey that said that 84 percent of young Americans believe The One is out there somewhere.

Look at Google’s archive of books and you see the word has exploded in popularity in the last 100 years.

But go back before 1900 and the word is hardly used at all…and you know why? Because it didn’t exist!

This guy - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - invented it in 1822.

So the word isn’t even 200 years old but 84 percent of us are so certain the concept’s real.

But love it turns out is a little bit more complicated…

Here’s a tender scene from one of the oldest love stories ever told. On the right is Achilles - the mythical warrior and the tragic love story between him and Petraculus is central to the plot of Homer’s epic poem The Illiad.

But there’s a great twist…something that didn’t get repeated for a long time…because Petraculus you might have noticed…is a dude.

People still argue about whether there was anything sexual between these guys, but really it doesn’t matter - the bromance was real.

And in ancient greece - a country pretty much always at war - the bond between brothers in arms was what really mattered.

People still fell in love…but romance as we know it..it’s hard to imagine but it really didn’t exist at all..and it certainly wasn’t celebrated.

That is, until a new love story came along…
So there’s this guy called William of Aquitaine…he was a Duke in the south of france in the middle ages… but when he wasn’t jousting he fancied himself as a Troubadour - a sort of medieval singer/songwriter.

And his songs sound nice enough…but they were mostly about tricking women into having sex with him, or comparing them to horses. Charming.

Then - probably stealing ideas from some Arabic poetry which was popular at the time - he switched the roles and made the woman the powerful character - so desirable any man would dedicate his life to her.

For the first time (in the West anyway) the idea of romantic love between a man and a woman became an ideal - a fantasy.. from Rapunzel to Romeo and Juliet love stories celebrated men pursuing unattainable women.

So yes, our entire idea of romance was invented by a sexist douchebag.

But now the love stories we told looked completely different…and the bromance the greeks believed in..well that was made illegal for a very long time.

Society now celebrated love and romance - with anyone really…as long as they weren’t your husband or wife!

Yes, as strange as it sounds, for most of history marriages have been more like a business arrangement, and you didn’t want feelings to get in the way.

These are wedding portraits amazingly and they’re not exactly full of passion.

Then a Dutch artist called Frans Hals painted this. And it tells us everything about how marriage changed.

Couples married for love, they held hands and kissed in public -things that had never been seen in Europe before.

Right, but then it changed again!

Because nearly 700 years later, Europe was obsessed with a novel about a young artist who falls in love with his friend Charlotte.

The only problem - and I’m sure you’ve heard this one before - is that Charlotte is already engaged to someone else

The young artist’s solution to the problem has a big impact - literally.

The Sorrows of Young Werther published by Wolfgang von Goethe in 1744 was like 50 Shades of Grey without the handcuffs. It was insanely popular - men started dressing like the main character - and some even shot themselves, in what’s considered to be the first case of copycat suicides in history.

This all helped launch the romantic movement - the most passionate but also dark version of love we’d ever seen. We assume the romantic movement was - well, romantic, but the reality was different.  

Gave us some of our best art though - Keats, Beethoven, Blake…and a young poet called Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who in 1822 wrote in a letter to a friend: “To be happy in married life, one must have…a soul mate.”
We think the concept of love is something eternal and universal…but it changes all the time!

And it’s funny… each time, it seems to come from the stories we’re telling…

And isn’t that more true NOW than ever…?

Unlike epic poems or novels, movies and TV shows work best with simple stories…

And while the idea of romance has been around for a long time, now it’s been transformed into the most simple and idealistic version of all.

And now we expect our lover, our best friend, our companion AND the best sex we ever had…in one person!

Thing is…it’s not just movies…

For a hundred years companies have used this story to sell us things…

And in our age of consumerism we’ve somehow turned love itself into a shopping trip…

Swipe left, swipe right…always keeping our eyes open for an upgrade..

But with such simple and idealistic expectations are putting too much pressure on other people? And on ourselves?

So our version of love is not the first, and you know what, it’s probably not the last..

In a hundred years we might be telling a completely different love story - all we’re waiting for, is for someone to write it.

Filed under Adam Westbrook delve Fusion video essay script transcript history of love Samuel Taylor Coleridge Achilles Wolfgang Von Goethe Sorrows of Young Werther Romanticism William of Aquitaine history