Reality frequently doesn’t match fantasy when you know full story

By David McElroy · December 18, 2016

I hate wedding photos.

It’s not that I hate marriage or the people in the pictures. I just don’t see the glamour or fantasy or happiness that so many people associate with those photos. Instead, I associate them with shallow fantasy and excess spending by people looking — consciously or not — to paint a false picture for the world.

I’m often asked why I don’t make money on weekends by taking wedding photos, but I could never be a wedding photographer unless I could take the photos the clients want and tell myself I’m doing parody instead. My over-the-top satirical take on cliched “life event” photos would be exactly what many others truly want and find meaningful.

I’m really big on symbolism and finding meaning in metaphor. I find that wedding photos tend to be shallow expressions of fantasy to cover up the reality of relationships that are shallow and unhappy. Those photos let people lie to others about their marriages for years. More importantly, those photos let people lie to themselves.

My friend Keith Hall shared a story Sunday that neatly illustrates the unintended irony of the American obsession with the wedding facade, which I see as representative of the marriage facade.

In the Birmingham suburb of Leeds, there’s a wedding venue called the Sonnet House. It’s a nice old country home that’s used for weddings and other events. I’ve attended a couple of weddings there and it’s a fine venue for people who like that sort of show. I can honestly recommend it.

In one of the bathrooms of the house is a large red bathtub that has become popular for wedding photos. Keith posted an example of one of them with his story on Facebook and the venue has another example among the gallery of marketing photos on its site, above. But I wonder how many of those brides know the story of that bathtub. Here’s Keith to tell the story.

“I’ve been pretty interested here lately in all the brides who seem to be fascinated by the red bathtub at the Sonnet House in Leeds,” Keith wrote. “Before this house was a wedding venue it was the home of my great friend James Stanford. James is the one who was constantly building on it and transforming it from an old farmhouse to the Victorian look it has today.

“He purchased this bathtub by mail order in about 1993 and when it was delivered I helped him carry it into the house. On April 22, 1995, James had dinner at Capt. D’s in Leeds and went back home. He suffered a heart attack in this bathroom and fell dead into this tub where he laid until he was found the next day. I’m pretty sure he would be amused at the latest fascination with his tub!”

Keith obviously didn’t intend his story to be a commentary on American weddings and marriages, but I found the symbolism too fascinating to ignore.

The brides who have their pictures taken there want to present a fantasy to the world of what they are and what their relationships are. The underlying reality of that fantasy is that it was where a human being died.

Those who want to project the fantasy don’t want to look too deeply beneath the surface for what might lie underneath their symbols. The same is true for many of our marriages — maybe most of them.

A wedding is about fantasy. I see it as the ultimate self-satirizing event. I hate going to them because they feel fake to me. They feel like events at which even happy people are going through a rote script because it’s what is expected.

I wouldn’t be so bothered by this if I didn’t find so many marriages today empty and lifeless and loveless. Those marriages are the final resting places of the hopes and dreams of many well-meaning people who bought into a fantasy but had no interest in building the relationship to match the fantasy.

I believe in love and I believe in marriage, but I believe even more in honesty, emotional vulnerability and genuine partnership. The fantasy that men and women buy in our society most often leads to unhappiness.

Modern marriage is frequently just like that red bathtub — a place where people go to wait for their own death.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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