You might or might not know this about
me, but I love words. There are few things I find so delightful as a
well turned phrase, and there are fewer tools I find so empowering as
a language equipped to make those phrases happen. The key to all
language is the ability to convey information, and the more
information that can be conveyed with a single word, the better. Why
spend three adjectives describing a noun when you can use a single
noun that conveys the same meaning of all its qualifiers? This is
why I love the English language, because it has so many synonyms that
all mean various shades of what might otherwise be the same concept.
There's a silent hierarchy in terms of size relations when it comes
to all the words that essentially mean big (big, large, huge,
gigantic); there are a multitude of ways to describe someone as a
nerd, yet so many of them have small but key differences (nerd, geek,
dork); even down to the minutest separations of color, you can bet
there are different words for slightly different hues. I prefer
language and diction that allows this level of differentiation, and
while I know there are languages larger and potentially better than
English, English has been good to me in this regard. I will love and
cherish it as one of my most prized possessions, but even so, I feel
the need to bring to your attention one particularly grievous,
glaring fault.
Love.
Have you noticed this? I sure have.
You want to say you're attached to your significant other in a deep,
profound, and romantic way? You say you love them. You want to
convey how much you appreciate the emotional depth of the latest
Batman movie? You say you love it. You want to tell a good buddy
that the strictly platonic relationship the two of you share is an
asset you will cherish forever? You say you love them. You want to
express to your mother just how good her chicken fried steak is? You
guessed it, you tell her you love it.
Starting to see the problem here? The
word that in English is simply “love” covers a wide range of
emotions, all of them in the realm of a deep, personal attachment to
someone or something, but all of them with a different connotation.
Yet the same word describes them all.
What other forms exactly might be
problematic? For comparison, the Greek language utilized four major
words (and possibly others) that in English are all translated into
“love”: agape, perhaps the most famous version to English
speakers, was a strictly platonic form of love, with interpersonal
implications, including (but not limited to) parents, children,
siblings, close friends, or even spouses. To use it in a sentence,
one could say that Alfred the Butler possesses an agape form of love
for his surrogate son, Batman. Eros, the other most famous nowadays,
was close to the opposite, carrying a connotation of sensuality.
While not necessarily sexual, it was a form of devoted love that was
stronger than simple friendship; while it could be said that Catwoman
loves Batman in this sense, you could also argue that Batman himself
loves Gotham, the city he has sworn to protect, in a similar way.
Philia, was the form of love that described the love between friends,
though it was stretched to include love for your neighbor or other
community members, or even the love of activities. You might want to
say that you like something, more than straight up love it when
trying to translate philia, but it typically is a stronger feeling
than how you might use like. Batman, for instance, philia loves his
fellow Justice League members, and he definitely philia loves
fighting crime, while he may not quite enjoy the company of the
Outsiders the same way, or enjoy fixing the engine on the Batmobile.
Lastly, there was storge, which could directly be translated
affection, but specifically referred to a natural affection, one you
just kind of have by the nature of a specific relationship. It might
even indicate an affection you have, despite having to put up with
copious amounts of crap, in the same way Southerner's use the
expression, “God bless 'em” after describing something that
annoys them about their spouse. Batman storges Jason Todd, for
instance, as opposed to the agape he feels for Dick Grayson.
These are just the different words that
the Greek language has, which while obviously a step up from English
in this regard, by no means covers all there is to say. There is,
for instance, a distinction between sexual love and romantic love, no
matter how much overlap there might be between those two. As close
as friends or siblings might be, there is typically a difference
between familial and close friendships, to the point that one can
interchange the two if the situation calls for it, referring to a
blood relation as moreso just a friend, or saying a particularly
close friend is as close as a brother. There's even a form of love
that denotes a religious devotion. The forms and types are nearly
endless, and yet English lumps them all into the same batch. This
obviously can lead to some confusion, albeit a decent amount of it
intentional, but confusion none the less. Ever hear someone say
“Well, son, if you love Batman so much, why don't you marry him?”
Of course you have, because at some point in your life, you have
definitely been so enraptured with your favorite superhero that you
made the mistake of saying in a conversation with your father that
you loved Batman. The response will always be the same to that; a
simple joke that hasn't been funny since roughly 64 years before it
was first uttered. But more importantly, it's a joke that relies on
the confusion between “love” in the enjoyment sense and “love”
in the erotic sense.
This level of confusion, especially of
using the erotic sense of love in any situation where the word is
used, happens constantly nowadays, either as a joke or in a
full out misapplication of someone's usage of the term. Heard of a
bromance?
You have now.
A bromance is a word that has been
added to the Meriam-Webster English Dictionary, thus sullying a
formerly noble collection with yet another portmanteau to feature the
disgusting moniker of “bro”. More importantly, it refers to a
deep affection between two men, one which is in actuality completely
platonic, but it utilizes a word that typically has an erotic love
connotation. The application could be two guys (who are comfortable
with their sexuality) jokingly talking about their bromance; other
guys (who are less comfortable with their sexuality) mockingly using
bromance as a put down; or advice sites attempting to get page views by scaring women into worrying about the time their significant other spendswith their best male friend (and losing all comfort with their
own sexuality). Why is it that the word bromance has suddenly popped
up everywhere now, of all times in history? It's a little bit to
blame because our modern society uses supposedly clever portmanteaus
like they're going out of style (they are), but it's also a lot to
blame because of our language's limitations when it comes to
describing love. Words tend to have one major meaning, and
populations as a whole tend to latch on to one meaning for a word,
often thinking only of the currently most popular definition at any given usage,
regardless of the context. Right now in our day and age, we've been
so sold on the importance of romantic, erotic love, that it's the
first and foremost definition for the word in mind. As this
obsession with loving someone has taken hold, it's also wormed its
way into all other forms of love, so that now we're starting to think
of loving a good friend closer and closer to how we love a
significant other. Now that we have the capacity for only one type of love, yet
cannot describe our feelings of affection for something in any other
way, that definition is subconsciously becoming a part of our other
relationships. Bromance is one of these effects, as is Man Crush. A
sense of admiration for a figure, a band leader, an actor, or a
sports player has become linked with a sexual infatuation with them.
And I suspect that this all has to do with our language's limited
number of words for love, and our decision to make sexual love our
primary definition.
Think about other effects, like actions
that are connected with declarations of love. Hugging, kissing,
holding hands, sleeping in the same bed; these are all things that
Americans identify with romantic love, and therefore are only
comfortable performing with someone who they identify (and want
others to identify) as their romantic partner. In a number of
Islamic and Arabic cultures, for instance, men hold hands, while men
and women do not. There are obviously many factors as to why this is
acceptable/not acceptable under certain circumstances, but it's
important to note that various Turkish languages have a separate word
for sexual love and that of other types of love, and physical contact
is more often connected with these others. In Chinese, this same physical contact
is associated specifically with the mother-child relationship, a type of
love which, again, has its own distinct word to describe it. There's
also this news article on how often people of various countries think
about sex in a day; the winners? Who else but the British and the Irish,
the countries that just so happen to have English as their primary
language.
And, of course, the English language's
limitation here even affect Batman. In a recent interview, comics
writer Grant Morrison was quoted as saying,
“Gayness is built into Batman. I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay… I think that’s why people like it. All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn’t care -- he’s more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid.”
“Don't worry, I'm not saying Batman
is 'happy' or 'lame', I'm simply saying he's more interested in Ra's
Al Ghul than Talia.”
Ignoring the fact that this was a
Playboy interview, and was spoken with a certain air of
sensationalism, and the fact that the viewpoint is already skewed
towards the hypersexual when you realize he considers burglary gear
as “fetish clothes”, it's interesting to note that the two
relationships he uses to back up his claim of Batman's gayness are the
ones where Batman definitely loves the other party, just, you know,
not in that way. There's Alfred, the surrogate father, and Robin who
is either his legally adopted son, or (in the case of the Robin that
Grant Morrison himself created) his actual, biological son. Morrison
didn't mention the other male relationships Batman has, like the
Joker, the man he spends most of his nights obsessing over; Harvey
Dent, the former best friend who had a particularly emotional falling
out with Batman, and who Batman struggles with fighting as he still
has feelings for him; or Superman the guy who has literally let
Batman ride him before. On his back.
No. I'm not kidding.
But it's the two male relationships
that could most be described as love, and are at heart the most
familial of all, that Morrison uses to point and say, “Gaaaay!”
Just not in the pejorative sense.
The worst part is that this whole confusion
could be so easily avoided. Just have more words, ones that describe
individual sections of the whole, wide range of love. We won't have
any more confusion, deliberate or otherwise; we won't be accused of
inappropriate (and non existent) relationships with family members;
and we won't have to deal with so many tepid, repetitive arcs in
sitcoms. And compared to bromance, if that isn't a better reason for adding some new entries to the dictionary I don't
know what is.
