Stop in the Name of Love

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.