http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFe1kPqGfhQ&feature=related 2:33-2:55
*I would HIGHLY recommend watching the short clip before reading
Writers always say we get inspiration from what we know. When thinking of a romanticized example, I had plenty to choose from. Growing up with Cinderella, Thumbelina, and dancing rats who wore pink tutus, I just had to reflect from my childhood. One movie I consistently watch when I’m sick is Ever After. It was one of the first “real-life” stories of Cinderella made before the 2000s (aka before the crust cooled). As a little girl, one of my favorite parts was when Danielle (the poor country girl who was supposed to inherit but due to her father’s death when she was little is now made to be a servant to her step mother) decides to take a swim in the nearby lake. She is looking for truffles (manual labor) in the rural countryside when she looks down and sees how dirty her hands are. Acting on the impulse we’ve all experienced, she ditches her adult work and goes for a swim. Wearing a simple white dress and doing a graceful backstroke, she is the epitome of innocence, femininity, and that peaceful feeling you get when you’re all alone (individual) in nature. Taking it one step further, the soundtrack of the movie played throughout the film when the lovers find they are perfect for each other is played as she floats gracefully through the water.
As an impressionable little girl I always loved this whole idea of being so gracefully perfect, I’d try it when I went to the lake to swim (monkey see, monkey do). I don’t know about you, but my experience was anything but what the movie portrayed. Water up the nose, running into other kids, and the screams of kids throwing temper tantrums was what I experienced. What makes this the perfect example is that we know how we should feel when we see Danielle swimming and enjoying the moment. Although it is romanticized to the extreme, we as viewers know that although that moment is almost impossible, we know how that moment would feel and long for our personal slice of heaven just like the few seconds on screen.It sends the message that although we work hard, sometimes it's okay to crave those small moments of peace in nature.
However, this moment only lasts just a few seconds when comedy strikes and Leonardo Da Vinci comes walking on water trying his new wooden lake shoes, interrupts Danielle’s serene moment, and brings her back to reality (adult, civilization, social, reasoning). And so we see that although there are spare moments in which our romanticism can exist, reality does come along to bring us back to earth.
I have seen this movie multiple times and agree with exactly what you said. When I see or picture Danielle floating in the water, I always picture myself and can almost feel the calmness washing over me. And after reading this it's exactly what I would love to do except for the fact that it is freezing out. That whole scene is romanticized and I would have to say I think it's very interesting how swimming could be come romanticized.
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