Win a Date With Romance

Win a Date With Tad Hamilton is a movie about an actor commonly cast as the idealized, romanticized guy in all the romantic comedies who gets in trouble with his public image. In order to make sure he maintains his reputation as the dream guy in movies, his manager and PR team decide to create a contest called “Win a Date With Tad Hamilton.” One lucky girl is chosen at random to fly to Hollywood and met Tad and go on a date with him. The lucky girl, named Roslee, absolutely adores Tad and loves his movies and cannot wait to meet the man from the silver screen. After their first date Tad falls for her. The plot of the movie has the audience questioning whether Tad is turning that one PR date into a longer PR stunt, but Rosalee genuinely thinks Tad and her are falling for eachother. 

    This movie plays with the idea of a parasocial relationship where someone has a “convenient romantic attachment, which can be idealized" (Karniol). Commonly, it is a relationship between a celebrity and an average person. Roslee believes Tad Hamilton is the guy he plays in his movies, when she meets him she already has preconceived notions of his behavior and actions, even though it is not representative of who he actually is as a person. This parasocial relationship Roslee has with Tad before meeting him changes into an actual relationship after she meets him. It is every girl’s dream who has a crush on celebrity that if they got the chance to meet their crush they’d instantly fall in love with them too. Girls who have their own parasocial relationships and see this movie may develop an ideal that there is a possibility that their celebrity crush could fall in love with them if they got the chance to meet. This creates an idolized romantic ideal and belief of how romantic relationships work among girls because of their exposure to romantic media. 

The romantic idealization of relationships is a common theme within romantic comedies. Roslee saw Tad’s characters in movies fall in love with extreme romantic gestures and passionate speeches about love, and she perceived it as though it was reality. This perception of reality is positively associated with general romantic beliefs (Lippman), meaning that through her exposure to romantic media, Roslee not only formed a parasocial relationship with Tad Hamilton, but idealized his romantic gestures which influenced her beliefs on romance and how men are expected to act in relationships. Throughout the movie she is portrayed as a doe-eyed girl who is love-stuck by her celebrity crush and the idea that he actually likes her back. Her naive demeanor plays into the idea that because of her exposure to Tad's movies she believes that the relationship is a realistic representation and doesn’t realize it is mostly a PR stunt.  The movie takes an interesting look at parasocial relationships and how they affect actual relationships, especially when the object of the parasocial relationship is the one who becomes part of the actual relationship; while it makes for a good story line and a great day dream, it isn’t a reality. 

Citation

Lippman, J. R., Ward, L. M., & Seabrook, R. C. (2014). Isn’t it romantic? Differential associations between romantic screen media genres and romantic beliefs. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(3), 128-140. doi: 10.1037/ppm0000034

Karniol, R. (2001). Adolescent females’ idolization of male media stars as transition into sexuality. Sex Roles, 44(1/2), 61-77.

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! Dir. Robert Luketic. Prod. Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher. By Victor Levin. Perf. Kate Bosworth, Topher Grace, Josh Duhamel, Nathan Lane, and Sean Hayes. DreamWorks Pictures, 2004.