Monday, 5 May 2025
As many of you know, the theme of this month is ‘Love is not rude’. While you may have already gotten bored of this topic, we are going to share some examples in movies and songs of how love is not rude.
The first example is from the movie, A beautiful day in the neighborhood released in 2019.
Tom Hanks’ character is a children’s TV show host, Mr. Rogers. A journalist named Lloyd needs to write a biography about him. While Mr Rogers was a very caring and nice person who loves to listen to stories from different people, Lloyd was very negative and impatient. Mr Rogers taught Lloyd that everyone has their temper, no one has a life free of pain. However, there are many ways to deal with pain instead of hurting yourself and others. This affects Lloyd on his relationship with his dad- His dad dumped him and his mom when Lloyd was very young. First, Lloyd couldn’t forgive his dad and even punched him. But Mr Rogers made Lloyd realize that he must deal with his emotions and his thoughts, not letting his anger continue to grow.
By putting together two people who are very different in terms of their personalities, Lloyd has never been so close to forgiveness and love. He is surrounded by love from Mr Rogers, which makes him reflect on his rudeness towards his dad. We believe that this is how ‘Love is not rude’ is shown. Other than not being rude, we can also show love and change others.
Another example is from a song. I am sure that some pop music listeners are already familiar with a song called ABCDEFU, but let me introduce another version of this song called Love You Still, by Tyler Shaw. ABCDEFU, a punk song about a girl who overcompensated for a breakup, blew up on social media. The song is full of anger, the most catchy line in the chorus even included swear words, while Love You Still is slower and gentle.
As the first line of the chorus of ABCDEFU was to spell out the alphabet till the swear word, from A to F, bringing the whole song to the climax, Love You Still still spelled out the alphabet, but it left the swear words alone and went much further, from A to I, connecting with the following line, ‘I love you still. It seemingly didn’t stir up as many emotions as compared to ABCDEFU but we can be very sure that it brings much more power as it is tender yet firm to choose to take a further step to love instead of hate the beloved ones. Why insist on hating and being rude when you are much more powerful to love?
By combining two examples, what have you learnt from them? We learnt that life is full of uncomfortable or painful situations, however, there are always ways to deal with it other than hate. Of course that the process of letting go takes time, but eventually love lasts forever instead of that painful feeling of hatred.
English Society
22 November 2022