I Love You, Beth Cooper.

I Love You, Beth Cooper is a recently featured comedy movie in Singapore.

Here is a short synopsis on it :

"I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER chronicles the story of a nerdy valedictorian who
proclaims his love for the hottest and most popular girl in school – Beth Cooper
– during his graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his
door that very night and decides to show him the best night of his life. "
(http://www.cathay.com.sg/cineplexes/movies.html?type=now-showing)

I would like to discuss about the two main characters, Beth n Dennis, in the movie.
Let us take a look at how Beth is being perceived by Dennis.

To Dennis, Beth is the dream girl, head of cheer leading, beautiful and curvy. However, after witnessing Beth kissing a cashier for a dozen beer at a convenience store , his dream was shattered.

This is pretty common in reality, as often people who we thought they are are actually much different from their true self. Frequently, we see the things or the people that we like as being almost flawless. the comments we make about the thing or person are positive and what our subconscious desire it to be. Similarly, in the movie, Dennis sees Beth to be as perfect as angel , however, later in the movie , it was revealed that this was not true. It was because all along Dennis is assuming Beth to be who he had imagined to be.

Dennis' false impression of Beth may also be due to another factor, lack of communication between Beth and Dennis. At the start of the film, Frederich , a friend of Dennis, mentioned that Dennis had never actually talked to Beth at all! This hints us that whatever possible information Dennis had gotten about Beth are second or maybe even be third or fourth hand information. In this manner, through the transmission of the information, Dennis might not get the actual information. This is because different people see information differently ; what may seem significant to the first person may not be equally significant to the second person. Therefore, through the passing of information until Dennis receives it, the information might have been filtered. This might be one of the reasons why the real Beth is different from the one Dennis imagined to be.

This is similar to how Beth perceived Dennis. He may seem uncool, being the head of debate club and the A star student. This is the typical uncool characteristic among high school students.

In addition, Beth's two best friends saw Dennis and Frederich as being geeks and weirdos. Definitely, Beth's impression of Dennis surely been influenced by her peers.

This is exactly what happens in real life. We are often influenced by what the society perceives or what our friends perceive. We would stereotype, group and label people. We would at the same time list down each group characteristics, and how we should handle them. For instance, Frederich is seen as gay by most of his peers and the "correct" way of "handling" him is to stay away from him and make fun of his sexual preference. These treatments, in my personal point of view, is seen as unkind.

From the movie we can realise that making assumption, stereotyping and lack of communication would lead to false impressions of people and lead to many inequalities in the society.