In Defence Of Summer

I once met a boy that didn’t “understand what that summer’s problem was”, and after a fifteen minute monologue in which he ripped apart a fictional character labelling her a headfuck, a slut and a lead-on, it became obvious that this boy wouldn’t understand me either.

If you haven’t seen 500 days of summer (how?!) then it is one of those marmite films that people either fall deep in love with or find confusing and weird and just wrong. For me, I adore it. After watching it approximately 500 times, the film has become a part of me yet I’m starting to feel like I have a different interpretation of it to that of many others. It seems that the titular character, Summer Finn, has been morphed into the villain. And so here I am as Summer’s defendant and I present to you my evidence that she is in fact far from villainous.

Exhibit A) “Either she's an evil, emotionless, miserable human being, or... she's a robot.”

Although titled 500 days of summer it is clear that the movie is about tom, The hopeless romantic dreamer that falls in love with Summer. During the film we only hear of tom’s thoughts, only see Tom’s actions when they are separate and the only knowledge we know of summer comes from either the independent narrator that delivers us her shoe size, or Tom. We never see what Summer is confiding in her friends or know what she truly feels, not because “she is concealing her emotions to string tom along” but because the film is built that way, so guys can sit in a theatre and think “that’s exactly how I felt!” or “that happened to me!” The character of summer is stripped of her right to tell the story and we are left with Tom’s voice, clearly leading to a negative view of the girl that broke his heart rather than seeing summer as the confused, possibly damaged girl whose messages he ignored.

Exhibit B) “I just, don’t feel comfortable being anyone’s girlfriend. I don’t actually feel comfortable being anyone’s anything.”

Pretty much immediately in the film Summer expresses her dislike for formal relationships and the expectations attached to it. Yet at several points in the film tom pushes for labels and assurance and more. It seems to me that Tom seems Summer’s uncomfort towards relationships as just a wall he needs to break down rather that respecting what she wants. I think this is what causes summer to be so on and off with Tom, leading her to become distant as who wouldn’t run away from someone that is constantly pushing you and pressuring you to label a situation. With lines like “I’m not looking for anything serious” and when summer says she doesn’t have a boyfriend because she doesn’t “want one”, I don’t summer is the headfuck here?

Exhibit C) “Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soul mate.”

It’s clear from the start that Tom and Summer are very different people, very incompatible people. Tom being a man that totally believes in love, Summer being a woman that doesn’t. Tom longing for labels and commitment, Summer running from it. But oh they both love the smiths and they both like pancakes so they must be soulmates…? Summer is so often blamed for the downfall of their relationship when maybe they were just incompatible and doomed from the start due to their clashing beliefs?

Exhibit D) “We're just fr...” “No!”

I feel like on more than one occasion summer tries to tell Tom how she’s feeling only to be cut off, or ordered to feel differently, or tom just goes along with whatever she says. Maybe summer actually wanted to just be friends and get out of the situation, yet doesn’t seem to want to let her. I think throughout the film tom seems to invalidate summers emotions. Right at the start of the movie when Summer mentions her parents’ divorce tom simply brushes past it with a “mine too” acting as though because his parents’ divorce didn’t make him give up on love that it’s not a valid reason for her. By the end of the time you still haven’t heard tom once think about why summer might hold the opinions she holds and why she acts like she act, never trying to find a cause, only caring about the effect. Maybe Tom is the villain? Maybe tom just wanted to fall in love, not fall in love with summer as he cares more about the effect she has on the relationship than her thoughts and feeling?

And maybe summer should have told tom she’d met someone, and maybe she shouldn’t have invited him to a party when she knew he would only leave hurt and disappointed. But in my opinion tom was living out a total self-made fantasy relationship swapping between pretending to be on the same page as summer and trying to force her to be on his page. If anyone is the villain in this story it’s fate- leading tom along and meeting summer at the wrong time to create a happy ending for the two. And maybe summer is even the victim, not of the relationship as such, but a victim of whatever emotional trauma and past pain that led her to be so frightened of commitment, a view that tom’s character never grasped or never cared about.

Maybe summer is, like the film, a love hate character purely because of the relatability some feel to the experience Tom’s character goes through. Falling for someone that can’t feel the same, someone who seems shut off. But for me, Summer may be one of the most real characters I’ve ever encountered. She’s scared and confused yet labelled a villain because she cannot leave the safety of “single”. Personally I relate much more to summer, and that’s why instantly I knew that the boy I met that hated summer would never love me.