love triangles poll!

[kindkit]

I've been thinking about that ever-so-common plot device, the love triangle, and wondering if I'm especially weird in how much I hate them. So, a poll! It asks only about the "two men in love with and competing for the same woman" kind of triangle, because that's by far the most frequent kind and the kind that especially puts me off.

Everyone is welcome to vote--you don't have to know me or subscribe to my journal or whatever. And if you'd like to elaborate on your responses in the comments, that's great.

ETA: The second question is meant to be pretty flippant and silly, so don't feel like you're answering it "wrong"!

Poll #15018

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 79

View Respondents

1) You learn that a book/film/TV show features a love triangle of the "classic" sort: two men who both love the same woman. Are you:

View Answers

More interested in reading/watching than you were before
0 (0.0%)

Less interested in reading/watching than you were before
60 (75.9%)

Neither more nor less interested in reading/watching
19 (24.1%)

2) Love triangles can be resolved by:

View Answers

Duels
8 (10.5%)

Fistfights
4 (5.3%)

Flipping a coin
5 (6.6%)

Heroic renunciation on someone's part
15 (19.7%)

Kidnapping
2 (2.6%)

Plot-convenient death
11 (14.5%)

Polyamory
64 (84.2%)

The two competitors behaving as though the love object's own feelings mattered
67 (88.2%)

The vertex/love object declaring "a pox on both your houses" and running away
62 (81.6%)

The two competitors realizing they're actually triangulating their forbidden love for each other
55 (72.4%)

Comments

[kindkit]

No, because it wasn't the formulaic "two men compete for a woman" triangle that seems to crop up in every second Hollywood movie and blockbuster novel these days. It was also written differently than a lot of such triangles, because there isn't exactly competition between Ralph and Andrew; the focus is on Laurie coming to understand what he wants. ETA: Also, Ralph and Laurie and Andrew are all well-developed characters, and I can see what Ralph and Andrew each love about Laurie and what he loves about them. Nobody is a prize or a plot device, unlike "classic" love triangle stories where the woman is usually those things and very little else.

If it's "two men who both love the same woman" that does tend to position the woman as very much the love object and not of interest in her own right. But if it's "a woman has to choose between two men," or something along those lines, then I'm all over it.

I've hardly ever seen the latter in mainstream stories, though. Of course I am het-avoidant so that may affect my sense of what's common. But it seems like when I see love triangles in movies/books/tv (mostly movies and tv) it's always focused on two men who are friends or frenemies, with the woman as an object to be won.

[naraht]

It was also written differently than a lot of such triangles, because there isn't exactly competition between Ralph and Andrew; the focus is on Laurie coming to understand what he wants.

Yes, agreed. That's exactly what I was getting at with the distinction between "love object" and... whatever the other version is, I'm not sure if it has a name.

It is certainly less common to see the woman treated as something more than an object. (Of course this is a complaint that isn't unique to love triangles!). Both of the cases I've mentioned have the main period of the love triangle set significantly before canon, but its repercussions continue to affect the characters' lives during the period of the show. And I certainly wouldn't say that Beverly Crusher (at least) is treated in the narrative as an object to be won.

It seems to me that you can also find a good number of examples in classic literature where it's the woman's choice that's the point of the story: Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, He Knew He Was Right, etc etc etc, I could go on.

Obviously I can't disagree that there are plenty of counterexamples of love triangles being treated in the way that you describe. You could argue that what I'm talking about is a completely different trope. But if what we're discussing is simply man-woman-man love triangles, then I would argue that treating the woman as nothing more than a prize or an object is simply bad writing rather than an inherent weakness in that sort of love triangle.

We agree in disliking badly written love triangles!