In looking into the Zizek’s work on courtly love, to really understand it I tried to think of the examples I had grown up with and have become familiar with over time, which can account for similar patterns of this concept. In doing so, I realized how we, women and men alike, may have been conditioned to have expectations on love, or rather the ideal lover, beginning with the tales we are told. If not learned from a Disney movie, then perhaps from another fictional tale, serving as a reference for idealization. I hint at the word tale to say that though we should not believe, we never truly question is there really ever a happy ever after? Is he really saving her or is he distracting her from her self?

We can visualize this through story of the Trojan War. In the Greek myth, love is expressed as the salvation of a damsel in distress. Helen, born of Zeus and Leda is inevitably the most beautiful woman to be known and becomes the object of desire for eligible bachelors, or “suitors”. She is the ideal, solely because of her beauty and nothing of what she may have to offer. All other conceptualizations of an ideal woman are thrown out because of her ability to mesmerize. The “abduction” of Helen by Paris (as depicted in Homer’s telling), initiates the obstacle of a war that her suitors must overcome. However, it becomes evident through this tale that the goal of the suitors is not truly to obtain Helen, but rather to receive the glories of war – the gifts, the praise, etc. This fictional idealization becomes all of their downfalls. Not much is told of the marriage between Helen and her savior Menelaus thereafter. Is she, then, saved from Paris or saved from her self?

Then, I began to recount the numerous Disney movies on the lives of princesses I had loved growing up. All include the same sort of damsel in distress theme. The Lady who needs a Knight to become her husband in order to save her from some miserable situation. Take Cinderella for example. She marries a prince who has options of women to marry. Cinderella, for that night, becomes the most beautiful of them all. However, one must think, would he have loved her the same had she showed up in her raggedy clothing, eliminating the ideal picture? And why must they go in search for the one who fits the shoe? Does he not remember her face? Clearly the answer leads to that fact that Cinderella is the idealized object of desire and since he cannot match a face, his obstacle becomes his search for the foot that fits. This is also an obstacle for Cinderella, who has to try and conceal the secret from her angry step mother and step sisters. He finds her, they get married and she is away from her step-family, but what happens after?

This also leads me to the idea that perhaps women have their own idealizations of “the knight in shining armor”. He must be unique, handsome, strong, and heroic. She to him must be beautiful and ditzy, unable to get out of her own situation alone. Courtly love is not only of the lady to whom the knight desires. It is also of the knight to whom the lady herself desires. This type of structured love will never work because of the strive for perfectionism. Truly a flaw we encounter today with the concept of love. In other words, it cannot be structured like a movie. It’s never real when it’s ideal.