ROMANTIC COMEDIES

ROM COMS, CHICK FLICKS AND HOMME COMS

CONTENTS• Confusion between ‘rom com’ and ‘chick flick’

• Definition of romantic comedy

• The meet cute

• The sex comedies of the 1950s

• A female aesthetic?

• The homme com

• A focus on Silver Linings Playbook and Crazy Stupid Love

• The future of the romantic comedy

• How this will inform my film

• Conclusion

CHICK FLICK/ROM COM

‘Cinematic romantic comedies are often referred to under the rubric of chick flicks. In an earlier era, they were called women's pictures, and you can go further back still, to their literary antecedents, where they were called domestic novels’ (Cohen, 2010)

This statement suggests that the rom com and the chick flick are essentially the same thing.

CHICK FLICKS- URBAN DICTIONARY 1) A film that indulges in the hopes and dreams of women and/or girls. A film that has a happy,

fuzzy, ridiculously unrealistic ending.

2) A film that has the following formula: Two people fall in love They get along fine There is some kind of misunderstanding They break up They get back together The end.

3) A poor excuse for a movie that usually ends of with people crying, not because of the plot, but because of how they wasted $6.50 on a movie ticket. Also it seems that the only type of people that watch them are either chicks and guys who go out with the chicks.

CHICK FLICKS

‘the movies that are truly chick flicks are those that feature gal pals. In these, girls and women are friends to the end, while men are sidelined and at best peripheral to the plot’ (Berry & Errigo, 2004)

WOMEN’S FILM

This term seems only to be used in academic writing, it seems to have no bearing on current film genres.

Is this because they have died out?

One of the only film I can think of in recent years that may fit the bill is the Sex and the City film but I would be loathe to include it as the plot focusses on marriage and the attainment thereof.

ROMANTIC COMEDY: URBAN DICTIONARY The most vile, insipid, sanity-destroyingly horrible genre in the history of cinema. The romantic comedy is a genre of movie, usually mainstream, that follows a fairly consistant formula: boy meets girl, silly shit happens, low-intensity comedy insues, mild disasters averted, boy and girl get married and live happily ever after, the end. This formula never changes, for if there were the slightest deviation, it would not ba a romantic comedy. This genre exists solely for the entertainment of obnoxious, highly sentimental housewives who feel that their gender must consign them to this terrible fate. For them, to be feminine is to be an obnoxious, hand-wringing milksop. This is similar to the viewpoint among men that to be masculine is to be an obnoxious, belligerent neanderthal who crushes beer cans with his forehead. Romantic comedy is cinematic anti-matter. It is the opposite of art, and can not, by nature, be creative or original in any way. Romantic comedies are as plentiful as they are unbearable, due to the consistent market for sappy, brain-dead entertainment. A watcher of romatic comedies never gets tired of the same plot, over and over and over again, and therefore can watch the same movie, with subtle variations, thousands of times over a lifetime, viewing each new clone as if it were the first. 

THE ROM-COM GENRE

Traditionally, classic Hollywood romantic comedy focussed on the apparently mismatched hetrosexual couple, overcoming conflicts and obstacles in order to move towards their happy union. (Hines, 2008)

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH

A feature of the romantic comedy is the ‘meet cute’ a:

‘Scenario in which two individuals are brought together in some unlikely, zany, destined-to-fall-in-love-and-be-together-forever sort of way (the more unusual, the better).’ (Urban dictionary)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPdIWk097ls

WHO IS THE AUDIENCE?

The dramatic comedy and comedy genres such as screwball comedy were considered films with broad-based appeal, directed and advertised to both sexes (Turin, 2008)

So why do we assume that it’s a women’s genre?

SEX COMEDIES OF THE ‘50S

It was assumed that a female audience was responsible for the success of the so called sex comedies of the 1950s because of the valorisation of female pre-marital chastity (Jeffers McDonald, 2008)

However a close reading of these films including ‘Pillow Talk’ (1959) suggests that both the male and female protagonists want sex, but women want respect too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_WxvjzvKLI

ARE ROMANTIC COMEDIES JUST FOR WOMEN?

Paula Cohen suggests that women like romantic comedies because

‘In romantic comedy, spectacle becomes central, and plot, secondary. As a result, these films have been denigrated as trivial or silly, and only recently have third-wave feminists noted that they offer unique pleasures. I want to go further and argue that women watch romantic comedies not just for the anomalous pleasures they afford but for more substantive reasons: to learn how to use the material world creatively and to assimilate things into a style of being that defines and empowers them.’ (2010)

I disagree with this theory as I believe it is not the spectacle that drives the romantic comedy but the plot; the dialogue and the story.

To state that female audiences are interested in spectacle suggests that women occupy a similar spectatorship to men.

A FEMALE AESTHETIC?

‘To ask whether there is a feminine or female aesthetic, or a specific language of women’s cinema, is to remain caught in the master’s house and there, as Audre Lorde’s suggestive metaphor warns us, to legitimate the hidden agendas of a culture we badly need to change.’ De Laurtis (1989)

Does this mean then that perhaps….women and men are….perhaps equal?

WHY ARE ROM COMS SO BAD?

 "Making a good romantic comedy is no harder than making a good drama or crime story or musical or Western. It's hard to make a good picture, is the problem’ Woody Allen

Vilkomerson and Breznican question why it’s so hard to make a good romantic comedy and among their conclusions the following stand out:

‘Men don’t want to star in romantic comedies, or go see them’

‘Filmmakers are afraid to get personal’

HOMME COMS Jeffers McDonald suggests that there is a new sub genre of romantic comedy which puts the male as the central protagonist.

A key feature of this is an element of gross out.

However this doesn’t seem to always have to be a feature.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOKThis film is interesting in that there is a male (Bradley Cooper) in the central role who is also mentally ill and therefore vulnerable being pursued by the intelligent and active Jennifer Lawrence.

This scene shows Tiffany literally chasing Pat down the street.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwnXBO1VjWs

CRAZY STUPID LOVE

We also see something although more explicitly depicting the female character’s pursuit of sex in this scene.

Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDjz2jU2oAg

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

This scene shows Tiffany out smart Pat and his father.

She shouts at him but is not portrayed as a nag or neurotic woman but as intelligent and on a par with the male characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwwAhX3fwlQ

CRAZY STUPID LOVEA long tradition of chick flicks features a seemingly unattractive (but secretly talented) girl who following a transformation into an attractive woman wins the man she dismisses but secretly pines for’ (Ferriss, 2008)

However this makeover is on the male lead rather than the female

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwwAhX3fwlQ

THE NEW ROM COM

These new romantic comedies are an improvement to the women’s genre films but is it because of the focus on the male protagonist and the fact that they are not marketed as typical rom coms the reason they are commissioned at all?

HOPE FOR THE CHICK FLICK OR WOMEN’S FILM

We have looked at rom coms that cater for men but where are the female protagonists?

Bridesmaides is an example of a film that could have marked a new era in women’s film but felt the need tack on a romantic comedy plotline.

Lena Dunham’s TV series ‘Girls’ also represents female writing and representation

HOLLYWOOD AND WOMEN

Maybe Hollywood needs to start making smart romantic comedies like these with female leads!

Or chick flicks that respect the audience they are intended for?

To maybe trust the female audience?

CONCLUSION

As we have seen there seems to be some confusion about the romantic comedy genre.

Some have lumped it in with the chick flick which probably has closer links to the women’s film and the domestic novel.

We have also seen a rise in the number of rom coms for men, or at least with men in the lead. This makes them definitely not women’s films!

HOW WILL THIS RELATE TO MY FILM?

As a romantic comedy I would like my film to be appealing to both men and women and stick more closely to the romantic comedy than to the chick flick.

Equality in comedy!

BIBLIOGRAPHYAbbott, A and Jermyn, D (2009). Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. London: IB Tauris & co . p1-7.

Berry, J and Errigo, A (2004) Chick Flicks: Movies Women Love, London: Orion

Bonilla, P (2005) Is There more to Hollywood low brow than meets the eye?, Quarterly journal of film and video, 22, p17-24

Bovenschen, S Is There a Feminine Aesthetic? trans. Beth Weckmueller, New German Critique, no 10 (Winter 1977): 136. [Originally published in Aesthtik und Kommunikation 25 (September 1976)

Cohen, P. (2010). What Have Clothes Got to Do with It?: Romantic Comedy and the Female Gaze. Southwest Review. 95 (11), p78-88.

De Laurtis, T. (1989). Rethinking Women's Cinema: Aesthetics and Feminist Theory. In: Heath, S, MacCabe, C and Riley, D Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, FIlm and Fiction. London : Macmillan Press. p127-146.

Doane, M. (1992). Film and the Masquerade:Theorising the Female Spectator . In: The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality . London: Routledge.

Dyer, R. (1992). Don't Look Now: The Male Pin-up. In: The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality . London: Routledge. p265-276.p277

Ferriss, S and Young, M (2008). Chick flicks : contemporary women at the movies. New York: Routledge.

Hines, C. (2008). Armed and Fabulous: Miss Congeniality's Queer Rom-Com. In: Abbott, S and Jermyn, D Falling in love again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. London: Routledge.

Jeffers McDonald, T. (2009). Homme-Com: Engendering change in Contemporary Romantic Comedy . In: Abbott, S and Jermyn, D Falling in love again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. London: IB Tauris & co . p146-159.

Mulvey, L Feminism, Film, and the Avant-Garde, Framework, no. 10 (Spring 1979)

Neale, S. (1992). Masculinity as Spectacle . In: ? The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality . London: Routledge. p277- 287.

Orr, C. (2013). Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad? Atlantic Monthly (10727825). 311 (2), p42-43.

The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (1992) Routledge London Screen

Turin, M. (2008). Women's Films: Comedy, Drama, Romance. In: Ferriss, S and Young, M Chick flicks : contemporary women at the movies. New York: Routledge.

Vilkomerson, S and Breznican, A. (2011). Why is it so Hard to Make a Good Romantic Comedy?. Entertainment Weekly. 1167 (7), p50-53.