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When I was younger,
this is how I pictured my wedding.
I'm standing at the altar with my fiance,
I have no idea that my best friend, Tom,
the man I truly love,
is galloping towards the church
on a huge black stallion,
racing to stop me from making the biggest mistake of my life.
Just as I'm about to say, "I do,"
Tom flies through the doors of the church, and...
My heart skips a beat.
Back then, I'd picture what it would feel like
to have my heart broken.
Maybe I'd be working in advertising
and I'd fall in love
with an inventor of mysterious confectionary
while on a work trip with him.
But then, I'd discover his true identity.
He's my arch nemesis from a rival company.
Understandably, I'm horrified.
Or, I'd imagine
how I'd meet the love of my life.
My new Gucci shoe.
Come on.
Or where I'd be working when I met my husband.
-Hello, Natalie. -Hello, David.
I mean, sir.
Shit. I can't believe I've just said that.
And now I've gone and said "shit."
It's fine, it's fine.
You could have said "fuck"
and then we'd have been in real trouble.
Thank you, sir.
I did have an awful premonition
I was gonna fuck up on my first day.
Or what it would be like
when I met my fiance's parents for the first time.
Good night, Mr. Banks.
Oh, you can call him George. Or Dad!
George will be fine.
And don't forget to fasten your condom.
Dad!
Seat belt! I meant... I meant seat belt.
And I'd often dream of being a chef
with magical powers,
which I could use to woo the man of my dreams.
And my best friend...
...would be a crab.
This is how dominant romantic comedies have been in my life.
As a young woman, they became
an obsession so powerful,
that they're now a part of my identity.
Maybe it'd be better if we start at the beginning.
And at most mythologized and beguiling of all places,
the suburban teenage girl's bedroom.
Mine looked a lot like this.
And it was here among the training bras, hair mascara,
and intense boredom
that my obsession with romantic comedies began.
They ease my fear of being alone forever
as they promised me that one day,
I, too, could have a fulfilling romantic life.
Just as long as I followed the rules.
A woman must always be laid back, easy-going and fun.
If you think you hate someone,
that might actually mean they're perfect for you.
And true relationship success is achieved
by one thing, and one thing only,
a big white wedding.
Which is wat happened to me, I got married.
Well, this isn't my wedding, but does it really matter?
Aren't all weddings basically the same?
Before I got married,
my relationship to romantic comedies
was pure and uncomplicated.
They reflected my experiences as a young woman
and dominated my outlook on love and relationships.
But because most romantic comedies
end with a marriage, after my wedding,
I felt like they'd abandoned me.
The connection was broken,
and suddenly, I began to see
all the other ways in which they were imperfect.
And I wasn't the only person who felt this way.
ANNE T. - I like that I don't have to think
when I watch romantic comedies.
I basically can just curl up and not really worry.
But I will say, the more...
The older I get, the more they do make me anxious.
Liar!
They're really heteronormative,
and they're really white,
and they're really schmaltzy.
I saw Cameron Diaz get poked in the face
by a penis in a glory hole.
And yet, I was still obsessed.
But now when the credits rolled,
I didn't feel elated,
I felt guilty.
Not that that stopped me.
I carried on watching them over and over again.
beyond this
and I feel it leads somewhere
They say for sure, once
for as long as you want
get up and run
Of all genres, romantic comedies are the films
that are most heavily targeted
towards a conventional female audience.
And so, they have the power to influence us.
Well, some of us.
We can see this in the way women respond
to one of the most successful rom-com heroines
of all time, Bridget Jones.
Some feel positive.
Everybody kinda likes Bridget Jones,
like, you have to love her
because she's completely who she is.
She never expresses that she feels complete
when she's with a guy.
She got happy and content by herself.
That's why Bridget Jones is just like the HBC.
The Head Bitch in Charge.
But if staying here means working within ten yards of you,
frankly, I'd rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's ass.
Others are not so positive.
You know what her weight is
and she's claiming to be very overweight.
And she weighs about nine stone or something.
Resolution number one,
obviously will lose 20 pounds.
I do remember seeing that film
when it first came out, and thinking,
"I weigh what this woman weighs.
"She's worried that she's really overweight,
"so I must be really overweight."
My own feelings on Bridget are also conflicted.
In the films, we're told she's a successful career woman.
Yet, I think this truth is undermined
by her many pratfalls at work.
Bridget wasn't the only clumsy career woman I saw in romantic comedies.
Rom-coms have painted career women
as these pathetic, clumsy, bumbling idiots,
because the idea of a woman
having her shit together is very frightening.
She's doing all this, like, nine to five,
but then, like, she's kind of a klutz.
Like, "I'll save her."
They always think that women need to be saved.
...must remember the way to a man's heart
is not through beauty, sex, or love,
but merely the ability
to fall arse over tit in the mud.
People wouldn't respond very well
to a portrayal of a successful woman
who wasn't somehow undermining her success at every turn.
There has to be something that takes away
from her own self-confidence
because I think people still don't particularly like
to see that on screen.
In order to better understand
how career women and women in general
are presented in the films,
we need to look at how they've been portrayed
in romantic comedies throughout history.
In the 1930s,
Hollywood wasn't taken seriously as a business.
Which meant people who normally existed on the margins,
namely, immigrants and women, were able to thrive.
There were far more roles for women than for men,
and female actors commanded bigger paychecks.
The romantic heroines of this era,
the screwball queens, reflected this female power.
They were strong, intelligent women
who excelled at exchanging pithy one-liners
with their male love interests.
This is my car.
-You mean this is your car? -Of course.
Your golf ball, your car.
Is there anything in the world that doesn't belong to you?
Yes, thank heaven, you.
-Now, don't lose your temper. -Well, I...
My dear young lady, I'm not losing my temper,
I'm merely trying to play some golf.
Well, you choose the funniest places.
This is a parking lot.
Will you get out of my car?
Will you get off my running board?
This is my running board!
All right, honey.
-Stay there then. -Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Unlike modern rom-coms, the female protagonists
of the '30s were often brilliant career women.
For example, Hildy fromHis Girl Friday.
It always thrills me that instead of picking the man
who offers her security, motherhood, and suburban lawns...
Oh, you're gonna live with your mother?
Well, just for the first year.
...Hildy returns to Walter
who loves and values her for her mind
and her journalistic talent.
He treats her as his equal.
They'll be naming streets after you. Hildy Johnson Street.
There'll be statues of you in the park,
The movies will be after you, the radio.
By tomorrow morning, I'll bet you there's a Hildy Johnson cigar.
I can see the billboards now. Says, "Light up with Hildy Johnson."
-Oh, Walter, will stop that acting? -Huh?
-We got a lot to do. -Oh, yeah, talking?
But this equality didn't last.
World War II killed the screwball
as it encouraged both genders back into conformity.
Men out fighting.
Women at home keeping the house in order.
Hollywood transformed into the patriarchal institution we know today.
If career women were shown onscreen...
I happen to be paying your salary, Ryan.
You can play games on your own time.
Now, get down.
Tip that light down a little, will you,
the one near his right shoulder?
They were always eventually tamed by the man.
Goodbye, Henry.
Oh! Oh, Ryan! Ryan...
In general, we see chaste innocent virgins
waiting for their man to come home and marry them.
But then in the 1950s, everything changed again.
Hi.
Well, hello.
Marilyn Monroe's charisma and talent
was unlike anything anyone had ever seen.
Whilst rarely shown as a career woman,
her innate natural sexuality elevated her.
Her male counterparts would be reduced to bumbling idiots,
cowed by her immense female power.
I'd like to stay here with you tonight.
Mmm?
I'd like to sleep here.
Are you sure?
That is, if you don't mind.
Marilyn died in 1962.
I often wonder what the world of romantic comedies
would have looked like if she'd lived.
Her last film, Something's Got to Give,
was never finished.
It was remade a year later asMove Over, Darling
with another beautiful blonde, Doris Day.
But unlike Marilyn,
Doris' romantic heroines were not sexually confident.
Bedroom problems?
In fact, they were incredibly chaste,
protecting their virtue even when they were stranded
on a desert island for five years.
There was a man on that island with me.
How marvelous. No wonder you look so well.
But you silly girl, why did you tell Nick?
I didn't tell him!
He just found out.
Oh. Well, tell me then. I wanna know everything.
There's nothing to tell.
And whilst these women often did have careers,
they were very happy to relinquish them
in the name of marriage and motherhood.
In general,
it feels like the genre hasn't really progressed much
since Doris Day and her pastel twin sets.
In The Devil Wears Prada, when he's pissed
that she missed his birthday or something...
Yeah, she should miss your birthday.
She has a really important job.
You got a cupcake, why are you mad?
Nate, I'm so sorry.
I kept trying to leave,
but there's a lot going on and...
You know I didn't have a choice.
Don't worry about it.
Romantic comedies don't have a responsibility
to represent reality.
Way to go, Tess.
-Yay. -Beauty.
However, I can say that as a teenager,
dreaming of the relationships I one day hoped to experience,
I turned to them for guidance.
What I saw influenced, or even defined,
my future romantic behavior.
When I fell in love with romantic comedies,
Julia Roberts was the reigning queen.
Holy shit.
During that period, there was a surge of the films,
which were hugely successful at the box office.
And I watched all of them.
As the demand grew,
the genre began to cannibalize itself
and spiraled out of control.
I now realize it was presenting me
with increasingly more dubious narratives as romantic ideals.
I think that many of the premises of rom-coms
are deeply suspect and a bit twisted.
While You Were Sleeping...
I mean, that's quite a good horror movie title already.
Does she have a cat or not,
even, like, just pictures of a cat?
And she's just always in that little booth
in the train station not really talking to anyone.
She pretends to be with a guy
who's been in an accident, he's in a coma.
She's obsessed with him,
but she's never, ever talked to him.
And she goes to the hospital, and they won't let her in to see him.
Completely justified.
Whoa, whoa, you can't go in there.
-No, no, no, you don't understand. -No, are you family?
-No. -Family only.
No, you don't understand.
-I was... -You wait there.
But she lies and says that she's his fiancee.
Is that the woman that saved his life?
Yeah.
Whoa.
It gets even better than that.
She's his fiancee.
And then, his family show up.
And she feels it's normal to lie to them as well,
and just insinuates herself into his life.
I've fallen in love with men
who are in emotional comas, for sure.
Maybe not physical ones.
I feel like there's some sort of deformity
that he has on his testicles that she gets a look at
so that she can say to his mother, like,
"No, I really am his fiancee
"because I've seen his, like, watermelon-sized testicle."
Peter has one testicle.
-No way. -Way.
About a month ago, there was an accident,
and he was playing basketball,
and his friend had a pencil in his back pocket.
Ew.
She's not even interested in him in the end,
and she falls in love with Bill Pullman.
She falls in love with his brother
and ends up with the brother.
I think the prospect that you could fall in love
with somebody who's in a coma,
tell his family that you're his fiancee
and then, fall in love with his brother is psychopathic behavior
that should probably see you ending up in a courtroom.
The film that first made me realize
that the genre had lost its way wasFailure to Launch.
It's about a guy
who is too old to be living with his parents,
but he's still living with his parents.
Unhappy with this domestic situation,
they employ Paula, who is an expert
in making adult children fly the nest.
Based on the initial personality assessment,
I think that I can have your son moved out of this house
and living on his own by June 15th.
Ah! Hallelujah.
The most dubious part of the film, for me,
is that, while Paula is still in the the employ of Tripp's parents,
she has sex with him.
Paula?
Wow. Early risers.
Hey, listen, FYI, workwise, we're definitely on track.
Things are good. Tripp is good. Well, actually, he's fantastic.
Of course, I don't need to tell you that.
You're his parents. I'm just, uh...
Just trying to say you should be very proud of him.
Well...
You've got a lovely home.
She betrays him.
And yet, they still end up together.
Idealizing any relationship that starts with one person
having immense power and control over the other,
that's not a good place to start from.
Fundamentally, one person has been paid
to spend time with the other
and has had a particular motive,
and it can't help but be curdled by that.
I never found Failure to Launch romantic or aspirational.
But one part of it did stay with me,
the way Paula changed who she was
in order to secure her man.
How do you make sure that he'll fall in love with you?
You look nice, you find out what they like,
and then you pretend to like it too.
That is pretty much how it works.
This idea that a woman is appealing
to a man if her behavior resembles his...
Yeah.
is common to many of the romantic comedies that influenced me.
And consequently, I spent much of my 20s trying to conform
to what I now recognize were unachievable ideals.
She somehow can still have a magically perfect body
despite eating whatever she wants
like Sandra Bullock inMiss Congeniality.
Sandra Bullock did a lot of overeating on film.
Not even overeating, just eating,
and not talking about her diets.
But it isn't just food.
The Generation X rom-com heroine
loves everything that a man loves.
InThere's Something About Mary,
Mary is the beer-swigging, sports-loving,
physical embodiment of the ultimate cool girl.
When a guy can play 36 holes and still have enough energy
to take me and Warren to a ball game, and eat hotdogs.
I'm talking sausage hotdogs, beer.
Not light beer, but beer.
That's my ad. Print it up.
Watching this, I saw how attractive Mary was
to every man she met
to the extent that she has to take legal action.
Woogie, you know you're not supposed to be within 400 yards of me.
Let's not forget here.
You put me through a lot of bullshit, okay?
I had to change my name.
I had to go to court. I moved.
I mean, you stole all of my shoes.
She sounds like an embodiment of a writer's desire
'cause all of that is about how she's seen
rather than anything that's coming, like, internally
from her own desire.
Women just conform to certain forms of male behavior,
and they are "chill"
and they're willing to sublimate themselves
and adopt male characteristics
in order to get along better with men.
It's this thing of, like, women having to be effortless.
It's like how women always wake up
with, like, perfect makeup in films.
How come you always look so great in the morning?
Do I?
They started making jokes about it now, but even then,
you're like, "Yeah, but you do actually look a bit too nice."
Oh, I was having a nightmare. I was so scared.
Oh.
You look beautiful.
Oh, no, I'm sure I look terrible.
I just woke up. Are you kidding?
-I'm sure I'm a mess.
As a young woman,
one of my favorite rom-com heroines was journalist Andy
inHow to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
She's naturally cool.
She loves sports,
fast food, and, of course, beer.
But for a magazine article, she has to drive her man away.
So she forces herself
to become the type of woman she knows men hate.
Consequently, I saw how unappealing men find women
who are not "cool."
I did something kind of wacky.
-Huh? -Yes.
I used Photoshop at work today to composite our faces together
to see what our kids would look like.
"Our Family Album!"
She's emotionally needy.
You don't wanna see our children?
She asks him to share her interests.
And she takes care of him in front of his friends.
-Blow.
Nobody likes a Mr. Sniffles.
-I hate Mr. Sniffles.
Ultimately though, Andy's natural coolness shines through,
and is what lands her her man.
So I thought that if I could be more easy-going and uncomplicated,
then I'd have more success with men.
Women are often taught growing up
that you're there to, like, ease social situations
and to make people feel comfortable
and not to make a fuss.
But it's actually not just coolness that makes a woman attractive.
It's her willingness to play the part of the muse.
They're there to inspire and facilitate
the greatness of their male counterparts
rather than to have that within themselves.
For example, Sam inGarden State.
The scene where she's like,
"Sometimes, I like to make a noise
"that no one's ever made before."
And then they make these kind of squeaky, kooky noises.
Like, this is supposed to be the character trait
that makes you think that she's this really extraordinary person.
She's got no agency, or desire, or humanity
beyond being a mirror to reflect him
and to allow him to find himself.
Even500 Days of Summer,
which was marketed as a subversion of the genre
because of its unusual storytelling devices.
And the scene in which the leading man performs
a post-coital dance routine,
still presents its female lead, Summer, in a troubling way.
We're introduced to her riding on a bike.
And are told her height, weight,
and her uncontrollable effect on men.
In 1998, Summer quoted a song
by the Scottish band, Belle and Sebastian,
in her high school yearbook.
The spike in Michigan sales of their album,The Boy with the Arab Strap,
continues to puzzle industry analysts.
Summer's employment at The Daily Freeze during her sophomore year
coincided with an inexplicable 212% increase in revenue.
And her round-trip commute to work
averaged 18.4 double-takes per day.
Looking back,
I didn't realize that someone was being objectified
because she's shown through a lens of indieness.
"I am being different because I'm this, like, skinny white dude."
But really, it's like,
"Well, you're still treating them the same way."
Even though they're not in a bikini,
you're still using the same, basically, misogynistic tropes.
Why is it pretty girls think
they can treat people like crap and get away with it?
Centuries of reinforcement.
I rewatched 500 Days of Summer recently
and was struck by the title card that opens the film.
On the whole, romantic comedies of this era led me to believe
that my main priority
was to find a man and make him happy.
Women aren't supposed to be hungry
for anything except love.
Overeating, sleeping around, or overworking
are all ways to fill a void
that's been left by not having a relationship.
Which, of course, is... We all know is true, right?
Tell me, when is the last time
that you went on a real live date?
I'm concentrating on my career right now.
Do you own any colored underwear,
stripes or anything?
There are still these very archaic rules
about who's allowed what.
If you want sex, that means you don't get love.
I don't think I've ever watched a rom-com
and related to the main character
and been like, "Oh, but you know,
"we totally share the same views about sex."
You think of, like, Ashley Judd inSomeone Like You,
blowing the dust off her diaphragm.
Why was it stored somewhere that it was getting so dusty?
Like, where has it been? And also, are you...
You're not gonna wash that off?
Like, are we not gonna talk about that?
Women are very rarely sexy in sex scenes.
There's always, like, a guy on top,
and they're, like, trying to coax something out of him.
For films that are effectively about the ultimate goal
being romantic satisfaction and happiness,
it's never about sexual satisfaction.
Because if someone's sexually satisfied,
it means that they're a slut.
That selfish whore.
We're sluts, Emma. We're dirty, dirty sluts.
Barfing, fucking, screwing,
the great days of nobody's fool.
Why don't you start taking cash for your services?
It would be more honest.
That girl is a slut. She completely trapped that guy.
InWhat's Your Number?, a woman who's slept with 19 men
reads an article that tells her that women who have slept
with more than 20 men won't get married.
I see it in my practice all the time.
When you're too sexually available,
it messes with your self-esteem.
Next thing you know, you're 45, no self-respect, no husband,
and no muscle tone in your pelvic floor.
She treats this as gospel
and decides to marry the next man she sleeps with.
The next guy who vacations at Casa Esperanza
is going to be my husband.
It means that you're damaged goods,
that you're this object that someone wants,
and your premium is much higher if you're untainted.
A man is supposed to be attracted to a woman
who can be fully owned by him. It's really gross.
The romantic comedies I watched didn't expect me
to be concerned with my own sexual desire.
In them, women are there to make their partner feel good about himself
and his prowess.
The Sweetest Thing, written by Nancy Pimental,
attempts to skewer this ridiculous trope.
What do we always tell them no matter what?
Oh.
"Oh, my God. Your penis is so... Big."
Good girl.
They sing this weird goofy song
that I'm just gonna call, "The Penis Song."
You're too big to fit in here.
Too big to fit in here. Ow!
Too big to fit in here.
to fit in here
-Oh, my God. -Oh, my God, it's fame.
Everyone in the restaurant is, like, immediately on board.
No one's like, "Who are these annoying women ruining our lunch?"
Then there's this old woman that's completely stealing the scene.
Scene stealer!
Okay, it's pulling me round now.
It's my feeling that the films influence me and my behavior.
But for every rom-com queen there must be a king.
So, how do the men in the films behave?
Ew!
People don't really talk about the men
in romantic comedies too much.
When I watch these films now,
I'm always taken aback at how aggressive
the men are in the way that they pursue women.
-I said no. -No?
-No. -Why not?
Because I don't wanna go have a drink with you.
I wanna go home. Is that so hard to understand?
Hey. Hey. Hey.
What's going on? Are you mad or something?
Go on, say it. You know what,
no matter what it is, we're gonna work it out.
Hal, I'm not attracted to you.
So what?
InThe Last Kiss,
Zach Braff plays a man living with his pregnant girlfriend.
Finding himself unable to commit,
he begins an affair with a college student.
You make me feel ten years younger.
Ten years?
Then I'm seducing a younger man.
Excellent.
You're trying to make me lose my mind, aren't you?
I've already lost mine.
When his girlfriend finds out, she's devastated,
and kicks him out of the house.
Who is she?
-What are you talking about? -I want to know who she is.
Who were you with, Michael?
This girl I met. It was nothing. It was nothing.
Oh, God! You make me sick!
But it didn't mean anything, baby.
She made me realize I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
-I know that now. -I'm three months pregnant
and you're already out trying to fuck other women!
-Jenna. -Get out right now.
I'll tell you when you can come back and get your shit.
-Maybe Kimmy can help you pack. -Jenna, we're having a baby.
Get out of here! Go back to fucking Kim!
What, are you gonna fucking stab me, Jenna?
-Get out! -Are you out of your fucking mind?
-Get the fuck out of here! -Are you out of your fucking mind?
-Get the fuck out! -Fuck you! Fuck you!
He asks her father for advice,
who tells him that he should try and win back the daughter.
I will do anything in the world to get your daughter back.
Well, it's very simple.
Just do whatever it takes.
So he camps out on her porch for days,
waiting for her to forgive him.
I really worry about where he was going to the toilet,
for the three days that he was lying, not moving, on the porch.
It's horrible.
Can you imagine if your partner was lying outside
shitting themselves for three days
bullying you into you taking them back.
In real life, I hope that this kind of behavior
wouldn't end in reconciliation.
But in the film, it's successful.
And there are many more examples
of men exhibiting aggressive and controlling behavior
in romantic comedies.
The tenacious man is an incredibly harmful portrayal of men to watch.
It goes against every idea of consent,
and that you should respect women's boundaries.
It says, "If you just do this inappropriate thing,
"or stalk her a little bit more or catfish her,
"then one day she might fall for you."
People talk about romantic comedies
giving women a lot of unrealistic expectations about relationships,
but I think they give men, perhaps, some even more damaging ones.
Rob?
Laura, I just want to say something.
I think you're running.
And... And he doesn't love you.
And he doesn't understand you, not the way I will.
And I will even more so in the future.
I like you, Tom,
I just don't want a relation...
Well, you're not the only one that gets a say in this!
I do, too. And I say we're a couple, God damn it!
I don't love you anymore.
No, I...
I refuse to accept that.
Izzy, go home!
those girls a chance
It's easy to see
Into lies
at playing the nice guy
That you're a nice guy
Over your bed?
And round your head?
Matter at all
While I might claim
that romantic comedies negatively influenced my behavior,
at least I saw elements of myself reflected in them.
This isn't the case for everyone.
In the majority of mainstream romantic comedies,
there's a disturbing lack of any characters
who aren't white, heterosexual,
or middle-class.
It's insane that there isn't, like,
a really popular, funny rom-com
about an interracial couple.
Isn't that crazy?
The only interracial couple I can think of is,
and he doesn't even speak, I don't think, hardly,
inLove Actually, Keira Knightley's husband is black.
But then all the focus is on her white stalker.
It's kind of interesting to think about
romantic comedies as a brown woman,
because so many of the mainstream Hollywood ones
that I watched were about white women.
It can feel jarring or distancing
because you can see a tiny element of yourself.
But it's also not you.
It's not your world.
And it can be quite a weird experience to watch.
Studio executives assume
that white audiences won't "relate" to films that have got black leads in,
which is obviously a racist assumption.
And what about the women watching mainstream romantic comedies
who don't resemble the very specific Hollywood ideal?
The only images I see of someone who looks like me
in films are "Before" pictures,
and then a woman goes on to, like, hate herself
or lose weight and then be happy.
-You look fabulous. -Thank you.
Look at you. What did you do? Is it your hair? What is it?
It's my hair, and I have a little sun.
-It's... -She lost 60 pounds.
And... And I lost a little weight.
-I see that. Yeah. -Yeah?
-You look terrific. -Thank you.
-Sixty pounds? -Yeah.
-That's a Backstreet Boy. -Right?
Or I see the sassy best friend
who never has any kind of romantic potential.
I'm doing the Dr. Riverbed fast.
-Oh, yeah! -Yeah!
What is that?
Water, peach resin, apple pectin, shark extract,
and Lawry's seasoning salt.
What about food?
Look, I'm going to look amazing in that dress,
I'm going to meet a Scottish man...
And I'm gonna be happy!
It's kind of this moral imperative
for women to be thin.
Because thinness is linked to success,
and is linked to fuck-ableness,
and is linked to whether or not that person is lovable
and worthy to care about.
Being loved means caring about being thin.
What are you doing? You're hurting her.
I'm helping her. I did it to myself for years.
She can take it.
There it is.
-Good job.
Good job.
Why would you ever do that to yourself?
I wanted to be beautiful.
We don't see anything but exactly what has been taught
is, "normal and digestible."
And anything that, probably, our parents were told to subscribe to
and our grandparents were told to subscribe to, etc. etc.
When I sawIn & Out,
it was really affirming.
-You know what you need? -I need a wedding!
Again, looking back on it, all the stereotypes...
-You're an English teacher. -Exactly.
I mean, all this poetry, and odes, and bonnets...
Sonnets?
And you're kind of prissy.
Prissy?
All the weird tropes...
-Uncut. -Funny Girl!
...that now as an adult gay man, like,
I'm not that into.
If you see gay men, they have only one purpose,
and that is to make the main character
look like they have dimension.
Which is the whole purpose of Rupert Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding.
What dress to wear now
She calls him when he's in the middle of important stuff.
And it's not about her being selfish,
it's about he's at her beck and call.
George, answer this, damn it!
-I'm in a meltdown here.
She double-crossed me!
-The little twerp double-crossed me.
I'm running out of time.
I'm completely out of sneaky ideas.
I've come to the end of my rapidly fraying rope.
George, you have got to think of something!
Even when romantic comedies
do show gay characters in fulfilling relationships,
it's always within a heteronormative framing.
And it's often tinged with tragedy,
as we see inFour Weddings and a Funeral.
Gareth used to prefer funerals to weddings.
He said it was easier to get enthusiastic
about a ceremony one had an outside chance
of eventually being involved in.
As ever, the problem with these things
is that these bits of representation
are being driven by people
with no real experience or familiarity
with the thing they're trying to represent.
I'm sure plenty of people in Hollywood
have a gay acquaintance
that they might see in this sort of stereotypical way,
because they don't see the full magnitude of their personhood.
They only see a very specific version of the person.
-What the hell was that? -I'm showing you the magic.
No, I said come 90 and then I come ten.
My mouth was open, Albert!
You overeager son of a...
Blecch!
-Oh, excuse me. -Yeah.
Are you running this whole thing?
Oh, sure.
Walk up to the first homo you see
and assume he's the wedding coordinator. Right? Nice.
No, no, I didn't mean that.
Nice stereotype, buddy. Nice.
Did I hear someone say, "Wedding coordinator?"
That would be moi. So, how can I help you?
-These aren't my clothes. -Well, where are your clothes?
I've lost my clothes.
Well, why are you wearing these clothes?
Because I just went gay, all of a sudden.
Why don't you just go to a gay bar?
At this point, it would be wonderful to talk about the portrayal
of gay women and bisexuals in the films,
and of trans people.
But I can't.
Because they almost never appear in mainstream Hollywood rom-coms.
And the films also rarely show people with disabilities,
or people from lower-income backgrounds.
Nobody is a drop out.
Everyone has post-secondary education.
Everybody lives in neighborhoods that are "good."
You have these characters who have, like, dead-end jobs,
but seem to live very, very stable lives.
Even if their job is, like,
getting fired from being a waiter in the first act.
But then again, you know, it was the '90s.
I'm never gonna find another part-time job,
and then I'm not gonna be able to pay my rent,
and I'm gonna have to move. To Brooklyn!
Ah, the joy of rent control.
Six rooms, $450 a month.
Perhaps the reason for this skewed or narrow representation
is because of the demographics of the people
in power behind the camera.
It's that, overwhelmingly,
there's a certain type of person whose perspective we hear,
like people coming from a certain background
or certain experience.
There isn't a space for enough challenge,
coming from different writers and different directors.
Men are the people that are in power,
like you always have male producers
or male heads of studios, and usually male directors.
For all the Hollywood liberalism,
all the guys that are making these decisions,
are the same 60-year-old white dudes.
It could be Wall Street.
You're not here to love anybody.
You're here to promote a movie. That's it. Period.
I've worked in film
and I've seen how it works behind the scenes.
It's about money,
and it's about what the industry thinks people want to see,
which is never what people actually want to see.
Gay people, black people, women, are all capable of making good movies.
So what's the hang-up?
And I don't have anything against straight white guys,
but to say that it isn't disproportionately in their favor is ludicrous.
Now, as an adult,
in a happy, balanced relationship,
I can clearly see the negative aspects
of so many romantic comedies I once loved.
And yet, I still find myself watching these films.
And I'm moved by them, despite their flaws.
It's wonderful watching people fall in love.
Like, it's very uplifting.
It's a thrill, it's a fantasy,
it's like something that you're experiencing
for a cinematic emotion.
And not because you necessarily condone or agree
with everything that's happening on the screen.
Disneyland of the heart or something.
You wouldn't want to go there all the time,
it's not something you would want for yourself,
but it's not an unpleasant fantasy to entertain.
You're given all the little tiny, bubbly feelings
of what it would be like to be in love.
But it's never treacherous.
They resonate because,
even if the circumstances in them are completely ludicrous,
there are moments of real humanity written into them.
It's the watching someone ride off into the sunset, isn't it?
You only imagine something beautiful is going to happen,
but you don't know what it is.
Romantic comedies tap into universal human desire.
We all want to be loved.
Maybe we want that for a lifetime.
But maybe we only want that for one night.
Either way, the desire for that connection is always there.
The films have a very simple way of showing this.
They present the love interests as two parts of one whole.
Plato tells us we began as circles.
And when we strived to be like the gods,
we were punished by a thunderbolt that struck us,
and cut us right down, dead-center, in half.
And we scattered to the ends of the earth,
searching and searching
for our other half.
Or to put it another way...
You...
Complete me.
For me, the pinnacle of romantic comedies
is Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally.
And this masterpiece wholeheartedly embraces
the idea that the two lovers should be opposites,
who unite and complete each other.
Harry is doomy and full of cynicism,
which is in stark contrast
to Sally's upbeat, positive persona.
-Yes, basically I'm a happy person. -So am I.
And I don't see that there's anything wrong with that.
Of course not. You're too busy being happy.
Do you ever think about death?
-Yes. -Sure you do.
A fleeting thought that's just in and out of the transom of your mind.
I spend hours. I spend days.
And you think this makes you a better person?
Well, when the shit comes down,
I'm gonna be prepared and you're not,
-that's all I'm saying. -In the meantime,
you're gonna ruin your whole life waiting for it.
At first, their differences drive them apart.
But then, as they grow older and move through the world,
they're faced with challenges.
You're not with Joe anymore?
We just broke up.
Aww.
I'm sorry. That's too bad.
Yeah. Well, you know... Yeah.
So...
-What about you? -I'm fine.
How's married life?
Not so good. I am getting a divorce.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm really sorry.
Yeah, well, what're you gonna do?
Gradually, through sharing
their contrasting worldviews with each other,
they begin to make sense of themselves,
and their lives.
Harry, you're gonna have to try and find a way
of not expressing every feeling that you have,
every moment that you have them.
Oh, really?
Yes.
There are times and places for things.
Well, the next time you're giving a lecture series on social graces,
would you let me know? 'Cause I'll sign up.
Hey.
You don't have to take your anger out on me.
Oh, I think I'm entitled to throw a little anger your way.
Especially when I'm being told how to live my life
by Miss Hospital Corners.
What's that supposed to mean?
I mean, nothing bothers you.
You never get upset about anything.
Don't be ridiculous.
What?
You never get upset about Joe.
I never see that back up on you. How is that possible?
Don't you experience any feelings of loss?
I don't have to take this crap from you.
If you're so over Joe, why aren't you seeing anyone?
I see people.
See people. Have you slept with one person
since you broke up with Joe?
What the hell does that have to do with anything?
That will prove I'm over Joe,
because I fuck somebody?
Harry, you're gonna have to move back to New Jersey
because you've slept with everybody in New York,
and I don't see that turning Helen
into a faint memory for you.
Besides, I will make love to somebody when it is making love.
Not the way you do it, like you're out for revenge or something.
Are you finished now?
Yes.
Can I say something?
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Ultimately, it's their differences
which make them an ideal fit.
This is a pattern we see repeatedly.
Sometimes, it's mundane.
InStranger Than Fiction,
an uptight IRS man falls in love
with the rebellious, tattooed pastry chef,
he's supposed to be auditing.
Mr. Crick.
Yes, what is it?
You're staring at my tits.
Uh, I what? I don't think I was.
I don't think I would do that.
If I was, I can assure you,
it was only as a representative of the United States government.
But sometimes, it's more metaphorical.
InSplash, a man afraid of the sea...
Then you wouldn't want me to do this.
Stop! God, no. Please.
Falls in love with a mermaid.
This way of seeing romantic connection is incredibly satisfying,
and emotionally overwhelming.
In fact, so powerful is this way of portraying lovers
as two opposites attracting to complete each other,
that it's existed since at least the 17th century.
Shakespeare used it inMuch Ado About Nothing.
I wonder that you will still be talking, SignorBenedick.
-Nobody marks you. -What?
My dear Lady Disdain!
Are you yet living?
Is it possible disdain should die
while she hath such meet food to feed it as SignorBenedick?
I do love nothing in the world so well as you.
Is not that strange?
As strange as the thing I know not.
It were as possible for me to say
I love nothing so well as you.
We also see this in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,
where the relaxed and unconventional Elizabeth Bennet
is the perfect match for the highly reserved Mr. Darcy.
I wonder who first discovered the power of poetry
-in driving away love.
I thought that poetry was the food of love.
Of a fine stout love, it may.
But if it is only a vague inclination,
I'm convinced one poor sonnet will kill it stone dead.
So, what do you recommend to encourage affection?
Dancing.
Even if one's partner is barely tolerable.
His anguished declaration of love is so successful
in eliciting an emotional response in audiences,
that it's become a trope,
used over and over again in romantic comedies.
I've fought against my better judgement,
my family's expectation,
the inferiority of your birth, my rank and circumstance...
All these things that I am willing to put them aside
and ask you to end my agony.
-I don't understand. -I love you.
Most ardently.
Please do me the honor of accepting my hand.
It's always one of the most human
and relatable moments in the films.
People convey those kinds of thoughts piecemeal
over the course of a relationship.
I don't mind the cinematic license
of presenting them in aggregate.
You become more wordy in moments of crisis.
Of course, I've performed speeches of love for guys,
I'm an actress. Everything is a movie to me.
Someone has formed a declaration of love for me,
but they didn't say any of the things
that I needed them to say.
It was awful.
I've done them in airports, in a supermarket.
Like, you just say it to each other in a mundane setting.
You can hear yourself. And it's like, "Wow.
"If anybody else hears me right now, can they actually just kill me?"
Because I would wanna kill myself.
He said stuff like, "If we had met on a dating app,
"we would have matched."
And that we had sparkling banter.
They must have been, "Yo, like she's insane."
They must've done!
They must have just been like, "Why does she think
"that she's in a Disney film right now?"
They must have done!
Do you wanna know the real reason why I came here tonight?
I closed my world off.
I put myself in a little box.
It was all my fault. I mean...
I'm the bastard here.
I'm immature, I'm unthoughtful, I'm a friggin' idiot.
I'm a liar and a phoney. A saxophone player.
But something's happened to me since I've...
Met you and...
I'm happiest when I'm being myself.
And I'm myself when I'm with you.
So...
I thought that I would come here and tell you something.
I like you.
I want you.
I love you.
I'm totally, completely in love with you,
and I don't care if you think it's too late,
I'm telling you anyway.
I'm crazy about you. I think about you all the time.
And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
'Cause like you said, "This is it."
"This is life."
I came here tonight because when you realize
you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody,
you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
And don't forget,
I'm also just a girl
standing in front of a boy,
asking him to love her.
Something about her
You see her clearly
You knew is shifting
It shows
This woman's in love
You found her
She's in love
Recently, I've noticed a spate of films
that, while not marked as romantic comedies,
will exploit, enlist, or twist the structures and tropes of the rom-com
to their own ends.
They employ many of the same time-honored tricks
as the traditional rom-com,
and fall into some of the same traps.
I need a taxi. I got to get to the airport right now.
I gotta stop someone from getting married.
Flight leaves in... Oh.
I got like four hours.
The Break-Up attempts to subvert the rom-com narrative
by, as the title might suggest,
refusing to give its protagonists a happy ending.
You think that I nag you?
That's all you do!
All you do is nag me.
"The bathroom's a mess.
"Your belt doesn't match.
"Hey, Gary, you should probably go work out."
Nothing I ever do is ever good enough.
I just want to be left the hell alone!
-Is that what you want? -Yeah.
-That's what you want? -Yeah.
Fine. Great. Do whatever the hell you want.
You leave your socks all over this house.
Dress like a pig.
Play your stupid ass video game, I don't care. I'm done.
-What? -I am done.
I don't deserve this. I really do not deserve this.
I deserve somebody who gives a shit.
I'm not spending one more second of this life
with some inconsiderate prick.
You're a prick!
A far more interesting twist
comes from 2012'sRuby Sparks,
written by Zoe Kazan.
This rom-com plays with the genre's conventions.
and directly confronts the insidious "cool girl" trope
and the power of the male writers who indulge it.
A novelist describes his ideal woman in his new book
and is stunned when one day she appears in his house.
I missed you in bed last night.
Did you get some good writing done?
He falls in love with her.
And resolves not to write about her again,
as he wants her to be her own person.
However, when she begins to seek a life outside their relationship,
he feels insecure.
-I'm so lonely. -No.
Don't say that. Please.
I think I should start spending some nights at my apartment again.
He starts writing about her again,
so he can control her behavior.
First, he makes her completely obsessed with him.
and crushes her desire for independence.
Then he makes her unrelentingly happy.
Eventually, we are shown how disturbing it is
to have a female character whose every thought and action
is driven solely by the male creator.
If this is how you think about people,
then you are in for a long, lonely, fucked-up life.
Do you hear me?
Calvin.
Less radical than Kazan's offering isI Love You, Man,
a film which is a rom-com in every aspect but one.
Our soulmates are platonic friends instead of lovers.
Sydney, I'm really sorry for all the stuff that I said.
Pete, you called me on a lot of my issues.
I appreciate it.
I'm really glad you're here, Sydney.
Me, too.
I love you, man.
I love you too, bud.
-I love you, dude. -I love you, Bro Montana.
I love you, homes.
I love you, Broseph Goebbels.
-I love you, muchacha. -I love you, Tycho Brohe.
Okay.
In 2013,The Heat did something similar.
It's a rom-com dressed up as a buddy movie.
This time between two female cops.
The uptight loner Ashburn, played by Sandra Bullock,
and Melissa McCarthy's loose cannon, Mullins.
-Ashburn. -Hey, it's me.
Hey.
So, uh, did you get that package I sent over?
Oh, God, I haven't even opened it yet. I'm sorry.
I signed it. On the front.
Okay, I see it. That's very funny.
I know. I'm just kidding.
Just look at the... Look at the back.
Well...
Don't make it weird.
Later, nerd.
Takes a nerd to know a nerd.
The success of these bromances
and womances,
proves that the power of the rom-com
is strong enough to survive being transplanted
into buddy movies.
Yes!
Other film-makers employ the same structure
as traditional rom-coms, but disguise it.
There's a number of reasons they might want to do this.
Foremost among them,
the sad fact that marketing a film as a romantic comedy
is a quick route to critical disdain.
Perhaps, because so many of the people
who are reviewing these films are men.
A film-maker hoping to be awarded accolades and acclaim
would do better if they presented their romantic comedy
as something else.
David O. Russell used some romantic comedy tropes
inSilver Linings Playbook.
The screwball dialogue.
So how's your thing going? The dancing thing?
It's good. How's your restraining order?
The declaration of love.
I love you.
I knew it the minute I met you.
I'm sorry it took so long for me to catch up.
I just got stuck.
And the happy ending.
But the film avoided the cloud of critical distain
that surrounds the genre
because it's tonally much darker
than the romantic comedies I grew up watching.
Instead of being clumsy,
its characters dealt with real problems
like suicide and depression.
Silver Linings Playbook was billed as a comedy drama,
not a romantic comedy,
and was Oscar-nominated across the board.
Other secret rom-coms might be even more critically acclaimed.
2016'sLa La Land employs all the beats of a romantic comedy.
But likeThe Break-Up, it skips the happy ending.
It's important to note that although these films use
the structure of romantic comedies to great effect,
eliciting powerful emotions,
they yet again only show us straight, white, middle-class relationships.
Earlier, I said that there was a lack of romantic comedies
with people of color as the leads,
or mixed-race couples,
or queer relationships.
But this isn't strictly true.
Many examples of those films do exist.
It's just that as a white, straight woman
who is heavily catered for by mainstream romantic comedies,
I never went looking for them.
And because of that, I missed out on this moment
from 2001's Kissing Jessica Stein.
I didn't see a blond Zack Braff
and Justin Theroux in the queer rom-com,
The Broken Hearts Club.
Or the sweet perfection of 2010'sJust Wright.
I'd never seen Stella getting her groove back.
And I'd also never watched Alice Wu'sSaving Face
about a Chinese-American surgeon
who falls madly in love with a ballet dancer.
Despite not being represented
in terms of race or sexuality by these films,
I love them just as much as I love While You Were Sleeping,
orWhen Harry Met Sally.
Because romantic comedies aren't about race or gender or sexuality,
they're about human connection.
I realize now why I'm obsessed with romantic comedies,
it's so simple.
They show people falling in love
and when anyone watches any two people fall in love,
we see nothing but their humanity.
My favorite film of recent times
is 2017's critically-lauded God's Own Country.
The love story is structurally a romantic comedy,
but instead of watching a straight middle-class couple
falling over each other in a New York office,
we have a struggling Yorkshire farmer
falling for a Romanian migrant worker.
They call you Georgie or summat?
-Gheorghe. -Whatever. Get in.
It's got all the beats of a Nora Ephron classic.
Two young people meet
and find themselves clashing over their differences.
I'm from Romania.
Gypsy.
Please don't call me that.
However, they're forced to share experiences
and in doing so, they're drawn together.
Fuck.
If you leave it, it will get infected with disease.
Eventually, they realized they complete each other.
I was thinking.
I can stay a little longer.
After circumstances force them apart,
there's no option but to make an anguished declaration of love.
I'm trying to do this.
Don't you see, I'm...
I'm trying to sort it out.
And I've come all this way up here,
on a coach and everything.
And I want you to come back...
With me.
And I want us to be together.
I don't want to be a fuck-up anymore.
No, leave me. I'm fine.
I want to be with you,
and that's what I needed to say.
And the rom-com closes in the traditional way
giving the audience the ultimate satisfying ending,
a kiss between the two lovers.
God's Own country isn't considered a romantic comedy,
which, while understandable, is perhaps a shame
because it left me with all of the uplifting feelings of elation and romance
that I get from re-watching Sleepless in Seattle
for the 35th time.
Another film I loved from the same year asGod's Own Country
isThe Big Sick,
which is based on a real-life relationship
between writers Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani.
What were you like in high school?
They called me chashmullee.
What is that?
It roughly translates to "dweeb."
I'll show you a picture.
Of you in high school? Oh, my God.
-Boom. -No.
And I'm thinking, "I'm killing it right now."
What inspired this haircut?
Hugh Grant.
-No. -Yeah.
The film was critically acclaimed,
Oscar-nominated,
and most importantly, a romantic comedy
that sticked to the traditional formula.
But unlike the films that I grew up watching,
its characters are complex and fleshed out.
I was going to tell you about that.
These are women in Pakistan who wanna marry you?
They're not in Pakistan.
You've met these women?
Just with my parents and stuff, we haven't like...
But you're not serious about this, are you?
It's my mom's thing, I just go along with it.
So what does your mom think about you and me then?
She doesn't know about me, does she?
No.
They're not from high-income backgrounds.
So are you ever gonna let me sit in the front seat?
No, I'm a professional, and you're paying for this ride.
I don't wanna pay for this ride, it's surging right now.
And they deal with real problems.
In the future, I hope film-makers will continue
to use the power of rom-coms
to put different types of relationships
in front of the camera.
I hope studios will realize
that there's a hunger for these films.
And that they'll reach a mainstream Hollywood audience.
Because love doesn't only happen
to white, straight, middle-class people.
And it doesn't have to end with a wedding.
And it doesn't always last forever.
Are you breaking up with me?
But it is wonderful to watch.
Any fireworks
At first sight
Waiting for me
It wouldn't bother
All the time
This would work
Walked away now
We'll be next year
To make plans
Yeah, I'm honest
When I wake up
The love of my life
I'd only get one shot
Had one plot
To treasure what you've got
And it was never enough
And then then it stops
In a little box
The love of my life