ifeelbetter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ifeelbetter) wrote2010-08-29 12:13 am
ifeelbetter) wrote2010-08-29 12:13 am
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Rom Com: a study in genre
I was at a Super Awkward dinner party/BBQ tonight...I'm in an English PhD program and we tend towards the awkward. So in one of the many stilted conversations I had tonight, I scrounged through my brain for something to make small talk about (the rodeo I saw in Wisconsin was trotted out at least six times before even I was tired of it) and I happened upon this one.
My dad, who has a PhD in English but has been doing Other Things with his life (my point is that he could hold his own with any of the stilted conversationeers at this dinner party not that PhDs=clever), has been compiling a list of the top ten Romantic Comedies of the past decade. He's doing this because my whole family is crazy fannish about the old screwball comedies of the thirties and forties, the heigh-day of Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart. My dad wants to believe that the genre survived intact into the modern era.
I'm not so sure, myself. I think it had to evolve, like every genre does over time, but that something has gone wrong with the entire genre very recently.
First of all, the things I loved about the screwballs from back in the day are simple pleasures.
1) The actors and actresses had a charm unique to his-or-herself (whoever you might name--Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, etc.) and no two were alike. If your film had Clark Gable at first but switch to, say, as in the case of Philadelphia Story, Cary Grant, you got an entirely different film.
2) The genre dealt more (and with more nuance) with the arcs of relationships. Sometimes the protagonists were a couple who met and fell in love, ending the film with a happy wedding. This was not always the case. Just as many dealt with a married couple going through a rough patch or a couple that has been together forever but can't seem to fully commit. All of these steps were drawn with the same finely tuned sensibilities.
3) There is a certain warm, fuzzy feeling that happens at the end of a lot of those old comedies. Stuff ends happily, you get your vicarious payoff. Even His Girl Friday ends happily. It was just a certainty and sometimes you want a good sugary payoff.
Those are my reasons for loving the classics. My love knows no bounds. But that doesn't mean I would hold modern rom-coms to the same standards. For me, the most drastic difference in expectation comes from the third reason.
I do not expect a happy ending from a romantic comedy today. I don't know if that makes me more mature or the genre more evolved but there you go. I think a rom com can be bittersweet, like 500 Days of Summer or Once. The former not many people would disagree with me in describing it as a romantic comedy, I think.
I was disagreed with emphatically at this party.
The girl's counter argument was this: Romantic comedies have to make you feel good. Comedies make you laugh and romances make you swoon but romantic comedies have to do both. And it can't be done stupidly or by applying to the worst aspects of people. (My best example, personally, of a comedy that appeals to the worst in us all is Everybody Loves Raymond. Someday you will hear all about my vitriolic hatred for that show.) It has to, this girl argued, make us happier and, subtly, better at the same time. Because it makes us believe, a tiny bit, in magic and that's never a bad thing.
[Get ready for a tangent-with-verve]
Here's my take on that: I think the magic she was describing was not, in fact, the beautiful thing she thought it was. I think modern romantic comedies lead us to believe that we are protagonists in our own films which--to a certain degree--is healthy. It has crescendo-ed in a Not Heathly way, I think. Romantic comedies lead us to expect all our friends and family (and everyone we pass on the street sometimes) to be our personal support system, to be available any time, any where for a pep talk or whatever. The truth of the matter is that that's too much to expect of people. We, as adults, know what the limits of others' sympathies are. We know your husband/wife/partner/whatever can be depended on to shoulder half your burden but it's too much to ask of the guy in the next cubicle or, though I LOVE Notting Hill, the friend who has trauma enough on her own to deal with without you and your romantic quibbles. I think it is bad for us as a society to be propagating the idea that other people are less than fully formed, independent, interesting, free people.
One of the things I liked best about 500 Days was that it dealt with this very issue. Tom is a narcissist. He assumes it's reasonable to have his little sister bike across town to Deal With Him. It's not. It's really not. It's funny but it's not reasonable.
And the thing he learns from Summer is that he can't dictate her narrative to her. He's not her Love Interest, no matter how much he insists she's his.
But the film still provides the optimism in its ending. "Autumn," whoever she may be, could be his Love Interest. Or she might not be. The point is that Summer, in 500 days, is a chapter that is closed. He couldn't dictate the contents to Summer and maaaaybe he'll know better with Autumn. That's the optimism. There's the hope, the magic, the je-ne-sais-quoi of the feel-good payoff.
I am aware that this is not the same kind of payoff as the interview interruption scene at the end of Notting Hill or the birthday cake on the table in Sixteen Candles. But do we have to be pleased in the same way all the time? And isn't hope a richer kind of reward than the simple-and-direct resolution? It nags at you, sure, and your first reaction will always be "I wish it had been happier" but it's good too, right?
So 500 Days is second on my dad's list of Top Ten in the past ten years. I can agree with that. I wasn't so sure when I got out of the theater, last summer, but I've thought about it more than most romantic comedies I see. And, somehow, I think that's the same as liking it best.
I might try to make my own Top Ten Romantic Comedies. Or I might theorize some more about the genre (I'm sure you, reader, are thrilled)...I don't know. I'm definitely not done thinking about it.
My dad, who has a PhD in English but has been doing Other Things with his life (my point is that he could hold his own with any of the stilted conversationeers at this dinner party not that PhDs=clever), has been compiling a list of the top ten Romantic Comedies of the past decade. He's doing this because my whole family is crazy fannish about the old screwball comedies of the thirties and forties, the heigh-day of Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart. My dad wants to believe that the genre survived intact into the modern era.
I'm not so sure, myself. I think it had to evolve, like every genre does over time, but that something has gone wrong with the entire genre very recently.
First of all, the things I loved about the screwballs from back in the day are simple pleasures.
1) The actors and actresses had a charm unique to his-or-herself (whoever you might name--Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, etc.) and no two were alike. If your film had Clark Gable at first but switch to, say, as in the case of Philadelphia Story, Cary Grant, you got an entirely different film.
2) The genre dealt more (and with more nuance) with the arcs of relationships. Sometimes the protagonists were a couple who met and fell in love, ending the film with a happy wedding. This was not always the case. Just as many dealt with a married couple going through a rough patch or a couple that has been together forever but can't seem to fully commit. All of these steps were drawn with the same finely tuned sensibilities.
3) There is a certain warm, fuzzy feeling that happens at the end of a lot of those old comedies. Stuff ends happily, you get your vicarious payoff. Even His Girl Friday ends happily. It was just a certainty and sometimes you want a good sugary payoff.
Those are my reasons for loving the classics. My love knows no bounds. But that doesn't mean I would hold modern rom-coms to the same standards. For me, the most drastic difference in expectation comes from the third reason.
I do not expect a happy ending from a romantic comedy today. I don't know if that makes me more mature or the genre more evolved but there you go. I think a rom com can be bittersweet, like 500 Days of Summer or Once. The former not many people would disagree with me in describing it as a romantic comedy, I think.
I was disagreed with emphatically at this party.
The girl's counter argument was this: Romantic comedies have to make you feel good. Comedies make you laugh and romances make you swoon but romantic comedies have to do both. And it can't be done stupidly or by applying to the worst aspects of people. (My best example, personally, of a comedy that appeals to the worst in us all is Everybody Loves Raymond. Someday you will hear all about my vitriolic hatred for that show.) It has to, this girl argued, make us happier and, subtly, better at the same time. Because it makes us believe, a tiny bit, in magic and that's never a bad thing.
[Get ready for a tangent-with-verve]
Here's my take on that: I think the magic she was describing was not, in fact, the beautiful thing she thought it was. I think modern romantic comedies lead us to believe that we are protagonists in our own films which--to a certain degree--is healthy. It has crescendo-ed in a Not Heathly way, I think. Romantic comedies lead us to expect all our friends and family (and everyone we pass on the street sometimes) to be our personal support system, to be available any time, any where for a pep talk or whatever. The truth of the matter is that that's too much to expect of people. We, as adults, know what the limits of others' sympathies are. We know your husband/wife/partner/whatever can be depended on to shoulder half your burden but it's too much to ask of the guy in the next cubicle or, though I LOVE Notting Hill, the friend who has trauma enough on her own to deal with without you and your romantic quibbles. I think it is bad for us as a society to be propagating the idea that other people are less than fully formed, independent, interesting, free people.
One of the things I liked best about 500 Days was that it dealt with this very issue. Tom is a narcissist. He assumes it's reasonable to have his little sister bike across town to Deal With Him. It's not. It's really not. It's funny but it's not reasonable.
And the thing he learns from Summer is that he can't dictate her narrative to her. He's not her Love Interest, no matter how much he insists she's his.
But the film still provides the optimism in its ending. "Autumn," whoever she may be, could be his Love Interest. Or she might not be. The point is that Summer, in 500 days, is a chapter that is closed. He couldn't dictate the contents to Summer and maaaaybe he'll know better with Autumn. That's the optimism. There's the hope, the magic, the je-ne-sais-quoi of the feel-good payoff.
I am aware that this is not the same kind of payoff as the interview interruption scene at the end of Notting Hill or the birthday cake on the table in Sixteen Candles. But do we have to be pleased in the same way all the time? And isn't hope a richer kind of reward than the simple-and-direct resolution? It nags at you, sure, and your first reaction will always be "I wish it had been happier" but it's good too, right?
So 500 Days is second on my dad's list of Top Ten in the past ten years. I can agree with that. I wasn't so sure when I got out of the theater, last summer, but I've thought about it more than most romantic comedies I see. And, somehow, I think that's the same as liking it best.
I might try to make my own Top Ten Romantic Comedies. Or I might theorize some more about the genre (I'm sure you, reader, are thrilled)...I don't know. I'm definitely not done thinking about it.