Romantic Comedy Blog Spring 2020

Ja’el Thomas Professor Sinowitz February 23,2020 Romantic Comedy Cinematic Love- Is It the Happy Ending We Make It Out to Be? Who doesn’t want a happy ending? Romantic comedies tend to have happy endings. These happy endings result in a woman forgiving a man for something he did earlier in the story, and then they get married without him having learned a single thing. Garner argues that there is a recurring pattern in Shakespeare's work Much Ado About Nothing. These patterns include: the men’s desire to be betrayed so they can return to their homo-social bonding, and the women just forgiving them even though they learn nothing. These patterns are transformed in It Happened One Night but still include traces of women’s easy forgiveness. Peter Warne’s (Clark Gable) desire to be betrayed is for a different reason. Warne wants to be proven right about his class prejudices, and no matter how rude he is, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) forgives him every time though he shows...

Hannah Lathrop Professor Sinowitz Tps:Romantic Comedy 25 February 2020 I Love You as a Crook: Dissecting the Class Divisions in Romantic Comedies Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932) opens to a still shot of a dingy, dark alleyway. The background consists of exposed brick, a slightly illuminated window, and a dog sniffing at trash. An average man walks from the right of the frame to grab a trash bin. As he leaves, the camera follows him, panning out to reveal the Venetian canals. We continue to follow the garbage man as he pours the bin right into his gondola, already filled with trash. He burst into a crisp a capella as he rows away. It's an intriguing introduction to a romance film; the traditionally glamorous city of Venice conflicts with the overall mundanity of trash collection. The imagery of the opening scene sets up a contrast between two worlds: the rich and poor. A contrast that the main character, Gaston Monescu (Herbert Mar...

Olivia Neal Professor Sinowitz TPS: Romantic Comedy February 25, 2020 S ubmissive Female Leads: It Happened One Night Contradicts Much Ado About Nothing Through the Protagonist Ellie Andrews        Through the character Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) in the 1934 film, It Happened One Night , we learn early on that she is an independent and confident female lead. The first scene of the film is of Ellie trapped on a boat by her Father (Walter Connolly), who is in the process of trying to get her marriage to King Westly (Jameson Thomas) annulled. Ellie is fighting with her father and is refusing to eat until he agrees to let her off the boat and accepts her marriage to Westly. Mr. Andrews continues to encourage his daughter to eat something. He then takes a piece of meat on his fork and holds it to her nose to smell. The camera angle in this shot is a close up on Ellie’s face as she slaps the food out of her father’s hand. This is an act of defiance...

Natalia Rued-Marshall 2/25/2020 Romantic Comedy The Benefit of Deception in Romantic Relationships: from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to Jack Conway’s Libeled Lady Most common love stories today do not often include deception and manipulation, and if they do it is usually the means to the end of the relationship. But, in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing , a romantic novel that has been the basis for many love stories to follow, deception is central to the budding romance. In the play, the plot revolves around two couple pairings one of which is Beatrice and Benedick. Their friends use deception to convince them that the other has already professed their love for them which helps trigger their hidden feelings. At first, they disguise these feelings as ones of pity but they eventually acknowledge their love for one another and their love story ends in marriage. Readers understand that the deception helped reveal hidden feelings because the banter between t...

Brielle Bait Professor Sinowitz  Romantic Comedy  25 February 2020 Romance or Performative Love : Misogynistic Behavior Found in Romantic Comedies The interactions between male and female characters in Much Ado About Nothing shows how patriarchy is prevalent throughout the play. The role of patriarchy gives way for male dominance to play a part of Claudio and Hero’s relationship. A misunderstanding leads Claudio to believe that Hero has been unfaithful. His response is dramatic, and he consciously makes the decision to publicly humiliate her. One may say Claudio is willing to accept this information so quickly because of his relatively short and shallow relationship with Hero, which may be true. However this does not explain his dramatic reaction to the situation. Instead of taking a civil approach, and privately confronting Hero, he consciously makes the decision to do the most damaging thing he can do to Hero. He publicly humiliates her, knowing very well that it...