A Window into Reality: The Evolution of Sex in Society and Romantic Comedies

Rachel DeShone 

Professor Sinowtiz

English 255F: TPS: Romantic Comedy

12 May 2020

A Window into Reality: The Evolution of Sex in Society and Romantic Comedies

To be quite honest, before this class, I never referred to a movie as a “romantic comedy.” Obviously, I knew romantic comedies were a film genre; however, to me, romantic comedies were a combination of two genres, so it didn’t seem as legitimate. Genres like action, adventure, and horror are genres that could stand on their own, but romantic comedies are a combination of romance and comedy, so I chose one of those genres to describe the film, depending on the film, rarely acknowledging both. After finishing this course, I realize romantic comedies are a genre on their own due to their repeated plotline. Shumway suggests that romantic comedies follow the plot that “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl” (McDonald 2). As I watched the movies for this course, I noticed all but a few (Roman Holiday and Lost In Translation) follow this order. Although I felt I could predict the ending of romantic comedies within the first five minutes, I never found myself getting tired of watching them. In a way, romantic comedies are the most realistic genre. In comparison to action, adventure, or horror films, romantic comedies portray the most natural and realistic characters. In romantic comedies you don’t have superheroes or the ghost of “La Llorona” haunting you; instead, you have a male and a female who meet, most of the time in a casual setting, and then fall in love. The portrayal of a couple ending up together makes romantic comedies light-hearted, feel-good movies people enjoy to watch. As I watched these movies, I began to realize that romantic comedies offer more than just the plot of a boy and girl ending up together. Romantic comedies portray societal issues such as the issue of sex in society.  The societal change in the stigma around sex and gender throughout history can be seen in the evolution of romantic comedies which makes romantic comedies more relateable due to the portrayal of current societal norms.

In one of the oldest romantic comedies known, Jane Austen portrays society's stigma around sex and relationships through the Bennet daughters in Pride and Prejudice. Throughout the book, Mrs. Bennet is obsessed with seeing her daughters married. When Elizabeth rejected Mr. Collin’s proposal, Mrs. Bennet was infuriated. Relationships were deemed as a business transaction. Mrs. Bennet expected Elizabeth to marry Mr. Collins, whom she doesn’t love but would get resources and a stable life in return. Austen also portrays the negative stigma around sex through Lydia, the youngest child. When Lydia runs off with Wickman, Austen implies that she engages in premarital sex, which is forbidden during this time. To avoid ruining the Bennet family’s reputation, Mr. Darcy has to pay Wickman to marry Lydia. Having premarital sex was so prohibited in society, that the family was willing to pay Wickman to save their reputation. In the 1800s any sort of intimacy between men and women was forbidden. Women were seen as housewives who must obey their husbands, which is what Pride and Prejudice portrayed. 

 As we transition to filmmaking in the 1930s, we still see a society's negative stigma around premarital sex continue. The Hays Code was implemented in the early 1930s to forbid intimate actions that may be deemed as inappropriate or shameful, based on society's standards. Despite the restrictions by the Hays Code on early films, directors still tried to insinuate sexual tension between the male and female characters. In the movie It Happened One Night (1934), Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) spends the night in a cabin with Peter Warne less than 48 hours after meeting him. It is quite evident how uncomfortable Ellie is with the situation. Her back is pushed up against the wall showing she is trying to distance herself from Peter as much as she can, she is standing there silently, and she keeps shifting back and forth anxiously. Peter throws a blanket over a line to act as a divider—what {they} refer to as the “Wall of Jericho''— to keep privacy between Ellie and himself (23:07-24:10). The divide by the “Wall of Jericho'' shows the audience that there would be no intimacy between Ellie and Peter. Once the two are in their separate beds, director Frank Capra cuts back and forth between Peter and Ellie to show that they are separated, yet interested in talking with each other. James Harvey describes this scene as “powerful” and “elegant” filmmaking in his Romantic Comedy excerpt. Harvey suggests that Capra alternates cuts in this scene to “convey the intense mutual awareness and the gathering of sexual tension” (112). This intense sexual yearning was prevalent throughout the whole movie. Because Ellie and Peter could not act on their sexual desires, the audience wanted them to be together even more to release the sexual tensions that built up the whole movie.  Even though Capra was restricted on the amount of intimacy he could show, he found a way to insinuate the idea of sex. It Happened One Night shows sex is an integral apart of relationships, but early romantic comedies tried to hide that reality due to the shameful stigma of sex in the 1930s.

On the contrary, the most modern (1988 to present) movie we watched, The Big Sick (2017), shows Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) and Emily (Zoe Kazan) having sex the first night they met. Even once Ellie and Peter were married in It Happened One Night, Capra did not show any intimacy between the couple. He implied that they were having sex by showing the house they were in at the end of the movie and playing trumpets. Capra starts the scene with a freeze-frame where the camera focuses on the house with the lights on. Then as trumpets begin to play, Capra zooms into the house to reveal the dropping of the blanket, also known as the “Wall of Jericho.” As Capra zooms out of the house quickly, the lights fade away (1:27:29). The camera movements of this scene allow the audience to insinuate that Ellie and Peter were going to engage in intimate activities. The dropping of the blanket shows that Ellie and Peter can finally be together; they no longer want privacy or separation. Although the audience can assume what happened in the house, Capra never showed the audience any sexual contact between Peter and Ellie. Modern movies, such as The Big Sick  are able to show sex scenes because society has become more welcoming to premarital sex. 

As an audience member, I found myself wanting Ellie and Peter together more than I wanted Kumail and Emily together due to how the directors portrayed the sexual tension amongst the characters. Throughout It Happened One Night, Peter and Ellie continued to build up the sexual tension. Peter and Ellie wanted to be together but due to society's constraints of showing intimate scenes, they could not. If It Happened One Night was made in the modern era, Peter and Ellie would have had sex on the first night, but then there would not have been that built up yearning for them to be together. In The Big Sick Ellie and Kumail had sex the first night they met when they barely knew each other. The rush to have sex takes away the characters’ relationship development and reduces the tension between them. Emily and Kumail could be intimate without having to be in a relationship, whereas Peter and Ellie couldn’t until they were married. Because of the mounting sexual tension, I wanted to see Peter and Ellie together to feel the satisfaction of that tension being released.

The movies during the Hays Code era attempted to work around the Hays Code by insulting sexual scenes without explicitly showing anything; however, there was a turning point in the portrayal of sex in romantic comedies in the movie The Graduate (1967).  At the time of this movie, America was undergoing a “sexual revolution” that lasted throughout the 1960s. The “sexual revolution” introduced a new culture that consisted of pop music, playboy cubs, and an increase in feminism that created a rebellious society that deemed sex as an “individual interpretation” rather than a moral burden (Hills). This movie solidified the transition from hinting at sexual intimacy to actually showing sexual intimacy between characters. Not only did it portray sex, but it portrayed an affair and a complicated triangle between a boy, a girl, and the girl’s mother. In the years prior to The Graduate, pre-marital sex was deemed as shameful; however, The Graduate shows a married woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) having an affair with a man half her age which should be even more shameful. This movie shows Mrs. Robinson being the one to provoke the sex with Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman). The Graduate upended the stigma around sex by showing a woman being in control of the relationship instead of a man, which signified the end of the Hays Code.  The Graduate took advantage of society’s new stigma around sex as an “individual interpretation” by showing that one does not have to be in love with someone to engage in intimate activities: sex can be meaningless.

As society and the film industry change their view on sex, we see a turn in gender roles in romantic comedies. Once premarital sex becomes more normalized in society and portrayed more often in romantic comedies, female characters begin to take on more independent, self-serving roles. In Working Girl (1988), the movie we watched directly after The Graduate, we see more women beginning to hold roles in the corporate world. Tess (Melanie Griffith) and Katharine (Sigourney Weaver) were portrayed as women in the workforce with Katharine holding the position as a boss. Although this movie still shows stereotypical gender inequality issues, it portrays the beginning of women entering the workforce. As women were freer to have sex without being shamed, they gained more independence from men in romantic comedies as well.

 In the movie Say Anything (1989), the female character Diane (Ione Skye) is portrayed as an intelligent young woman who has much greater aspirations in life than her love interest, Lloyd (John Cusack). Diane’s father even shows dismay about Llyod, suggesting “she is going to be an international think tank while he is going to be kicking punching bags” (00:59:25). Diane sits there staring blankly off into space knowing that her father is correct, yet she can’t help but still love him despite his lack of ambition. Say Anything portrays a successful woman who is trying to lead the man on to a mature path. This differs from older movies in the Hays Code period such as Bringing Up Baby (1937) where the woman is portrayed as a scatterbrain, clumsy woman who relies on the man to help her. As society began to normalize sex, women began to take a more prominent and independent role.

The movie Knocked Up (2007) is a pivotal movie in showing the acceptance into premarital sex and female independence. Ben (Seth Rogan) and Alison (Katherine Heigl) drunkenly have sex, an event Ben does not even remember, which results in Alison becoming pregnant. This movie normalizes the idea of a “hook-up culture” where men and women have sex without having a pre-existing relationship. Alison is a smart, sophisticated young woman who just received a promotion while Ben is lazy and unambitious. David Denby suggests in his article A Fine Romance: The New Comedy of the Sexes, that this romantic comedy be classified as a “slacker-striver.” This is a sub-genre of romantic comedies in which the men are consumed with the “male pack” and the women are responsible for pulling men out of it. Women are now having to take care of and provide for the men (Denby 7). Knocked Up shows that women are becoming more powerful figures in American society. Alison’s ability to continue to provide for herself and her baby while having a lazy baby daddy shows that women do not need to rely on men for resources. 

Romantic comedies have become more realistic as they’ve become less filtered and address themes such as premarital sex instead of ignoring them. Sex is a central part of romantic comedies as a genre and a central part of society. Although this essay focused on sex in society, romantic comedies are a platform used as a window to portray societal issues much more than sex such as homosexuality, interracial relationships, feminism, etc. Romantic comedies are able to convey issues amongst society to audience members because they offer relatable characters that are portrayed as everyday men and women. Once the audience is able to relate to the characters, they begin to put themselves in the character's shoes to understand how they felt. As a woman growing up in the 21st century, I do not understand the shameful stigma around sex. Being able to watch the progression of sex portrayed in movies dating back in the 1930s through relatable characters has educated me and gave me a glimpse into what relationships were like in each decade. Romantic comedies offer more than just the plotline of “boy regains girls.” They allow audience members to get a glimpse into the everyday societal issues relevant in the time period of the movie.

Works Cited

Apatow, J. (Director), Apatow, J., Robertson, S., Townsend, C., & Rogen, S. (Producers), & Apatow, J. (Writer). (n.d.). Knocked up [Video file]. Retrieved May, 2020, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478311/

Austen, J., & Pascoe, P. (2010). Pride and prejudice. Harlow: Longman.

Capra, F. (Director), & Riskin, R. (Writer). (1934). It happened one night [Motion picture on DVD]. United States: Columbia Pictures Corp.

Coppola, S. (Director). (n.d.). Lost in Translation [Video file]. Retrieved May, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Translation-Scarlett-Johansson/dp/B001NLCBJI

Crowe, C. (Director). (1989). Say Anything [Video file]. Retrieved April, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Y8tFQ01OY

Denby, D. (9). A Fine Romance: The New Comedy of the Sexes. The New Yorker, 83, 20th ser., 59.

Harvey, J. (1998). Romantic comedy in Hollywood: From Lubitsch to Sturges. New York: Da Capo Press.

Hawks, H. (Director). (1938). Bringing Up Baby [Video file]. United States: RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. Retrieved February, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Up-Baby-Katharine-Hepburn/dp/B000I04044

Hills, R. (2014, December 02). Sexual Revolution Then and Now: Hook-Ups From 1964 to Today. Retrieved May 13, 2020, from https://time.com/3611781/sexual-revolution-revisited/

McDonald, T. J. (2012). Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. New York: Columbia University Press.

Nichols, M. (Director), Turman, L., Sylbert, R., Nelson, G. R., Maret, H., Wilson, S., Zipprodt, P., & Guilaroff, S. (Producers), & Willingham, C., Henry, B., Surtees, R., O'Steen, S., Solomon, J., Simon, P., & Grusin, D. (Writers). (1967). The Graduate [Video file]. United States: An Embassy Pictures release. Retrieved April, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/Graduate-Anne-Bancroft/dp/B002BPY2HE

Nichols, M. (Director). (1989). Working girl [Video file]. Retrieved April, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/Working-Girl-Melanie-Griffith/dp/B000SVZIH6

Showalter, M. (Director). (n.d.). The big sick [Video file]. Retrieved April, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sick-Kumail-Nanjiani/dp/B07193L7RD