Not so different as they may seem

One of the things that has always intrigued me the most about romantic comedies is the constant misconceptions about the genre. While some people believe that to truly be a romantic comedy a couple must end up together that is definitely not the case. The form has no doubt been reworked countless times; it is however still very recognizable. Critics of modern films often argue that the genre is no longer what it once was or that the genre is dying out. David Denby believes that the kind of leads in the genre have changed too much to be really recognizable. The male is, according to Denby, a slacker and the couple more about finding a partner than finding romance. Because films with characters like this exist he says that the kind of rom coms made in the 1930s are no longer being produced, mainly because the spark between the leads is apparently gone. Wesley Morris says that the romantic comedy genre is no longer being made saying that instead other kinds of comedies and romances are being made. He praises the old rom coms but calls for more diverse ones( that there are far more straight,white films than is representational of the world is a fact hard to debate). However, he is also putting very specific lense on what counts as a rom com that doesn’t allow for things that it has always been.

The modern critiques of rom coms don’t seem to fully grasp the ways in which many of the films being made now are not really as different from their predecessors as it may seem. Wesley Morris says that films like Crazy Rich Asians or tv shows like You’re the Worst are really “fizzy soap operas” or “funny dramas”. In response to this, it is important to note that You’re The Worst does actually follow the narrative arc of a romantic comedy almost exactly. After all it is described as a show that “puts a dark twist on the romantic comedy genre” by the official summary on the FX website, indicating that it is highly aware of the more tragic undertones that it has. A key element of the romantic comedy is that the relationship falls apart and comes back together- an element of the story that is quite fundamental to the genre and yet, it is now often used as the reasoning to say something is more drama than comedy. These arguments that this is a change that occured recently don’t make sense considering that elements of drama have heavily influenced the plots of romantic comedies since the very beginning.- Much Ado is only different from one of Shakespeare's tragedies because Hero does not actually die. As a sign of Benedick’s love Beatrice asks him to kill one of his best friends- that's hardly light hearted. As far as the argument that Crazy Rich Asians is not a romantic comedy, aside from the fact that we finally see representation of Asians on a grand scale, the film could very easily have been made in the 1930’s. Vivacious Lady or You Can’t Take It With You (both released in 1938, both starring Jimmy Stewart) are vastly different films yet both have the same structure of a couple of different social classes who are happy together and then through the actions and disapproval of the wealthier family are torn apart, only for the family to eventually see that their way of life and prejudices are unfounded, and the couple gets back together. This is also the exact plot of Crazy Rich Asians. While the Asian cast may have been groundbreaking in this film, the story certainly was nothing new.

As far as Morris’s claim that no romantic comedies are being made anymore or that they are so ridiculous to modern audiences, “that a regular comedy can now laugh at how ridiculous it would be to exist in a romantic one”- he is missing the point,(and apparently a great many new releases). The film,Isn’t It Romantic,  he claims is  a “regular comedy” is a romantic comedy. The main person that the lead character realizes she loves is herself (in a self-empowerment type way), but even then she also starts a romance with her best friend before the film ends. Aside from Isn’t It Romantic, 2019 did have other romantic comedies released.Yesterday, Simon Amstell’s Benjamin, and Gully Boy all hit audiences in 2019. Each of these films follow the basic plot that can be traced back through centuries worth of romantic comedies. While each has its own defining differences- a focus on Beatles music, a love story of self professed damaged people, and a Mumbai street rapper  trying to start his career- they all have at their core a love story that holds echos of Benedick and Beatrice. 

Knocked Up certainly does show a couple that is not very well matched. However Denby only really discusses one film with this lack of banter saying that the female is not given jokes. Kathrine Heigl alone was in more than just one rom com of this era and not all of them meet or even come close to Denbys mismatched slacker/striver idea. For that matter not all old films are void of that dynamic. Carole Lombard who is praised by Denby as one of the stars of older films was constantly outwitted and out-talked by her romantic opposite, William Powell looks at her like she is insane and rejects her until the last few minutes of My Man Godfrey. Kathrine Hepburn seldom be left speechless in her films but Cary Grant was constantly without words in films like Bringing Up Baby - a reversal of the roles Denby outlines but very much an example from before this supposed shift in the genre. 

What the likes of David Denby don’t seem to realize when they talk about how the leads of rom coms have changed for the worse, holding in high esteem the characters that “dress for dinner and make cocktails”, is that the world has changed too. Seth Rogan is certainly an unappealing leading man but the type of character he plays in films like Knocked Up is only more vulgar by our standards because we have seen a thousand real-life graphic tee clad stoners just like him. In the 1930’s these characters already existed, though their drug use was veiled or shown in more subtle ways it still existed. The same dapper butler in My Man Godfrey started the film as a literal hobo, and was an alcoholic as Nick Charles in The Thin Man series. In 1937 Double Wedding, just a year after playing Godfrey, William Powell played a trailer dwelling unemployed artist who upturns Myna Loy’s perfect society life. Hard as it may be for a lover of classic films to admit, the plot and characters of Double Wedding are quite similar to that of a Seth Rogan and Kathrine Hegel film. In the original trailer for the film Loy’s character is seen asking Powell “do you take dope?” (the era’s slang for weed), modern audiences might not catch the details or understand the implications of slang but the audiences of the time certainly would have.

The description of a romantic comedy needs to be redefined. Not because romantic comedies don't exist anymore or because they don't follow the definition of the old romantic comedies, but because plots and films in general are now becoming more inclusive and are not being as confined to the relationships that they are able to portray. McDonald's description of the romantic comedy as “a film which has as its central narrative motor a quest for love, which portrays this quest in a light-hearted way and almost always to a successful conclusion” (McDonald, 9) does not work anymore.The general idea of boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy regains girl, was never quite as simple as that phase implies and is now becoming much more complex in light of more inclusive cinema. The LGBTQA+ romantic comedies like the aforementioned Benjamin or 2005’s Imagine Me & You might not be in the highest grossing film list but that is not because the genre is dead but because it is living on in different ways. Most films getting made about minorities are about their struggles as a minority; big studios would rather put money into Oscar bait than a romantic comedy that a lot of people are unlikely to go see. So the romantic comedies that could be showing representation of minorities are instead made as indie films by those minorities because they want to make their stories on film. However, it is widely known that unless an indie film finds a distributor it is very hard to get it actually seen by people, even the ones that want to see it. Independent films have in recent years proven themselves to have a wide range and have received great critical acclaim, including in the romantic comedies. No matter how much the world changes heteronormative films and films about white people are going to be produced and viewed by heteronormative and white audiences. So the romantic comedies about minorities, when they are made, are generally not as publicized as the  Hollywood ones starring straight, white, conventionally attractive couples. If less of the Hollywood rom coms are getting made perhaps that is because they don’t ring as true as they once did and audiences are not as interested in seeing the same two people fall in love with different names and different jobs( that they never seem to actually be doing). Like the decline of movie viewership after the end of the second world war when people no longer needed the escapism and the widespread of television meant they didn’t have to leave their homes to see their favorite stars, audiences as a whole are tired of unrealistic stories like the ones being told in Hollywood and are as a whole moving towards more long form media.

 The critics that say the romantic comedy is dead don’t seem to understand that genre as a whole is on the decline. Yes, superhero movies may reign but they are not one genre. Captain America: The First Avenger was a superhero movie but what does that entail? It was a war film, a buddy movie, sci-fi, hero’s journey, and even a romantic comedy-albeit one that doesn’t get its happy ending until many Marvel movies later. As the world becomes more conscious of the many socio-economic and personal issues that may affect anyone's life and works to make these issues a part of realistic characters lives the idea of having a character solely focused on one issue (that would make for a genre film) is naive at best. Most films being made now do not fit evenly into one genre as they previously have. Films are longer now than they were in the 1930’s and 40’s which means they have more time to focus on more than one element of the narrative. Most films that before would have been seen as just a rom com are now also described as coming of age stories or action movies. For that matter many of these new subgenres could be applied to older films as well

 In 1967’s The Graduate, the basic plot while following the structure of a romantic comedy is certainly more about Ben as a character and the journey he goes through than it is as just a rom com. It was never a romantic comedy but many people saw it as one. They took the uncertain ending of the film and saw it as the happy rom com ending that people want rom coms to have. That ending has been dissected and parodied by people since it was released and is a very good example of how one story is taken in dramatically different directions by the audience. In 2009, Tom,the main character of 500 Days Of Summer (a film made to go against the common tropes of a romantic comedy) is said to have seen the ending of The Graduate as a happy ending and ends up miserable for quite a lot of the film because he has convinced himself his life will be like a rom com. The dichotomy that these two films show brings to light the apparent difference between audiences. Ben is not a character that gets a happy ending, he is confused and blows up his entire life. The character Tom as an audience member romanticises Ben’s ending and makes it into what people think of as a classic romantic comedy. Forcing his own life down a path just like Ben’s, Tom becomes unhappy. The way the story of 500 Days of Summer goes is very similar to The Graduate but the audience has a harder time romanticising the less ambiguous story and haven’t had the time to. No doubt in twenty years time the same fate will befall it.  McDonald describes The Graduate as a “radical romantic comedy”(62). She says that one of the things that makes this film different from a regular romantic comedy because it is self aware and more truthful to reality than a fairy tale ending. These ideas of how a more realistic film should end weren’t even new in 1967.

 Roman Holiday  from 1953 had a bittersweet ending where the princess and the reporter didn’t end up together. Not because movies had changed as a whole: that same year the princess and the reporter did end up together in Call Me Madam. The fantasy happy ending and an awareness in reality have coexisted for longer than it may seem at first glance. The turn towards realism that many films took after WWII was not absolute. Another film released in 1953 was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a film with an ending more reminiscent of a Barbie movie than of Roman Holiday. The lead actress from that film, however, was in The Prince and the Showgirl a few years later. The ending of that film is very similar to Roman Holiday. There have never been absolutes in romantic comedies. Audrey Hepburn and her male lead could not end up together in one film and float away together singing in another (Funny Face). Just as how today Emma Stone might not get together with Gosling in the end of La La Land but she does in Crazy, Stupid, Love. 

The Big Sick follows the typical boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl structure perfectly but even in this film we have the main characters trying to start careers, family conflicts, and life threatening situations. It is a very realistic story based on the writers’ real lives. In this film the couple, despite all their differences, ends up together. An comic/uber driver isn’t far from a character that we might have seen Seth Rogan playing a few years ago but Nanjiani’s personality and quirkes match a character played by Jimmy Stewart more than one of Rogans. The main reason the couple breaks up in the middle of the film is because of pressures from culture and family. Substitute Desi culture for high society and this film could have easily been made in the 1930’s.    

The romantic comedy is important to understand as a genre because so many of the elements in it show up in practically every other genre. However this is a genre that more than most others is criticized mainly because many of the films are marketed mainly towards women. If the people that appreciate and value the romantic comedy as a genre constantly degrade it and say that the genre is dying how will anyone else take it seriously? It is important to understand that the kinds of complaints people have with modern rom coms are about elements that are far from new to the genre. They are just being shown in a different way due to modern audiences. Perhaps that is why they find these things as problems.The audiences of romantic comedies now often seem to be looking for a perfect story that is different from their world so when they see something that might not be that different they don’t want to except it, They would much rather go back to a time that never even necessarily existed. If the writers, actors, and directors of romantic comedies are at all good at their job then the characters are like people and people all have different values and place value on different things. Fundamentally people have been the same since the conception of the rom com in the things they want from life, that's why plays like Much Ado About Nothing are still relatable to audiences. Of course variations to specific details of the story change and update with the times but before we idolize or demonize any era’s romantic comedies it is important to note just how similar they really are.

Works Cited: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18McQnlfkdejXGWMWPuq6E-RHwP2f1evEGvHRy6IpRoo/edit?usp=sharing