Allan Mott assumes one reason so many male viewers object to RomComs is because they’re some of the only films where you’re expected to identify with a female protagonist.
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My favourite Hollywood anecdote of all time — though it’s probably not true — is about what happened when Jennifer Jason Leigh auditioned for the role Julia Roberts eventually played in “Pretty Woman.”
Under the direction of Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, all of the gritty drama of J.F. Lawton’s original script* had been carefully excised away until nothing but a gooey centre remained. It was from this new script that Leigh read her lines as she auditioned for the film’s director, “Happy Days” creator Garry Marshall.
Leigh hadn’t got the memo about the film’s new light-hearted tone and delivered her dialogue the way she thought a character in Vivian’s situation actually would in real life.
“That’s great, Jennifer!” Marshall told her after they were done. “But this time could you make it a little more peppy?”
“Peppy?” Leigh asked him, confused. “This is a woman who spends 18 hours a day on the street giving strangers $50 blowjobs.”
“Yes,” agreed Marshall, “but she hasn’t been doing it for that long!”
Fact or fiction, it’s as perfect an example I’ve ever heard of the disconnect filmmakers must have from everyday life in order to construct their elaborate make-believe fantasies. Despite this, I actually find myself on Marshall’s side in this exchange.
Given the choice between the fairy tale and the truth, I’ll eagerly enjoy the fairy tale first and then reluctantly endure the truth just so people won’t think I’m a vapid jerk (a strategy I admit isn’t entirely successful). I just can’t help myself. I sincerely love even the most formulaic of romantic comedies.
This puts me in the minority amongst both serious cineastes and every dude I’ve ever heard complain bitterly about having to sit through a Kate Hudson movie just because their girlfriend/wife previously agreed to go to the latest musclehead car chase flick for the dudes. The critics will tell you that such films are trite, predictable, populated by stereotypes and bear no relation to the realities of human courtship, while the dudes will tell you that they are really fucking stupid and lame.
While I bristle at the lack of eloquence of the dudes, I can’t entirely disagree with the concerns of the critics. All of those things are true about the kind of romantic comedies I’m most attracted to, but they’re also the reasons why I like them.
So we know exactly what I’m talking about, I’m not referring to all films that try to spin funny tales out of romance, but the very specific kind of “high concept” pictures that follow the same basic rules:
1) The entire plot can be summed up in one sentence.
2) The film’s couple will meet in a cute fashion. Complications will therein ensue.
3) Said complications could have been easily avoided with just the tiniest bit of openness, communication and honesty, but the screenwriters have bent over backward to ensure that dire things will happen if such dialogue actually takes place until….
4) A speech is given that will make the disgruntled party forget all about the previous complications.
5) Everyone lives happily ever after, except for maybe the jerky loser who gets dumped at the event where the speech takes place. Fuck those guys. They had it coming for being so superficial and uptight.
It’s this rigid, unyielding structure that alienates detractors the most, but where they see cynical Hollywood condescension and lack of imagination, I see the glory of cinematic ritual, akin to the experience the devoted enjoy during their favourite religious ceremony. Of course, I knew exactly what was going to happen when I saw “Friends With Benefits” — that’s WHY I went to see it!
Plus, as someone who has long identified more with female protagonists than male ones, romantic comedy is one of the few genres (outside of pornography and horror) where women play the most dominant roles.
While some male actors have successfully thrived in the genre (Hugh Grant being the best example), romantic comedies most often live and die on the appeal of their female star. For example, when I name “The Wedding Planner,” “Maid In Manhattan” and “The Back-Up Plan” the first names that come to mind aren’t Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes and some guy I’m too lazy to look up on the IMDb, but Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Lopez.
I try to avoid throwing out accusations of “misogyny,” but it is hard for me not to think that the reason so many male viewers seem to object so strongly to these films is because they’re the rare example where they are expected to spend the entire length of the movie identifying with a female protagonist.
In many romantic comedies, the traditional sexist dynamic we have come to expect from mainstream films gets turned on its head. In these films, the female characters are the interesting protagonists we invest in, while the male love interests are — more often than not — bland fantasy figures who are simply there to serve the plot and look pretty.
True, they tend to always have really awesome jobs, live in amazing apartments and look like the kind of people you generally see on magazine covers, but they are still infinitely more relatable than their male counterparts in the action genre, who are more often than not portrayed as superhuman gods in mortal clothing.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my strongest attraction to the genre comes from its assertion that love, soul mates and happy endings are all things that really exist and can be had if you decide to fight for them. Many will say this instills false hope and unreasonable expectations in the hearts and minds of audiences who have spent their whole lives absorbing these romantic fantasies. It’s why so many relationships fail, and why so many more of us are single today than ever before.
But hope, false or not, when combined with the promise of tomorrow is enough to sustain most of us as we get on through the tiresome realities we confront each and every day. Even the worst of these movies allows me a chance to dream of what could be, rather than be devoured by the thoughts of what actually is.
Plus, I’m super-awesome at speeches. If I ever get my Hugh Grant in the rain moment — I’m totally going to nail it.
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*”Pretty Woman” had one of the more fascinating development processes of any film made in the 90s. J.F. Lawton’s original script was called “$3,000,” and told the tale of a sociopathic businessman who hires a junkie street prostitute to temporarily pose as his companion. Rather than fall in love with her and return to save her from her life on the streets, their relationship ended when he literally kicked her out of his car and threw the agreed-upon $3,000 at her while she laid prostrate on the corner where he had originally picked her up. Lawton’s idea of a happy synergistic ending was to have Vivian use the cash to take a bus trip to Disneyland.
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by Allan Mott
Originally appeared at xoJane
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Allan, thanks for writing this piece. I liked what you had to say. I think you hit the nail on the head about a certain inability to relate to female protagonists. There is a huge dirth in entertainment about creating truly good, complex, multi-faceted female protagonists that aren’t sold out of the interest of sex. More times then not, women are secondary characters who are there to prop up the male leads. usually through what their beauty must reflect about his masculinity. I remember catching a bit about the show Breaking Bad. I’ve never seen the show myself but apparently… Read more »
What a great comment! Thank you, Erin.
I find it interesting to read a lot of backlash at the author’s premise, especially because I think he has a reasonable position. I hear a lot of defensiveness and rationalization in some of these responses, and I think it’s indicative of a lot of equality issues in our society, especially among the intelligentsia. Because even we smart people are sometimes victims of our own illogical fallacies. I might have had a knee-jerk reaction to a theory of this sort. I might have decided that the idea that there is misogyny behind men’s disinterest in romantic comedies meant one of… Read more »
Perfectly put. Thank you for this.
All I ask of a romantic comedy is a smart lead and some unforeseen turns in the story. Then I’m hooked. Actually, I’m a big fan of British romantic comedies. The guy and gals who will never find love in those movies are so very lovable. I love them right away. Love. Lovey-dovey. Really. And their bedrooms are always so nicely disheveled.
Biker,
I agree with you.
Genre films usually indulges in the use of various tropes. That’s why we enjoy them. (Of course, if you can make a genre film that trandscends the genre, so much the better.)
So, if a man doesn’t care for RomComs, this makes him a misogynist?
Flip it around. If a woman doesn’t care for sci-fi or action movies, does this make her sexist?
No to both.
I totally agree with the point of view that men can enjoy romcoms. Why not? If someone can enjoy make believe sci-fi and action films based on minimal plot and a lot of stereotypes, why not romcoms?
But why in the world have you got to blame men just because the romcoms tend to have female leads? This is just unfair and increasingly becoming an accepted way of portraying some sort of fantastic equality. Why is it so difficult to have any article that even mentions women and men to not end up vilifying men?
Even stranger is that the author is a man himself.
There’s a select few rom-coms that I do like (When Harry Met Sally, 500 Days of Summer, hell, even Hitch), but that’s because they generally don’t have the vapid romantic leads who are attractive with no personality.
Seriously, I could never figure out why anyone likes this crap.
If only someone took the time to write a post explaining why they enjoy them. 🙂
Hitch is totally overlooked in great RomComs! I agree.
Fascinating conversations about Hitch – they couldn’t cast a Black woman to play beside Will Smith because then it would become a “Black” movie instead of a “movie”. So they cast a Latina with mainstream fame, and it did well. Not as well as it probably should have, had Ryan Reynolds and whatever white girl had been in it, considering how great it is.
It’s used often as the famous casting story as to how two Black leads makes a movie a “Black movie”… Which is messed up.
I have to admit that I like Hitch because is a movie where a guy helping men out in the dating world is demonized (namely by the female lead who is out to expose him) and when the story gets straightened out in the end we see that Hitch wasn’t what she was making him out to be. She had him pegged as a PUA that was teaching guys how to “score” when it was much more than that.
I’m a guy who dislikes the overwhelming majority of romantic comedies and dramas. While it might be supposed that my tastes in this matter are driven by some misogynistic impulse, considering that my two of my three favourite films (Babette’s Feast and Spirited Away—the third is Tree of Life) hit the Bechdel Test out of the park, perhaps it is somewhat more complicated than that. Nor do I have a problem with romance: I will take any excuse to watch the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice—I must have seen it at least ten times. The problem with most romantic… Read more »
Romance movies too often feature a stalker who “wins” her heart by persistence. A lot of female-orientated romance movies also have a woman who is unhappy and cheats on her fiance/husband…..
That, too. Romantic comedies and idiot comedies tend to have one thing in common: every last character is an asshole I have zero interest in.
Definitely. A film like The Notebook—the touchstone of the romantic film according to a number of my female acquaintances—immediately comes to mind. Noah is creepy, obsessive, mentally unbalanced, and callous, getting in Allie’s space, trying to shove in on another guy, not taking ‘no’ for an answer, threatening to kill himself so that he can get a date, sending hundreds of unanswered letters, going crazy and potentially violent and not moving on after a vapid summer romance, hooking up with a vulnerable war widow but dropping her as soon as Allie turns up, and being prepared to break up her… Read more »
I’m with you, Alastair. I’ve been known to adore chick flicks about likable women, particularly the ones with no male lead at all. But romantic comedies are vile for a host of reasons.
When almost all of the fans of a particular movie are of one sex, that is usually a bad sign in my book. In many respects, I would even sooner watch romantic comedies than be insulted by some of the material that is served to male-dominated audiences. Mature men and women will typically find it much easier to relate to their counterparts of the other sex than they will to immature persons of their own sex—psychologically mature men and women are far, far more alike than they are different—while immature persons find it hard to relate to anyone who isn’t… Read more »
An extraordinarily well-written post.
Thanks for writing it.
I certainly understand and appreciate your response Alastair and yours is the viewpoint I alluded to when discussing “the concerns of the critics”. The difference between us–and I fear it is an irreconcilable one–is that I believe emotion on its own is worthy of celebration and examination. Fantasy is a salve that always many to continue on in lives that are desperately real and it strikes me as an act of cruelty to insist that it be taken away from them in name of a supposed deeper understanding of human existence.
Alastair! That’s a fantastic counter! That’s truly almost a post. Would you allow us to work with you on making it into a post?
Thanks, Joanna! I would be happy to write something. Just tell me what you would be interested in and I can work the comment into a post (you can contact me using the e-mail given in these comments).