Unlikely Heroines? 'Women of a Certain Age' and Romantic Comedy

Abstract

Since the screwballs of the classical era, romantic comedy or romcom, in one form or another, has remained one of the most durable of Hollywood's genres. In 1934, Frank Capra's crowd-pleasing It Happened One Night famously became the first film bag the big five (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Actress, Best Actor) at the Academy Awards, a feat which underlines how historically at least the genre managed secure both critical and popular esteem. Yet the critical weight afforded romcom in more recent times has often seemed be inversely proportionate its box-office pull, since the romcom has increasingly come suffer from a reputation for trite, sentimental and conservative storytelling. In her absorbing account of postfeminist culture, for example, scholar Diane Negra argues that, romantic comedy that has flourished since the 1990s has shown itself be extraordinarily adept in pigeonholing the perceived truths of women's experiences ... [speaking] from and a neoconservative cultural context. (1) It is not just in academic circles that the romcom has often fared badly. Writing on film.com, Laremy Legel has gone as far as suggest that, Critics HATE romantic comedies. In an interesting albeit brief survey, Legel examines two sets of figures relating a series of successful romcoms drawn from 2003-2008 (including such titles as 50 First Dates (2004) and The Break-Up (2006)), comparing their box-office receipts with the ratings they received on film critic website rottentomatoes.com. He notes that in contrast their evident popular success (the two titles above made $239m between them), the films average a critics' score of just 46%, with only six romcoms in this period meriting the favourable rottentomatoes rank of certified fresh (ie rating 75% or more among 40 critics). (2) Legel concludes, A critically loved true romantic comedy that scores at the box office is becoming non-existent. However, there has long been a co-existent school of thought in scholarly writing which argues that the romcom's maligned reputation doesn't tell the whole story. This suggests instead that with its focus on romantic bargaining, the sexual economy and shifting cultural standards, the genre is ideally placed reflect on and critique the nature of changing values and relationships, and continues to negotiate and respond dynamically the issues and preoccupations of its time. (3) From this perspective, the narrative concerns of the genre can enable it hold an instructive light up the prejudices, fears and assumptions that too often inform our emotional and romantic entanglements. In this essay, it is this more liberal interpretation of romcom that I take further. Specifically, I want explore how the socially critical, even subversive, potential of romcom can be seen at work in a particular body of films or sub-genre that has gained momentum in recent years; classical style films in which the romance centres on the desires of and for an woman. (4) The absence of of a certain age from cinema screens has long been one of the most grievous criticisms levied against the industry, a key instance of how, unlike their male counterparts, older women in our cultural landscape are systematically rendered invisible, spent, obsolete, as they age. For Margaret Tally, the lack of good film roles for women in mainstream cinema as a whole can be attributed the fact that, Men still predominantly hold positions of power in Hollywood--with men [occupying] more decision making positions ... than ever before--executives who are driven by the belief that (other) young men are the most important audience pursue. (5) As Tally's comments underscore, for many years, Hollywood in particular has been charged with being youth-obsessed, chasing younger audiences by putting their likeness on-screen and, barring a handful of tired stereotypes such as the interfering mother, virtually removing an entire demographic group from representation in the process. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 16 citations exist upstream.