Romantic Comedy LET’S START WITH SHAKESPEARE. Although some scholars reach back to the comic plays of Aristophanes and other Greek writers, Shakespeare’s comedies—especially The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night—offer more well- known and relevant predecessors: witness the contemporary romantic comedies that directly remake Shakespearian works, such as Much Ado About Nothing (1993 and 2012), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), She’s the Man (2006), and the blatant reference to As You Like It in Never Been Kissed (1999). ; In Shakespeare's plays young people meet and fall in love, but numer- ous, often funny, complications ensue: humorous misunderstandings, mistaken identities, infatuations with the wrong people, and parental/ official disapproval. Other impediments inevitably arise, as in Taming and Much Ado, from the lovers’ pride and character defects. Subplots involving associates of the central couple supply supplementary entangle- ments that further confound the characters—and sometimes the audi- ence as well. Finally, the plays conclude with characters discarding their disguises, recognizing each other, and discovering their own wishes and needs. All this fast-paced confusion serves to demolish the young people's fears, resistance to change, or initial arrogance; it makes them better people, more appropriate partners for each other, and ultimately capable of true love. When the Shakespearian couple unites, their union serves as abirth ofa new, better society, the triumph of spring over winter. If the groundlings of the Globe Theatre could sit in our local AMC multiplex, they would wonder if anything had changed in four hundred 121Shakespeare in Love (1998) This inventive mixture of biography, fantasy, and Shakespeare's, plays, which won an Oscar for Best Film, ends with Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Will (Joseph Fiennes) being torn apart. Instead of focusing on the pain of the lost romance, however, the viewer rejoices as Viola courageously strikes out for the New World and takes delight in Will's bright future as the world’s most famous playwright. The separation ending is one modern variation filmmakers offer within the romantic comedy genre. Even with this “go their separate ways" conclusion, however, such films can stil be classified as comedies because they end ona life-affirmative note, stressing change and renewal. years. In its essence, the romantic comedy genre has remained extraordi- narily constant over the centuries. Although contemporary filmmakers struggle to differentiate their works in myriad ways, their efforts nor- mally amount to surface variation over a consistent “marriage plot”: 1) meet, 2) separate, 3) unite; or, in the “remarriage” variation, 1) be mar- ried, 2) separate, 3) remarry. The most radical film alterations divide the couple at the conclusion. Roman Holiday (1953), Annie Hall (1977), My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), and Shakespeare in Love (1998) all adopt “go their separate ways” endings. Despite the viewer's regret that the love affair has broken off, these films still manage to finish on an affirmative note, rejoicing in the individuals’ growth and new prospects. If these mov- ies concluded sadly, we would not classify them as romantic comedies. This constancy of narrative structure does not prevent romantic comedies from responding to historical and social changes. Tempted though we may be to ascribe romantic comedy to some universal, evo- lutionary, biological urge to mate, we know that many seemingly static institutions and categories—marriage, love, sexuality, gender roles—have changed radically over the centuries. For instance, marriage had been primarily a business arrangement, an alliance between families, until the concept that one should marry for love gradually took hold in West- ern culture during the eighteenth century. The idea that husband and 122wife should not only find each other sexually attractive but also be each other’s best friends and closest companions—forging what scholars call a “companionate marriage”—is a very recent model. In the twentieth century, many cultural factors, such as increased mobility, the decline of extended family households, and employment by corporations rather than ownership of individual enterprises, conspired to make marriage of preeminent importance. Cultural scholar David Shumway sees mar- riage today as the last refuge of a nurturing human connection in a colder, more impersonal world, meaning that it carries a burden for our ongoing personal happiness that it didn’t use to shoulder. As we know, the most essential relations between men and women have also changed radically in the last century, particularly as women have won more rights and independence. For centuries, no one would have thought of women as equal partners in a relationship: women were property to be sold, and their role in the unit was to honor and obey rather than to question or act independently. Concurrently, mores related to sexuality—whether in or out of wedlock, whether confined to one’s own race or ethnicity or interracial, whether heterosexual or homosexual—have shifted enormously. Romantic comedies cannot help but reflect the changing relations between the genders and the ever- evolving sexual customs in the shifting iterations of their established plot lines. Romantic comedy remains one genre where the film industry, the casual moviegoer, and film scholars all agree regarding classification; that is, producers overtly market certain films as “romantic comedies” and we accept that label as an accurate description. Nevertheless, just as with other genres, classification questions arise. Because 90 percent of Hollywood movies include romance as the main plot or as a second- ary subplot, hybrids abound. Most musicals, such as those with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and those by Rodgers and Hammerstein, revolve around the creation ofa romantic couple. Thrillers often involve acentral couple in an exciting series of events that are entangled with the progress of a love story. Alfred Hitchcock’s British films, such as The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), typify this mixture, but the mélange persists in more contemporary examples as well, such as Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005). The endings of Speed (1994) and The Bourne Identity (2002), showing the central couples in loving clinches, could be final shots of romantic comedies. Sports stories also frequently cross with romantic comedy to create a hybrid subgenre, exemplified by Bull 123Runaway Bride (1999) Showcasing megastars Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, Runaway Bride was a box-office hit in its own right, but the viewing experience is much richer if one sees its deliberate parallels to /t Happened One Night (1934), in which Ellie (Claudette Colbert) runs away at the last moment from wedding the wrong man and ultimately into the arms of Peter (Clark Gable). The differences between 1934 and 1999 are wryly highlighted by the means the heroine uses to make her escape: Maggie's hitching a ride on a passing FedEx truck makes a witty comment about the speed-crazy, commercial texture of our lives at the turn of the century. Romantic comedies frequently contain allusions to earlier works and figuratively wink at their audiences with intertex- tual references. Durham (1988), Tin Cup (1996), and Leatherheads (2008), all interweaving the development of the romance around a suspenseful athletic contest (so as to attract both male and female viewers?). How is it that, although resolutely formulaic, romantic comedies suc- ceed in pleasing audiences year after year? Why don’t we get bored watch- ing the same old story endlessly? Partly, we can never have too much reassurance that winter (the toils and troubles of life) will eventually cede to spring (a promise of emotional plentitude and renewal); we can never get our fill of joy. When a romantic comedy succeeds in capturing the elation of love requited, it creates a warm bath that splashes through the screen to drench the viewer. In addition, to borrow a phrase from film critic Robert Warshow’s discussion of Westerns, romantic comedy is an “art form for connoisseurs, where the spectator derives his pleasure from the appreciation of minor variations within the working out of a pre-established order.”' From the poster and the credits we surmise—we ‘Robert Warshow, “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner,” in Film Theory and Criticism, 6th ed., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford Un Press, 2004), 713. 124hope—that the Major Male Star and the Major Female Star will end up together, but we delight in seeing exactly how cleverly the events unfold this time. Moreover, romantic comedies refer to one another constantly in ways that forge bonds between films and congratulate viewers who are in the know. Such self-referentiality promotes connoisseurship. Finally, the major pleasure of romantic comedy comes from its stars, and directors utilize every cinematic technique to highlight their attrac- tiveness and sexual appeal—lingering close-ups, flattering lighting, care- ful costuming, etc. Individual responsiveness to stars comes into play here. If, like some of my students, you find Carole Lombard or Julia Roberts annoying, you will avoid their films. If, like me, you can’t bear to spend time with Woody Allen, you'll be tempted to throw his films out of the canon. But when viewers fall a little bit in love with the stars, the genre seduces us. Many film lovers can think of few greater treats than spending two hours with Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Meg Ryan, Matthew McConaughey, Julia Stiles, or Heath Ledger. History Histories of romantic comedy generally start in the sound era because the verbal banter between the protagonists defines the genre. However, to do so overlooks silent-era antecedents. Romantic comedy requires a facility with transmitting complicated narrative information, so it was not one of the first genres to appear in early cinema. However, by 1908—with one-reelers running approxi- mately fifteen minutes—filmmakers possessed the narrative tools to undertake more intricate storylines. Indeed, bold production companies tackled the classics of world literature in an attempt to earn prestige for their fledgling medium. Biograph, Vitagraph, Kalem, and other early production companies adapted The Taming of the Shrew in 1908, As You Like Itin 1908 and 1912, A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1909, Twelfth Night in 1910, and Much Ado About Nothing in 1913. By 1913, romantic comedy was an established genre. Evidence exists in two films Alice Guy directed that year, Matrimony’s Speed Limit and A House Divided. In the first, a young woman tricks her financially strapped fiancé into marrying her by sending him a fake telegram from an aunt, saying that he will inherit a fortune if he marries by noon. In the second, 125—— a newly married couple suspects one another of infidelity; on their law- yer’s advice they live together but communicate only by note, which cleverly turns the screen’s silence into an aesthetic device. Of course, as in most romantic comedies, they reconcile at the end. A House Divided is an early example of the remarriage plot. The remar- riage plot is important to the genre because, as in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it extends the excitement and adventure of courtship into wedded life. Spurred by the “new morality” of the Jazz Age—the acceptability of divorce and the changing position of women in American society—Cecil B. DeMille was making remarriage comedies as early as 1919. In Don’t Change Your Husband (1919) and Why Change Your Wife? (1920)—just as in The Awful Truth (1937)—couples separate, learn to change and appreciate one another, and get back together. The famous comic films of the 1920s mostly showcased the slapstick talents of male comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Their movies, so-called “comedian comedies,” empha- sized the individual performers’ special skills, rather than a romance plot. However, we also know that major female stars in the 1920s, such as Constance Talmadge, Dorothy Gish, and Marion Davies, specialized in romantic comedies, although many of these films are unavailable for general viewing today. Luckily, we do have access to two classics, one starring Mary Pickford and the other Clara Bow. Pickford’s My Best Girl and Bow’s “It” (both 1927) display their leading ladies’ charms in winning tales of disguise and misunderstandings. Intriguingly, both movies feature department store settings, and conclude with a shopgirl’s marrying the owner of the store. When sound came in during the late 1920s, Hollywood changed dramatically. The studios needed writers who could craft dialogue, so they imported a coterie of East Coast newspapermen; perhaps not sur- prisingly, to this day a remarkable number of romantic comedies casts one of the principals as a journalist of some sort. The studios also hired playwrights who brought with them the Noél Coward style of sophisti- cated comedies then current on Broadway. Film historians enshrine 1934 in the history of the genre as a banner year, particularly because Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night swept the Academy Awards. It Happened One Night was a signal event not only for its story of a runaway heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), who meets a washed-up newspaper reporter, Peter Warne (Clark Gable), but also because it—along with other films of that year, such as The Thin Man 126“It” (1927) Clara Bow here prefigures the screwball heroine. She unabashedly chases Cyrus Waltham Jr. (Antonio Moreno), the gon of the owner of the department store in which she sells lingerie. Upon first laying eyes on her boss, she quips: “Sweet Santa Claus, give me him, She's also a tough cookie, fighting off the social workers who try to remove her best friend's out-of- wedlock child, claiming that the baby is hers, which complicates her love affair with Cyrus. Note, too, her short hair bob: a sign of female rebellion and independence in the twenties. “It” exemplifies the role major female stars played in the romantic com- edies of the 1920s and Twentieth Century—sparked a particular style of romantic comedy, a style we call screwball. Screwball comedy reigned from 1934 into the early 1940s, creat- ing works of enduring enchantment. The screwball variant of roman- tic comedy is particularly unrealistic, fast-paced, and unsentimental. Several factors contributed to its distinctive style, most significantly, censorship. Starting in 1934, censors strictly enforced the Production Code that regulated onscreen morality, banning the blatant sexuality of Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932) and early Mae West films. Thus, directors had to find indirect ways to siphon off (or, in Freudian terms, “displace”) sexual energy, such as into dazzling dialogue, slap- stick action, and wildly improbable events. In Easy Living (1937), the plot starts with a fur coat falling out of the sky and landing on Mary (Jean Arthur). In My Man Godfrey (1936), Irene (Carole Lombard) leaves a horse in the library. In Bringing Up Baby (1938), Susan (Katharine Hepburn) lets a leopard loose in the Connecticut countryside. Screwball also took its energy from the building wave of reforms in the status of American women, who won the right to vote in 1920. As many scholars have noted, screwball comedies get their special flavor from the prominence given to their female stars. This era is character- ized by the “fast-talking dames,” all imbued with high spirits that crit- ics saw as “madcap,” stars such as Colbert, Hepburn, Lombard, Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, and Rosalind Russell. Among major directors who specialized in screwball comedies, How- 127e «af. The Awful Truth (1937) Some critics consider The Awful Truth the epitome of the screwball era. Jerry (Cary Grant) and Lucy Warriner (Irene Dunne) each suspect the other of infidelity. They quarrel and file for divorce. One hitch in their separation, however, concerns custody of Mr. Smith (Skippy, who also played Asta in the Thin Man movies), the dog they both adore. Jerry gets dog-visitation rights, which leads to his sabotaging Lucy's engagement to a dull-witted Oklahoman, Dan Gleeson (Ralph Bellamy). Lucy pays him back by visiting the home of Jerry's stuffy new future in-laws disguised as his alcoholic sister and behaving outrageously. The couple reconcile in a cabin in the coun- try just before their divorce becomes final ard Hawks popularized fast, overlapping dialogue and combative rela- tionships between the sexes, directing a trio of masterpieces in quick succession: Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday (1940), and Ball of Fire (1941). George Cukor worked closely with Hepburn, making Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940). Preston Sturges, a screenwriter-director with a wild imagination, a flair for dialogue, and a disdain for conven- tion, directed and/or wrote such screwballs as The Good Fairy (1935), Easy Living, Remember the Night (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), and The Palm Beach Story (1942). Although Sturges continued to work in this genre into the 1940s, World War II and its immediate aftermath were not particularly hospi- table to screwball’s froth. The late 1940s and 1950s saw several different strains of romantic comedy. Cukor’s films with Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Adam’s Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952), and his three works featuring Judy Holliday, a brilliant actress who played a daffy blonde— Born Yesterday (1950), The Marrying Kind (1952), and It Should Happen to You (1954)—recast romantic comedy into more conventional and less 128freewheeling stories than those of the screwball era. Audrey Hepburn, charmingly fey but not as challenging as the screwball heroines, starred ina series of films highlighting romance over comedy: Roman Holiday, Sabrina (1954), Love in the Afternoon (1957), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), and How to Steal a Million (1966). As the fifties progressed, the tight strictures of the Production Code loosened, leading to more sexual content. This shift is demonstrated in Billy Wilder’s Marilyn Monroe films, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959). Though no one is bedded onscreen, these more sug- gestive romantic comedies would not have been allowed in earlier decades dominated by strong censorship. Late in the 1950s and into the 1960s, Doris Day’s films mixed prudishness and verbal licentiousness in odd proportions—lots of smarmy innuendo and leering but no actual sex—in a series of so-called “sex comedies,” the most famous of which is Pillow Talk (1959). During the early 1960s, romantic comedy plots often featured chil- dren who needed a second parent, so the union of the main couple also stabilized a traditional family. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, My Six Loves (both 1963), and Father Goose (1964)—like the megahit The Sound of Music (1965)—use romance to provide the missing parent for a brood. However, Hollywood’s traditional take on marriage at this time was behind the changing social zeitgeist, which saw the launching of the modern feminist movement with the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Through the stir following Friedan’s critique Roman Holiday (1953) Audrey Hep- burn's first starring role was in Roman Holiday. She plays a princess who runs away from the palace for a day, encoun- tering Joe (Gregory Peck), a newspaper reporter. He recognizes her and plans to write a scoop about her but changes his mind when they fall in love. In this scene they are standing in front of a Roman sculpture, The Mouth of Truth, which—legend has it—bites off the hands of liars. They are lucky the sculp- ture has lost its magic, because they are both lying to one another. Roman Holiday is much more romantic than the movies of the screwball era. 129of women’s place in society, and political events such as the founding in 1966 of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the country had to acknowledge how unhappy—even enraged—women were made by domestic and economic arrangements previously taken for granted, such as the condescending cult of housewifery, women’s exclusion from many professions, and unequal pay. By 1968, the motion picture trade association replaced the restrictive Production Code with a much more flexible ratings system that assigns movies letter designations (G, PG, R, etc.). The sexual revolution (partly spurred by the invention of oral contraceptives in 1960) had changed attitudes involving sex in daily life and on the screen: intimacy no lon- ger functioned as the prize at the end of courtship but instead as one of the stations on the road to commitment. For the next few years, the film industry seemed as confused about male-female relationships as Ben Braddock in The Graduate (1967). Most of the Young Turk directors who were part of the New Hollywood of the 1970s—Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, Lucas, Friedkin, and others—avoided romance like the plague. Frank Krutnik writes, “In the post-1960’s world, heterosexual engage- ment is posed as a perilous voyage into unmapped territories beyond the frontiers of the old cartographies, where lovers must steer between the wrecked vessels of romantic discourse and the abysmal prospect of emo- tional limbo.”? In 1972, Peter Bogdanovich consciously tried to revive screwball with What's Up, Doc?, an homage to Bringing Up Baby that fell flat with both critics and moviegoers. As the 1970s lurched forward, the key filmmaker focusing on relationships was Woody Allen, who created a new style of romantic comedy scholars label the “nervous romance.” In the nervous romance all the psychological and emotional stresses of relationships are laid bare and the conclusion for the couple remains uncertain. Play It Again, Sam (1972), Annie Hall, and Manhattan (1979) reveal deep suspicions about whether love, romance, and marriage are possible in an era so different from earlier times. Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975), another nervous romance, centers on a hair stylist (Warren Beatty) who has sex with all of his rapacious clients but can’t figure out where his heart lies. By the late 1970s, the wars between the sexes *Prank Krutnik, “Love Lies: Romantic Fabrication in Contemporary Romantic Comedy,” in Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and 1990s, ed, Peter William Evans and Celestino Deleyto (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 18, 130appeared so dire that the scholar Brian Henderson, punning on the title of a forgettable 1977 film—and, thankfully, mistakenly—predicted the end of the genre in his 1978 article “Romantic Comedy Today: Semi- Tough or Impossible?” During the conservative Ronald Reagan era of the 1980s, studios regrouped and produced movies that proved the endurance and profit- ability of the genre. Tootsie (1982) finds a way to incorporate watered- down feminism into its plot, by turning a man into a woman (at least for awhile). Meanwhile, Splash (1984), Moonstruck (1987), and Bull Durham offer unusual premises, witty scripts, and attractive stars. The end of the decade, though, saw the genre move onto another plane of critical and popular approval: in 1989 Nora Ephron co-wrote and Rob Reiner directed When Harry Met Sally... ,a tremendously popular success, topped ayear later by Gary Marshall's Pretty Woman (1990). These ushered in the contemporary era of the films called the “new romance,” or the “neotra- ditional” romantic comedy, a cycle that (arguably) continues to this day. The “Big Three” female stars dominated the 1990s: Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, and Sandra Bullock. Ryan is the smallest of stature and the When Harry Met Sally... (1989) Meg Ryan, one of the leading stars who made new romances so popular with audiences, here plays Sally, who chats with Harry (Billy Crys- tal) in a restaurant, catching up on life events since they last met. She is talking about her realization that she wants a family, and that the freedom she and her ex-boyfriend shared was never as fulfilling as they thought it would be. New romances often reaf- firm traditional values such as having children, monogamy, and marriage. Ryan's fresh prettiness, comic timing, and touch of poignancy fit perfectly into the genre's latest incarnation. 131most kittenish; in Peter Williams Evans’s words, “To look at Meg Ryan is to contemplate a world free of demons and terror.”* Roberts, tall and coltish, with an unusual beauty, is more “unladylike,” and spontane- ously emotional, exemplified by her dazzlingly wide smile and seem- ingly spur-of-the-moment laughter. Bullock shows the least vanity, often slightly mocking herself and the stories she appears in, and emerges as the most bristly and independent. Hugh Grant, who emerged as the major male star of new romance in a series of British films beginning with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), leavens his too-handsome face with stuttering, bumbling, insecure (winning) mannerisms. In the first decade of the 2000s, romantic comedies multiplied like rabbits. By one account, production companies have released more than three hundred of them in the last fifteen years. Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Anne Hathaway, Katherine Heigl, Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, and Renée Zellweger each appear in several (though none of them has broken through to the superstardom of the Big Three). George Clooney, Will Smith, Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Richard Gere, and Hugh Jackman appear as male leads, but because they are also cast in a variety of other genres, audiences don’t associate them exclusively with romantic comedy. The only contemporary male stars who unabashedly specialize in this genre are Matthew McCo- naughey and Ashton Kutcher. As he has aged, McConaughey has sought out grittier roles. Romantic comedies became plentiful in recent decades partly because they are (comparatively) cheap to produce and return healthy profits to Hollywood. No need for large budgets to support the spe- cial effects or dazzling visual spectacles demanded in science fiction and action adventure movies. Another reason these films remain reli- ably profitable is because they are directed primarily at female viewers. Women—and men—not eager to spend two hours with explosions, vio- lence, or horror respond to the character focus of romantic comedy. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), about a young Greek woman who falls in love with a WASP man and must deal with her family’s ethnic culture shock, became the top-grossing romantic comedy of all time. Written by and starring Nia Vardalos, it is an indie film that cost a mere $5 > Peter William Evans, “Meg Ryan, Megastar,” in Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and 1990s, ed. Peter William Evans and Celestino Deleyto (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 180. 132Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) Written, directed, and produced by women, Des- perately Seeking Susan is a landmark romantic comedy. The focus here is partly on the romance between Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) and Dez (Aidan Quinn), but the emphasis is really on the parallels and contrasts between Roberta and Susan (Madonna), who switch roles: Roberta leaving her stultifying marriage and the trap of being a suburban housewife to become more liberated, and Susan taming her unruliness. The before and after photos of each woman (drawn from different scenes, and never shown in split screen as here pictured) show how they both change. nillion to produce and has grossed over $240 million domestically. Even vhen Paramount, a major studio, produced What Women Want (2000), vith expensive stars Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, the film cost only 370 million, while returning a domestic gross of $180 million. Many ‘omantic comedies double their gross in international distribution, nd the genre does very well in ancillary markets such as DVD rental ind sales, because they do not depend upon spectacle, and thus fit the maller screen. Whether due to their own inclinations, or because they’ve been shut nut of other more expensive, “male” genres, female filmmakers have ound a home in romantic comedy. Susan Seidelman, for example, a vathbreaking director in the mid-1980s, created Desperately Seeking Susan 1985) and Making Mr. Right (1987). In more recent years, Nora Ephron ecame a lauded screenwriter and director: her hits include When Harry Met Sally... Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You've Got Mail (1998), and Bewitched 2005). Nancy Meyers directed What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give 2003), The Holiday (2006), and It’s Complicated (2009). Anne Fletcher 133directed 27 Dresses (2008) and The Proposal (2009). Lisa Cholodenko wrote and directed The Kids are All Right (2010). Mira Nair, an Indian director based in New York, brought her international perspective to Mississippi Masala (1991), about the love affair between an Indian woman and an African-American man, and Monsoon Wedding (2001). Dig down in the credits, and you will often find women producers and screenwriters as integral participants in romantic comedies. Although one can find romantic comedies starring Sidney Poitier as early as Paris Blues (1961), For Love of Ivy (1968), and Guess Who's Com- ing to Dinner (1967), films focusing on African-American romance have become particularly notable in recent years. Coming to America (1988) and Hitch (2005) were wildly profitable thanks to the star power of Eddie Murphy and Will Smith, respectively. Smaller-budget productions such as Brown Sugar (2002), Deliver Us from Eva (2003), and Perfect Holiday (2007) recast romantic comedy conventions for the African-American community and provide expanded opportunities for a new generation of black filmmakers, such as Ricky Famuyiwa, Gary Hardwick, and Lance Rivera. Similarly, romantic comedy has long included gay characters and themes, though mainstream offerings tend not to challenge traditional prejudices directly; instead they often make the gay character the lead’s “best friend,” so as not to depict homosexual romance. Still, Victor/ Victoria (1982) flirted with transvestitism, while The Wedding Banquet (1993), which was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film, involves a gay man whose parents are pressuring him to marry and have children. In and Out (1997) and The Object of My Affection (1998), the former about a popular high-school teacher (Kevin Kline) who discovers he is gay and the latter about a woman (Jennifer Aniston) who falls in love with a gay man (Paul Rudd), played in major cinema chains all over the country. However, bolder independent films, such as The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), Kissing Jessica Stein (2001), and All Over the Guy (2001), have been ghettoized into smaller exhibition venues. With the recent rise of the gay-marriage movement, homosexual romance will undoubtedly move into more mainstream romantic comedies. Although the Production Code now belongs to the dustbin of Holly- wood history, many studio releases continue to demonstrate a level of self-censorship. Though the typical romantic comedies of the last two decades are substantially more open about sexual desire and activity 134than they were during the screwball era—in The Wedding Date (2005), for example, the heroine (Debra Messing) ravishes the male escort (Der- mot Mulroney) she has hired to accompany her to her sister’s wedding festivities—they nevertheless strive to earn a PG rating and remain suit- able (sort of) for young teens. Characters discuss sex obliquely; love- making scenes fade out; if people are nude, the camera frames them strategically. Filmmakers design their movies this way to keep them acceptable to parents, mature viewers who dislike vulgarity, and open- exhibition venues such as airplanes. Yet this self-censorship also has the benefit of encouraging clever indirection and substitution. Film scholar Leger Grindon argues that the affirmative, traditional quality of new romance has been replaced since 1997 by a trend toward what he labels the “grotesque and ambivalent.” We see the “grotesque” influence in those R-rated films that get comic mileage out of frank- ness about sexual and bodily matters. These include those “gross-out” comedies, such as There’s Something About Mary (1998), Knocked Up (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), and Bridesmaids (2011), which foreground crude speech, explicit sex, bodily functions, and full nudity. By knock- ing love down from its glossy, magical place, they flout authority. These films are designed to have more appeal for young men than more genteel romantic comedies, and indeed, by bringing in a larger demographic, they have performed particularly well at the box office. Grindon’s “ambivalence” manifests in films that, like the nervous romance, question whether romance is possible in today’s society. Espe- cially in “art films” such as Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Before Sunrise (1995), After the Sunset (2004), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), characters are hesitant to accept or believe in love. This ambivalence characterizes another new strand of romantic comedies as well, those that present multiple story lines and offer a panoply of couplings, such as Love Actually (2003) and He’s Just Not That into You (2009). Spreading romance around among numerous couples allows a filmmaker to pres- enta variety of scenarios (straight/gay; monogamous/unfaithful; com- mitted/breaking up), illustrating a variety of approaches to courtship and love and providing both comparisons and contrasts. Multiple- couple films offer more options regarding romance than the traditional single-couple happy ending, and reflect the changing nature of relation- ships in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Despite Grindon’s able description of short-term cycles, I believe that the “reaffirmation of romance” typical of new romance still thrives. 135One has only to look at the popularity of Silver Linings Playbook (2012)~ where love conquers serious mental illness—to witness American films’ will to love. Typology, Themes, and Theories Along with the basic plot structure of meet/separate/reunite (or, in the remarriage variation, be married/divorce/remarry), romantic comedies frequently manifest a characteristic narrative structure that the scholar Rick Altman terms “dual focus.” In a dual-focus film, scenes centering on one lover alternate with parallel scenes centered on the other. For example, in Pillow Talk, we see scenes of Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) in his apartment, and then of Jan Morrow (Doris Day) in hers. In Sleepless in Seattle, scenes with Annie Reid (Meg Ryan) in New York alternate with those showing Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) in Seattle. This choice of alternating focus has important thematic implica- tions. As we gain more knowledge about each character, we understand that each is missing what the other can provide. Typically, one pole of the couple is responsible, cautious, and high achieving (read: sexually inexperienced and/or uptight), while the other is unconventional, free- spirited, and irresponsible (read: sexually experienced and liberated). The union of David Huxley (Cary Grant) and Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) in Bringing Up Baby, or of Elizabeth Masterson (Reese With- erspoon) and David Abbot (Mark Ruffalo) in Just Like Heaven (2005), creates a happy mean that makes the participants more blessed and more fulfilled as a couple than they were as singles. Classic dual focus highlights additional differences besides sexual experience. In the screwball era, the lovers often come from different social classes and/or have diverse approaches to careers. Sandro (Fran- cis Lederer) in The Gay Deception (1935) is a prince, while Mirabel Miller (Frances Dee) is a secretary. Johnny Case (Cary Grant) in Holiday is a self-made man, while Linda Seton (Katharine Hepburn) is an heiress. The dichotomy in social class continues down through the decades to Working Girl (1988), Pretty Woman, and Maid in Manhattan (2002). Along with social class, the dichotomy between the lovers often involves high achievement and careerism versus less ambition and a more relaxed attitude toward life. In earlier movies, such as Ball of Fire, Sabrina, and The Apartment (1960), the male characters are losing out on life because 136Pillow Talk (1959) The famous split-screen shot in Pillow Talk captures the dynamics of the | dual-focus narrative usually achieved via alternating parallel scenes. She is a prissy, career- obsessed interior designer; he is a lackadaisical songwriter whose real interest is in bedding women. They share a party-line telephone, which leads to their mutual hatred. By this scene, however, Brad (Rock Hudson) has disguised himself as Rex Stetson, an ultra-gentlemanly Texan visiting New York who is wooing Jan (Doris Day). His feigned sexual reticence brings out her sexual desire. When they go away to a cabin in the country, however, Jan discovers Rex's true identity. Such a dual structure, common in many romantic comedies, allows the viewer to learn more about each character, discover what each is missing in his/her life, and understand how the other person can provide the missing balance. they can’t pry their noses out of work long enough to smell the roses. Although movies continue to chastise men for single-minded ambition, in recent offerings the career-obsessed boot fits the female characters’ smaller feet. Elizabeth in Just Like Heaven is unadventurous in terms of personal relationships because she can’t detach from her profession as a doctor. Melanie (Michelle Pfeiffer) in One Fine Day (1996), Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) in Sweet Home Alabama (2002), and Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in No Reservations (2007) elevate their work above openness to life and romance. Many films of the 1980s onward set about teaching women not to let their career ambitions close them off to love. Others, such as Knocked Up, criticize the slackers’ immaturity and the striver’s obsessiveness. While many romantic comedies employ this dual focus, others uti- lize single focus; they privilege one side of the couple and sometimes even allow that character to narrate via voice-over. Recent examples include Legally Blonde (2001), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), and About a Boy (2002). In these movies, we learn very little about the needs or feelings of the other member of the romantic couple. About a Boy doesn’t even introduce the leading lady until midway through the film. Ironically, About a Boy nevertheless does contain a dual-focus tension, not between 137the lovers, but between Will (Hugh Grant), who is irresponsible, self- centered, and cool, and the young boy, Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), who is loyal, selfless, and hopelessly nerdy. “Bromances,” such as The Odd Couple (1968) and I Love You, Man (2009), replicate dual-focus structure between male characters of contrasting personalities. Asin Shakespeare, modern romantic comedy plots frequently hinge on role-playing and deception. The tagline for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) reads: fairly sums up the dynamics in nearly all of these films. Whether on “One of them is lying. So is the other,” which pretty purpose or by accident, characters fall into playing a part: in The Lady Eve, Jean (Barbara Stanwyck), a cardsharp, pretends to be British nobil- ity to get revenge on Charles Pike (Henry Fonda). In Splash, the mermaid (Daryl Hannah) pretends to be human to win Allen (Tom Hanks). In While You Were Sleeping (1995), Lucy (Sandra Bullock) has a crush on Peter (Peter Gallagher), a man to whom she has never spoken. When he is hospitalized in a coma, she deceives his family by pretending that Love & Basketball (2000) Like many romantic comedies from the 1980s onward, Love & Basketball initially questions the heroine's intense desire for an ambitious career—in this case, she wants to play pro basketball—and shows the price that she pays for her obsession, Such films often suggest that women who strive for success close themselves off from the possibility of romance. Love and Basketball, however, vali- dates the dream Monica (Sanaa Lathan) has of becoming a professional athlete. Here, at the film's conclusion, she challenges her about-to-be-married-to-someone-else true love, Quincy (Omar Epps), to a desperate, nighttime contest of one-on-one, the stakes being the future of their relationship. The film ends refreshingly with Monica on the pro- fessional court, as Quincy sits in the stands, cheers her on, and tends to their child 138she’s his fiancée. The family loves her, and all is going well while Peter lies unconscious, but the course of true love never runs smoothly in romantic comedies: tangles ensue when Lucy falls in love with Peter’s brother, Jack (Bill Pullman) and must reveal her lies to the family. In The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and its second remake, You've Got Mail, the man discovers that the anonymous pen pal he’s fallen in love with is the woman in his life he can’t stand; he strings her along until the combat- ive antagonism fades to reveal the attraction underneath. In Roxanne (1987), IQ (1994), and The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), would-be lovers resort to the central trope of the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, employing proxies to help them woo the objects of their affections, which, predict- ably, leads to mayhem. As Puck says in A Midsummer's Night Dream, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Deception serves as a double-edged sword in the romantic comedy genre. On the one hand, when x misleads y in order to write a newspaper story about y, the deception is self-serving and immoral; the romance cannot come to fruition without a process of discovery, humiliation, and forgiveness. Although we anticipate that everything will work out, romantic comedies always contain the possibility that the deception will not be resolved in time, or that the hurt partner will not be able to forgive the deceiver. Romantic comedies gain their poignant quality as they extend the scenes of anger and irreconcilability and keep the audi- ence wondering whether the relationship will ultimately thrive. As film scholars Kathleen Rowe and Tamar McDonald point out, melodrama and heartbreak lurk like sharks underneath romantic comedy. As view- ers we hold our breath, hoping—praying—for a last-minute reconcilia- tion, which is sometimes strung out in a chase scene, and sometimes—as in Never Been Kissed—in a five-minute countdown in the center of a base- ball field, which serves no purpose other than to prove that Josie (Drew Barrymore) is so ashamed of her behavior than she will undergo this achingly painful public contrition and humiliation. Yet playacting and deception also have the potential to liberate people from their mundane daily ruts. In Never Been Kissed, Josie’s love interest, Sam (Michael Vartan), says, apropos of As You Like It: “See, the point Shakespeare's trying to make is that when we're in disguise, we feel freer, we do things we wouldn’t do in ordinary life.” And the movie proves his point by having Josie come out of her nerdy-loser shell when she impersonates a high-school student to write about high-school life for her newspaper. For many characters, only by breaking away from 139I] their everyday identity can they move forward: through pretending to be someone else, they are free to find themselves and someone to love as well. Deception takes the form of cross-dressing with surprising frequency in this genre. In Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Some Like It Hot, Victor/Victoria, All of Me (1984), Tootsie, Shakespeare in Love, Good Advice (2001), and She’s the Man, characters all learn more about their inner feelings and prepare themselves for love through such disguises. These films put into ques- tion many of our social assumptions about what it means to be aman or a woman and to what degree gender roles are merely social conven- tion. In fact, some go further: they posit that by assuming the gender of the opposite sex, even if only by altering superficial details of one’s appearance, one can become a more rounded human being, and more fully understand the inner life of the person whose love one craves. This knowledge can take the form of little instances—such as how demean- ing it is to be called “Babe” in Tootsie—to far larger lessons, such as the problems posed by the cultural roles each gender must conform to in order to find a place within society. Ultimately, men understanding women and women understanding men teach each the problems the other gender faces and prepare them for maturity and love. Twentieth-century romantic comedies promote a therapeutic ethos; that is, they believe that people can grow and repair their character defects when the pain, humiliation, and thrill of love make them reex- amine traits they stubbornly hold on to. Characters can move on from grieving for past lovers (Sleepless in Seattle), medicate their obsessive- compulsive disorder [As Good as It Gets (1997)], overcome their fear of flying [French Kiss (1995)], repent for their judgmentalism [The Philadel- phia Story, Pride and Prejudice (2005)], and generally grow up (too many to list). They take a journey—often literally—from their past problems to a brighter future. According to Hollywood's rules, learning to be more sexually attrac- tive is part of the therapeutic thematics. Starting with DeMille’s silent films, romantic comedies stress the importance not only of inner matu- rity but also of outer display. As we all know, romantic comedies spe- cialize in makeovers: Gracie (Sandra Bullock) in Miss Congeniality (2000) and Albert (Kevin James) in Hitch submit themselves to painful treat- ments to enhance their sex appeal. Even those films that don’t officially “make over” a star predictably build tension toward “dress up” scenes: a climactic prom, party, wedding, or other occasion where the characters 140put on fancy clothes, and the camera ostentatiously pauses, or pans up their bodies, in admiration of their newly revealed sexual appeal. (Such narratives also form the basis of a slew of contemporary reality- based TV programs, from What Not to Wear to The Ultimate Makeover.) Viewers applaud these makeovers as positive signs of the characters’ gaining self-confidence and accepting their sexual desires. Moreover, viewers derive vicarious satisfaction from seeing Cinderella rise from the ashes to become a beautiful princess, as in Maid in Manhattan, when the hotel housemaid goes to a benefit at the Metropolitan Museum. We believe that with the right clothing and expert help we too could morph from our ugly duckling quotidian frumpiness into swanlike gracefulness. However, students of this genre should not ignore how exterior makeovers can indoctrinate us into overvaluing the products of our consumer-oriented society and coerce us into strict normative standards of beauty. The lesson of nearly all romantic comedies is that the way to win love is to go shopping on the ultra-expensive Rodeo Drive in Los Ange- les and get your eyebrows shaped by an expert makeup artist. Women, in particular, are not lovable until they are as conventionally pretty as Hollywood can make them. You are not charming until you appear in designer duds. Actually, How to Steal a Million is one long commercial for Givenchy fashions, which, indeed, Audrey Hepburn, as slim and grace- ful as any model, displays fetchingly. Consumerism reaches its acme of absurdity in Sex and the City (2008) when Big (Chris Noth) proves his love for Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) by building her the ultimate walk-in closet. Not surprisingly, this is the site where they have sex and ultimately reconcile. Some academics suggest that the upper-class settings of romantic comedy are not important in themselves but merely free up the charac- ters from bills and responsibilities so that they can concentrate on eros. I disagree. The romantic comedy is the American genre most consistently and profoundly culpable for displaying and advertising the luxuries of American consumerism. Although the 1930s screwball comedies show a conscience about the Depression and criticize the rich, curiously, all the couples seem to end up quite financially comfortable. Another pos- sible exception to the consumerist ethos might be those films featuring a repeated plot motif in which protagonists progressively lose all their possessions until they rediscover themselves in a more elemental situ- ation, as occurs in Jt Happened One Night and Romancing the Stone (1984). 141The Devil Wears Prada (2006) When Andrea (Anne Hathaway) starts working at Run- way magazine, she is indifferent to high fashion, Gradually, she fal!s under its spell and makes herself over into the kind of fashionista she originally despised, adhering to the demanding code of beauty espoused and disseminated by her ruthless boss, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). The most clever sequence features an Andy-on-her-way-to-work montage that match cuts her into a series of haute couture outfits as she walks down the street, enters the sub- way, comes out, goes into her building and office. Each change of clothing is for our viewing pleasure, shows the passage of time, and demonstrates her acceptance of a new set of values. Such makeovers indoctrinate viewers into overvaluing the expensive goods of our consumer- oriented economy and pressure audiences (particularly women) into blindly slaving to achieve a shallow ideal of beauty. However, this plot motif doesn’t actually lambaste consumerism; it just offers an exciting “adventure vacation,” with the protagonists eventu- ally returning to their normal lifestyle. Other films that appear to criti- cize consumerism actually demonstrate bad faith: The Devil Wears Prada (2006) supposedly advocates renouncing high fashion for a simpler and more moral life, but its camera fetishizes the ensembles that the charac- ters wear and lingers over the fantasy of a Parisian excursion. Obviously, this emphasis on beauty, fashion, and consumer goods stems from filmmakers’ assumptions that these topics will interest their female audiences (and from product placement deals with companies). But it also arises from a deeper level: the thematic connections between con- sumption and courtship. Marriage in Western culture was once primarily a financial pact: a deal, involving families negotiating the dowries and settlements to their best advantage. Today, without matchmakers or extended families’ help, individuals have to market themselves and portray their advantages in the most appealing light; hence, the emphasis on display, and the preeminent importance of instantly, physically, tele- graphing one’s beauty (read: healthiness and suitability to propagate), 142class, and social standing (read: resources to protect future offspring.) Asrelationships and sexual connections have become more casual, indi- viduals “shop around” for mates just as they shop for consumer goods, surfing choices on the Internet, where a host of dating sites assumes the matchmaking role. Individuals “try on” different mates to see if they fit and ultimately “purchase” the one that suits them best. As the tagline for 27 Dresses’s puts it: “She’s about to find the perfect fit.” Thus, courtship is like consumerism; however, consumerism is also like courtship. Admit it: most of us get deep emotional satisfaction from our prized possessions. We yearn for a certain object, we hunt for it, we commit to it, and we triumphantly possess it. If the luster wears off, we either dust off the object and renew its appeal or dump it and search for anew one. The new car or the perfect pair of shoes is not just a utilitar- ian purchase, but one that gives us a pleasure that is partly sexual in nature. The plot of Ninotchka (1939) hinges on the title character's desire fora fashionable hat: the hat isa fetish object that stands in for her need for frivolity, love, and sex. All the displays of diamonds, fashion, yachts, and resort hotels in romantic comedies enhance the sexual charge of these films. We feast our eyes not only on the handsome stars but on the handsome goods and luxurious surroundings. The critical literature on romantic comedy is fascinated by the issue of what the genre tells us about gender relations in American society. Some scholars (Kathleen Rowe in The Unruly Woman makes the most eloquent case) see it as potentially liberating, as subversive. Rowe high- lights female characters she sees as “unruly,” breaking the bonds of con- ventional behavior through open displays of intelligence, assertiveness, independence, and blatant sexual desire. We can trace the unruly woman throughout the sweep of the genre: from Ellie diving off the yacht in It Happened One Night to Theodora (Irene Dunne) going wild in a film literally and amusingly titled Theodora Goes Wild (1936), to Hildy (Rosa- lind Russell) physically tackling a policeman in His Girl Friday, to Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) wielding her sex appeal like a flamethrower in Some Like It Hot, to Annie (Susan Sarandon) schooling baseball players in Bull Durham (1988), to Audrey (Melanie Griffith) kidnapping Charles (Jeff Daniels) in Something Wild (1986), to Elle (Reese Witherspoon) upending all male expectations in Legally Blonde, to Eva (Gabrielle Union) cowing her brothers-in-law in Deliver Us from Eva. Unruly women mock male pretensions and arrogance. They turn the tables on male superiority. 143They dare anything and everything. They own their own sexuality and pursue their own desires. On the other hand, many scholars criticize the genre as merely offer- ing feints toward equality between the sexes, the better to conquer wom- en’s desire for independence and teach them a lesson about their proper role in society. Diane Carson opens our eyes to a scary pattern: how many times in these movies men strike or otherwise physically abuse the women and how often the women are literally silenced: see, for example, the ending of The Proposal, filmed in 2009. Emphasizing the endings of movies in which the man inevitably conquers the unruly woman and she subsides into the role of predictable bride or lover, this school of thought sees romantic comedies as compulsively repeating the taming of the shrew. The more unruly the woman, the more credit redounds to the man (like Shakespeare’s Petruchio) who ropes her in, teaches her a lesson, makes her submit, and ties her down with the silken cords of her own love. Certainly, Overboard (1987) belongs in the Pantheon of Most Sex- ist Films of All Time. Starring Goldie Hawn as Joanna, a spoiled, rich woman who gets her comeuppance from a carpenter, Dean (Kurt Rus- sell), it ends with her learning to love being the domestic slave to his four children. I also propose a special award for The Thrill of It All! (1963), in which a husband (James Garner) plots to make his wife (Doris Day) give up her high-paying career starring in soap commercials and find fulfill- ment in just being a pregnant wife. You may have other nominations. However, we can’t ignore that some films—for example, Bringing Up Baby, About a Boy, Forgetting Sarab Marshall—put more emphasis on taming the unsocialized male animal, making him fit for love. The genre is so com- modious that within its bounds one finds a wide spectrum of models of relationships between the sexes. Nevertheless, we need to recognize that one end of the spectrum is indeed chopped off: romantic comedies by definition do not advocate the independent, single path, or a lifestyle of serial sexual adventure. They advocate love and commitment—and, for nearly all of their history, heterosexual love. If one believes that coupledom per se is an outmoded institution oppressive to men and women, or one feels rejected by these films’ constant stress on heterosexuality, then the whole genre becomes propaganda for a conservative viewpoint, a way of socializing movie- goers into traditional gender roles and cultural conventions. 144Iconography The distinctive aesthetics of romantic comedy come from its dialogue, not its images. The best romantic comedies spring from the wittiest scripts delivered by the most skillful actors. Romantic-comedy dialogue sabotages the language of love; it uses insults as part of the mating ritual. Here is a meeting of two future lovers: in 10 Things I Hate about You, Patrick (Heath Ledger) approaches Kat (Julia Stiles) on the soccer field, trying to chat her up: Patrick: Hey there, girlie. How you doin’? Kat: Sweating like a pig, actually, and yourself? Patrick: Now there’s a way to get a guy’s attention, huh? Kat: My mission in life. But, obviously I struck your fancy so you see it worked. The world makes sense again. Progressing further through courtship rituals, in Moonstruck, we get this unusual declaration of love by Nicolas Cage to Cher: Ronnie: I love you. Loretta: [slaps him twice] Snap out of it! This style of combative relationship lasts even through divorce. In His Girl Friday, Hildy says to her ex-husband (Cary Grant): “Walter, you're wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way.” Romantic comedies don’t merely sabotage the language of love, they use their dialogue to deflate all serious subjects. In Two Weeks Notice (2002), George (Hugh Grant) is a real-estate developer talking with the very liberal parents of his girlfriend, Lucy (Sandra Bullock); he pur- posely misunderstands questions and the conversation veers off like a drunken sailor: George: This whole project is worth about fifty million in profits. Ruth: No offense, but I think it’s immoral for one person to acquire that much wealth. How do you sleep at night? George: Well, | have a machine that simulates the sound of the ocean. Larry: Do those really work? George: Oh, yes, quite well actually. 145Other sequences have the rhythm of stand-up comedy, building up toa punch line. In When Harry Met Sally... , Sally is describing to Harry what caused an earlier romance to falter: Sally: Well, if you must know, it was because he was very jealous, and I had these days-of-the-week underpants. Harry: Ehbhh. I’m sorry. I need the judges’ ruling on this. Days-of- the-week underpants? Sally: Yes. They had the days of the week on them, and I thought they were sort of funny. And then one day Sheldon says to me, “You never wear Sunday.” It was all suspicious. Where was Sunday? Where had I left Sunday? And I told him, and he didn’t believe me. Harry: What? Sally: They don’t make Sunday. Harry: Why not? Sally: Because of God. Alongside the funny dialogue, romantic comedies use slapstick action—particularly pratfalls. In The Lady Eve, Jean/Eve gets Charles Pike so confused he goes splat! three times in one scene. In French Kiss, Kate (Meg Ryan) is trying to spy on her ex-fiancé when she tumbles into the dessert cart. Just Married (2003) crashes and smashes its central couple around with such frenzy one wonders they aren’t in body casts. Such physical comedy adds humor—and humbles the characters. By far the most common locale for romantic comedies is New York City. Nearly all the screwballs take place there. In recent decades other yuppie cities, such as Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, or London, some- times substitute for New York, but Manhattan is still the ur-location, the home of many of the screenwriters, the center of money, fashion, and culture. The couples at the heart of these dramas are sophisticates, not hicks. They have swanky jobs as journalists, book editors, advertising executives, and the like. They live a glamorous high life. Their Manhat- tan is a stage set for romance—a glorious confection of sidewalk cafes, Lincoln Center, nightclubs, rooftops, galas at the Met, riverside prom- enades, and boats on the Hudson. Yet often, to discover their true feelings, characters must leave the surroundings where they are most comfortable and travel to what the literary scholar Northrop Frye calls “the green world.” The green world is a more pastoral setting where the characters can discover themselves. 146ona re Maid in Manhattan (2002) This poster embraces the iconography of New York City. The film includes nearly every convention of romantic comedy, such as mistaken identity, a make-over scene, a heroine who speaks her mind, a dog who brings the couple together, and a holiday ending. Note the print at the bottom: ‘This Christmas....love checks in,’ indicating a Christmas season release. What is unusual about the film, however, is that the romance between Marisa (Jennifer Lopez) and Christo- pher (Ralph Fiennes) is interracial. In fact, Maid! mixes together both race and class: Marisa is a hotel maid, working her way up from housekeep- ing to management. In several scenes, she criti- cizes Chris's silver-spoon perspective and shows pride in her social station. One might notice, that forall its political progressiveness, this poster lightens Lopez's complexion in the background graphic. Creme ees oy The forest of Arden in Shakespeare's As You Like It, and the woods outside Athens inhabited by the fairy rulers Oberon and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream provide prototypes. A modern equivalent to this Elizabe- than “green world” appears in Bringing Up Baby, when Susan and David journey to her aunt’s place in Connecticut, and in 27 Dresses, when the lovers drive up to rural Rhinebeck. In The Palm Beach Story, Geraldine (Claudette Colbert) and Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) travel separately to Florida; in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Peter (Jason Segel) and Sarah (Kris- ten Bell) end up in Hawaii, the latter to be with her new lover and the former to forget her. Sometimes, instead of literally leaving the city, the couple find the green world close at hand, such as in Central Park or on alandscaped rooftop. Like the green world, dogs play a pivotal role in romantic comedies because they straddle the realms of the wild and the domesticated. Must Love Dogs is the commandment not only in the personal ad in that 2005 movie but also for romantic comedy aficionados. Skippy, the famous wire-haired terrier who plays Asta in the first two of the Thin Man mov- ies, and shows up again in The Awful Truth and Bringing Up Baby, has sired litters of descendants. Dogs are partially about love—the dog’s 147affection for Melvin (Jack Nicholson) in As Good As It Gets proves that at heart he is lovable even when his behavior is at its worst. Yet dogs blend cuteness with unpredictability—they run, they bite, they bark; they pull their owners in unexpected directions; they steal intercostal clavicles. In short, as well as fleshing out the best and sometimes the worst in the genre’s cast of characters, they bring the green world indoors. Even more than barking, music proves to be the food of love in roman- tic comedy. Particularly in the new romances after 1989, this genre leans toward popular song, the more familiar the better. Songs such as “All of Me,” “Down With Love,” “One Fine Day,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “Something to Talk About,” “Pretty Woman,” and “Love Potion #9” provide the titles of movies in which they are heard. Old standards from the American songbook, “It Had to Be You,” “Stardust,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “You Were Meant for Me,” live again on the genre’s sound tracks. Filmmakers cleverly harness our nostalgic affection for these romantic classics to engender similar feelings for the story at hand. Music also forges interfilm connections. For instance, both How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Kate and Leopold (2001) include “Moon River,” the theme song from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The romantic-comedy connois- seur feels a flush of pride at recognizing the reference. Northrop Frye notes that comedies signal the appearance of a new society by some kind of party or festive ritual. The most common festi- vals in romantic comedy are holidays and weddings. Christmas songs, Christmas trees, Christmas dinners, Christmas gifts stack higher and higher with each new romantic comedy produced. Hundreds of roman- tic comedies take place at the time of the winter solstice and the turning of the earth toward sunlight. Those few that don’t take place at Christ- mas choose New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, or, occasion- ally, Midsummer’s Eve. These nodal points of the year are recognized and ritualized times when society as a whole celebrates emotional con- nection and renewal. While studios tend to release action blockbusters in summer, for students out of school, they traditionally hold romances for the winter season. As for weddings, who can keep track of the number of weddings seen on the screen in romantic comedies? Weddings, weddings, weddings—planned, cancelled, fled, and interrupted. Wedding, wed- dings, weddings—quiet elopements, vulgar Vegas chapels, full-regalia extravaganzas in churches and on seashores and mountaintops. On the one hand, I hate these wedding scenes because they buy into the 148Sense and Sensibility (1995) Sense and Sensibility's dual focus is on the two sisters’ disparate approaches to romance: Elinor (Emma Thompson) and Marianne (Kate Wins- let) each find that something of the others’ temperament is essential to true happiness. This ending shot occurs after the sisters’ double wedding, where Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) throws coins up into the air, a gesture demonstrating generosity and commu- nity. The music soars as the coins glitter and tumble down like rain, spreading the magic of a world set right. This ending, like so many concluding scenes, seeks to include the audience in the new society created by love. consumer madness of the U.S. wedding industry and promote the lie that the best way to declare your love and start your future is to bank- rupt your family on fleeting, extravagant, and ostentatious trappings (which on television leads brides to act like maniacs). But if we look at these ceremonies as anthropological rites, weddings are the ultimate festive rituals, celebrating family, connection, and hope, and they belong in this genre. Some ancient Greek comedies ended with the actors inviting their audiences to an imaginary banquet. Frye notes that this is only fitting, because romantic comedies are communal; they ask the audiences to join in an imaginary wholeness and the satisfaction of misunderstand- ings resolved. While their music soars, romantic comedies typically con- clude with some kind of onscreen frolic that captures the joyfulness and hopefulness of the world set right, creating a mild buzz of euphoria that temporarily sustains us, as the lights come on, and we leave the theater to face che cold wind and traffic. 149