The Good, The Bad and the Romantic Comedy

This is it. You look into the eyes of the boy you've had a crush on for a million years. You've pined for him. You have deciphered his texts in great detail with all your girlfriends. You have written your first name and his last name on the inside of notebooks.  Now, after all this time you are finally talking to him. You scrabble to find something interesting to say, because how ever else will he know that you and him are the stuff of not just love songs, but Taylor Swift love songs? 

So, you ask him what his favourite movies are. You brace yourself for the obvious answers, Pulp Fiction, American Psycho, Martin Scorsese's entire filmography. But, wait, do your ears deceive you? No, he is not waxing lyrical about why Tarantino's use of the N- Word is a-okay. No. He's talking about Never Been Kissed, he's telling you his favourite scene from You've Got Mail. He's conversing with you about Old Hollywood rom-com classics and how he likes to watch Bringing Up Babywhen he's sad. He's confiding in you that he watched Safety, Not Guaranteed three times at his local independent cinema. He's perfect.

Sounds nice, doesn't it? Except it isn't real. As a woman, who has the gall to engage in "typical" feminine activities, I know all too well the look men (and women alike) give you when you tell them you love romantic comedies. All you have to do is say you think Jennifer Aniston is a good actress and people put themselves on a pedestal because they lied about actually liking The Tree Of Life to their pretentious friends.

But this isn't about me being upset because a lot of Quentin Tarantino wannabes don't approve of my viewing choices. I can deal happily with people not liking what I like, but this isn't about whether or not someone likes the same pizza topping as me (to all you people who dislike ham and pineapple, who hurt you?). No, this goes much, much deeper.

Within society's constant disdain and degradation of the rom-com as a legitimate cinematic genre, is masses and masses of home grown misogyny. Yes. Misogyny. In terms of feminism, rom-com's are pretty great. I mean, most of them have female protagonists, they often show women who are three dimensional, women who are not just existing in the scene to prop up the male lead. Some even concern themselves heavily with female friendship. Bridesmaids, anyone? But yet, it is the genre which is seen as fluffy, light and uninteresting.

Now, don't get me wrong, you can get some real stinkers in this genre but the same can be said for pretty much any genre. 

The thing is, most protagonists are male in films and yet, women go to the movies more than men. All this displays is, men will refuse to sit through rom-com's because they are too "girly" and "stupid" and unrelatable, yet we as women watch film upon film where men are front and centre. This evidently conveys that female fronted films are considered "other" while films starring men have some universal cosmic pull. 

This is highly due to the way men are portrayed in media and how they are treated in society in general. In films starring men, women are side notes, usually killed off to develop the male protagonist (see Spiderman 2), or stuck in some odd Manic Pixie Dream Girl hell of a role, doomed to never get any real character development.

In society also, men are considered rational, strong, smart while women are pigeon holed as over sentimental and emotional. I know that, yes, some women are those things, and I know that rom-com's deal with these issues often but why are those things not strengths? Why are those things not also characteristics an intelligent woman can have? Why do we find female characteristics so repulsive that we shun the genre who is wholeheartedly dedicated to giving women a starring role for a change.

The thing is, you can talk about your Scorsese's and Fincher films until the cows come home. I've watched Fight Club,American Psycho, Taxi Driver and most of Tarantino's movies and they were all well and good but that doesn't diminish the amazing, quirky, heartfelt kooky quality of films like Juno. 

I'm not asking you to watch Katherine Heigl's entire filmography. But next time, someone tells you they love romantic comedies try not to roll your eyes because misogyny isn't a good colour on anybody.

Posted March 14, 2015 22:21

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