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“Slightly Overlooked Professionally”:

Popular in Postmillennial Romantic

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

By

Elizabeth Kirkendoll, MM

Graduate Program in Music

The Ohio State University

2018

Dissertation Committee:

Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Adviser

Arved Ashby, Co-Adviser

Sean O’Sullivan

Daniel Goldmark

Copyright by

Elizabeth Kirkendoll

2018

Abstract

In recent years scholars has turned their attention to the cinematic conventions of romantic comedies. Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Deborah Jermyn, and Stacey Abbott have advocated for the scholarly merits of the ; these scholars posit that through romantic comedies, we can trace developments in women’s rights and feminist critiques of hegemonic masculinity. Scholars have recently focused attention on in film, as well, and argued for its inclusion in serious musical study in works such as The

Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music (Jeff Smith, 1998),

Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music (ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur

Knight, 2001), and Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema (ed. Steve Lannin and Matthew

Caley, 2005), among others. Nonetheless, romantic comedies are largely missing from the discourse about popular music, possibly because of the assumption that the genre’s conventions hold no merit as a subject for academic investigation. Based on information gathered from romantic audiences this dissertation makes the case that postmillennial romantic comedies deploy popular song conventions to underscore character development, create , and question the validity of the . Thus, rather than conveying superficial messages of romance, songs in postmillennial romantic comedies destabilize a postfeminist ideology that asserts the achievement of gender equality. As they are deployed in the , these songs are not a simple marketing ploy or entertainment intended for a mindless audience; rather they convey an argument for female autonomy and the continued need for feminist discourse. Films discussed in this dissertation include ’s Diary (2001), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), Love

Actually (2003), Trainwreck (2015), and Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016), among others.

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Dedicated to Nick and Izzy

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Acknowledgments

I thank my adviser, Dr. Fosler-Lussier, for her guidance throughout my time at the Ohio

State University and especially during the dissertation process. Thank you to my committee members, Dr. Ashby, Dr. O’Sullivan, and Dr. Goldmark, for their willingness to contribute to my project and for their valuable feedback. Thank you to my cohort for their support and feedback. Thanks also to the music librarians at the Ohio State

University and the Interlibrary Loan staff for their willingness to help me find resources.

Thank you to my family, the Barnabys, and the Baxters for their emotional support and constant encouragement. Finally, thank you to Nick and Izzy for their willingness to support me on this journey.

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Vita

2009 ………………………………...... Keller High School

2013 ………………………………...... B.M. Oboe Performance, Christian

University

2015 ………………………………………… M.M. Musicology, Texas Christian

University

2015 to present ……………………………… Graduate Teaching Associate, Department

of Musicology, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Music

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Contents

Abstract ...... i

Acknowledgments...... iii

Vita ...... iv

List of Tables ...... vi

List of Figures ...... vii

Introduction:

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice”: Considering Popular Music in Romantic Comedies ...... 1

Chapter 1: “All by Myself”: Establishing Postmillennial Conventions Through Song.... 36

Chapter 2: Film Case-Studies: (2003), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), and

Sweet Home Alabama (2002)...... 60

Chapter 3: “Do My Thang”: Expanding Conventional Boundaries Through Popular Song

...... 110

Chapter 4: “Who Doesn’t Love a Happy Ending?” Conversations with

Conventions ...... 172

Appendix A: IRB Materials ...... 213

Bibliography ...... 217

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List of Tables

Table 1. Romantic Comedy Cycles and Conventions ...... 6

Table 2. “Both Sides Now” Analysis ...... 64

Table 3. “Re-Ignite” Scene Analysis ...... 160

Table 4. “Still Falling for You” Scene Analysis ...... 167

vi

List of Figures

Figure 1. advertisement ...... 190

Figure 2. Still from Can't Buy Me Love (1987) ...... 201

Figure 3. Still from “Tweek X Craig” (2015) ...... 201

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Introduction: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”: Considering Popular Music in Romantic Comedies

It’s the week after the release of Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016), and a friend insists that I see the film with her. We’ll make it a “’s night,” she says, and even though I’ve already seen the film, I agree. We decide on one of the dine-in theaters in downtown

Columbus. We’re sipping our margaritas and deciding on appetizers when two women sit in front of us. Within a few minutes they turn to us and are making small talk— “What size margarita is that? How’s the food?” We all quiet down as the previews end and the production titles appear on screen. As the Miramax production title gives way to that of

Working Title Films, music begins: “All by Myself” (Jamie O’Neal, 2000). As if on cue, one of the women in front of me whispers “Yes!” to the on her left. “Working

Title” changes to Bridget’s journal: “9th May/Birthday. 0h [sic] Christ!” The camera pans to Bridget, dressed in her iconic pajamas, sitting on her couch, and staring at a cupcake with a solitary candle. As Bridget picks up the cupcake and mumble-sings

“Happy Birthday,” her voiceover begins: “How in the hell did I end up here again?”

Suddenly Bridget sets down the cupcake, exclaims “Oh, fuck off!” and changes the song to “ Around” (House of Pain, 1992). Holding her glass of wine, Bridget proceeds to lip-sync and jump around her apartment. I’m once again pulled out of my immersion in the film as the woman in front of me in her seat, only stopping when the scene ends. During the end credits, I talked to the woman about her impression of the music in the film. She said, “I felt like this movie really used a lot of songs from the first film, which made me remember how much I liked it. So, even though I don’t this

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film is as good, I liked how it made me feel.” When asked if the film gave her a sense of nostalgia for the first film, she agreed: “Yeah, definitely.”

Bridget Jones’s Baby is the third film in the Bridget Jones series and is set fifteen years after the release of the first film (Bridget Jones’s Diary); thus, by recalling the first film and conveying a passage of time, this opening scene evokes nostalgia. In the third film, the re-creation of the mise en scène of Bridget’s living room from the first film

(re)immerses the viewer into Bridget’s world, asking the viewer to recall the characters and their quirks, and the viewer’s knowledge of Bridget’s past relationships.

Nonetheless, it was not the mise en scène that elicited a reaction from the women in front of me—it was the music. The woman’s exclamation was prompted during the production title—before Bridget was even on screen—when she heard the opening of

“All by Myself,” the song inextricably linked to the image of Bridget alone in her apartment, drinking an entire bottle of wine and wallowing in her misery. This image of

Bridget is recalled in the audience’s mind’s eye as the music begins, and the subsequent mise en scène merely reinforces this idea. At the moment when Bridget changes the music and dances rather than sulks, though, our expectations of Bridget “all by herself” are upended. We are introduced to a new, confident Bridget. Bridget’s assertive nature, refusal of misery, and sexual freedom throughout the film contradict our expectations not only of the character but also of romantic comedy heroines and the representation of older . These contradictions beg the question: who is Bridget telling off in this opening scene? The music? Or her past self as represented in her inner monologue, whose inclination is to align with traditional romantic comedy heroines and indulge in misery? This scene both plays upon and overturns the expectations of the audience, who

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have come to anticipate that the heroine should be unsatisfied at the beginning of a romantic comedy.

Romantic Comedy: A Gendered Genre

Romantic comedy (or romcom) is defined 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.”1 Central to the marketing of romcoms is the female audience who, filmmakers presume, identify on some level with the film’s female protagonist. As a result, critics often conflate the genre with “the woman’s film” and

“,” two distinct that share primarily female audiences but differ thematically and narratively from the romcom.

The woman’s film was popular from the era through the 1960s, featuring a female protagonist and focusing on her personal development and domestic life. The woman’s film often emphasizes a relationship (although the male partner was not necessarily present) and the female protagonist’s personal development. Examples of woman’s films include Jezebel (1939), The Women (1939), Now, Voyager (1942), and To

Each His Own (1946). Some might argue that the “” is a contemporary outgrowth of the woman’s film. This more recent genre has as its main narrative motor the development of the female protagonist, independent of a man or relationship; for example, films such as Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

1 Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (: Wallflower, 2007), 9.

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(2005), and Bridesmaids (2011) rely on women’s quests for self-discovery, personal development, and female social bonds to propel the plot.2

The woman’s film was designated as such by studios because these films feature a primarily female cast and are marketed to women. No equivalent genre of “man’s film” exists because most films are presumed to have a male audience. To name a “man’s film” genre would be to name all genres apart from the “woman’s film.” While one might expect woman’s films to pass Alison Bechdel’s test [explain what the test measures, in a few words]—a film must have at least two women in it, who talk to each other about something other than a man—not all films marketed to women qualify. Therefore, we cannot automatically assume that a film marketed to women will align with feminist goals. I will take up this point frequently in this dissertation.

Also associated with women, the film melodrama was popular from the 1930s through the 1970s and portrayed the emotional gravity of various life scenarios including tragedy, familial relationships (with an emphasis on the various stages of motherhood), friendship, illness, and (occasionally) romantic relationships. Examples of film melodrama include Gone with the Wind (1939), Written on the Wind (1955), and

Heaven Allows (1955). Elements of melodrama can still be found in television soap and dramatic films such as Titanic (1997), (2002), and

Marley & Me (2008). Although the woman’s film, melodrama, and romantic comedies all

2 It should be noted, however, that some film scholars, such as Roberta Garrett, discuss romantic comedies as “chick flicks” and use the term more broadly to designate any film with a primarily female audience, regardless of narrative. Roberta Garrett, Postmodern Chick Flicks: The Return of the Woman’s Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 3.

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had in the 1930s, they are independent genres, with distinctive narrative arcs, tropes, and transformations.3

The romcom’s history can be conceptualized as a series of cycles, each lasting approximately a decade, that emphasize or diminish feminine independence, sexual freedom, and generic contextualization. Romantic comedy scholar Tamar Jeffers

McDonald identifies these cycles through their cinematic conventions (see chart below); however, they can also be differentiated musically.4 Romantic comedies began in the

1930s, labelled as “screwball comedies”: the couple’s friction propels the narrative, often through humorous banter and comedy. These films rely on the film underscoring practices common in their time, played by a full that mirrors the onscreen action and emotions.

3 More information about differentiating features of women’s film, melodrama, and romantic comedy can be found in Roberta Garrett, Postmodern Chick Flicks, 1–14. 4 McDonald, Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre, 20, 45, 67. 91. 5

Label Conventions Music Emphasis on quick insults and Symphonic (1934–42) violence; the couple’s friction underscoring that propels the narrative; reverse mirrors onscreen class snobbery; role play. E.g., action and emotions It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938) Battle of ; Popular songs (1950s–60s) disguise/masquerade; hierarchy recorded for the film of knowledge; and share title; reversion/inversion of the borrowings of older “natural order.” E.g., Pillow popular songs Talk (1959), (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) Radical Romantic Comedy Self-reflexivity about the Borrowings of older (1970s) romantic relationship, the popular songs; importance of sex, and the film soundtrack written and as a text. E.g. Harold and performed by one Maude (1971), What’s Up Doc? artist (e.g. Cat Stevens (1972), The Heartbreak Kid soundtrack for Harold (1972), An Unmarried Woman and Maude) (1978) -Traditional Romantic Backlash against the ideologies Mix of traditional Comedy (late 1980s–??) of the radical film; imprecise underscoring and nostalgia; vague self- foregrounded popular referentialism; de-emphasizing songs; occasional of sex; city setting. E.g., When songs borrowed from Harry Met Sally (1989), Bridget earlier cycles, e.g. “As Jones’s Diary (2001), How to Time Goes By” in Lose a Guy in Ten Days (2003) When Harry Met Sally Table 1. Romantic comedy cycles and conventions. Based on Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. 7, 18, 38, 59, 85.

By comparison, the “sex comedies” of the 1950s and 1960s rely more heavily on popular music. The genre is typified by ’s films, such as Pillow Talk (1959). A popular song written for the film introduces the main themes and conflicts around which the narrative will revolve. The “radical romantic comedy” of the 1970s is self-reflexive both as a film text in the context of the genre’s history and musically. It evokes tropes

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from earlier romantic comedy cycles to situate itself within the genre. For example,

What’s Up Doc? (1972) was marketed as a screwball comedy and features the film’s stars, Barbara and Ryan O’Neal, a rendition of the iconic “As Time

Goes By” from Casablanca (1942).

Beginning in the late 1980s with When Harry Met Sally (1989), “neo-traditional romantic comedies” are marked by film scholars as a return to traditional gender roles.

These films de-emphasize the importance of sex. Over time, films in this genre have increasingly relied on popular music for their , diminishing the role of traditional orchestral underscoring.

Although the neo-traditional romantic comedy began in the 1980s, film scholars have yet to identify a new cycle of the genre; thus, they place the current moment within the neo-traditional cycle. Has the genre remained unchanged since the late 1980s? When

Harry Met Sally is a very different film from postmillennial romcoms such as Bridget

Jones’s Diary (2001), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), Made of Honor (2008), and

Trainwreck (2015). These apparent differences raise new questions that I seek to answer throughout this dissertation. What conventions distinguish the postmillennial romantic comedy from its predecessors? How do we recognize—or fail to recognize—the introduction of new conventions? How do we know when a convention has been altered?

How far can a convention be altered before it redefines the genre?

These questions are not easily answered. As art historian Jonathan Gilmore posits,

“the new movement, because it may differ only in terms of its brief from what came before, may end up using material resources no different from those available to the

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earlier movement.”5 In other words, the artist’s perception of the problems posed by the work—or the “brief”—may be the only distinguishing factor between two movements.

Indeed, it is the apparent sameness of the cinematic tropes—lovelorn female protagonist, her choice between her career and the relationship, and the eventual union of the couple—that has prevented the demarcation of a new cycle. Nevertheless, compared to the roughly ten-year span of the previous cycles, the supposed thirty-year span of the neo-traditional romcom cycle suggests that a new label is overdue and we can determine the new cycle by identifying the social problems it tackles. This dissertation suggests that the new label can be defined by the transformed message conveyed through musical conventions.

Popular Song and the

Despite the prominence of popular music in neo-romantic and postmillennial romcoms, scholars have marginalized the genre for its ostensibly superficial and simplistic connection between song and narrative. Scholarly attention to popular music in other genres of film has increased, and multiple articles and individual chapters on popular music in auteur film, science fiction, and television make arguments for its inclusion in serious musical study. Examples of such scholarly work include The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music (Jeff Smith, 1998), Soundtrack Available:

Essays on Film and Popular Music (ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur Knight,

2001), and Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema (ed. Steve Lannin and Matthew Caley,

2005). Nonetheless, romantic comedies are largely missing from the discourse.

5 Jonathan Gilmore, The Life of a Style: Beginnings and Endings in the Narrative History of Art (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 107. 8

The few times the genre is mentioned, commentators suggest that popular songs do not offer meaning for viewers of romcoms. Some dismiss examples of popular music as a mere marketing ploy. For example, Smith describes the use of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty

Woman” in (1990) by outlining the financial results of the film’s cross- marketing strategy and subsequent romantic comedies’ attempts to duplicate Pretty

Woman’s financial success.6 By contrast, musicologist Ian Garwood argues that pop songs serve a narrative function in romantic comedies by encouraging the audience to bond with the narrative; however, he argues that because of the song’s autonomy from the image, its specificity to the scene is unimportant.

[The pop song] may connect spectator to narrative, as a vocal assertion of a belief in old-fashioned romance: a belief that needs to be cultivated in the audience for the eventual commitment of its character to such an ideal to appear plausible. It may also bond spectator to audience: the success of the song’s encouragement of a sense of belief in romance can only be achieved by a shared awareness amongst viewers of how the standard song is capable of denoting non-cynical (that is, non-modern) modes of romance. In this process, however, the song neglects to bond shot with shot, or narrative event with meaning. Under this conception, a song’s “fit” with the specific narrative moment it accompanies becomes unimportant.7

Here, Garwood seems to suggest that filmmakers and viewers manifest an “insert love song here” mentality and, so long as the song encourages traditional love, the audience will bond with the character. In their arguments, Stapleton, Smith, and Garwood assume a homogeneous and susceptible audience who hear a song, are overwhelmed by its messages of love, give in to the overwhelming marketing genius, rush to theaters to see

6 Jeff Smith, Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 206. 7 Ian Garwood, “Must You Remember This? Orchestrating the ‘Standard’ Pop Song in Sleepless in Seattle,” Screen 41, no. 3 (2000): 284. 9

the film, and then rush again to buy the soundtrack. This theorizing presumption about audience responses is overgeneralized, but common to film and film music studies.

This critique that romantic comedies rely on popular music as a marketing ploy is integrally connected to the role of the music supervisor; specifically, the connotation that the music supervisor’s primary consideration is economics, while the is concerned with art. While the filmmaker might make decisions about how the soundtrack should sound, it is the music supervisor who, as Jeff Smith describes, “will assist in providing suitable , , and recording artists to match that concept. In doing so, the music supervisor operates with an eye toward budget considerations, the promotional value of various musical materials, and the dramatic appropriateness of the score’s concept.”8 In the conventional description of popular music’s role, the music’s dramatic purpose is tethered to its monetary value, making it difficult to differentiate between the two. As I will demonstrate in , however, this assessment of mainstream romantic comedies’ compilation soundtracks as mere copying of music for the sake of money overlooks the genre’s history of title songs as a way of introducing the narrative.

Additionally, scholars have criticized romantic comedies for their over-reliance on popular music. For example, romantic comedy scholar Roberta Garrett denounces

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) for its reliance on “slapstick, and a loud and a [sic] continuous and intrusive pop soundtrack to retain audience’s interest.”9 This assessment is curious, though, because scholars do not condemn films such as The

Graduate (1967), American Graffiti (1973), or (2014) for their

8 Smith, The Sounds of Commerce, 210. 9 Garrett, Postmodern Chick Flicks, 122. 10

prominent popular soundtracks or the way pop songs form the basis for the entire film’s plot. In fact, the opposite is true—these films are applauded by film and film music scholars for their “innovative” inclusion of popular song—without the inclusion of a music supervisor—as such, the decision is often attributed to the genius of the film’s creators.

Compounding this issue of directorial prowess, mainstream romantic comedies are belittled in favor of “more sophisticated” examples by “serious” directors. Several well-known have created romantic comedies, namely , the , and Edward Burns. Yet their romantic comedies are discussed by critics as an exception to the disparaged genre. For example, in Robynn Stilwell’s work entitled

“Music, Ritual and Genre in Edward Burns’ Indie Romantic Comedies” she argues that while “music in rom-coms may often be superficial in its specific connection to the narrative” and does not have “an immediately recognizable style,” Woody Allen’s and

Edward Burns’ auteur status and use of indie music elevates their romantic comedies to the level of approved academic status.10 Stilwell does not point to the musical superficiality of specific examples of romantic comedy; rather, she paints the entire genre with a broad stroke in order to define a stark contrast between mainstream and indie.

Belittling the music of the former in order to praise the latter seems premature and portrays a willingness to view all mainstream romcoms as one and the same. This desire to use mainstream romantic comedies as a steppingstone to critical acclaim for “better” examples from the genre further diminishes the mainstream romcom.

10 Robynn Stilwell, “Music, Ritual, and Genre in Burn’s Romantic Comedies,” in Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 28–29. 11

Likewise, in his discussion of the Coen brothers’ film Raising Arizona (1987),

Jeff Smith mentions offhand that the film is a “very stylized romantic comedy,” but he does not discuss the ways in which the film conforms to or diverges from generic conventions.11 Instead, Smith relates the film to the Coen brothers’ oeuvre, promoting the film to auteur status without having to deal with the genre’s lowbrow connotations. Both

Stilwell and Smith use filmmakers’ auteur status as a way of setting films apart from mainstream romantic comedies and justifying the attention they pay to those films.

Nevertheless, by taking this approach they overlook filmmakers who specialize in postmillennial romantic comedies who could (and should) also be granted auteur status— namely and Nancy Meyers. In terms of music, the critical difference between auteur romantic comedies and mainstream films is that the latter have music supervisors; thus, the director is not the sole creator. This criterion appears to be an unwritten rule of auteur designation.

In 1962, Andrew Sarris coined the term “auteur theory” and suggested three principles that define the auteur: auteurs almost always make “good” films, auteurs exhibit “certain recurrent characteristics of style,” and auteur theory promotes cinematic works to the status of art.12 Thus, the auteur label is both a status symbol for the filmmaker and promotes the “glory” of the art form. In 1972, Peter Wollen added to

Sarris’s theory, advocating for the role of the critic in determining the value of auteur

11 Jeff Smith, “O Brother, Where Chart Thou? and the Coen Brothers,” in Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers After MTV, ed. Arved Ashby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 135. 12 Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 8th edn., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 400–402.

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film. Wollen argued that critics could determine auteur filmmakers through their ability

“to identify the ‘consistent,’ establish its truth, profundity, and so forth, and then demonstrate how it is expressed with minimum loss or leakage in the signals of the text itself, which are patterned in a way which gives coherence to the work as a whole.”13

In his own discussion of auteur theory, musicologist Arved Ashby incorporates the role of the market in the development of auteur theory, stating that “directors and even some producers have become brand names by which American films, those shown in the giant cineplexes and art-house cinemas, are sold.”14 In other words, to be labeled an auteur, one must make “good” films (as determined by critics), have a distinct cinematic style, make films with interior meaning, and become a brand (or at least, household) name.

Although filmmakers such as Richard Curtis and Nancy Meyers are infrequently considered by such criteria, their work conforms to the auteur principle. Film scholar

James Leggott describes Richard Curtis as “one of the most influential, profitable, and talked about figures in ,” arguing “that there are enough narrative, thematic, and tonal similarities between all of his major films to establish Curtis as auteur.”15 While Curtis is often the screenwriter, and not the single artistic authority, films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), (1999), and Love

13 Peter Wollen, “The Auteur Theory [Howard and John Ford],” in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 8th edn., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 419. 14 Arved Ashby, “Introduction,” in Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers After MTV, ed. Arved Ashby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1. 15 James Leggott, “Travels in Curtisland: Richard Curtis and British Comedy Cinema,” in British Comedy Cinema, ed. I.Q. Hunter and Laraine Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 2012): 184.

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Actually (2003) share particular traits attributed to Curtis: British/American tensions, ensemble cast, balance between light and dark narrative elements, and to specific pop culture and sociopolitical moments. This final characteristic is perhaps most obvious through the music selections in Love Actually, which “frequently offer a celebration of the potency of pop culture.”16 In my second chapter, I will discuss Love

Actually in detail to argue that popular music in romcoms carries more than an incidental connection to narrative: it is used to refer to portrayals of women in media and depict changing social roles.

Films by Nancy Meyers, such as Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and It’s

Complicated (2009), portray the lives of older female protagonists, navigating romance at a time of life when, as romantic comedy scholar James Leggott puts it, “our culture habitually tells women that the possibility of romance is now passed.”17 Moreover,

Meyers’ works, which also include (2000) and (2006), recall the screwball comedy with lavish sets, wealthy characters, and the .18 Meyers is the writer, director, and producer of her films, and they have a recognizable signature and do well at the box office—yet she has been met with critical disdain. Indeed, romantic comedy scholar Deborah Jermyn states that the traits that make Nancy Meyers the “romcom queen” “have become a stick to beat her

16 Leggott, “Travels in Curtisland,” 192. 17 Deborah Jermyn, “Unlikely Heroines? ‘Women of a Certain Age’ and Romantic Comedy,” CineAction no. 85 (2011): 32. 18 The term “Comedy of Remarriage” was coined by literary scholar Stanley Cavell. Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Comedy of Remarriage (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1981), 1.

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with, as much as a descriptive marker of a ‘Meyers style.’”19 Jermyn goes on to explain that

[the houses in Meyers’ films] have taken on a kind of cultural currency of their own, pored over on design websites and blogs by interior design professionals, journalists, and fans. Yet at the same time, they are regularly maligned by film critics who see her devotion to intricate texture, color, and style coordination as a kind of empty and shallow distraction. In this way, a skill, a distinctive quality that one can well imagine would be remarked on as “an eye for detail” in a male director, is used in Meyers’s case to imply she can’t really “do” more substantial work like original character or plot.20

Thus, Meyers’s work is doubly rebuked for operating within the “lowbrow” romantic comedy genre and for its exclusive portrayal of upper-middle-class households.21 Film scholar Deborah M. Sims is even more explicit than Jermyn in her advocacy of Meyers’s work:

If audiences are receptive to her films, and studios rely on her as a consistent moneymaker, why is Nancy Meyers ignored in film literature?… Why is Meyers not a celebrity director akin to Scorsese and the other men she beats out at the box office? And what affects [sic] might be produced through her directorial fame, and the subsequent analysis of her films? The answer to Meyers’ noncelebrity status lies in her exclusion from an elite community of auteur filmmaking that is coded as masculine and upholds admission standards predicated on maleness… I would suggest [that] Meyers’ exclusion from the rank of auteur filmmakers lies not in her lack of a signature, but in her chick-flick subject matter and, moreover, in the way in which fame itself is gendered.22

19 Deborah Jermyn, Nancy Meyers (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), xiv. 20 Jermyn, Nancy Meyers, xv. 21 Meyers could do a better job of casting racially and ethnically diverse in her films. However, lack of diversity is a well-known problem in Hollywood in general, and therefore should not be a reason to exclude Meyers. 22 Deborah M. Sims, “Genre, Fame, and Gender: The Middle-Aged Ex-Wife Heroine of Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give,” in Star Power: The Impact of Branded Celebrity, ed. Aaron Barlow (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014), 193.

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Indeed, Meyers’s authorial signature works within romantic comedy conventions; the music underscores character emotions and plot revelations.

For example, It’s Complicated follows protagonist Jane (), who is navigating a post-divorced, “empty nest” life. Despite some moments of melancholy reflection, Jane is “bold, vital, and very much her own woman.”23 In for their youngest ’s college graduation, Jane and her ex-husband Jake () begin an affair. Shortly thereafter, Jane also begins dating her architect, Adam (Steve

Martin). Jake attends a graduation party with his wife, Agness () and Jane attends with Adam. Jake takes Jane’s hand on the dancefloor and they to

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (, 1966). Adam signals Jane across the room and she rejoins him while Jake stands alone. While Adam is oblivious to what Jane’s dancing with Jake means (“Sweetest divorced couple in the world!”), Agness realizes the dance’s significance—Jake is still in love with Jane—and watches on, teary-eyed.

The song is both sincere and ironic. The lyrics initially align with Jake and his constant insistence that he and Jane should reunite: “Happy times together we’ve been spending/I wish that every kiss was never ending.” The song is also ironic, however, given that Jane and Jake were already married and, thus, the happily married life Jake imagines for them through the song (“We could be married/And then we’d be happy”) is obviously unrealistic. In this way, Meyers uses the song to underscore desires, expose an affair, and foreshadow the relationship’s inevitable failure. Moreover, the scene (and the film as a whole) makes a social statement that older women are not sexually deficient.

While the use of the song may not be groundbreaking, it allows us to view divorce and

23 Jermyn, Nancy Meyers, 199. 16

re-marriage through a new lens—portraying desire, heartbreak, and doubt in a realistic way.

The problem is not, therefore, that romantic comedies do not have auteurs. Rather, it is that the genre is not typically granted the critical and academic merit that allows prominent directors to be considered in such a way. Critics and scholars make excuses to exclude figures such as Curtis (“he is mainly a screenwriter”) and Meyers (“she situates her films within generic tradition”), while praising works by accepted auteurs. Such exclusions disregard the romantic comedy genre as “feminine” and “fluff” rather than acknowledging its ability to produce social critique. As Sims states,

A famous director does not make every culturally impactful film, but nearly every film made by a famous director is analyzed for its potential to be culturally impactful. In the same manner that genre informs audiences, a director’s celebrity status or lack thereof can shape the viewers’ preconceptions of a film . . . While the individual response of each movie- goer is subjective, the culture of genre labelling, movie reviews, and film scholarship guides viewers in the expectations of, and responses to, entertaining programming. In other words, when a film is touted as important, audiences are more likely to regard it with serious attention.24

Auteur labeling disguises subjectivity as objectivity, using covert values and uneven measuring sticks to praise certain films and reduce others. Filmmakers such as Richard

Curtis and Nancy Meyers should be considered auteurs, and their films should be applauded for the ways in which they address romance, gender, and aging. I will continue to advocate for the merits of the genre throughout this dissertation.

Unfortunately, assessments of the romcom as superficial and unworthy of recognition are not new by any means and likely stem, at least in part, from the genre’s historical representation of women and associated with female audiences.

24 Sims, “Genre, Fame, and Gender,” 193–4. 17

Scholars such as Roberta Garrett, Suzanne Ferriss, Mallory Young, and Deborah Jermyn have argued that female viewers are not so easily duped and are aware of the genre’s conventions and its social commentary. On this topic, film scholar Roberta Garrett argues that archaic stereotypes of female viewers further contribute to the genre’s underrepresentation in film scholarship.

…female-oriented genres are still haunted by the hopelessly uncool figure of the dim-witted, impressionable female viewer… this archaic view of the female viewer ignores the way in which the new female-oriented cycles have increasingly incorporated the self-consciousness and framing devices associated with postmodernist aesthetics.25

As Garrett states, stereotypes of female audiences and what they do or do not see still overshadow the reception of new iterations of female-oriented cycles, namely chick flicks and romantic comedies. As Ferriss and Young have written,

If chick flicks are influencing female viewers to accept rather than resist the societal conventions that restrict them, then surely such films are open to censure. But given the complexities of spectatorship and psychology found in response to the woman’s film, it is just as likely that chick flicks allow women to enjoy imaginative possibilities or to indulge in vicarious experience that assists them in returning to the challenges that face them. In fact, it’s only fair to note that in this heyday of postfeminist chick flicks, the number and percentage of women attending college, graduate schools, and professional schools continues to climb.26

Despite these scholars’ assertions that romantic comedy audiences do not mindlessly absorb plots or imitate on-screen characters and their actions, film critics continue to malign romantic comedies for the ways they stage heterosexual social conventions.

25 Garrett, Postmodern Chick Flicks, 7–8. 26 Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young, “Introduction: Chick Flicks and Chick Culture,” in Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young, eds., Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), 16. In her book Postmodern Chick Flicks: The Return of the Woman’s Film, Roberta Garrett argues that archaic stereotypes of female viewers further contribute to the genre’s underrepresentation in film scholarship. Postmodern Chick Flicks: The Return of the Woman’s Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 7–8. 18

In 2008, online columnist Laremy Legel conducted a survey of romantic comedy reception on the popular and “reliable” film review website . Legel found that between 2003 and 2008 only six romantic comedies received the “certified fresh” rating of 75 percent or more and that the films averaged a critic score of 46 percent.27 Romantic comedy scholar Deborah Jermyn posits that romantic comedies are not consistently without merit, nor do they deserve such critiques; rather, these low scores indicate gender bias:

The male bias evident in film journalism has entrenched a tradition in which belittling and denigrating the genre in its most evidently female- focused form has become something of a professional pastime. This has come to constitute the critical consensus, and it need not only be enacted by men—the (precious few) women film journalists in employment may well regularly participate in it too… and why wouldn’t they, if they are hoping strategically to secure themselves a career in a male-dominated profession, where this disdainful position more often than not counts as the accepted “status-quo”…?28

Comments made by critic Manohla Dargis offer further evidence for

Legel’s observations. In an interview with Jezebel, Dargis expressed support for films made by women for a female audience, but could not extend this support to romantic comedies made by filmmakers Nancy Meyer and Nora Ephron.

I personally don’t think either of them is a good filmmaker—they make movies, for me, that are more emotionally satisfying but with barely any aesthetic value at all. I really like Something’s Gotta Give, but I don’t think it’s a good movie.… I’m of two minds. Sometimes I think what [sic] women should do what various and gay audiences have done, which

27 Laremy Legel, “Is Definitely, Maybe the Last of the Real Romantic Comedies?” MTV News, June 23, 2008, accessed December 26, 2017, http://www.mtv.com/news/2759570/is-definitely- maybe-the-last-of-the-real-romantic-comedies/. 28 Deborah Jermyn, Nancy Meyers (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017): 113–4.

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is support women making movies for women. So, does that mean I have to go support Nora Ephron? Fuck no. That’s just like, blech.29

While Dargis is eager to state her support for women making films for women, she refuses to extend that support to the two most prominent female filmmakers of romantic comedies, arguing that their emotional satisfaction comes without aesthetic value. Dargis goes on to explain that her dislike for romantic comedies stems from the fact that “Judd

Apatow makes the best romantic comedies and they’re about men.”30 Dargis does not specify why Apatow’s films are better than Ephron’s or Meyers’s; however, I would argue that her judgment is informed by a critical orthodoxy that works to promote films about men above those focusing on women. As evidenced by Dargis’s comments, this mentality creates a state of cognitive dissonance in which female critics can complain that women do not make “good” romantic comedies while maligning the two most successful women in the genre.31

Online columnist Nico Lang surveyed the discrepancy between male and female critics of female-centered films (specifically those starring Meryl Streep). He found that,

“on average, men were overrepresented in negative reviews by a six percentage-point margin—with 82.1 percent of ‘rotten’ ratings coming from male critics.”32 Lang

29 Irin Carmon, “‘Fuck Them’: Times Critic on Hollywood, Women, & Why Romantic Comedies Suck,” Jezebel, December 14, 2009, accessed December 27, 2017, https://jezebel.com/5426065/fuck-them-times-critic-on-hollywood-women--why-romantic- comedies-suck. 30 Carmon, “‘Fuck Them.’” 31 Darryl Wiggers analyzed the ticket sales of Nora Ephron’s and Nancy Meyers’s films compared to those by auteur directors such as and Quentin Tarantino and found that their top films outsold auteur directors in other genres and the top two men in romantic comedies— and Richard Curtis. Darryl Wiggers, “Enough Already: The Wonderful, Reception of Nancy Meyers,” CineAction 81 (2010): 67. 32 Nico Lang, “The Growing Gender Divide Over ‘Ghostbusters’: Why Movies Starring Women Get Slimed By Male Critics,” Salon, July 12, 2016, accessed December 27, 2017,

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concludes that “the problem is, thus, not just that men do not like female-driven movies and television shows as much as women do but that they have a disproportionate say in how such entertainment is received.”33 In a follow-up study, Lang surveyed 100 movies released since 2000 “that were made and marketed with a female audience in mind.”34

Lang found that, in general, female critics liked these films more often than male critics but that male critics made up a larger percentage of the overall score.35 These negative reviews perpetuate the ridicule of romantic comedies, thus entrenching their “fluff” status and promoting the that romantic comedy audiences are incapable of recognizing good films.

Furthermore, while some may argue that there are films made for “dim-witted” male viewers, the critical reviews of such films are remarkably different from those of romantic comedies. For example, the reality : The Movie (2002) is a continuation of the MTV series by the same name and follows the cast on a series of stunts and pranks. While critics were quick to note the film’s “disgusting, repulsive, grotesque spectacle,” they were equally willing to defend the film.36 Writing for the

Chicago Tribune, critic Mark Caro stated, “Maybe the best way to look at Jackass: The

Movie is as a piece of conceptual art. How far and low will these guys go? What’s the

https://www.salon.com/2016/07/12/the_growing_gender_divide_over_ghostbusters_why_movies _starring_women_get_slimed_by_male_critics/. 33 Lang, “The Growing Gender Divide.” 34 Nico Lang, “The Tomatometer Gender Gap is Real: We Crunched Numbers on Reviews of 100 Films Aimed At Women, and Here’s What We Found,” Salon, July 31, 2016, accessed December 27, 2017, https://www.salon.com/2016/07/31/the_tomatometer_gender_gap_is_real_we_crunched_numbers _on_reviews_of_100_films_aimed_at_women_and_heres_what_we_found/. 35 Lang, “The Tomatometer Gender Gap is Real.” 36 Jackass: The Movie, Rotten Tomatoes, accessed March 19, 2018, accessed March 19, 2018, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jackass_the_movie/.

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pinnacle of pointlessness?”37 Reviewing the film for Variety, Joe Leydon said, “It’s plotless, shapeless—and yet, it must be admitted, not entirely humorless. Indeed, the more outrageous bits achieve a shock-you-into-laughter intensity of almost Dadaist proportions.”38 Michael Rechstshaffen of Hollywood Reporter said, “Critics need a good laugh, too, and this too-extreme-for-TV rendition of the notorious MTV show delivers the outrageous, sickening, sidesplitting goods in steaming, visceral heaps.”39 It would seem that critics are either willing to promote this “dim witted” film as a form of performance art or simply do not care that it is mindless entertainment because they find it funny. Thus, the film’s entertainment factor is not a detractor; rather, it works in the film’s favor.

Conversely, one can find numerous articles, blog posts, and critical reviews of recent romantic comedies in which the author asks if modern romantic comedies truly represent modern women’s lives and whether the films’ apparent lack of accurate representation might signal a of the genre. One review of Home Again (2017) states that “it seems more than a trifle obnoxious to tell a story that unfolds in a bubble of

Hollywood privilege and to present it as if it were something that everyone could relate to.” 40 Others argue that the romantic comedy is no longer a viable genre. Yet relatively few authors ask women what they think about the films: little attention is paid to how

37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Owen Gleiberman, “Film Review: in ‘Home Again,’” Variety, September 5, 2017, accessed February 19, 2018, http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/home-again-review- reese-witherspoon-1202540326/. Melena Ryzik, “Reese Witherspoon Knows Rom-Coms Need an Image Makeover,” New York Times, September 3, 2017, accessed February 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/movies/reese-witherspoon-home-again-younger- men.html?mcubz=1.

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audiences identify with the music in romantic comedies, and how music acts as a medium between character and audience.41 Furthermore, warnings that the romcom is dead are almost as old as the genre itself and, rather than confirming the end of the genre, these warnings inspire new attempts to represent women’s contemporary lives.42

Describing the Audience of Romantic Comedy

Although the previously cited scholars, Garrett, Ferriss, Young, and Jermyn, advocate for the genre and insist on the presence of a knowledgeable audience, they do not consult audience members in their findings. Instead, they make general observations about audience behavior and pleasure.43 It should also be noted that such generalizations are not limited to the study of romantic comedies. Film scholar Rick Altman initially resists the notion that audiences are a homogenous block, and argues that the audience plays an important role in the film industry, which relies on a symbiotic relationship between audience and genre. Yet, again, Altman does not incorporate audience responses; rather, Altman theorizes audience preferences.44

Likewise, musicologists such as Smith and, more recently, Giorgio Biancorosso argue against a binary theoretical model (as advanced by musicologist Claudia Gorbman) in which the audience either fully attends to the music or ignores it, resulting in “heard”

41 Viewer responses tend to differ significantly from critic accounts. As a point of comparison, an audience review of Home Again on the website Rotten Tomatoes states, “A beautifully crafted romantic comedy, well written, current and relatable. Yet, old-fashioned and funny without unnecessary vulgarity.” Home Again, Rotten Tomatoes, accessed March 19, 2018, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/home_again_2017/reviews/?page=12&type=user&sort=. 42 For example, Home Again portrays a woman over forty as career-driven and sexually active. She supports and loves her children but has a life outside of the school carpool lane. 43 Ferriss and Young, “Chick Flicks and Chick Culture,” 15. 44 Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), 25.

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versus “unheard” music.45 Yet Smith’s and Biancorosso’s conclusions about audience listening and musical awareness are entirely theoretical. While their conclusions are not necessarily incorrect, and popular songs in film do seem to fulfill a marketing function, film criticism based on these methods does not account for individual voices and the participatory processes facilitated by film viewership. Additionally, although theory is important for the advancement of scholarly work, I question the value of theorizing mainstream film without consulting the genre’s target audience.

I am not alone in this line of questioning. In 2007 and 2008, film scholar Lauren

Anderson conducted a series of focus group interviews with average audience members in which she sought to understand how audiences related to and identified with romantic comedy characters and music’s role in the identification process.46 Anderson’s focus groups were recruited via the snowball method (one person was contacted and asked to bring to the interview); thus, the groups were comprised of people who had established relationships with one another with the aim of facilitating a natural conversation among participants.47 Anderson’s participants were arranged into four groups based on age and gender: five under-25-year-old women, six over-45-year-old women, four under-25-year-old-men, and four over-45-year-old men.

45 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 1–7. Jeff Smith, “Unheard Melodies? A Critique of Psychoanalytic Theories of Film Music,” in David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds., Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 230–47. Giorgio Biancorosso, Situated Listening: The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 6–12. 46 Lauren Anderson, “Dancing about Architecture? Talking Around Popular Music in Film Soundtracks,” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 188–215; Lauren Anderson, “’That’s How It’s Supposed to Make You Feel’: Talking with Audiences about ‘Both Sides Now’ and Love Actually,” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 9, no. 2 (2012): 206–238. 47 Ibid., 189. 24

Each group watched selected scenes from 10 Things I Hate About You (1999),

What Women Want (2000), and Love Actually (2003). From the group responses,

Anderson noted that conversations within the female groups were linked to aspects of identity:

It seems that if these women recognize aspects of life that relate to their own lived experiences, they tend to deem a film or a character believable or credible, while films or characters that do not relate to their lived experience are seen as ‘contrived’ or unbelievable. Moreover, a successful experience of a film, as well as being believable and associated with familiar life aspects, is usually one that evokes an affective response… Whether funny or sad, what is important is that the affect is strongly felt.48

The male participants were less emotionally engaged with the scenes. In Anderson’s view, their relationship to the film was colored by their gendered expectations:

they did more performative or discursive work in the interviews because they did not necessarily perceive themselves as target audiences; they thus drew lines between themselves and potentially “less critical” viewers by presenting themselves as more knowledgeable, critical, and distanced.49

Furthermore, almost all the participants indicated that the music in each clip matched the mood either of the scene, a specific character, or conveyed a certain mood to the audience.50

Inspired by the importance of identification and mood-matching in the first study,

Anderson conducted a second series of interviews with one participant from each group of the original study. Whereas in the first study, Anderson was concerned with the

48 Ibid., 196. 49 Ibid., 205. This notion that the male participants considered themselves more critical than the target, read female, audience members suggests that stereotypes of “dim witted” female audiences is not limited to critics. 50 Anderson noted that the participants discussed mood matching the most after watching a scene from What Women Want (2000) in which the main character specifically chooses music to relate to a female experience. Ibid., 206. 25

participatory culture of films, in the second study Anderson focused specifically on audience relationships to film music. To narrow the focus of the second study, the interviews focused on the “Both Sides Now” scene from Love Actually. According to

Anderson,

Whether or not the participants liked the scene, the aim of the research was to explore how they expressed their relations to it, and how they talked about what the song and the scene achieved and what it meant for them.51 Through these interviews, Anderson investigated the audience’s meaning-making processes to add qualitative evidence to the theoretical understanding of audience’s knowledge of music and film.

Anderson concluded that in film’s participatory culture, audiences’ sense of self plays an important role in making meaning. This result is important because it implies that an audience member’s feeling of immersion in film is not a binary between exclusion and inclusion. Furthermore, songs are not simply heard or unheard, nor are they fully integrated or external to the film:

The participants’ meaning-making processes are multi-faceted and complex: they draw on a broad range of understandings, relations, associations, and ‘knowledges’ of the song, and bring these to bear on their interpretations of the film scene in a variety of ways. They do not rely solely on information about the song’s history or lyrics, nor do they read the scene as an independent or isolated filmic artefact. Moreover, both song and scene are variously located within the participants’ understandings of their life-worlds and identities, and in this way, they are more or less ‘connected’ knowers. Although an exploratory study such as this cannot provide an all-encompassing model, the different ways in which these participants mobilize their various knowledges point towards an intricate relation between film, popular music, and audiences.52

51 Anderson, “’That’s How It’s Supposed to Make You Feel,’” 207. 52 Ibid., 236. 26

Anderson’s studies indicate that an audience’s participatory culture is more vast and complex than is often accounted for by theoretical models. Moreover, Anderson makes it clear that audiences actively engage with songs when they interpret the meanings of romantic comedies.

Research Methods

Using Anderson’s research as a starting point, I conducted interviews in the summer of 2017.53 Furthering the reception work outlined by Anderson, my own study is rooted in research on the psychology of film viewership and audience identification, genre reception in literary studies, and ethnomusicological and feminist methods, which I will outline below.

In a chapter called “Negative Emotions and Sympathetic Narratives” in his 2009 book Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience, film scholar Carl

R. Plantinga discusses spectatorship and catharsis, using the film Titanic (1997) as a case study. Plantinga introduces the concept of “sympathetic narratives” that encourage psychological closeness with the main characters. He posits that it is this closeness and the resultant catharsis that results in a pleasurable viewing experience.54 Further,

Plantinga argues that in films such as Titanic, catharsis is not so much the purging of negative emotions as it is

the process of dealing with negative emotions in film… a “working through,” a “dealing with,” a “reconceptualization”—in short, the development of a construal that takes into account the negative

53 My study was approved by the Institutional Research Board at The Ohio State University. See Appendix A for IRB information and interview questions. 54 Carl R. Plantinga, Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience (Berkeley: University of Press, 2009), 178–179.

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circumstances of the narrative and frames them in such a way that their overall impact is both cognitively and emotionally satisfying, comforting, and pleasurable.55 Crucial to the success of a sympathetic narrative is audience identification with the character—or Plantinga’s “psychological closeness.” In other words, for catharsis to take place the audience must identify with the character, requiring a balance of the imitation of a real life situation (mimesis) and the believability or realness of that situation

(verisimilitude).

Psychologist Jonathan Cohen describes the process of viewer absorption and identification with a particular character in his chapter “Audience Identification with

Media Characters”:

Identifying with a character means feeling an affinity toward the character that is so strong that we become absorbed in the text and come to an empathic understanding for the feelings the character experiences, and for his or her motives and goals. We experience what happens to characters as if to us while, momentarily at least, forgetting ourselves as audience members, and this intensifies our viewing experience. Thus, identification has both affective (empathy) and cognitive (understanding goals and motives, perspective-taking) components.56

Using the concepts of sympathetic narratives and character identification as a foundation for my research questions, I am interested in whether and how audience members identify with characters and how this identification informs their viewing experience.

Furthermore, in my reception research I seek to understand how this process of character identification shapes cinematic communities.

55 Plantinga, Moving Viewers, 179. 56 Jonathan Cohen, “Audience Identification with Media Characters,” in Psychology of Entertainment, ed. Jennings Bryant and Peter Vorderer (London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), 184– 5.

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Literary scholars Stephanie Lee Moody, Henry Jenkins, and Amy J. Devitt discuss this type of audience identification as a component of participatory culture in which “individuals enact, reproduce, shape, and navigate genres.”57 Henry Jenkins, Katie

Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, and Margaret Weigel argue that

“participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement.”58 Therefore, the meaning-making involved in audience identification is not a strictly individual phenomenon, but requires that the viewer operate within a larger community. As such, generic form is ever changing, molded by the community that uses it. Devitt argues that

generic form, like language itself, is at once shared and unique. Speakers and writers of a language share a common language, but each uses the language in unique ways. Similarly, genres are always shared, but each text embodies that genre in unique ways.59

Based on these social aspects of genre interpretation, Devitt advocates for the use of sociolinguistic methods through which the researcher can identify linguistic patterns and shared knowledge. Interpreters who use these methods consider audience members as individuals who interact with and relate to the narrative in individual ways, rather than as a homogenous block; at the same time, they also consider how these individuals participate socially through shared genres.

57 Stephanie Lee Moody, “Affecting Genre: Women’s Participation with Popular Romance Fiction” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2013), 34. 58 Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, and Margaret Weigel, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (: MacArthur, 2006), 7. 59 Amy J. Devitt, “Re-fusing Form in Genre Study,” in Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein, eds., Genres in the Internet, (: John Benjamins, 2009), 42. 29

Of course, there is a strong possibility that audience members will differ in their reception of romantic comedies and in their opinions on the effectiveness of the music choices in a given film. Rather than dismissing these differing viewpoints as too complex or homogenizing them through the viewpoint of the author alone, we can value these differing perspectives by adopting feminist standpoint analysis. As feminist theorist Mary

Hawkesworth explains,

feminist standpoint analysis accepts plurality as an inherent characteristic of the human condition and uses the comparison of multiple and competing views as a strategy for knowledge production. Rather than presuming the truth of any particular standpoint, feminist standpoint as an analytical tool requires the collection and interrogation of competing claims about the same phenomenon.60

Therefore, in my research I expected and welcomed differing viewpoints and interpretations.

I conducted my own interviews with a small number of romantic comedy audiences in the summer of 2017. Participants were recruited from a grocery store in

Gahanna, Ohio on a Saturday morning when the store was relatively busy. Potential participants filled out an information form and then I contacted them to inquire about their availability for interviews. Six participants were available and split into three interview groups; interview 1 was a woman over the age of 45 and her daughter, under age 25; interview 2 was three women over the age of 45 who did not know each other prior to the study; interview 3 was one woman over the age of 45.

My purpose in the study was to gain a better understanding of film audiences’ awareness of, and reaction to, popular music in romantic comedy films. While my small

60 Mary Hawkesworth, Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation (New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 177–8. 30

sample size and the subjectivity of my interview questions result in ethnographic findings that evade decisive conclusions, the audience responses support Anderson’s findings and suggest that this mode of questioning is useful for gaining a better understanding of an audience’s meaning-making practices. Furthermore, some of my questions were similar to Anderson’s, but with an American, rather than British, audience; I considered how an audience member’s prior engagement with the film and popular song in question alters or enhances the audience member’s reception.

During the study, participants were shown the following film and television scenes:

1. Opening and closing scenes of Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) 2. “Both Sides Now” and “Jump (for My Love)” scenes from Love Actually (2003) 3. Opening and closing scenes of Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) 4. Breakup montage from “Tweek X Craig,” South Park (2015; S19E6)

Before viewing each group of clips, the participants were told the title of the film or show and were asked about any prior knowledge of or pre-conceived ideas about the film or show. Following each group of clips, the participants were asked about their awareness of the music in the scene; any prior knowledge of or relationship to the music; what they thought the music’s function was in the scene; how the music related to the characters, relationships, or plot; if the participant personally related to any of the characters and if that relationship was enhanced or prohibited by the music; and how watching the scene out of its context altered their opinion of the scene. After viewing all the scenes, there was an open discussion about participants’ perception of trends across the scenes.

Participants were also asked whether they understood the scenes as similar to any other media they watched outside of the study.

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Although the questions were directly related to music in the specific scenes, responses indicate that the participants situated their understanding of the scenes within a broader knowledge of the romantic comedy genre, film, and television. Additionally, throughout the course of the interviews, participants relied on each other, through eye contact and verbal cues, to confirm and reinforce their statements. While this is unsurprising in an established relationship, such as the and daughter from interview 1, for participants who did not know each other prior to the study, as in interview 2, this joint work of interpretation indicates that meaning-making takes place within a community of participants.

While it is impossible to speak for every woman’s experience and counterproductive to try and formulate a generalized female perspective, the alignment between Anderson’s study and my own suggests that the interview method offers rich evidentiary material for analyzing audience reception. Although my sample size was extremely small, these interviews demonstrated that these audience members are aware of music and its functions. Even though I asked participants to comment on the music, they relied on their previous experiences and knowledge of film and television music to make informed observations.

Although my study confirms some of the theories outlined at the beginning of this chapter, it calls others into question. The importance of the music to participants in each of these conversations confirms that music in romantic comedies is not a simple “insert love song here” formula. Rather, the genre and its viewers demand a connection between song, character, and narrative to achieve the maximum emotional and cathartic affect.

Focus group participants frequently commented that the music facilitated a psychological

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closeness between the viewer and character; while many of the participants had not seen the films prior to the study, they related to and empathized with the characters and discussed the importance of music in this process. During their discussions, participants increasingly relied on each other for support and validation, enacting the community- building aspects of the movie-going experience.

Thus, while one role of songs in romantic comedies might be to market the film and sell a soundtrack, economics is not the only motivation for song in romantic comedies. Audiences recognize and desire the emotional aspects of these songs, relate them to their lives, and remember them as hallmarks of the genre. To dismiss romantic comedies and their music as superficial is to discredit audience members of the meaning- making processes that occur during and after the film. To assume an audience’s reactions based on theoretical models or an author’s personal conclusions reduces the diversity of women’s lives and their varied identification processes. Therefore, before making sweeping claims about audience viewing practices—especially in regard to romantic comedies—scholars should consider the merits of ethnographic methods.

Furthermore, it is important that we question what merit these films hold for audiences and how the films relate to their lives, both in the moment and across decades. Such accounts shed light on the serious social and political work of the romcom genre, its relation to women’s contemporary lives, and its role in shaping media portrayals of women. To return to the anecdote that opened this chapter, it was not mere recognition of a popular song or a desire to purchase a soundtrack that elicited the woman’s reaction to Bridget Jones’s Baby in the theater. Her statement that she liked how the film made her feel (disregarding the

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fact that she did not like the film as much as the first) points to emotions elicited by the music and a potentially ingrained knowledge of popular song’s connotative meaning in the context of the film, series, and genre. Along these lines, I will include responses from audience members throughout my dissertation, shedding light on how women feel about romcoms, their heroines, and their musical conventions.61

When scholars or critics dismiss romantic comedies due to their overt entertainment appeal, they overlook potentially groundbreaking uses of popular music in film. In this dissertation I analyze the emergence of popular music conventions beginning in the early with an emphasis on their function within the narrative, their relation to the cinematic conventions of earlier forms, and how these conventions are borrowed, reconfigured, and combined outside the romantic comedy genre.

Furthermore, I argue that musical conventions are established and altered in postmillennial romantic comedies, transforming the genre in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As art historian Jonathan Gilmore states, “the goals or ends that define a given practice may have changed radically over time. But their status and effectiveness as practice-defining ends depend on their being taken in some sense as stable and enduring by those who engage in .”62 Thus, the narrative conventions that define romantic comedy as a genre have remained overtly stable—couple meets, breaks up, reunites—while the ways in which these conventions are deployed musically and the feminist messages attached to them have changed over time. This dissertation

61 I chose to transcribe these responses verbatim—including stutters and pauses—to accurately reflect the nature of the individuals and their interactions. 62 Gilmore, The Life of a Style, 76. 34

investigates these conventions to shed light on their dramatic and social purposes, development over time, and contributions to the genre.

In the first chapter I outline the musical conventions of postmillennial romantic comedies, including the introductory song and its connection to the title song of the

1960s and 1980s; the breakup montage; the closing song; and other uses of popular music, including diegetic music chosen by the character and nondiegetic music as marker of character development and as narrative framing device. In the second chapter, I focus on a series of case case-studies exemplifying each of these conventions.

The third chapter examines the transformation of these conventions throughout the early 2000s, including incremental changes to the introduction and closing songs that convey new meanings to the audience. These changes are examined in greater detail in two case-studies: Trainwreck (2015) and Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016).

The final chapter focuses on the incorporation of romantic comedy musical conventions in other film and television genres. Numerous examples across various

(sub)genres, including buddy films, action films, , and television drama, make it clear that the functions of popular music outlined in the previous chapters are not limited to the romantic comedy; rather, they are shaping the portrayal of relationships in a variety of media contexts.

Throughout each chapter I involve responses from a series of interviews with audience members about their understanding of popular music in the genre, through these discussions I seek greater understanding of how generic expectations are maintained or subverted by the music in postmillennial romantic comedies and how these expectations pair with or negate the marketing ploys endorsed by other film music scholars.

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Chapter 1: “All by Myself”: Establishing Postmillennial Conventions Through Song

Film genres are defined by their conventions—the set of pervasive characteristics that audiences come to expect from the genre. According to scholar Rick Altman, the term “genre” denotes a variety of things:

• genre as blueprint, as a formula that precedes, programs and patterns industry production; • genre as structure, as the formal framework on which individual films are founded; • genre as label, as the name of a category central to the decisions and communications of distributors and exhibitors; • genre as contract, as the viewing position required by each genre film of its audience.1

In other words, producers use the blueprint to capitalize on what is selling well and minimize their financial risk. The structure is a set of generic conventions.

The label establishes audience expectations, enabling the marketing of the film.

When audiences view the film, they carry expectations of the genre: if the film subverts the expectations set up by the blueprint, structure, and label, the contract is broken. These conventions are often structural, cueing the audience’s attention to specific points in the narrative, such as darkness cueing the start of the action in a , a shootout at the end of a , the car chase in the middle of an , or an epic battle at the end of a .

As important as these structural conventions are in establishing and maintaining audience expectations, the accompanying musical conventions are just as crucial: tremolo strings underscoring the horror villain, the suspenseful chord before the shootout, the pounding in the car chase, or the driving, brass-laden underscoring during the

1 Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), 14. 36

superhero battle. The strategic placement of this music helps us understand the plot of the present film by recalling to our ears, eyes, and minds similar plot points throughout each genre’s history. These filmic-narrative strategies are continually redefined and codified with each generic cycle.

As outlined in the introduction to this dissertation, each iteration of the romantic comedy genre has its own set of tropes. Nonetheless, several cinematic conventions appear consistently in each cycle and align with the genre’s narrative arc:

couple meets  couple breaks up  couple reunites

The couple’s initial meeting, also called a “meet-cute,” typically portrays a situation in which “the lovers-to-be first encounter each other in a way which forecasts their eventual union.”2 The couple’s path to happiness is blocked by a variety of obstacles, causing the couple to break up. However, the couple overcomes the obstacles, and reunion is often preceded by “the embarrassing gesture,” or “grand romantic gesture,” in which “one of the lovers [submit] to public humiliation in order to prove that love is more important than dignity.”3 Other romantic comedy conventions include masquerade, hierarchy of knowledge, and self-reflexivity in which there is a ruse that the audience knows but the characters do not and, in the end, the film pokes fun at its own conventions.4

The proliferation and consistency of these conventions, particularly in connection with the narrative arc, have come to define the genre, so much so that eschewing any particular convention calls the generic label into question. (Is it really a romantic comedy

2 Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (London: Wallflower, 2007), 12. 3 McDonald, Romantic Comedy, 13. 4 A description of the conventions of each romantic comedy cycle can be found in the introduction to this dissertation and is explained in further detail in McDonald, Romantic Comedy, 20; 45; 67; 91. 37

if the couple doesn’t end up together?) Thus, audience members attending a postmillennial romantic comedy today would likely expect each of these structural conventions to play at least a minor role in the film’s plot. Supporting these structural conventions are popular songs that provide vital commentary on the events within the narrative arc, telling us more about how the couple meet, breakup, and reunite. Although these popular music conventions are typical in postmillennial romantic comedies, they did not originate after the year 2000; rather, they began in various earlier stages of the genre and evolved at different times in its history.

In this chapter, I trace the origin and evolution of the introductory song, breakup montage, and closing song conventions through several romantic comedies of varying reputation, describing the role music conventions play in past generic cycles and their increasing importance in the postmillennial cycle. This description lays the groundwork for the third chapter, in which I examine how these conventions interact with other uses of popular music in postmillennial romantic comedies, arguing that popular songs play a crucial role in demarcating character types and outlining character development. By examining the origins and codification of conventions, I aim to uncover the dialogue between postmillennial romantic comedies and their history—to better understand how audiences might view postmillennial romantic comedies and their conventions in their historical context.

The groundwork for this discussion comes from a study of much older comedic forms: Mary Hunter’s discussion of eighteenth-century Viennese buffa conventions in her book The Culture of in Mozart’s Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment.

Hunter asserts that composers were in dialogue with previous opera buffa performances

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and that quotations of previous operas contributed to the pleasure of the genre. Similarly, postmillennial romantic comedies make reference to previous cycles through cinematic and music conventions; part of the pleasure of the genre results from the audience’s recognition of these references.5 Therefore, after a brief explanation of the conventions, I take us to the past with early iterations of the romantic comedy, and then trace song conventions through postmillennial examples. Although this analysis is detailed, homing in on specific songs and scenes, the chapter lays the groundwork for case-studies in the second chapter and a broader consideration of the social implications of the postmillennial cycle—that is, how the cycle relates to third-wave feminist and postfeminist movements.

In the postmillennial romcom, the conventional introductory song introduces the main character(s), presents their personalities and desires, and establishes a frame of reference for the story. Whereas the function and placement of the introductory song remain the same across films, the style of the introductory song and the information it conveys about the characters depends on the individual film. The introduction song convention is an outgrowth of the title song tradition that began in the 1950s, in which a song would underscore the and introduce the film’s (typically female) protagonist.6

Functioning in tandem with the title song, the conventional closing song underscores the couple’s reunion, reaffirms their love, and foreshadows the longevity of their relationship. The closing song often appears as a reprise of the title song, a strategic

5 Mary Hunter, The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 30. 6 The title sequence may or may not be at the opening of the film, but the song functions in a similar way regardless of the sequence’s placement. 39

reappearance where the song is reheard in the new context to resolve the initial conflict.

Similar in function to an opera , closing songs often highlight an emotionally static moment and offer insight into the characters’ thoughts and motivations. Thus, even as the song’s style helps to define the overall tone of the film, the lyrics of these songs also have explicit connections to the scene and the character. Therefore, my analysis of these songs and scenes takes up the lyric content of these songs and their role in shaping audience understanding. In the following discussion, I examine the origin, development, and connections of the title song and the closing song conventions in four earlier iterations of the romantic comedy: Pillow Talk (1959), Pretty in Pink (1986), Can’t Buy Me Love

(1987), and Pretty Woman (1990).

The Convention of the Introductory Song

Although the introductory song in a postmillennial romantic comedy does not necessarily share the title of the film its function is an outgrowth of the title song tradition. From the very beginning of a film, the inclusion of a title song of the same name as the film points to a characteristic, narrative aspect, or central conflict of the feature.7 The romantic comedy title song tradition emerged during the sex comedy cycle of the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in the Doris Day/ films, such as

Pillow Talk (1959). This film’s plot centers on two tenants who share (and fight over) a phone party line. Following the cinematic conventions of its generic cycle, the film features a battle of wits, a ruse involving disguise or masquerade, and a subsequent

7 Jeff Smith discusses the development of the title song in non-romantic comedy films, such as High Noon (1952) in his book The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music, 59–60.

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hierarchy of knowledge in which the audience knows the ruse but the characters do not.8

From its opening, the film sets the stage for Jan and Brad’s romantic union—their

“pillow talk”—through the title song (“Pillow Talk,” Doris Day). Day sings about nights alone talking to her pillow, her desire to find the man marry, and the repeated lyric “there must be a boy.” The song’s lyrics thus explain the film’s title as a reference to lovers talking in bed and the heroine’s desire for a partner; however, these expectations are overturned by the contentiousness of Jan and Brad’s relationship. Foreshadowing their eventual union, the “Pillow Talk” is used as orchestral underscoring throughout the film and then the song returns, in full, in the . The title song thereby introduces, foreshadows, and underscores the narrative, establishing, recalling, and fulfilling the song’s meaning.

In the 1980s, the title song retained the introductory aspect of its original function, illuminating the film’s title and its connection to the film’s plot. At this stage in romcom history, however, the title song did not reappear throughout the film the way it did in

Pillow Talk. Situated between the radical romantic comedy of the 1970s and the neo- traditional romantic comedy cycle beginning in 1989, Pretty in Pink (1986) and Can’t

Buy Me Love (1987) center around the romantic lives of teenagers and build on the masquerade and hierarchy of knowledge conventions established in earlier iterations of the genre—specifically, screwball comedy. Musically and cinematically, these transitional films include features of numerous romantic comedy cycles.

Pretty in Pink stars Molly Ringwald as unpopular high school student Andie

Walsh. The film opens with The Psychedelic Furs’ 1986 recording of “Pretty in Pink”

8 The film was considered risqué for its time because of its split-screen camera shots that showed the two characters in bed and the bathtub “together.” 41

and the title sequence establishes the film’s setting and central character, panning over

Andie’s rundown neighborhood, centering on Andie putting on pink tights and a dress

(reinforcing that Andie is the subject of the song), then cutting to Andie joining her best friend, Duckie (Jon Cryer), at school. Andie is eventually asked on a date (and then to the prom) by one of the most popular boys in school, Blane (Andrew McCarthy), much to

Duckie’s distress, as he is convinced that Blane will only hurt Andie. Giving in to pressure from his friends, Blane breaks off his relationship with Andie; Andie attends the prom alone, wearing a pink dress that she altered herself. There, she reconciles her friendship with Duckie, who encourages her to forgive Blane. The film ends with Andie and Blane reuniting in the school parking lot.

Although the song does not return as underscoring during the film, the lyrics of

“Pretty in Pink” have loose connections to the film’s plot, referring to numerous lovers, and the song’s presence establishes Andie as the protagonist. The song’s most overt connection is to Andie’s homemade pink prom dress at the end of the film—an external representation of her eccentric personality. The lyric “isn’t she pretty in pink” in the opening of the film foreshadows the prom dress and Duckie’s and Blane’s reactions upon seeing Andie at the prom. Likewise, the dress at the end of the film recalls the song and the film’s title, confirming the connections between song and title strongly enough that there is no need to replay the song at the end of the film.

Can’t Buy Me Love (1987) makes more overt narrative connections between song and title. The film opens with ’ “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and the words appear on the title screen in a temporal alignment with the song’s lyrics. The title sequence then opens with the film’s protagonist, Ronnie (), mowing lawns and pining

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after one of the most popular in school, Cindy (Amanda Peterson). After Cindy ruins one of her mother’s suede outfits, Ronnie offers her $1,000 to replace the outfit if she agrees to be his girlfriend for one month. Cindy agrees and Ronnie gains entry to the popular clique; although the two develop true feelings for each other, Ronnie “breaks up” with Cindy when the month is over, the popular clique discovers the scheme, and Ronnie returns to unpopularity. By the end of the film, however, Ronnie manages to convince the students to overcome their differences and the film ends with Cindy and Ronnie riding a lawnmower into the sunset, underscored by a reprise of “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

In the film’s opening, the title song sets up Ronnie’s attempt to literally “buy love” by paying Cindy to be his girlfriend; however, the song also serves as a warning that his plan will fail (“money can’t buy me love”). When the song returns at the end of the film, the same lyrics are heard from a new perspective, within the context of Ronnie and Cindy’s true relationship, and Ronnie’s preference for the relationship over money or popularity. Whereas the return of the title song at the end of Pillow Talk marked fulfilled wishes, the return of the title song at the end of Can’t Buy Me Love modifies the meaning of the lyrics through the context of its presentation in the film. Pretty in Pink and Can’t

Buy Me Love mark a significant change in the title song’s function—not only does the song foreshadow narrative events and underscore the protagonist’s desires, it also acts as commentary and conveys character development.

One of the first films of the neo-traditional romantic comedy cycle, Pretty Woman

(1990), likewise contextualizes the title song to convey alternative meanings, this time by placing the song later in the film. As mentioned in the introductory chapter, film scholars have denounced Pretty Woman for its inclusion of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman”: they

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called it a marketing ploy, meant to entice audiences to purchase the soundtrack. In his analysis of Pretty Woman (1990), Jeff Smith wrote:

By changing the title to Pretty Woman, Touchstone downplayed the seamy subtext of the film in favor of its Cinderella-ish romance. Moreover, by highlighting the feminine charms of its star, both the title and the Roy Orbison song that inspired it helped spur Pretty Woman to a $178 million box office gross and soundtrack sales of more than three million copies. In an effort to duplicate Pretty Woman’s remarkable success, several more recent romantic comedies have employed this cross-marketing strategy with varying results. Representative titles include It Could Happen to You, Only You, Something to Talk About, Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Fools Rush In, One Fine Day, and Addicted to Love.9

Although Smith later acknowledges that pop songs in films can serve a narrative function, he discusses this function in relation to non-romantic comedy films and continues to emphasize the economic motivation for producing compilation scores. While it may be true that filmmakers only included “Pretty Woman” to market the film, the film also aligns with, and alters, the generic function of the title song; thus, the song’s presence is not reducible to a mere marketing ploy.

In Pretty Woman, business tycoon () offers prostitute

Vivian Ward () $3,000 and a new wardrobe if she will pretend to be his girlfriend for six days, accompanying him to numerous social gatherings as he attempts to close a business deal. Vivian accepts the deal; the subsequent montage, underscored by

“Pretty Woman,” shows Vivian shopping for a new wardrobe at high-end retailers throughout Beverly Hills, catching men’s eyes on the street, and telling off a store owner who had refused to serve her the previous day. The film works against generic conventions in that the title song is not part of the title sequence: rather, it is displaced to

9 Jeff Smith, The Sounds of Commerce, 206. 44

later in the film as part of Vivian’s material transformation from prostitute to high-class

“pretty woman.” Additionally, the song’s lyrics ironically juxtapose Vivian’s profession with her act of walking down the street—“Pretty woman, walkin’ down the street/Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet.” Through this juxtaposition, the song highlights Vivian’s changing social status from “street walker” to respectable woman walking down the street.

Furthermore, the song foreshadows Edward’s attraction upon seeing the transformed Vivian and their eventual union: “Pretty woman, say you’ll with me.”

While these meanings could theoretically be achieved by placing the song during the title sequence, placing the song later in the film allows it to visually and sonically articulate the change in Vivian’s dress, status, and confidence, strengthening the connection between song and plot.

Although the conventionally anticipated title song is placed later in the film, other popular music is present in the title sequence. Edward and Vivian are each underscored by their own introductory songs—Go West’s “King of Wishful Thinking” and

Christopher Otcasek’s cover of Iggy Pop’s “Real Wild (Wild One),” respectively.

Edward’s song is cued after he breaks up with his girlfriend over the phone, borrows a co-worker’s car, and drives to Hollywood. The song indicates Edward’s ability to move past the breakup through sheer will (“I’ll get over you, I know I will, because I’m the king of wishful thinking”). As the title sequence seemingly ends, the song fades out, and almost immediately Vivian’s song enters. We see Vivian dressing in lingerie and sneaking out of her apartment to avoid her landlord, interspersed with shots of Edward driving around the city. The two characters are immediately juxtaposed visually

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(Edward’s suit versus Vivian’s lingerie) and musically (Edward’s bright, - heavy British pop versus Vivian’s back-beat driven, electric guitar-heavy rock). Through these juxtapositions, the plot’s central conflict emerges: how can a business tycoon and a prostitute fall in love?

These contrasts and the displaced title song exemplify the introductory song’s emerging purpose and importance in comedies from the 1950s through the 1980s, and its

(eventual) standardization in postmillennial romantic comedies. In the following section,

I further explore the convention of the introductory song, its continued role in establishing the plot through a more intimate commentary on the protagonist’s inner thoughts, and its connection with the closing song through an analysis of three characteristic postmillennial romantic comedies: The Wedding Planner (2001), How to

Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), and 13 Going on 30 (2004).

The Introductory and Closing Songs in the Postmillennial Romcom

In The Wedding Planner, the song “Somewhere My Baby Waits for Me” (Lisa

Stansfield, 2001) underscores the title credits and a montage of a Barbie-doll wedding.

The song fades into Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” and we see a little girl wearing a bridal veil; she holds up Barbie and Ken, telling the dolls, “From now on, he’ll take care of you and you’ll take care of him. He’ll make you big bologna sandwiches, and you’ll buy him new socks and a white briefcase. And you’ll live happily ever after. You’re the luckiest girl in the world, Barbie.” This final statement is repeated and the close-up of

Barbie transforms into that of a real woman, as the title character, Mary Fiore (Jennifer

Lopez), repeats to a bride, “You’re the luckiest girl in the world.” At two minutes into the

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movie, the opening song and scene establish the main character, including her background, profession, and desires. Through the song’s lyrics, we are presented with a hopeless-romantic version of young Mary, who idealizes love, marriage, and the “happily ever after,” believing that one day she’ll meet her soulmate and, presumably, have her own Barbie-perfect wedding.10

Someday I’ll meet that someone I’ve dreamed about He may live around the globe far across the sea But somewhere my baby waits for me I don’t know where I’ll meet him, I don’t know when I only know that someday my search will end One find day I’ll turn around and there he will be Yeah, somewhere my baby waits for me

We, and the wedding participants, assume that because Mary precisely orchestrates weddings and helps women achieve their own happily ever after, that she must still hold these idealized views on love and marriage, perhaps even having the “perfect” love life herself.

Following the opening, though, Mary is re-introduced with a new song: “In Good

Time” (Jessica Sheely, 2001). The song underscores a montage of Mary post-wedding, eating dinner while watching Antiques Roadshow, cleaning her apartment, and sleeping alone in a queen-sized bed. While the song retains the idea that there is something (or someone) waiting for Mary, its words present the idea that Mary has the autonomy to find and take on the world, on her own terms:

We can make believe That everything makes sense And there’s no need to worry now ‘Cause you’re not like all the rest

10 Additionally, the prominent synthesizer and drum track overlaid with bright, auto-tuned female vocals of “Somewhere My Baby Waits for Me” establish the early-2000s pop sound that remains consistent throughout the film’s soundtrack. 47

Living with only your heart A new day arrives and it’s only the start Of something already here The sky’s open up And it’s perfectly clear It’s all waiting for you You can take the world And give it your own name It’s all there waiting for you No matter what you find You will never be the same11

Taken together, these songs foreshadow the standard romcom formula: Mary will meet a man, fall in love, encounter obstacles, and eventually unite with her lover.

The Wedding Planner establishes and fulfills these expectations through a series of generic tropes—the male lead, Steve (Matthew McConaughey), is engaged to be married and Mary is hired as the wedding planner. Mary agrees to marry a man she does not love, but breaks off the engagement and leaves a high-profile wedding job to pursue

Steve, who breaks off his own engagement. Mary and Steve unite in a San Francisco park and the film ends with the song “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” (, 2001), establishing that Mary cares about love, not wealth, fulfilling the romantic ambitions introduced at the film’s opening.12 Romantic comedy scholars Alan Dodd and Martin

Fradley notice that the song conflates Lopez’s onscreen and musical personas in the closing sequence, which creates a tension between the song’s anti-materialist message

11 Additionally, the lyrics recall the song “” (Sonny Curtis, 1970) which served as the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977). Thus, The Wedding Planner is musically contextualized within an alternate media tradition that portrays successful and autonomous female characters. 12 Alan Dodd and Martin Fradley, “‘I Believe that if I Haven’t Found my Charming Already that I Will; or He Will Find Me, if He Hasn’t Already’: Jennifer Lopez, Romantic Comedy, and Contemporary Stardom” in Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 195.

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and “the film’s polished glamour.”13 Furthermore, the song highlights the racial ambiguity of Lopez’s character, with elements of pop, hip-hop, soul, and R&B that run counter to the Italian heritage of the character. Dodd and Fradley claim that the song draws on Lopez’s “to-be-looked-at ethnic difference whilst simultaneously seeking to contain it.”14 This synthesis between Lopez’s musical and cinematic personas further complicates the relationship between music’s narrative function and its economic purpose in romantic comedies. This relationship between real-life and fictional knowledge suggests that although marketing is not the only reason to use a song, as some scholars might suggest, it certainly is a factor and can influence the choices made by music supervisors and filmmakers.

The two introductory songs of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) establish the two main characters, Andie Anderson () and Ben Barry (Matthew

McConaughey)— “Catch Me If You Can” (The Beu Sisters, 2003) and “Who Do You

Love?” (George Thorogood, 1978), respectively.15 Andie’s song underscores images of fashion magazine excerpts; “How To: Get a Better Bod in 5 Days,” “How To: Feng Shui

Your Apartment,” and “How To: Talk Your Way Out of a Ticket,” followed by the film’s title. These images are interspersed with shots of Andie exercising, rearranging furniture, and arguing with a traffic officer. The title sequence fades into Andie working on a new article, “How To: Bring Peace to Tajikistan,” implying that although she writes fluff articles for a women’s magazine, she has ambitions of writing about “real news.” And, while the song’s lyrics taken alone refer to love and relationships, within the context of

13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 The juxtaposing introductory songs in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days function like those in Pretty Woman. 49

the opening scene the lyrics “Do you really want it, if you want it you can get it” emphasize Andie’s career aspirations. Ben’s song, by contrast, underscores images of him wearing a leather jacket, riding a motorcycle, and navigating New York City traffic establishing him as a “bad boy”/womanizer.

Andie and Ben are forced together when she is assigned to write an article on

“How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” while Ben must make a woman fall in love with him to secure a diamond advertising campaign. The ruse is eventually discovered by both characters at the advertisement launch party. Although the couple breaks up, Ben still secures the job and Andie admits that she let the love of her life get away, publishes her article, and earns a promotion. Nonetheless, Andie quits her job and prepares for an interview in Washington, D.C., where she will be able to write what she wants. On her way to the airport, she is stopped by Ben, who has read the article and accuses her of taking the interview as an excuse to run away, not because it would allow her journalistic freedom. Andie agrees to stay with Ben in New York City, and their reunion is underscored by “Weight of the World” (Chantal Kreviazuk, 2002). The lyrics of the song reinforce Ben’s observation and Andie’s decision to stay, “I used to carry the weight of the world/And now all I want to do is spread my wings and fly.” The song also recalls

Andie’s introductory song, contextualizing it back into its original meaning as a love song and confirming that Andie is no longer afraid to fall in love. Furthermore, the songs used in this film are, overall, contemporary with the film and the synthesized, bright female-pop aesthetic differentiates the film from other romantic comedies of the decade that typically borrow older songs.

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The film 13 Going on 30 (2004) juxtaposes childhood longing and adult realizations through its introductory song. The film opens with “Head Over Heels” (The

Go-Gos, 1984), as the young heroine, Jenna (Christa B. Allen, child; , adult) endures an awkward school photoshoot, tries to convince the popular girl clique to attend her birthday party that afternoon, and walks home with her best friend, Matt (Sean

Marquette, child and , adult). At her birthday party, Matt gives Jenna a homemade dollhouse and sprinkles it with wishing dust. When the popular girls arrive,

Jenna shoves the dollhouse in a closet and is rude to Matt to win over the clique; Matt leaves to get his Casio keyboard and the girls tell Jenna to hide in the closet while they send in one of the popular high school boys to play a game of “seven minutes in

Heaven.” After an embarrassing encounter in which Jenna mistakes Matt for the popular boy, she cries in the closet wishing she could be “thirty, flirty, and thriving” as advertised in one of her teen magazines.

The wishing dust from the dollhouse sprinkles onto Jenna and she wakes up in a

Manhattan apartment as a thirty-year-old, successful business woman. However, during the film, Jenna learns that she and Matt are no longer friends because she became cruel and ruthless. Matt is engaged to another woman, rejects Jenna’s attempt to reconcile, and gives her the dollhouse again. Sitting outside Matt’s wedding, Jenna cries over the dollhouse and is wished back into the closet, returning to her 13-year-old life. Matt opens the closet door and Jenna tackles him to the ground. The film ends with adult Jenna and

Matt, married, moving into a dollhouse style house in the suburbs underscored by “” (, 1985). Even though the film ends in a 2000s setting, the use of

Madonna to close the film brings us back, aurally, to The Go-Gos at the beginning.

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The introductory song immediately establishes the film’s 1980s setting while simultaneously conveying Jenna’s melodramatic tween attitude and foreshadowing both the time-travel element of the plot and adult Jenna’s realization that gaining popularity wasn’t worth losing Matt:

Been running so long I’ve nearly all track of time In every direction I couldn’t see the warning signs I must be losin’ it ‘Cause my mind plays tricks on me It looked so easy But you know looks sometimes deceive

The introductory song thus establishes the film’s central conflict and resolution—Jenna will realize and rectify her mistakes while the closing song confirms Jenna’s transformation and her love for Matt.

In The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and 13 Going On 30, the introductory song is used in standard ways: to introduce characters, establish the plot, and foreshadow events. The ending scenes and songs of these films are also typical for the postmillennial romantic comedy: they frame the couple in the shot and confirm their love through the words of the song.

The Convention of the Breakup Song

Whereas the tradition of introductory and closing songs can be traced to the sex comedy of the 1950s and ‘60s, the breakup song is less conventional in these early films.

It appears with more regularity in the 1990s neo-romantic comedy. The breakup song typically underscores a montage of the separated couple as they go about their single lives; for example, reflecting on the relationship, coping, and improving themselves. The

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song lyrically reinforces the despair and longing felt by both partners. After the montage, one or both characters realize that they were happier in the relationship and make attempts at reconciliation. Examples of this type of breakup montage are found in Pretty

Woman, “It Must Have Been Love” (Roxette, 1990); Fools Rush In (1997), “I Wonder”

(Chris Isaak, 1996); and Runaway Bride (1999), “Blue Eyes Blue” (Eric Clapton, 1999).

Some postmillennial romantic comedies continue to use breakup montages of this conventional form, such as “Love Her for That” (Teddy Thompson, 2000) in 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002). By the early 2000s, however, the breakup montage was a cliché, and many films presented an altered version of the convention. In the following section I analyze the varying ways in which filmmakers alter the convention of the breakup montage: first in the film Loser (2000), which uses a popular song associated with a critically acclaimed film to position itself within the genre; then in Down to You (2000), which uses multiple songs to underscore a single montage and employs a diegetic song chosen by a character.

Loser centers around college freshman Paul (). Paul is attracted to a young woman in his English class, Dora (Mena Suvari), who is simultaneously in a relationship with the English professor. When Dora loses her job, has no place to stay, is rejected by the professor, and is drugged at a party, Paul comes to her rescue. The two pseudo-date while Dora recovers but when she decides to take back the professor, Paul is devastated, cueing a breakup montage underscored by “Scarborough Fair” (Simon and

Garfunkel, 1966). The montage features Paul reading outside, watching Dora and the professor talking after class, and researching egg donation risks (recalling a previous conversation with Dora).

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On its own, the montage is unremarkable, aligning perfectly with a decade-long convention; however, when heard and seen in the context of other films, the montage becomes meaningful because it has so frequently been present in previous exemplars of the genre. The song “Scarborough Fair” underscores a similar breakup montage in The

Graduate (1967) in which the main character, Ben (Dustin Hoffman), pines over Elaine

(Katharine Ross)—listlessly watching a cigarette burn, watching Elaine from his car, aimlessly staring out his bedroom window, watching Elaine pack her car and leave for university, and a zoomed-in shot of the beginning of a letter with “Elaine” written multiple times.

In his discussion of the montages in , David R. Shumway discusses how songs in the film create nostalgia:

The Graduate is not presented with a voice-over telling us that we will get a glimpse of that narrator’s past, but its bildungsroman-like plot strongly implies it. The [“Scarborough Fair”] sequence telescope[s] the diegetic time just as our memories select certain experiences for detailed preservation and consign others to be classified as examples of our larger experience. . . [Montages] are also presented as folk songs, distinguished by their simple melodies and sparse accompaniment from “Sounds of Silence” and “Mrs. Robinson,” which have rock . In short, the lyrics and the music of [“Scarborough Fair”] recall past times. In 1967, rock ’n’ roll was young enough that it could not readily produce nostalgia.16

Thus, although the song creates a sense of nostalgia for a distant past through its elegiac text and folk in The Graduate, the same song becomes meta-nostalgic in

16 David R. Shumway, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Sound Tracks and the Production of Nostalgia,” Cinema Journal 38, no. 2 (1999): 37–38.

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Loser—evoking (for certain audiences) the soundscape of 1960s and the decade as presented by The Graduate.17

While the montage in Loser is not a shot-for-shot remake of the montage in The

Graduate, it pays homage to the latter in several cinematic ways—showing the main character depressed and watching his former lover from afar. Additionally, there are plot similarities between the two films. Ben and Elaine go on a couple of dates, but whereas

Elaine is interested in a relationship, Ben is initially hesitant because of his affair with

Elaine’s mother. Similarly, Paul and Dora are never officially a couple; rather, Paul has built up the idea of a relationship in his mind and Dora is in a relationship with an older man.

In a 2000 interview with The LA Times, director discussed the reference to The Graduate, drawing parallels between the films’ lead actors, Hoffman and Biggs, stating, “The Graduate wasn’t just a career maker, but an archetype maker… the film [turned] Hoffman into a leading man despite his not being exactly the Robert

Redford type, just as Biggs isn’t the type.”18 Thus, “Scarborough Fair” in Loser gestures to internal and external narratives—Paul’s feelings post-“breakup” and the audience’s memory of the song in The Graduate, including associative understandings of that film, its narrative, and its meanings. Therefore, the montage is structured as a standard breakup montage but is intertextual, calling on the audience’s memory of earlier moments in .

17 It should also be noted, however, that this is an imprecise nostalgia with no clear narrative motivation or relevancy for the link to the 1960s. 18 Steve Hochman, “He’s Not the Type, but He’s the Lead,” The LA Times, July 16, 2000, accessed November 13, 2017, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/16/entertainment/ca-53594. Biggs played Ben in the Broadway version of The Graduate, creating a meta-moment for the knowledgeable viewer. 55

The conventional breakup montage typically uses one song paired with a series of images to convey a passage of time; however, multiple songs can also be used to reinforce the time-lapse function. Down to You features a couple, Al (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and Imogen (), recounting how they met in college and the ups and downs of their relationship. Although the film follows the standard romantic comedy arc, Al and

Imogen’s breakup does not cue a montage of the inconsolable characters trying to function on their own. Instead, Al narrates the post-breakup and reminisces about

Imogen, opening a box of pictures, mixtapes, and items from the relationship before drinking a bottle of her shampoo and passing out.

This sequence is underscored by three different songs, each of which could suitably underscore a traditional breakup montage: “Didn’t Mean to Do You Harm”

(Craig Wedren and James Harry, 2000), “Shine on Me” (Velvet Crush, 1999), and “Spun

Out” (Psychic Rain, 2000). While the narration and songs underscore snippets of montage, the songs themselves seem to take on the time-lapse function, conveying Al’s continuing heartbreak and inability to move past the relationship, commenting in different ways on the breakup and giving the impression of Al’s multi-stage grief and coping process. In this scene, we see Al cue “Spun Out” on the stereo before drinking the shampoo and fainting outside the frame.19

Multiple scholarly studies describe the real-life analogue of the breakup montage, explaining how people experiencing sadness choose sad music with the goal of enhancing

19 The music in (2000) is an example of a continuous breakup song cued by the character as it underscores the main character, Rob’s commentary on his failed relationships. The film opens with Rob’s misery and he poses a question to the audience, “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

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or changing their affective states.20 In one such study, entitled “On a Blue Note:

Depressed People’s Reasons for Listening to Music,” scholars Kay Wilhelm, Inika Gillis,

Emery Schubert, and Erin Louise Whittle posit ten reasons why people listen to sad music: to energize and motivate; enhance mood; relax or reduce stress; inspire and stimulate; express, experience, or understand emotion; focus and concentrate; match or reflect mood; escape, distract, or immerse; reminisce; and find solace.21

We can posit that Al chooses “Spun Out” to match his mood, to reminisce about his time with Imogen, and to facilitate his escape from misery by drinking the shampoo.

When viewing this scene, the audience can assume that the act of choosing a song follows a convention in which a character uses music to match their mood. The relatability of this act appears to increase the audience’s empathy for that character and encourages the audience to feel “with” the character. Therefore, this diegetic song moment provides the audience with insight about Al’s emotional-musical choices and his mental and emotional state. The song itself may also add to the character’s relatability, inviting the audience to sympathize the character and his current situation.

Two additional postmillennial romantic comedies display characters choosing songs to match their mood after a breakup. In The Broken Hearts Club (2000), a group of friends tries to help a member of their group overcome a breakup by frantically looking for a song appropriate to the situation. Although the scene does not actually cue a song, it conveys realism and the pervasive connection between music and heartache. In What

20 For further studies on why people listen to sad music see Sandra Girddo and Emery Schubert, “Negative Emotion in Music: What is the Attraction?” Empirical Musicology Review 6, no. 4 (2011): 214–30; David Huron, “Why is Sad Music Pleasurable? A Possible Role for Prolactin,” Musicae Scientiae 15, no. 2 (2011): 146–158. 21 Kay Wilhelm, Inika Gillis, Emery Schubert, and Erin Louise Whittle, “On a Blue Note: Depressed Peoples’ Reasons for Listening to Music,” Music and Medicine 5, no. 2 (2013): 3–5. 57

Women Want (2000), the main male character attempts to create marketing slogans for a new line of women’s merchandise while listening to “I Won’t Dance” (Frank Sinatra,

1957) before exclaiming that he’s “got to change the music,” and settling on “Bitch”

(Meredith Brooks, 1997) while he drinks wine and tries on the pantyhose and nail polish.

Even though the song choices in this scene fall into stereotypical expectations of men’s and women’s listening habits, the role of the music in setting a desired mood and mindset suggests a purposefulness behind the song choice in the film. Because it is chosen and played diegetically, the song tells the audience not only what the filmmaker wants, but also what the character wants or feels.

Although the breakup montage became a cliché by the early 2000s, postmillennial romantic comedies alter the convention in meaningful ways to shape audience understandings of the character and convey a desired mood. The breakup montage provides aural support to a crucial plot point that juxtaposes the mood of the introductory song and sets the stage for the closing song convention.

Conclusion

The postmillennial romantic comedy introductory, breakup montage, and closing song conventions support generic structural conventions in which the couple meets, breaks up, and unites. The songs do more than reinforce these plot points, though, they also signal the arrival of these moments—telling the audience what to expect.

Furthermore, the songs provide the audience with crucial information about the protagonist and love interest and guide the audience through plot twists and shifting moods. In the next chapter I will examine the implementation of each of these

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conventions in three case-study films: Love Actually (2003), Bridget Jones’s Diary

(2001), and Sweet Home Alabama (2002).

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Chapter 2: Film Case-Studies: Love Actually (2003), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), and Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

Case-study: Character Relatability and Song in Love Actually (2003)

Love Actually features an ensemble cast and is, in essence, a microcosm of various romantic comedy plots. Each character and couple are in different stages of the standard plot of meeting, breaking up, and then reconciling. The film’s pop-music underscoring aligns with certain generic conventions, such as the breakup montage; at the same time, the music serves to connect scenes, acts as commentary on character’s emotions, and reinforces the film’s broader message.

The film opens with a monologue by (who, we later learn, plays the

British Prime Minister) where he draws a parallel between loved ones greeting each other at and the assertion that “Love, actually, is all around.” This final statement cues the scene cut to a where Billy Mack () is recording a new version of an old hit song; however, Billy incorrectly sings the song’s original chorus, singing “Love is all around me,” rather than the new, seasonally appropriate “ is all around me.” The incorrect words humorously underscore the Prime Minister’s message while simultaneously establishing the film’s Christmas- time setting. In this way, the song acts as an introductory song to the film as a whole— rather than any single character. The song also acts as a bridge between couples, though, and throughout the film Billy attempts to market his new song and reach the top of the charts before Christmas. Through television appearances and performances, Billy and his song connect with various character groups, bridging scenes and serving as the first of several narrative links that unite the ensemble.

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As is evident in the Billy Mack scenes, popular music underscoring in Love

Actually generally acts as commentary on a character’s emotions and then serves as an emotional and sonic bridge to the subsequent scene. In one pivotal scene, Mark (Andrew

Lincoln) is in his apartment watching Billy’s new when he is visited by his best friend’s wife, Juliet (), who wants to see Mark’s video recording of her wedding. Hesitantly, Mark plays the video, which is almost exclusively close-ups of

Juliet. Realizing that Mark is in love with her, Juliet confronts him, exclaiming “But you never talk to me! You don’t like me.” As he excuses himself from his own apartment,

Mark explains, “It’s a self-preservation thing, you see.”

Mark’s exit cues the song “Here With Me” (Dido, 1999); the song begins in harmonic ambiguity with synthesizer and drums as Mark paces in front of his door, debating whether or not to return to Juliet; the lyrics “I am what I am, I’ll do what I want, but I can’t hide” act as commentary on the unveiling of Mark’s true feelings. As Mark shakes his head, he zips his sweater, timing with a drum hit that begins the song’s chorus,

“I won’t go, I won’t sleep, I can’t breathe until you’re resting here with me.” Mark is outwardly distraught as he grabs his head and shouts before walking away from . The scene cuts from Mark to the Prime Minister; the music continues through the beginning of the scene as the Prime Minister asks his assistant to have Natalie (his love interest and staff member) reassigned. The song’s lyrics underscore both men’s emotions, albeit in different ways. Whereas the song aligns with Mark’s longing for

Juliet, his unrelenting feelings, and situational confinement (reflected in the line “I can’t breathe”), the song contradicts the Prime Minister’s action—he requests a separation from Natalie. However, by juxtaposing Mark and the Prime Minister, accompanied by

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the faint continuation of the song in the underscoring, we can surmise that the Prime

Minister feels just as trapped and lovelorn as Mark.

In addition to underscoring characters’ emotions, certain instances of popular music in Love Actually align with romcom generic conventions. The film’s breakup montage features an emotional-musical choice similar to the one made in Down to You.

In one of the most memorable scenes from the film, Karen () opens a

Christmas present from her husband Harry (); Karen anticipates a necklace that she discovered in Harry’s coat pocket in a previous scene, but instead she unwraps a

Joni Mitchell CD. Realizing her husband’s infidelity, Karen retreats upstairs to listen to the song “Both Sides Now” (, 2000, re-orchestration of her 1969 recording) and process her emotions.22 Returning to Wilhelm et al.’s ten reasons for why people listen to sad music, we can theorize that two of these themes appear to describe what

Karen is doing in Love Actually. First, the song “Both Sides Now” helps Karen “express, experience, or understand emotion”: she engages with the song cathartically, taking the opportunity to cry at the realization that her husband is having an affair. Secondly, Karen uses the song to reminisce: the camera (presumably demonstrating Karen’s perspective) pans over family pictures on her dresser, reflecting on happier times in her marriage.

“Both Sides Now” itself aids in the reinforcement of these themes through its sound and its words, which act as commentary and correspond to the onscreen action (see

Figure 2 below). Mitchell originally wrote the song when she was 21 and re-recorded the song in her 50s. In a 2014 interview with The Irish Times, Mitchell notes, when she wrote

22 The Karen receives is Both Sides Now (2000) which contains a re-recording of “Both Sides Now.” The song was written by Joni Mitchell but originally released by Judy Collins in 1967 and then Joni Mitchell in 1969. For the 2000 album, the track was re-orchestrated to include a string orchestra, horn, and saxophone. 62

the song she was criticized for her age and presumed inexperience. While Mitchell insists that the song came from a genuine place, she prefers the re-recording.

Well, I wrote it at 21. And I took a lot of flak for, “What do you know about life? You’re only 21.” And it’s not an ingenue’s song. And I think I gave my best performance of that song with the London Philharmonic. It’s not an ingenue’s role. I grew into that song.23

Audiences can trace this growth; audiences who know the original version can, in their “mind’s ear,” juxtapose the bright in Mitchell’s first recording with the raspy alto in the new. This comparison extends to Karen—the juxtaposition between the lighthearted and in-love Karen in the dresser pictures and the heartbroken, sobbing Karen who stands in the bedroom. Furthermore, this juxtaposition serves as a breakup montage in which we see happier times in the relationship and the current emotional state of the female protagonist. This comparison is furthered through the choice to use the re- recorded version, which contributes to the bittersweet, retrospective portrayal of life and love, facilitated by age and context.

The scene implies that Karen is “seeing” love from both sides by juxtaposing the happy family pictures with her devastation upon discovering her husband’s betrayal— what once brought happiness now represents despair.

23 Una Mullally, “Both Side Now: Joni Mitchell Looks Back,” The Irish Times, November 29, 2014, accessed November 13, 2017, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/both-sides-now- joni-mitchell-looks-back-1.2016070. 63

Lyrics Song Scene Orchestra faintly playing Karen opens CD; excuses herself upstairs Moons and Junes and Ferris Orchestra thins and Secretary puts on wheels gradually builds again necklace The dizzy dancing way that you feel Camera cuts through as every comes real pictures I've looked at love that way But now it's just another Album cover on stereo show, Karen looking at dresser and you leave ‘em laughing Wringing hands and when you go looking around the room And if you care don’t let them know, don't give yourself away Close-up; Karen wipes tears I’ve looked at love from Strings swell; Horns enter Covers face with hands both sides now From give and take and still Karen stares blankly somehow it's love’s illusions that I Looks at dresser recall I really don't know love Saxophone enters at end of Karen wipes tears with I really don’t know love at line tissue all Tears and fears and feelin’ Saxophone drops out Karen looks around proud room and straightens To love you right out bedspread loud Leans on bed Dreams and schemes and Leaves room circus crowds Upper strings dominate I've looked at life that way Karen downstairs; steadies herself Oh but now old friends Exclaims that children they’re acting strange are ready And they shake their heads and they tell me that I have changed, Family leaves; Karen well something’s lost but steadies herself again Saxophone re-enters and leaves something’s gained in livin’ Cuts to different every day characters and song fades Table 2. “Both Sides Now” Scene Analysis

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We could interpret Karen placing her hands over her face during the chorus as her refusal to “see” the current state of her marriage; instead, Karen uses the song a source of solace and consolation which allows her to hide reality and compose herself before returning to her family—reflected in the lyrics “if you care don’t let them know, don’t give yourself away.” The swelling strings in the orchestra act as a musical code for intense emotion—one that is typically associated with romance but that, in this scene, represents sorrow. Additionally, the unresolved seconds and repeated ninth chords create an atmospheric, suspended quality in the scene, perhaps representing Karen’s disbelief at her husband’s actions and the current uncertainty of their relationship. Thus, the scene cinematically and musically aligns with the breakup montage convention—the character reflects on happier times in the relationship juxtaposed with the newfound anguish, and the song invites the audience to reflect sympathetically with the character.

My focus groups with audience members suggest that the specific pop songs included in romcoms—and this specific example—are meaningful to them. The participants in interview 1 were a mother and daughter, Susan and Edith.24 Before I could fully introduce the Love Actually scenes to the group in interview 1, Susan and Edith exclaimed that Love Actually is their favorite romantic comedy. Edith explained why:

Oh my gosh. I love all the intertwining love stories and how they all connect and it’s so crazy and fun. And there’s so many famous people in there that you kind of forget that they’re all famous and they all work together, so… I like it a lot.

24 All audience names used in this dissertation are pseudonyms. 65

Edith’s comment that she “forgets” the actors are famous suggests a full immersion in the story, where the power of the storylines overshadow the film’s mechanics. After Susan and Edith’s exclamations, I began to explain the clip, but again, they interjected.

EK: Ok, so we’re going to watch the scene where Emma Thompson unwraps the-- Susan: [groans] EK: --the Joni Mitchell CD. Susan: [sigh/groan] The Joni Mitchell CD. [groan] EK: Do you have any opinions about it before we watch it? Other than— Susan: Other than that we hate that man. Edith: Oh man, he’s the worst! Susan: Snake. Edith: Oh my gosh, he’s the worst. Susan: But she is so amazing in this scene how she— Edith: Yeah, she’s really good. Susan: —pulls it together. Yeah, it’s good.

By “that man,” Susan referred to Karen’s husband Harry, but when Susan referred to how amazing “she” is in the scene, it was unclear whether Susan meant the character, Karen, or the actress, Emma Thompson.

After watching the scene, Susan and Edith’s responses more clearly addressed

Karen in the scene and indicated a closeness between audience and character.

Susan: Oh, I love the Joni Mitchell one. And how she ends up going into the bedroom, which is kind of a personal thing for a couple. And, just how she’s so British and it’s kind of like “buck up, ’s coming, you’ve seen love from both sides now” and I just love that. Edith: Yeah, it’s like the Joni Mitchell CD and she thinks she’s going to get the necklace and she’s disappointed. And I think it’s interesting how the music keeps going after she comes back out of the bedroom and it’s like it’s still playing in the back of her mind while she’s trying to, like, keep going with her family.

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Susan contextualized Karen’s actions within her own understanding of a couple’s bedroom: she highlighted the intimacy of the bedroom which, to her, maximized the impact of the scene. Furthermore, Susan related Karen’s actions to her understanding of

British behavior and suggested that the song is encouraging Karen by telling her to pull herself together. Edith relayed Karen’s emotions in the scene, then commented on the origin of the music. Edith echoed Susan’s statement that the music is encouraging and added that she thought the music continues in Karen’s head after she rejoins her children.

These responses revealed that Susan and Edith understand how the music functions in the scene and related it to their understanding of real people’s behavior.

Whereas Susan and Edith were fans of Love Actually, in interview 2, only Carol had previously seen the film, and told the other two women: “It’s a very iconic film, the music, I have it in my head but yeah… it was a wonderful movie, it was a really, really wonderful movie. If you haven’t seen it you really must go see it.” Despite her recognition of the film and recommendation that the other group members watch it, Carol did not remember the “Both Sides Now” scene. Further, the three women had differing opinions on how the music fit with the scene. Maggie thought that, although the lyrics matched the scene, the mood of the music did not.

The lyrics fit more than the melody, to me. I don’t know what—I didn’t— as it’s going I’m listening, I’m thinking, it didn’t feel like it fit at first. And then, as she singing I’m hearing the lyrics, I’m like ok, that may fit but I didn’t like the melody with that.

Pat agreed with Maggie, and said that the line “I never knew love at all” helped guide her understanding of the scene. Carol, on the other hand, thought that the song matched

Karen’s mood and offered encouragement.

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Right, but with that CD she realizes he’s having an affair and that her life is never going to be the same. So, I am very familiar with that song and I do like it. And I thought that the melody more than the words was her trying to—now she’s going to pretend like she doesn’t know. And, so, it was, you know, (Maggie: That’s interesting) so sad but she, you know, was going to pull herself together.

This difference of opinion about how the music best relates to the scene the dual significance of the song: both opinions were valid readings of the music in the context of the scene. The orchestra matched Karen’s mood, whereas the lyrics related to the specifics of the onscreen action and the depth of Karen’s pain.

When the final participant, Linda, watched the scenes from Love Actually, she first noted how the scenes worked in relation to those from Bridget Jones’s Diary

(2001)—viewed earlier in the study— and her understanding of film music’s function.

It was—it was a different style but it still did the same thing in that it just gave a second layer of meaning to the message that was going on. I mean, I never even thought about it when I watched movies that that’s another way that they can tell you what the person’s thinking without—you know, like in a book where they can tell you but in a movie, they can’t, so I never realized that a lot of the time they can do that through music. Yeah, no, I thought it was good. This was different of course and then the—at the end that scene with him, that was—that was different but that was fun too.

Linda compared music to the narrator in a novel whose role is to explain the character’s perspective. Although the camera also played an important role in explaining the character’s emotions (such as directing our attention to the pictures on Karen’s dresser), the visual cues worked in partnership with the song. Linda’s reaction to the “Both Sides

Now” scene was similar to Susan’s and to that of the participants in Anderson’s study.

I thought it was—and I’ve heard that song, but I never paid attention to the words, so I—it was interesting to—to pay more attention… yeah, I thought it was a good song because it could—you could feel the pain and the emotion there, and then you could also feel the strength, “well I’m going to keep going on.” I thought that, yeah, just the way the music led

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into the ending, I thought—that’s what came across to me… I think just— not only just the style of the music, you know, sometimes the pain that came across in the way the music is, but then also the confidence out in the way it builds. I thought it related to the characters that they’re playing in those shows—those scenes.

Linda acknowledged the song’s ability to match Karen’s emotions and to offer the character consolation, encouraging her to build her confidence before returning to her family. The women in my study understood the scene as a film text, in dialogue with their own and others’ experiences, and in relation to their perception of real people’s behavior.

Another scene in Love Actually involves a character’s emotional (and physical) response to music, providing the audience with additional insight about the character.

After standing up to the boorish President of the United States (played by Billy Bob

Thornton), the Prime Minister listens to the radio in his bedroom in as the radio announcer dedicates to him the song “Jump (for my Love)” by the Pointer

Sisters; the Prime Minister then proceeds to dance throughout the house only stopping when he realizes he is being watched. Returning to Wilhelm, Gillis, Schubert, and

Whittle’s ten themes, we can posit that the Prime Minister listens to “happy” music to enhance and match his mood and to express emotion. The dancing scene is similar to the

“Both Sides Now” scene in that the character uses the music as an opportunity for emotional expression that runs counter to his normal behavior. In Love Actually, the

Prime Minister is fairly serious, albeit quirky, and he maintains a sense of decorum throughout most of his scenes; however, in the dancing scene he is freer. In this scene, the Prime Minister becomes a relatable character, allowing the audience to identify with his behavior. The audience retains a sense of psychological closeness from this scene, and that sense is reinforced in later scenes involving the Prime Minister.

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When the Prime Minister realizes he is in love with his former assistant, he has his driver take him to her street as “Jump” plays in the background. The song recalls the

Prime Minister’s earlier feelings of triumph and the audience’s sympathy for him, cultivated by the music. Hearing the song again invites the audience to respond sympathetically a second time. Thus, by connecting “Jump” with relatability and triumph in the dancing scene, the song serves as a marker for the Prime Minister’s heightened emotions and retains these connotations throughout the film. Although the audience is unlikely to relate with the Prime Minister’s position of authority, through the music and the Prime Minister’s actions, the audience can sympathize with his emotions.

Compared to their in-depth discussion of the “Both Sides Now” scene, Susan and

Edith’s analysis of the “Jump” scene was brief. Susan and Edith discussed the song’s relation to the Prime Minister’s mood and indicate that the purpose of the song was straightforward. Edith noted that the song was “Just a celebration, victory song” and that she thought the scene was more relatable because the scenario was not as specific as the

“Both Sides Now” scene. Here, Edith felt that the Prime Minister’s triumph was a broader experience that more people can relate to whereas the “Both Sides Now” scene was a specific case of infidelity. Susan agreed with Edith’s statement and commented on the ubiquity of the experience, “Yeah… I can see, me, hearing a good fun song and dancing to it on the radio.”

The women in interview 2 also disagreed on their interpretation of the “Jump” scene in Love Actually. Carol thought the scene was fun and ironic: she felt that it presented a discrepancy between her expectations of British behavior and the outlandish dance. But Maggie felt the song was too feminine. Pat noted that this irony between what

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we would expect the Prime Minister to listen to and the nature of the song is what made the scene work.

Carol: It was just fun and I think what’s really fun is that, you know, the British have this reputation of being stiff upper lip and so, you know, so the British you don’t really think about dancing in their house like that. And of course, Hugh Grant is so lovely to do that. So, and then him at the end going back to being British. Pat: Yes, yes. Carol: So, the moment he’s seen he went right back to [imitates] “yes let us move the schedule to the thing with the thing and thank you very much.” Pat: [laughs] Carol: And then leaving the room. I thought that scene worked beautifully. And the music really enhanced that. Maggie: I like the song, I think they could have picked a different one for him. Because it makes—that song makes me think more female than male. Pat: I kind of liked the irony of it, though. It being more a female song. Maggie: I hear you, I hear you. Pat: Yeah so, I thought that was— Carol: He pulled it off. Maggie: He did. Carol: And then—and it—just so quickly right back to being British. I need to change the schedule to the thing and thank you so much and right out the door [Maggie laughs], right back to being Prime Minister.

In Anderson’s study, her British participants also talked about the irony in the scene: they noted that they thought the Prime Minister would listen to a news station, rather than pop.

Anderson’s participants recognized the radio host heard in the film and were surprised that the Prime Minister would not listen to the news coverage of his recent speech. While my American participants did not have the detailed knowledge of British radio stations,

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they still noticed irony between their expectations of a male Prime Minister’s listening habits and the actuality of the scene.

Linda thought the “Jump” scene was similar to the “Both Sides Now” scene in that it showcased the character’s emotion and offered solace.

It just—you kind of, you know, you saw his confidence come back, he seemed a little down at first and then the music brought his confidence back and then—and that’s what you saw through the dancing… it grew and the feeling like, “Ok, I’m doing the right thing and I can go on with my job.”

Whereas the participants in interviews 1 and 2 discussed the Love Actually scenes independently and distinguished the “Both Sides Now” scene as psychological from the surface-level humor of the “Jump” scene, Linda saw a similarity between the scenes. She commented that she related to both characters and felt that the scenes presented universal situations.

Well sure! I mean, I think we all do. When we feel, you know, the pain and I think we react and yet trying to be strong when we’re hurting; and then, of course, his experience when you worry, “Did I do the right thing?” and then feeling str—and lots of times music can bring that strength back to you so, it was neat to see how it did it in that one. Here, Linda uses the inclusive and familiar “we” and “you,” suggesting that she felt personally connected to the characters and identified with them as though they were real people, not just character manipulated by an offscreen director. As with the “Both Sides

Now” example, the women in my study related the scene to their understanding of everyday behavior and music’s ability to alter mood both in film and reality.

Furthermore, the women talked about the song’s suitability for the character and the specificity of the song in the scene. Thus, the song not only conveyed a general mood of

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triumph but it also conveyed information about the Prime Minister character specifically and shaped the women’s understanding of the scene.

Love Actually ends much as it began—with a series of reunions at Heathrow

Airport, this time with the full cast of characters. This ending simultaneously serves to highlight connections between the characters and conclude the multiple storylines.

Furthermore, as underscored by “” (The Beach Boys, 1966), the couples align with generic conventions when they reunite and musically reinforce their love. The song choice is appropriately adjusted for an ensemble cast, and object ambiguity (“God only knows what I’d be without you”) helps the song reinforce the connections between the various romantic partners without making specific reference to any particular storyline or imposing a hierarchy of importance. However, the final scene also recalls the feeling of togetherness that opened the film through its cinematography and message.

When the images of the characters reuniting are replaced by the images of anonymous people that opened the film, the song’s lyrics reflect back on the opening monologue—

“Love is all around”—implying that we have gained a new perspective on the lives of the ordinary people at the airport. Situated within the tense socio-political climate after 9/11, a tragedy referred to in the opening monologue, the film highlights the importance of interpersonal relationships, empathy, and union rather than division.

Case-Study: Musical Conventions and Diegesis in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

Through these analyses of Love Actually, it becomes readily apparent that popular music is used not only to mark conventional moments in the film and heighten their emotional force, but also to further character development, intensify the audience’s

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insight, and help the audience relate to the story through narrative framing and character music choice. These further uses of popular song coordinate with the musical conventions of earlier postmillennial romantic comedies.

An earlier film in the Bridget Jones cycle, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), demonstrates that the music conventions and functions were already established in the early 2000s and are adapted to suit each film. While in Love Actually music highlights emotional moments of various couples, the music in Bridget Jones’s Diary guides the audience through the romantic life of the eponymous character. Bridget Jones's Diary, based on ’s novel of the same title, is a modernized retelling of Jane

Austen’s .25 Narrated by the title character, played by Renée

Zellweger, the film depicts one year of Bridget’s life as she falls in and out of love with two men: Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and Mark Darcy (). The popular songs in Bridget Jones’s Diary correlate with Bridget’s narration, in effect acting as an aural extension of her diary. As a result, the music reveals Bridget’s feelings and intensifies the audience’s identification with her. Furthermore, in this film popular music aligns with the introduction, breakup, and conclusion conventions; within these standardized uses, the music also functions as a framing device, marking the beginning and conclusion of her relationships with Daniel and Mark.

The film begins with Bridget’s narration as she attends her parents’ Christmas party; uncomfortable and socially awkward, Bridget attempts (and fails) to make small talk with Mark Darcy—a childhood friend—who excuses himself from the conversation and not-so-privately tells his mother that he does not need or want to be set up with

25Bridget Jones's Diary directed by Sharon Maguire (2001; UK: Miramax Films), DVD. 74

Bridget. Mark’s admonishment cues the next portion of Bridget’s monologue, which in turn cues the title sequence.

And that was it, right there, that was the moment. I suddenly realized that unless something changed soon I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine. And I’d finally die, fat and alone, and be found three weeks later, half eaten by wild dogs. Or I was about to turn into in Fatal Attraction.

As a despondent and increasingly intoxicated Bridget reflects on her life and resolves to change, we (along with Bridget) hear the song “All by Myself” (Jamie O’Neal, 2000), the end of the narration transitioning almost seamlessly into the song’s entrance. We watch as pajama-clad Bridget checks her empty voicemail, chugs a glass of wine, and gives a spectacular “performance” of “All By Myself,” lip syncing and air drumming the chorus.

The sequence establishes a direct link between the narration and the song, tying the lyrics to Bridget and suggesting that the song is a continuation of her narration. The last lyrics

Bridget lip syncs are “Don’t wanna be all by myself anymore,” introducing the next section of narration, in which Bridget makes her New Year’s resolutions and begins her diary:

And so, I made a major decision. I had to make sure that next year I wouldn’t end up shitfaced and listening to Sad FM: Easy Listening for the Over-Thirties. I decided to take control of my life and start a diary to tell the truth about Bridget Jones. The whole truth.

This title sequence functions as more than just a standard introduction underscoring a montage of happy images, as in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, or juxtaposing the dreams of a little girl and the reality of adult life, as in The Wedding Planner and 13

Going on 30. By listening and responding to the song diegetically, Bridget puts her emotions, desires, and fears on display, inviting an immediate and intimate connection

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between character and audience while establishing the narrative conflict, thus fulfilling conventional expectations.

In this way, the title sequence of Bridget Jones’s Diary is similar in its expressive strategy to the previously discussed “Both Sides Now” scene in Love Actually. In fact, we can surmise that Bridget listens to “All By Myself” for cathartic reasons that resemble

Karen’s when she listens to “Both Sides Now”: to express, experience, or understand specific emotions. At the same time, however, Bridget also listens to the song to match her mood and, eventually, to find a source of solace. Thus, the song establishes the central conflict of the movie—Bridget’s fear of being alone—and inspires Bridget’s resolution to “take control of her life.” 26 While the song functions effectively as diegetic, the source of the music is ambiguous. One could argue that even though the music is not coming from a visible source, Bridget is listening to the song throughout the entire scene and only acknowledges it at the end. This does not work with the continuity of the scene, however, as the song continues in “real time” while the scene shows the passing of time throughout the night. This scene falls into what Robynn Stilwell refers to as “The

Fantastical Gap” where the song is not clearly diegetic or nondiegetic. This ambiguous diegesis and the patterns established here in the —connecting popular music with Bridget’s narration and significant structural points in the film—continue throughout the rest of Bridget Jones’s Diary.

A portion of Bridget’s resolution following the opening credits is a commitment to generally avoid romantic attachments to “alcoholics, workaholics, commitment-

26 Robynn Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic,” in Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert, (Berkeley and : University of California Press, 2007), 187. 76

phobics, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits, or perverts” and, specifically, she “will not fantasize about a particular person who embodies all these things.” This final resolution leads directly into ’s 1967 recording of

“Respect,” which accompanies the entrance of the first male lead in the film: Bridget's boss, Daniel. We hear “Respect” twice in the film, both times in connection to Daniel; the song thus frames their relationship, adding to the narrative clarity of the film.

The song’s initial occurrence is sudden and its audibility forces the audience’s attention on Daniel. The foregrounded nature of the song reflects both Daniel’s physical presence in Bridget’s life as well as his prominence in her thoughts. Moreover, in this scene, “Respect” does not reach the chorus, and we only hear the opening lines: “What you want? Baby, I got it. What you need? Do you know I got it.” Thus, the audience might have to dig into memory to recognize the song, its connection to the narrative, and its significance.

In a literal sense, the title of the song reflects Daniel’s status — he is the boss and expects respect. Within the narrative, the song highlights Daniel’s sex appeal and the fact that he has everything Bridget wants even though she just finished saying that she will not get involved with him. Although this juxtaposition of ideas brings humor to the scene, when situated within the history of the song, the scene takes on additional meaning.

“Respect” was originally recorded by in 1965; his version of the song is a man’s desperate plea to the woman he loves regardless of how she treats him, whom he will return to so long as he gets “respect”—in other words, sex.27 Aretha Franklin's 1967 version, however, turns that meaning on its head in that it “[projects] a protagonist who is

27 Victoria Malawey, “‘Find out what it means to me’: Aretha Franklin’s Gendered Re-authoring of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect,’” Popular Music 33, no. 2 (2014): 200. 77

strong, financially independent, perhaps demanding, and sexually in control, she makes a statement that disallows any man, white or black, access to her female body without her permission.”28 For an audience member who knows the meaning of the lyrics and the song’s cultural context, the song both parallels and foreshadows Bridget and Daniel’s relationship.

Bridget and Daniel eventually begin dating and Bridget seems content in the relationship, going so far as to envision marrying Daniel. However, Daniel cheats on

Bridget with an American colleague and, to add insult to injury, informs Bridget that he is engaged to the new woman. This information cues a new diary entry:

At times like these, continuing with one’s life seems impossible, and, eating the entire contents of one’s fridge seems inevitable. I have two choices: to give up and accept permanent state of spinsterhood and eventually being eaten? by dogs or not. And, this time, I choose not. I will not be defeated by a bad man and an American stick insect. Instead, I choose vodka and Chaka Khan.

We immediately hear the music cue “I’m Every Woman” (Chaka Khan, 1978). If we were thinking along the lines of romcom conventions, we would expect Daniel’s adultery to cue a breakup montage. In fact, Bridget’s narration recalls the opening diary entry through reference to being eaten by dogs, implying that Bridget is again experiencing the sense of loneliness and despair that accompanied “All by Myself.”

As it did in the title sequence, Bridget’s narration cues the beginning of the song, and we can assume from the direct reference to Chaka Khan that the song begins diegetically. However, “I’m Every Woman” portrays a different sentiment than “All by

Myself” and, while we do see a rapid montage of Bridget and Daniel’s relationship, the

28 Malawey, “‘Find out what it means to me,’” 204. 78

self-pitying breakup montage is rejected in favor of a self-help montage. “I’m Every

Woman” underscores Bridget as she exercises; cleans her apartment; trashes her cigarettes; replaces books on how to win in a relationship, , and how to be attractive with new books on confidence and life without men; and interviews for and secures a new job. The song underscores both Bridget’s actions and her emotions, conveying her determined confidence as a “singleton” and, moreover, her realization that she deserves better than Daniel, even if that means being alone. Although the placement of the montage—following a breakup—suggests a slow ballad and crying protagonist are imminent, the scene twists the breakup montage convention to portray a confident, single protagonist rather than a self-pitying one. This shift in convention conveys both a change in Bridget’s demeanor and a critique of the genre that calls for a breakup montage even when the partners are incompatible.

In the following sequence, Bridget quits her job. Daniel attempts to convince her to stay by arguing that she was someone who “perhaps for personal reasons [was] slightly overlooked professionally.” Bridget proceeds to rebuke Daniel in front of the entire office, declaring that if staying at the job means working for Daniel she “would rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein’s ass.” This statement cues the chorus of “Respect” as the camera cuts to the shocked and delighted expressions of Bridget’s coworkers. Daniel tells the room to “sod off” and the song stops with the scratching sound of a needle pulled off a record.

In the moment, this presentation of “Respect” relates to Bridget, with her newfound sense of strength and self-respect. The film makes a clear connection between the song and Bridget’s newfound standing with regard to Daniel; through these two

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instances, “Respect” frames Daniel’s role in Bridget’s story. Bridget’s diary entry, her desires, and Daniel’s presence cue the first entry, whereas her confidence and defiance cue the second. Thus, by hearing the song a second time, we trace Bridget’s character development, the power shift from Daniel to Bridget and the reshaping of the word

“respect.” In the second hearing, the song stresses Bridget’s newfound independence, aligning with Aretha Franklin’s performance—Bridget is no longer dependent on Daniel, and her empowerment is reflected in the song.

Just as Bridget's relationship with Daniel was framed by “Respect,” her relationship with Mark is framed by the ballad “Someone Like You” (Van Morrison,

1987). Bridget and Mark were childhood friends; however, she intensely dislikes him as a result of his rude remarks at the opening Christmas party and because she thinks he had an affair with Daniel’s fiancée. Although Bridget encounters Mark several times throughout the film, his framed narrative, and their relationship, does not begin until almost an hour in. The scene in question occurs at a dinner party hosted and attended primarily by “smug married couples.” Following a series of questions about when she will be married, her “ticking biological clock,” and the larger societal trend of marrying at an older age, Bridget excuses herself from the dinner table. Mark follows Bridget to the foyer and, awkwardly, confesses his feelings. Bridget tries to qualify the confession, suggesting that Mark likes her “apart from the smoking and the drinking and the vulgar mother and the verbal diarrhea.” Mark reaffirms his sentiment, “No. I like you very much. Just as you are.”

Mark’s final statement coincides with the beginning of the introduction to

“Someone Like You.” However, Mark’s law partner, Natasha, enters the room insistent

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that Mark return to the table, preventing a union between Mark and Bridget. After Mark’s farewell, the song’s volume increases, making the lyrics “Someone exactly like you” clearly audible to the audience (and making Mark’s meaning clear to Bridget). The song continues into the next scene as Bridget’s friends analyze Mark and Bridget’s conversation: “Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer? Or with slightly bigger breasts and a slightly smaller nose?” “But this is someone you hate, right?” Throughout this line of questioning, Bridget is silent, sipping a cocktail, as the lyric “Someone exactly like you” repeats in the underscoring. Bridget finally responds that she “hates” Mark as the scene cuts to two bobblehead dogs, one nodding and one shaking its head, a material representation of Bridget’s conflicted feelings. The song fades as Bridget’s next diary entry begins.

Whereas “Respect” entered abruptly, “Someone Like You” sneaks in, starting with piano and then adding vocals. The song reflects the subtler and more gradual aspects of Bridget and Mark’s relationship. In stark contrast with the sudden onset of Bridget’s relationship with Daniel and the coordinating song “Respect,” “Someone Like You” enters the narrative slowly and delicately, in much the same way Mark “sneaks into”

Bridget’s affections. Whereas “Respect” was sudden, energetic, and demanding,

“Someone Like You” is gradual, relaxed, and sensitive; in this way, the two songs act as a musical juxtaposition of the male leads and Bridget’s contrasting reactions to them.

Furthermore, the gradual entrance of “Someone Like You” mirrors Mark's revelation of his feelings for Bridget. Just as Mark has difficulty finding the words to tell Bridget how he feels, stumbling through his sentences before making a definitive statement, the hesitant piano accompaniment is not presented fully until after the vocals enter. In

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addition to acting as a musical reinforcement of Mark’s feelings, the musical cue reflects

Bridget’s uncertainty, confusion, and fixation over Mark’s declaration by way of its considerable length. The repetition of the song stands in for Bridget’s mental replay of

Mark’s words.

Nested within the overall frame of “Someone Like You” is Bridget’s realization of her feelings for Mark, their separation, and, ultimately, her pursuit of him. The realization and pursuit portions of the narrative also feature a popular song as a structural framing device: “Ain't No Mountain High Enough” (Diana Ross, 1970). The song propels the narrative momentum by framing and articulating Bridget’s revelation of her feelings for Mark.

At this point in the narrative, Bridget continually resists a relationship with Mark, despite his efforts to earn her affection, because she believes that Mark slept with

Daniel’s fiancée. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” first enters after Bridget learns that

Daniel lied and finds out, in fact, that he had an affair with Mark’s wife. Upon learning the truth, Bridget literally speeds through the snow to attend a party at Mark’s parents’ house and reveal her feelings. The song’s fast , energetic vocals, and driving beat imply a musical drive to a narrative conclusion—Bridget will find Mark and reveal her feelings, and the two will be together—completing the boy meets, loses, regains girl generic structure. Although Bridget confesses her changed feelings, Mark’s parents announce that he is moving to New York City and they soon anticipate his marriage to his law partner, thus ending any hope of a relationship between Mark and Bridget. After

Bridget's emotional, and somewhat incoherent, outburst at the announcement, she leaves

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the party, cueing a conventional breakup montage—a counterpoint to the “self- improvement” montage seen after the earlier breakup.

The montage, underscored by “Out of Reach” (Gabrielle, 2001), shows both

Bridget and Mark coping with the separation. Bridget returns to her apartment, changes her diary title to “Diary of Bridget Jones: Spinster and Lunatic,” stares despondently out her apartment window, and (silently) writes in her diary; meanwhile, Mark, appearing miserable, arrives in New York City. Although both characters are shown in the montage, the song’s lyrics align more closely with Bridget’s feelings of confusion, betrayal, and foolishness upon Mark’s departure.

Knew the signs/wasn’t right/I was stupid for a while/Swept away by you/And now I feel like a fool/So confused,/my heart’s bruised/Was I ever loved by you?/Out of reach, so far/I never had your heart/Out of reach/Couldn’t see/We were never meant to be/Catch myself/From despair/I could drown/If I stay here/Keeping busy everyday/I know I will be ok

Although this scene is one of few in the film that does not begin or end with a diary entry, the song’s lyrics presumably stand in for Bridget’s voiceover, providing valuable insight into her feelings. Indeed, the song functions similarly to the “All by Myself” and “I’m

Every Woman” scenes, allowing a space for Bridget’s feelings and acting as commentary on the situation, and by the end of those scenes Bridget resolves to take control of her life, career, and relationships. While such resolve is reflected lyrically in “Out of

Reach”—“I know I will be ok”—Bridget does not respond correspondingly on screen, suggesting that the song is a source of needed support rather than a strict reflection of

Bridget’s feelings. Even though the song does not seem diegetic, the film has established

Bridget’s mind as a sound “source,” through the narrative voiceover and during multiple

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scenes involving music where the sound crosses the diegetic/non-diegetic space with ease.

Mark ultimately returns from New York City to be with Bridget, stopping her on the street before she goes on a trip with her friends, stating that he “forgot to kiss her .” The sweeping strings in the underscoring and close framing of Mark and

Bridget conventionally signal the close of the film. However, Bridget’s friends consistently delay the kiss, hollering from the street and honking a car horn. Mark suggests that he and Bridget go upstairs to Bridget’s apartment. There, she excuses herself to change clothes; meanwhile, Mark reads a portion of her diary wherein she declares her hatred of him, and he storms out. Once again, “Ain’t No Mountain High

Enough” enters as Bridget (wearing only a camisole, cardigan, underwear, and shoes) chases Mark through the street to convince him her feelings have changed. As the song’s lyrics suggest, Bridget must literally overcome natural obstacles in her pursuit of Mark, including winding roads and snow, as well as the psychological obstacles she has been wrestling with the entire film. As part of her path to self-empowerment Bridget must be willing to pursue what she wants—in this case, Mark—and the music signals her determination. The replaying of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” induces a feeling of optimism in the audience, a feeling that “this time it will work” infused with humor as the climax of the narrative and the impassioned song are contrasted with Bridget’s outlandish behavior.

When Bridget reaches Mark she immediately begins explaining away the diary entry, ending with “It’s just a diary, everyone knows diaries are just full of crap.” Mark acknowledges her comment stating that he was just getting her a new diary, “Time to

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make a new start, perhaps.” Bridget’s face breaks into a smile and “Someone Like You” enters for the second time. The couple embraces, indicating the conclusion of the “Mark” portion of the narrative, the end of the film, and the conventional fulfillment of the closing song. By contrast with the first, hesitant instance of “Someone Like You,” this replaying is immediately foregrounded and underscores a shot of the couple together.

Through these sonic and cinematic elements, the scene captures a mutual understanding between the characters and the song is heard from both of their perspectives. The song is a culmination of both Mark’s and Bridget’s feelings and ends with the song acting in place of Bridget’s narration. Heard in contrast to “All by Myself,” which served to introduce us to Bridget, “Someone Like You” ensures that she will no longer be alone, musically bookending the narrative.

The end title sequence shows Mark and Bridget as children, cinematically presenting a story that is mentioned a few times in the film—as a child, Bridget played naked in Mark’s paddling pool. The film embellishes the story, showing young Bridget drinking and playing with cigarettes while Mark, dressed in a suit and tie, attempts to maintain decorum by painting and ignoring Bridget. However, the two children join hands by the end of the sequence. The scene is underscored by a re-recording of the

Rodgers and Hart song “Have You Met Miss Jones?” (, 2001). The song situates itself and the film in an extended generic tradition through the title song and its obvious lyrical connection to the film’s eponymous character. Through its placement at the end of the film, rather than the beginning, the song portrays the entire relationship arc of Bridget and Mark, predicting a long-lasting relationship through the lyrics “And we’ll keep on meeting ‘til we die/Miss Jones and I.”

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Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001): Opening and Closing Scenes, Audience Reactions When I introduced Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), Edith commented that she had never seen the film, to which Susan exclaimed, “You’ve never seen it? Oh my gosh. Who is your mother?” Although Susan’s statement was said in a joking manner, I think her disbelief was genuine. Several times throughout the Bridget Jones portion of the interview, Susan insisted that Edith would need to watch the film after the interview.

Therefore, from the beginning of the interview, there was an established link between

Susan and Edith’s viewing habits that seemed to influence their responses. Susan would often speak first and Edith would echo Susan’s sentiments, reinforcing them with her own opinions. Edith consistently looked to Susan for encouragement and validation, often concluding her statements with a question to Susan, such as “You know?” or “Does that make sense?” This connection suggests that while meaning-making is a personal process, it is not necessarily an individual one.

After watching the opening and closing scenes, I asked Susan and Edith whether they had noticed anything about the music.

Susan: I loved in the beginning when she’s drinking the wine and smoking her cigarettes and then singing right along to it Edith: Yeah, it’s good! Susan: It’s so awesome because you can totally see yourself in the same spot. Edith: Yeah, very relatable. Susan: Very relatable. And then I love the, um, when she’s running out in the snow. The tone of it. And then I love, love, that last one. Edith: Yeah, the ending tied it together, it’s cute. Susan: That song is really great. And the way they stopped the music when they spoke and then it-- Edith: Yeah, it’s great.

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Susan: --I thought was really good

Susan and Edith expanded on these statements when asked if they thought the music related to any of the characters and if they related to the characters.

Edith: Yeah, definitely. Um, the opening song, that’s totally how she feels so that was good. Um, let’s see. What was the last one called? The song? EK: “Someone Like You” Edith: Yeah that was pretty fitting. (To Susan) What do you think? Susan: I love, um, I think the first one really relates to her mood and her character. And then, wait what’s the second one called? I’m sorry. EK: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” Susan: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” um, it was just good when she was running, it just really fit that, I thought. Because her personality—I’ve seen the whole movie—it—she is so up and down up and down up and down that that worked for her character. You’ll have to watch all of it! Edith: Yeah, I wouldn’t know, so… EK: Do you relate in any way to the characters in these scenes and is this enhanced or prohibited by the music? Edith: [whispering] uhhh let’s see… Susan: Have you been smoking and drinking wine? Edith: Yeah, I have not. I would not know about that. [laughs] But no, just the home by herself, totally singing is good, it was relatable definitely, I think. Susan: Definitely. I can relate to the first scene and then I think the last scene too. The kissing and the being happy in that experience like that. [To Edith:] So hopefully you would not relate to that. Edith: No, I don’t know about that.

Susan felt that Bridget was relatable in the opening scene, saying she could “see herself in the same spot” and felt that the song matched both Bridget’s mood and character.

While Edith did not think she could relate to Bridget’s specific actions, she seemed to

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understand the context of the scene and the motivation to sing when alone. I wondered whether, if Edith were interviewed alone, she might have more to say about her understanding of Bridget but might have felt hampered by a sense of propriety in front of her mother or that her age, eighteen, prevented her from relating from certain experiences.

Susan worked to distance Edith from the character, jokingly asking Edith if she has been smoking and drinking wine and saying that while she can relate to both scenes, she hopes that Edith would not, perhaps because of Edith’s young age. Susan here acted a mediator of tradition for Edith. Mediators of tradition relay information about customs and pass on traditions. Ethnomusicologist Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s notion of mediation is helpful for defining this mother-daughter relationship in terms of community.

Mediation takes many forms and may not be restricted to an intermediary zone between the community and outsiders.… Mediation can therefore entail not just translating for those outside of the tradition, but also participating in raising awareness of the tradition within the community itself.29

Therefore, as much as I was a mediator of tradition during the interview, drawing attention to music in romantic comedies, Susan was also a mediator for her daughter, introducing Edith to romantic comedies and guiding her in her understanding of how these films simultaneously do and should not relate to real life. Moreover, Susan and

Edith’s responses and reactions suggest they brought their personal histories and relationships to bear on the film, not just by relating characters’ experiences with their

29 Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “The Ethnomusicologist, Ethnographic Method, and the Transmission of Tradition,” in Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley, eds., Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, 2nd edn., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 151. 88

own, but in the way they interact with each other as mother and daughter during films and in conversation about films.

The three women in interview 2, Carol, Maggie, and Pat, did not know each other prior to the interview; however, throughout the hour-long interview, they reacted to and affirmed each other’s statements as if they knew each other, suggesting that they took places within social roles as a group, rather than as individuals. After we watched the opening and closing scenes of Bridget Jones’s Diary, I asked the women in interview 2 the same questions posed to the group in interview 1: Did they notice anything about the music in the scenes?

Carol: I thought they were entirely appropriate for the scene. They enhance the scene. EK: In what way? Carol: You know just the one about being alone and she was, you know, clearly depressed and drinking wine and being alone. And then, you know, the charging through the streets and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” (Maggie: “mhm” in affirmation) And then the Van Morrison one at the end, I thought you know that they matched up with the tempo and what was going on in the scene and then enhanced it.

Maggie: I agree with that.

Pat: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean that first scene—

Carol: It’s great, isn’t it?

Pat: It’s awesome, it’s just so—

Carol: You feel her despair, you know, sitting around in her underwear drinking wine in her living room.

Maggie: [laughs] No messages, no one wants me. Yeah.

Carol: That’s right.

Pat: And she—you can tell she knows every beat of that song. She’s even doing the drum part. [laughs]

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Carol: She’s played it a hundred times.

Pat: And I think at the end that song, it could have gone another way if he—I don’t even know what song he could have played—but that song, you knew, ok they’re together now. Nothing’s going to fly in, swoop in, and change the mood. They’re together. Yeah.

Maggie: I agree.

Carol’s initial statement reveals a knowledge of the songs, naming the title of “Ain’t No

Mountain High Enough” and the artist of “Someone Like You,” Van Morrison. This knowledge contributed to her understanding of how the songs aligned with the tempo of the scene, indicating a congruency between song tempo and film action. Furthermore,

Carol and Maggie agreed that the opening song, “All by Myself,” matches Bridget’s sense of despair.

Pat and Carol also commented on Bridget’s detailed knowledge of the song and talked about her as if she was a real person with a life that extends beyond what is seen onscreen: “She’s playing it a hundred times.” In Pat’s discussion of the final scene, she acknowledged the song’s fulfilment of generic convention— “Nothing’s going to fly in, swoop in, and change the mood. They’re together.” Pat’s reference to who plays the song is noteworthy for its ambiguity: Pat stated that “it could have gone another way if he” had played a different song (emphasis added). Here, Pat seemed to extend the action of Mark

Darcy’s character beyond the frame, indicating that the character cued the nondiegetic song and suggesting a connection between Mark’s volition and the closing song.

When asked if they recognized any of the songs and how that recognition affected their viewing experience, Carol, Maggie, and Pat connected the songs to their personal lives and to their understanding of film music’s function.

EK: Do you have any relationship with those songs? Any memories attached to them?

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Pat: I was just singing that song this morning with my daughter. I swear to you. Maggie: Really, which one? Pat: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Yeah. We were just singing it this morning. She’s 14 and we sing all the time and we like to make up movements and not just 4 hours ago. And it’s just a fun song that we’ll sing sometimes in my house, but yeah. EK: So then when you hear it again does it remind you of those memories? Pat: Yes, yeah! I was thinking about this morning, yeah. EK: Do you feel like that enhances your viewing experience, takes away from it, doesn’t really matter? Pat: For me, it enhances. I—yeah, it made me think “run faster, run faster!” Carol: It does enhance the movie. It makes the movie just so much better. Pat: Yeah. Carol: Because there’s just so much—I mean music, overall, makes, you know, music— Maggie: Makes it go. Pat: It does. […] Maggie: You can’t imagine watching a movie and not having music. They go together, it enhances the emotion, you know. Pat: The music, it makes you cry, it makes you laugh. Maggie: Mhm. Carol: When the woman shows up in high heels and starts to walk down a dark alley and then you hear “Dun dun duuun.” [all laugh] You know. Right? You know she’s going to have to run but she’s in four-inch stilettos—but that’s fine—she’s going to have to run because you know as soon as you hear “Dun dun duuun” she’s going to have trouble. She’s already in trouble, she hasn’t done anything, you know she’s in trouble.

For Pat, the song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” carried connotations with it into the film; however, these pre-conceived ideas did not detract from her viewing experience, rather, they enhanced it and reinforced her connection to the character as she imagined 91

encouraging Bridget to “run faster.” Furthermore, Maggie’s statement that film and music are inseparable reinforces the relationship between structure and song conventions.

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is an aural reinforcement of Bridget’s pursuit of

Mark and makes the scene “go,” as Maggie says.

Confirming this connection between structure and music conventions, all three women noted music’s ability to enhance emotion in film and its function as a narrative cue. Carol commented that an ominous three-note motif can tell the audience that the protagonist is in trouble, even though there has not been any on-screen action. Carol further highlighted the Hollywood trope that, inevitably, the female protagonist will have to escape in four-inch stilettos.

EK: And, do you feel like it matters if there’s lyrics there? Maggie: Sometimes, not all the time. Carol: Yeah. Maggie: Sometimes music can just—you don’t need the lyrics—you just hear the melody and you can still feel it, the emotion of it. Pat: Yeah. I don’t know why the opening song for The Walking Dead just comes to me with that and there’s no lyrics at all, but— Carol: That’s the haunting, I don’t know if Jeff does that one but it’s that haunting— Pat: No lyrics, but The Walking Dead you can hear that. Carol: You know, you really found this if you watch MeTV, the shows in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so you know the Perry stuff and, you know, all those, , they do the cymbal, you know [Tsk] (cymbal noise) Pat: Mhm. Carol: You’d be coming into a building and all you’d hear [tsk tsk tsk tsk] you know with the—the metallic kinda, you know, or that clocking [tick tick tick] you know, clicks. Maggie: With Law and Order [All sing “duh duh”]

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Here, the women emphasized the way in which the character of music establishes setting and expectations—highlighted by their unison singing of the signature sound of the Law and Order. Although this discussion might seem far removed from

Bridget Jones’s Diary, it came about seamlessly, indicating that the women did not consider a distinction between the way the music functioned in this film and other film and television genres.

I then asked Carol, Maggie, and Pat if they identified with, connected, or related to any of the characters in the scenes.

Carol: I—I do because of, I mean, who hasn’t sat in their underwear in the living room feeling pathetic? Maggie: Yes, in the depths. Carol: And when did I turn into a loser? When really all you need is just a shower and a hairdresser? But really, beyond that, right? But who hasn’t just had morning when—no. Pat: [laughs] But to me, the way she—not just the situation, the depressing situation that she’s in—but the way she sat there and related to the music, knew every phrase, every drumbeat—that’s me when I’m in my car, when I’m the passenger, it drives my husband nuts. But, I know every drumbeat (Maggie: Right), every crescendo, I mean that’s—to me, that’s how I related with her because that’s exactly how I would relate to, you know, any song that I really know. It’s just fun. It’s just fun. Yeah, I saw that she was having fun with that song even though she was down and depressed and dirty and in the dumps. She was still enjoying that song. Carol: So, you bring up an interesting point, though, about gender. So, your husband isn’t like that? Pat: No, it drives him crazy. He’s just driving like [makes face] Maggie: [Laughs] Carol: That’s funny. Pat: [laughs] EK: (To Maggie) Do you have anything to add? Maggie: Um… for me, and I find it interesting she’s picking a song that meets—that fits her emotions. And you get into it more. Have you ever

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listened to something that you just feel it, that’s what, you know, I take from that. So same thing but it’s just—and I’ve done that—picked songs where you know it fits your mood whether it’s— (Carol: mhm) you’re feeling low or you’re feeling good or if you feel romantic or whatever it is, and you pick a song that fits that and you identify with it. She identified with it. And so, as viewers we can identify, and like you said we’ve all been there at some point and time in our lives, so… Carol: Mhm, yeah. […] Carol: But her acting, you know with the music that of course I’m familiar with and like and it’s funny, the opening scene draws you right in, ‘cause she’s very funny. She has nailed pathetic, right, didn’t she? She’s very pathetic and you want to find out what has happened with this pathetic woman, who’s not pathetic but thinks that she’s pathetic. And, it—all of that, the combined music and her acting and how they interrelated, they were kind of an interwoven part of the scene makes me want to watch the movie.

These responses, especially Carol’s initial statement, suggest that the women not only understood Bridget, they identified with her. Furthermore, the women in this focus group related not only to how Bridget felt (“in the depths”), but also to Bridget’s response and relation to the music—saying that they, too, sing along with any song that they “really know.” In Maggie’s final statement she recognized why Bridget chose the music, saying that she has also chosen music to match her mood, and she explicitly stated that because

Bridget identifies with the music, so does the audience. Moreover, although the music pre-dates the film and is immediately recognizable, it draws the viewer in, rather than creating a rift between film and viewer. In this way, the use of “All by Myself” is not only obvious, informing the audience of a character’s emotions, it can be experienced as relatable and sincere.

Interview 3 had only one participant, Linda. At the beginning of the interview,

Linda indicated that she does not see many films and had not seen any of the films in the

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study. After watching the Bridget Jones’s Diary clips, Linda discussed her understanding of the music.

Particularly at the beginning I noticed that the beginning kind of started the quiet part and then it got real tense when she got real tense and then it came back down and then it got even more tense. I thought it fit well. And at the end the same thing, I thought it fit well—fit well with what was going on. And also, it’s interesting because then there’re words in the music sometimes that, then if you listen to the words in the music, they fit well with what’s going on then—with what’s happening, so…Yeah, I thought it fit well.

Linda related the tone and mood of the music to how Bridget felt; in her case, these elements seemed more salient than the lyrics, although she did note that the words fit the action and sense of the film.

When asked if she related to any of the characters, Linda responded that she did and explained the music’s role in the identification process.

‘Cause I think when you’ve felt sad about something, like she felt like, you know, there was no hope, I think you do—or if it’s not something I’ve felt exactly, I’ve related to having seen other people and this is the way they feel and you heard-it was neat because you heard it come out in the song and you heard-and you saw it in her actions too. She, uh, it was choreographed well, she fit well with the music in—particularly in the first scene. The second scene too but it just… yeah, I think it, uh, I think it just gives a double layer of meaning to what’s going on right then. At least in that one, I feel.

Although Linda asserted that she related to Bridget’s emotions, she was more distant in overtly expressing an identification with the character, transferring the relation to “other people.” Unlike the other participants, Linda was less inclined to talk about Bridget as if she were a real person: she noted the mechanics of the scene and admired the choreography, indicating an awareness of the framing of the film. However, Linda still noted that the music fit the scenes and added to the meaning of the action.

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In Bridget Jones’s Diary, popular music acts as an extension of the narrative voiceover, functioning as Bridget’s internal monologue. The placement of the popular songs is key to the structure of the film, at times aligning with narrative conventions and, ultimately, providing narrative cues for Bridget’s relationships and insight into the character. The songs introduce Bridget as a lonely singleton, frame her relationships with the two male partners, reinforce her emotional anguish, and underscore moments of agency. In this way, the songs align with the structural conventions of the genre, underscoring the introduction, breakup, and reunion of the primary couple. However, the film also plays within musical conventions by implying an imminent reunion with the initial cue of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and then delaying the final coupling until later in the film. Thus, through song lyrics and knowledge of songs’ histories, the audience traces Bridget’s emotions about her life, career, and romantic relationships in their respective stages.

Popular Music and Character Transformation in Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

In a 2002 interview, film director Andy Tennant called attention to the role of convention in romcoms:

Interviewer: There's certainly a formula to the romantic comedy. How do you keep it fresh when working within a familiar genre? I mean, no one watching the previews for Sweet Home Alabama thought, "Oh, she stays with the city guy!"

Tennant: I am one of those people who doesn't believe that the ending has to be so original and new, because, frankly, we've seen it all before. In a romance, it's really about the journey, so you wind up in a place to make the journey as interesting as possible and enjoy as many themes as possible. I never set out on a romantic comedy to reinvent the wheel. What

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I did want to do is make sure that, on a Friday night, people had a good time.30

As we have seen, popular song in the romcom meaningfully reinforces the conventions of the genre. But it also accompanies the journey of the main character, making it distinctive within the genre as a whole and encouraging a personal investment on the part of the audience. The use of popular song to delineate character, both by type and individually, is a key element of differentiating one romcom from another.

The popular music in Sweet Home Alabama (2002), for example, identifies character types and traces the protagonist’s embrace of her southern identity through her musical representation. Sweet Home Alabama portrays the romantic and life struggles of female protagonist Melanie Smooter (Reese Witherspoon), a clothing designer living and working in New York City. As we watch Melanie interact with parents, friends, and lovers, we see her struggling with opposing aspects of her identity—rural versus city, southern versus . These seemingly binary identities are juxtaposed musically as well, with different musical styles underscoring Melanie and her romantic partners,

Andrew Hennings (Patrick Dempsey) and Jake Perry (Josh Lucas). Andrew and Jake are presented, cinematically and musically, as complete opposites; Andrew is the New York

City mayor’s son, is a successful politician, lives in New York City, wears a suit, has no accent markers, and is represented musically with traditional, orchestral underscoring; whereas Jake appears to be unemployed, lives by a lake, dresses casually, speaks with a thick southern accent, and is underscored by country/southern rock and blues. While the

30 Joel Cunningham, “Talkin’ Sweet Home Hollywood with Andy Tennant,” digitallyobsessed.com, 2002, accessed November 13, 2017, http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/displayinterview.php?ID=41. 97

men’s underscoring remains consistent throughout the film, Melanie’s transforms with her self-awareness, identity, and romantic choices, changing from 2000s pop, to southern rock, to a blend of the two musical styles.

The film opens with Melanie and Jake as children, running on the beach during a thunderstorm. The scene is underscored by up-tempo bluegrass, including banjo, guitar, and harmonica, establishing the scene’s southern setting. As the children run across the beach, thunder booms, Jake calls out to Melanie, asking if she’s going to marry him or not, to which Melanie responds, “Jake Perry, I’m ten years old. I’ve got too much to live for.” Lightning strikes in front of them and Jake insists they run towards the spot of the strike, claiming that “lightning never strikes the same place twice.” After investigating the smoldering sand, Melanie asks Jake why he would want to marry her. He answers,

“So I can kiss you anytime I want.” As the children kiss, lightning strikes, the children break apart, and the scene cuts to adult Melanie asleep at a drawing desk in her bustling design studio.

Adult Melanie is then introduced with the pop song “Bring On the Day”

(Charlotte Martin, 2002), the contrast between the bluegrass instrumentation of the opening song and the guitar, synthesized drum set, and female chorus of the second song juxtapose the city-living adult with the rural-raised child, and lyrically presenting adult Melanie as confident, controlled, and ambitious:

When I feel like I’m falling I’m still on my feet Reality is calling But that don’t bother me Cause I’m on my way, I’m ok Hey, hey, hey Come on bring on the day Cause I just might get everything I need

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Hey, hey, hey Give ‘em what it takes I’m ready as I’m ever gonna be So, bring on the day (x3) You gotta keep on (x3)

Following a fashion show of Melanie’s designs, a driver takes Melanie to meet her boyfriend, a politician named Andrew, for an event featuring Andrew’s mother. The driver tells Melanie that Andrew is running late and takes her into a darkened building to await his arrival. The building is revealed as Tiffany & Co. Andrew proposes to Melanie, asking her to pick out any ring she wants. Underscored by tentative piano and lush strings, Andrew is musically presented as the embodiment of class and romance. Thus, in these first ten minutes of the film, Melanie seems to have the “perfect” life, with a balance of feminism—she is successful and highly recognized in her career—and femininity—her romantic partner is the ideal leading man. Yet we quickly learn that the opening scene of child Melanie holds lasting significance: Melanie married Jake after high school and did not divorce him before moving to New York City. Thus, before she can marry Andrew, Melanie must return to her home state of Alabama and reconcile her present with her past.

Although the reason for Melanie and Jake’s separation is ambiguous throughout most of the film, and Jake remains aloof about his employment and personal life, the music provides insight into Jake’s feelings and acts as narrative commentary. After

Melanie takes money out of their joint account and refurnishes Jake’s house, including a new stove and a refrigerator stocked with light beer, Jake refuses to sign the divorce papers, and his action cues “Bright Lights, Big City” (Jimmy Reed, 1961). We can interpret the song’s lyrics as a musical representation of Jake’s feelings upon Melanie’s

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return: “Bright lights, big city, gone to my baby’s head.” The song is a bridge into the next scene, where Melanie visits the local bar, reconnects with childhood friends, gets drunk, and belittles their way of life, “I mean how do you people live like this anyway?

Did you know that there’s a great, big world out there? It has absolutely nothing to do with chitlins or children or beer!” Through a stark comparison between Melanie’s comments and people who presumably represent her upbringing, the song is commentary on both Jake’s and the town’s reactions to Melanie’s return to Alabama.

Later in the film, when Melanie attends the Pigeon County Catfish Festival to apologize for her rude behavior and comments, the scene is underscored by “Falling

Down” (, 2002). While the song style is the same as that of Melanie’s introductory song, the lyrics comment on Melanie’s vulnerability during the apologies.

If fear’s what make us decide Our journey Well I’m not along for the ride ‘Cause I’m still yearning I am falling down Try and stop me Feels so good to hit the ground You can watch me I fall right on my face It’s an uphill human race And I am falling down

After her apologies are accepted, Melanie, Jake, and their friends crowd around a bar at the festival when “Sweet Home Alabama” (Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1974) begins diegetically in the background. The group, and other festival attendees, cheer and one friend puts his hat over his heart saying, “Let’s , folks.” As the group moves to the dance floor, Melanie remains hesitant and suggests that she and Jake could talk rather than dance. Melanie’s reluctance to join the group on the dance floor suggests that while

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others hear the song as the anthem of their state, deserving of respect and celebration,

Melanie has become an outsider, further solidifying a disconnect between the southern rock Alabama underscoring and Melanie’s sentiments.

Jake eventually signs the divorce papers. Although Andrew learns about

Melanie’s past marriage, he confirms his love for her and they continue with their wedding plans, cueing a montage of Melanie planning the wedding. The montage serves a dual function: it shows Melanie planning her wedding to Andrew and Melanie calling

Jake, who disconnects his phone. The montage is underscored by “You Got Me” (Jason

Chain, 2002) which, from the outset, marks the song as a breakup montage through its lyrics, portraying Melanie’s conflicting feelings about the marriage and her continued love for Jake:

Something’s been creepin’ into my head Turnin’ my thoughts into a dizzy red Now you have come to get some lofty role Oh, you got me walkin’ backwards You got me thinking sideways You got me talkin’ circles You got me losin’ my way You got me crossin’ every line You got me just in time

It turns out that although Jake signed the divorce papers, Melanie did not; as the audience knows her true feelings from the montage, they are not surprised when she leaves

Andrew at the altar and returns to Jake. Mirroring the opening of the film, Melanie finds

Jake on the beach during a thunderstorm and states her reasoning for marrying him, “so I can kiss you anytime I want.”

The film seems to move towards a happy conclusion as the couple holds a reception at the bar, underscored by “Gonna Make Me Love You More” (Ryan Adams,

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2001). Yet, as is typical of the romantic comedy, this happy ending seems to harbor many questions: will Melanie will be happy with Jake this time? What will happen with her career? Will she be truly happy in Alabama? The film begins to answer these questions for us as the jukebox plays a cover of “Sweet Home Alabama” by Jewel. The song conveys Melanie’s reconciliation between her rural and city selves. Whereas Jewel’s vocal style aligns with Melanie’s previous underscoring, the sonic and lyric elements of the song closely align with the original. Recalling the first iteration of the song in the film and Melanie’s reluctance to dance to it, this final scene conveys Melanie’s self-assurance in her identity. The subsequent scene is a slideshow during the end credits in which we see snapshots of Melanie and Jake’s life in New York City after their reunion: Melanie’s parents meeting her work colleagues; Melanie and Jake at dinner with her friends; and

Melanie and Jake, with a baby and coon dog, walking in . This sequence functions in opposition to the breakup montage and through this series of snapshots, we can surmise that Melanie achieves a balance between her previously binary positions.

In the above-cited 2002 interview, Andy Tennant, director of Sweet Home

Alabama, commented on the film’s running theme of personal acceptance.

If your self-worth is based on external forces, then you're a mess, you're at the and call of people and critics. It's an awful place to be. And I think thematically the whole idea of self-worth and self-love and acceptance are profoundly personal. Everybody goes through it, whether you're in the movie business or not.31 Here, Tennant points to self-love, self-worth, and self-acceptance as both personal and universal. While the film emphasizes these themes through Melanie’s personal story, they also serve to make the film and its characters relatable.32

31 Joel Cunningham, “Talkin’ Sweet Home Hollywood with Andy Tennant.” 32 I will return to this issue of character relatability throughout this dissertation. 102

Although Tennant argues that he did not set out to reinvent the romantic comedy genre in Sweet Home Alabama, he certainly expands the tradition of conveying character development through musical connotations and representations by using two versions of the same song to encapsulate Melanie’s transformation. Furthermore, even though the audience knows that Melanie and Jake will be together in the end, showing the after of their “happily ever after” infuses the film with a sense of solidity that is not as readily present in previous exemplars of the genre.

Convention and Female Story in the Romcom

Although each of the previously mentioned films adapts popular song for its own purposes, the narrative arc, the placement of the songs, and the meanings of the songs remain consistent. Popular songs introduce the protagonists and their current life and relationship status, underscore the emotional anguish of the couple’s breakup, and reinforce the “happily ever after” of the couple’s reunion. In this way, the songs act as commentary on each stage of the “couple meets, breaks up, reunites” genre arc and act as a foregrounded emotional guide for the audience.

This plot standardization and predictability invite critique. For example, a reviewer from Reel Film Reviews gave The Wedding Planner a 1.5/4 stating, “The script recycles every cliché you could possibly imagine (and then some),” a reviewer from The

Washington Post said that How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days “resorts to the kinds of clichés that were so yesterday two weeks ago,” and of 13 Going on 30, a reviewer from The

Seattle Times gave the film a 2.5/4 stating that you “find yourself rooting for [Garner and

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Ruffalo], despite the predictability of the premise.”33 On the other hand, to quote film scholar Deborah Jermyn,

it seems somewhat misplaced to critique a film for adopting the generic conventions that, after all, allow it to define itself within that genre. . . Instead, it is perhaps more appropriate to look at the flair or skill with which conventions are used, appropriated, or re-imagined.34

Although we could (and perhaps, should) critique romantic comedies for their inevitably unproblematic, monogamous-heterosexual, happy ending, those making these criticisms fail to take into account the ways in which these films play within and alter the genre’s established conventions.

Furthermore, we should evaluate the ways these films account for women’s experiences in the early 2000s and the ways they engage with third-wave feminism— particularly, women’s conflicted feelings about femininity and feminism. Of course, the conflict between these two positions did not begin in the new millennium; rather, it originated with the Suffragettes and the New Woman in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and was expanded in the 1960s, when femininity was viewed as a patriarchal tool for women’s oppression. To this point, feminist scholar Joanne Hollows writes:

For many second-wave feminists, femininity was seen as fundamental to understanding women’s oppression. Girls, it was often claimed, were socialized into feminine values and behavior which were associated with passivity, submissiveness, and dependence. For many feminists, in

33 David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews, February 24, 2003, accessed November 13, 2017, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wedding_planner/.; Ann Hornaday, “More Like ‘How to Lose an Audience,’” , February 7, 2003, accessed November 13, 2017, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2003/02/07/AR2005033117089.html.; Moira Macdonald, “‘13 Going on 30’: Cheerful Fantasy Floats on Dust,” The Seattle Times, April 23, 2004, accessed November 13, 2017, http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?slug=thirteen23&date=20040423. 34 Deborah Jermyn, “Unlikely Heroines? ‘Women of a Certain Age’ and Romantic Comedy,” CineAction no. 85, (2011): 29.

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becoming feminine, women were “colonized” by patriarchy and become implicated in their own oppression.35

Thus, as feminist scholars Hilary Hinds and Jackie Stacey state, the feminist response to femininity is “perhaps most clearly articulated in what has now become the mythical, and most persistent, icon of second-wave feminism: the bra-burner.”36 They further describe the origins of the bra-burner icon as follows.

Bras were not burnt, but were just one of many items—including corsets, suspender belts, high heels, and hair rollers—to be cast into the “freedom trash can.” This famous symbolic rejection of all feminine accoutrements was part of the women’s liberation protest against the sexism and racism of beauty contests staged the day before the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City in 1968…. The press’s invocation of the braless women’s libber as the figure who stages so perfectly the tension between feminism and femininity is no accident of history, but rather reveals broader anxieties about women’s liberation.37

The image of feminists as bra-burners who do not care about their appearance is

“antithetical to conventional definitions of desirable femininity: the feminist is a slack- busted, ugly woman with hairy legs and no make-up, living in domestic squalor with her dirty children (if any children), seeking to stir up ferment amongst her more attractive and contented sisters.”38

Despite the supposed incompatibility of these stances, the 1990s saw attempts to reconcile them: for instance, Princess Diana represented “the acceptably feminine face of feminism.”39 Thus, women were presented with a potential reconciliation to the previous feminism/feminine polarization. As a result of this reconciliation, women supposedly

35 Joanne Hollows, Feminism, Femininity, and Popular Culture (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 10. 36 Hilary Hinds and Jackie Stacey, “Imagining Feminism, Imagining Femininity: The Bra-Burner, Diana, and the Woman Who Kills,” Feminist Media Studies 1, no. 2 (2001): 156. 37 Hinds and Stacey, “Imagining Feminism, Imagining Femininity,” 156–7. 38 Ibid., 161. 39 Ibid., 169. 105

won the equality battle, marking the dawn of the post-feminist age. As feminist scholar

Angela McRobbie explains,

…post-feminism positively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account, suggest that equality is achieved, in order to install a whole repertoire of new meanings which emphasize that it is no longer needed, it is a spent force.40

In a post-feminist society, women are said to have achieved equality, have sexual freedom, and the right to indulge in feminine practices. While there was no longer a polarization between feminist and feminine, there remained a balancing act. In the 2002 book Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire, feminist scholar Merri Lisa Johnson explains women’s struggles to be both career-driven and feminine.

… twenty- and thirty-something women of today inhabit a transitional period in U.S. history, with deferential femininity from the not-so-distant past layered beneath (not simply replaced by) hard won career-related advances toward equality. Women’s rights have been part of pop culture lingo all our lives. All this apparent progress makes it hard to turn to my eccentric Aunt Feminism and say, “I’m still having some pretty big problems.” Or, “I know I don’t have to be the second most important person in a romantic relationship, but somehow I keep finding myself there anyway.”41

The opening songs in The Wedding Planner reflect Mary’s own struggle with femininity and career-related advances, as described by Johnson, and they represent the experiences of some postmillennial women. Similarly, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days portrays Andie as a career-minded woman who must choose between her career and the man she loves.

40 Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, , and Washington DC: Sage, 2009), 12. 41 Merri Lisa Johnson, “Fuck You & Your Untouchable Face,” in Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire, ed. Merri Lisa Johnson (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), 15. 106

13 Going on 30 shows Jenna choosing between two alternative life paths, one centered on her career and the other on her relationship. The endings of these movies resemble

Johnson's description: the female protagonists keep finding themselves as the second most important person in a romantic relationship. Mary leaves her work at a high-profile wedding that would secure a promotion to chase after Steve, Andie misses her job interview in Washington D.C. to stay with Ben, and Jenna gives up a career altogether to be a housewife. While the former two are somewhat ambiguous in what might happen after the film—we can assume that Mary is still a wedding planner and Andie still writes—the latter creates a binary stereotype between executive/“bitch” and wife/“nice girl,” suggesting that there is no middle ground between the two.

Viewed favorably, the introductory songs in these films portray contemporary women’s attempts to reconcile feminism and femininity, but the films then fail to offer any real solution to the heroines’ problems. Instead, the closing songs, which comment on the elation, comfort, and solidity of the happy ending, reinforce the negative connotations of femininity by framing a couple in which the woman is subservient, sacrificing her career and aspirations for the sake of a relationship.42

Seen some years after their premieres, postmillennial romantic comedies have been criticized for portraying women as subservient to men and as willing to sacrifice their own careers for a romantic relationship. For example, in her 2007 discussion of in new romantic comedies, film scholar Yvonne Tasker states:

While postfeminism insists on female strength and the primacy of the self (for which choice stands as the marker), that strength can, it seems, only be celebrated when figured in appropriately feminine terms. And since conventional femininities are traditionally aligned not with strength but

42 Sweet Home Alabama, however, seems to offer a more tenable solution to this problem, showing the happy couple in New York City and suggesting that Melanie can “have it all.” 107

with passivity, malleability, and a broad willingness to sacrifice self for others, the postfeminist commitment to an imagery of strong, self-defined, sexually confident yet resolutely feminine women is potentially rife with contradiction. Indeed, what postfeminist culture deems to be signs of empowerment routinely emerges as an accommodation to, and acceptance of, a diminished role for women.43

Further, Angela McRobbie makes the case for reading Bridget Jones’s Diary as a post- feminist text:

The film [Bridget Jones’s Diary] celebrates a kind of scatterbrain and endearing femininity, as though it is something that has been lost. Thank goodness, the film seems to be saying, that old-fashioned femininity can be retrieved. Post-feminism in this context seems to mean gently chiding the feminist past, while also retrieving and reinstating some palatable elements, in this case sexual freedom, the right to drink, smoke, have fun in the city, and be economically independent.44

Nevertheless, McRobbie also argues that feminism is present, however abstractly, in post-feminist texts. She maintains that Bridget owes her lifestyle and freedoms to feminism:

Bridget Jones’s Diary speaks then to female desire, and in a wholly commercialized way, to the desire for some kind of gender justice, or fairness, in the world of sex and relationships. Here too the ghost of feminism is hovering. Bridget deserves to get what she wants. The audience is wholly on her side. She ought to be able to find the right man, for the reason that she has negotiated that tricky path which requires being independent, earning her own living, standing up for herself against demeaning comments, remaining funny and good humored throughout, without being angry or too critical of men, without foregoing her femininity, her desires for love and motherhood, her sense of humor and her appealing vulnerability.45

43 Yvonne Tasker, “Enchanted (2007) by Postfeminism: Gender, Irony, and the New Romantic Comedy,” in Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema, ed. Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), 69. 44 McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 12. 45 Ibid., 22. 108

Therefore, according to McRobbie, the conflict between femininity and feminism can in some sense be resolved. In her reading, feminism remains an active force, even in the conservative post-feminist framework of postmillennial romantic comedies.

Viewed either as unsuccessfully engaging with third-wave feminism or as a conservative portrayal of women in a post-feminist society, women’s representation in romantic comedies is undoubtedly problematic. Before dismissing all postmillennial romantic comedies as anti-feminist, though, we should note the generic constraints within which these portrayals work and evaluate the role that music plays in establishing and modifying those generic boundaries. Within and apart from these conventional uses, music can also be a tool for showing what scholar Tania Modleski would call “what it means to be a woman” rather than a hierarchy of certain types of womanhood.46 The constraints of the romcom genre beg the question: Is it possible to have a romantic comedy that portrays a woman as independent, confident, and single while still being defined within the genre? In the next chapter, I look at previous cycles of the romantic comedy that have attempted to resolve this question and the ways in which later postmillennial romantic comedies use music to expand the genre’s boundaries.

46 Tania Modleski, Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a Postfeminist Age (London: Routledge, 1991), 20. 109

Chapter 3: “Do My Thang”: Expanding Conventional Boundaries Through Popular Song

Filmmakers working in the postmillennial romantic comedy use carefully chosen popular songs to articulate and underline the specific structural conventions of the genre: the protagonist’s desires (introductory song), the couple’s breakup (breakup montage), and the couple’s reunion (closing song). These songs emphasize the desperate and single female protagonist, her need for a male partner, and her ultimate submission to a heterosexual romance. Examples of this narrative arc and song conventions are exemplified by films such as Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), in which Bridget is introduced as hopelessly alone with the song “All By Myself” (Jamie O’Neal, 2000), wallows in her post-breakup misery to the sounds of “Out of Reach” (Gabrielle, 2001), and is reunited with the male partner at the end of the film, underscored by “Someone

Like You” (Van Morrison, 1987). Within this arc, there are moments that highlight the female protagonist’s agency (for example, Aretha Franklin’s 1967 recording of “Respect” and Chaka Khan’s 1978 song “I’m Every Woman”); however, the film is bound by the generic convention that necessitates the couple’s reunion.1

Even as these narrative plot points define the genre and audience expectations, film critics and scholars such as Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Roberta Garrett, and Anthea

Taylor, argue that the traditional ending—in which the female protagonist abandons any career aspirations in favor of a heterosexual coupling—exemplifies a troublesome erasure of feminism.2 A problem then arises: Is it possible for a romcom to support rather than

1 For a full discussion of Bridget Jones’s Diary and postmillennial romantic comedy song conventions, see chapter 2. 2 Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (London: Wallflower, 2007).; Roberta Garrett, Postmodern Chick Flicks: The Return of the Woman’s Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).; Anthea Taylor, Single Women in Popular Culture: The Limits of Postfeminism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 110

deny feminist ideas? Is it possible to alter a conventional narrative while still retaining the genre’s essential, defining elements?

To begin to answer this question, we can look to an earlier cycle (or distinct group of films) of the genre, the radical romantic comedy of the 1970s. Of this cycle, film scholar Tamar Jeffers McDonald states:

The radical romantic comedy is often willing to abandon the emphasis on making sure the couple ends up together, regardless of likelihood, instead striving to interrogate the ideology of romance… the radical romantic comedy, for a short period, was interested to see what became of the genre if more realistic elements were permitted space. Loss and death were allowed into the stories alongside love and marriage, and the traditional happy ending of the romantic comedy in these films might be subverted… There is a very noticeable emphasis on the importance of sexual satisfaction to women, as well as to men, and the acknowledgement of female sexual desire.3

The radical romantic comedy even attempts to break convention by eschewing the traditional happy ending. In McDonald’s description of the genre we can read the radical romantic comedy’s subversion of conventions as a cinematic counterpart to the 1970s . At a time marked by protests for women’s equality, the Equal Rights

Amendment, Roe v. Wade, and feminist movements in literature, poetry, and the visual arts, it is no wonder that romantic comedies of the 1970s had no place for “happily ever after,” and especially for media that showcased women as subordinate to men.

Nevertheless, despite the cycle’s avoidance of the happy ending, radical romantic comedies preserved the emphasis on the romantic couple. In fact, McDonald writes of the film (1977):

3 Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (London: Wallflower, 2007), 59, 70.

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[No romantic comedy] has tried to suggest monogamous coupledom itself is an outmoded concept; even Annie Hall, possibly the most radical film in choosing to deny the audience an ending with the couple’s union, does not suggest the goal of finding one’s true love is no longer desirable, merely impossible.4

Moreover, although the ending of Annie Hall does not actually show the reunited couple, through song choice the film implies the couple’s eventual union. The final scene of the film is underscored by singing “Seems Like Old Times” (music and lyrics by Carmen Lombardo and John Jacob Loeb, 1945). The song was sung by Annie

(Keaton) in an earlier scene following a reconciliation between Annie and Alvy (Woody

Allen). Upon hearing the song at the end of the film and recalling its previous cue, we can view the final scene as part of a relationship pattern in which Annie and Alvy repeatedly break up and reunite, rather than the more conventional linear romantic comedy narrative. Thus, even in their attempts to break convention, Annie Hall and the radical romantic comedy remain inherently bound by these conventions and their importance in defining the genre.

The inevitability of these generic restrictions—in which the man and woman reunite despite their incompatibilities or prior issues—contributed to the doubling-down on convention in romantic comedies of the late 1980s and 1990s. These films almost always include a monogamous, heterosexual happy ending. Examples include When

Harry Met Sally (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), While You

Were Sleeping (1995), and Notting Hill (1999).5

4 McDonald, Romantic Comedy, 13. 5 McDonald, Romantic Comedy, 85. 112

With these generic restrictions and their history in mind, it might seem impossible for filmmakers to break the genre’s conventional shackles. However, I suggest that, rather than breaking with convention altogether, postmillennial romantic comedies use popular songs to convey alternate meanings within conventions, to shift from a needy protagonist to an independent one. Film scholar Rick Altman would refer to this shift in meaning as a partial change in the genre’s semantics while retaining its syntax, defined as follows:

… we can as a whole distinguish between generic definitions that depend on a list of common traits, attitudes, characters, shots, locations, sets, and the like—thus stressing the semantic elements that make up the genre— and definitions that play up instead certain constitutive relationships between undesignated and variable placeholders—relationships that might be called the genre’s fundamental syntax. The semantic approach thus stresses the genre’s building blocks, while the syntactic view privileges the structures into which they are arranged.6 The syntax of the romantic comedy genre includes the introduction of the primary couple, the obstacle(s) preventing their union, and the happy ending while the semantics traditionally consists of the hopeless romantic female protagonist, a problematic relationship, and the heterosexual happy ending. In line with Altman’s description, in

6 Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to ” (1999) in Film Theory & Criticism, 8th edn., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 499. Altman’s description of the semantic approach differs from that of Fredric Jameson, who theorizes the semantic nature of the text as a whole, whereas Altman analyzes units of the text. Frederic Jameson, “Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre,” New Literary History 7, no. 1 (1975): 135–63. Theorists and filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein have used syntax to describe the film grammar of montages, while others such as Christian Metz have resisted analogies between film and language. Sergei Eisenstein, “Film Form” (1929) in Film Theory & Criticism, 8th edn., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 28; Gilbert Harman, “Semiotics and the Cinema: Metz and Wollen” (1975), ibid., 63. Musicologist Wye Jamison Allanbrook discusses semantic units in opera buffa and their musical syntax as critical to the rhetorical function of eighteenth-century music. Wye Jamison Allanbrook, The Secular Commedia: Comic Mimesis in Late Eighteenth-Century Music, ed. Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 99; 111. 113

postmillennial romantic comedies these new kinds of popular song choices function syntactically as songs did in earlier cycles of the genre; but they express the different message that the female protagonist does not need to be rescued from singlehood. She is just fine the way she is.

In this chapter, I trace incremental changes to the message, or semantics, of the introductory and closing song conventions outlined in chapter 1. While the placement and function of the introductory and closing songs remains the same in the postmillennial romantic comedy—introducing the female protagonist and resolving the conflict, respectively—they now introduce a different type of protagonist and mark a self- reflexivity within the happy ending of the closing song. Rather than desperate and single, the female protagonist in these films is confident and content being alone. Furthermore, while the narrative emphasis remains on the couple, the closing scene and song showcase the female protagonist’s agency—her choice for happiness, regardless of the coupling— thus redefining the focus and meaning of the happy ending.

These conventional alterations were incremental, and they emerged at a time when the more standardized versions of the conventions still dominated. In the following section, I analyze Two Can Play That Game (2001), The Sweetest Thing (2002), and

Made of Honor (2008) to discuss the ways in which music alters the presentation of women, their career aspirations, and their sexual lives in films from the early- to mid-

2000s. This chapter will culminate in a discussion of two more recent romantic comedies:

Trainwreck (2015) and Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016).

Incremental Changes and Generic Subversion in Two Can Play That Game (2001)

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Before beginning my analysis of how the conventional shift is fully displayed in later postmillennial romantic comedies, it is useful to trace the incremental changes to popular song conventions. The film Two Can Play That Game opens with funk electric bass underscoring an aerial shot of a cityscape, and a voiceover by the main character,

Shanté Smith (Vivica A. Fox). The scene fades and we see the source of the voiceover—

Shanté is in her office, talking on the phone and telling her friend that she needs to “kick him to the curb,” followed by, “Oh no, don’t cry, Karen. Don’t cry, sweetie, look, I’ll be right there.” Shanté hangs up the phone and speaks to the camera, explaining that her friends Karen and Tracy are having “man trouble.” Shanté observes that spring is “break- up season” when women start dressing in more revealing clothing and men are more likely to cheat on their partners. She tells her assistant to clear her schedule for the day, cueing the beginning of her introductory song, “She’s a Bad Mama Jama” (Carl Carlton,

1982).

The song underscores an opening montage: Shanté leaving her office; a man catcalling her as she walks by, to which Shanté tells the camera, “Men are so predictable”; an older white man admiring Shanté in the elevator, a man whose gaze she catches before rolling her eyes, smiling, and asking the camera, “What is it about men and big booties?”; Shanté driving through town in her convertible; and Shanté arriving at her house. The song continues as Shanté introduces herself to the audience:

By the way, I’m Shanté Smith, senior advertising executive at Parker and Long. And, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a sister. An educated, strong sister who remembers where she came from and knows where she’s going. But let me ask you a question: Why can’t men act right? Hm? Don’t they know that if they acted right, women would gladly give them all the love and respect that they needed? But, because they show they’re asses, we’ve got to chuck ‘em. [Song fades]

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This opening sequence is groundbreaking for the way the music manipulates the convention. While “She’s a Bad Mama Jama” comments on Shanté’s attractiveness

(“She’s a bad mama jama, just as fine as she can be”), the song does not refer to a relationship or any potential romantic desires; in fact, we do not even learn that Shanté is in a relationship until ten minutes into the film.7 Furthermore, the song serves to establish

Shanté’s authority, specifically, her awareness of men’s gaze and her ability to look back.

The act of gazing involves commodifying the seen; rather than simply an act of looking, the gaze connotes control and is critiqued by feminist theorists as a tool of hegemonic regulation. Feminist media scholar Linda Mizejewski discusses standup Wanda Sykes’s use of comedy to “target [the] racist ways of looking as well as the black self-policing of the body that results from this surveillance.” Mizejewski situates her argument within W.E.B. Du Bois’s “double consciousness”: a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”8 Mizejewski argues that

Sykes evokes this acute awareness of white surveillance and “the physical restraint of black girls who want to dance in the car, a black woman’s detour to the salad bar.”9 This double consciousness and self-policing are present in the opening scene of Two Can Play

That Game: Shanté is aware that she is being looked at and she refuses to alter her

7 As a point of reference, by ten minutes into Sweet Home Alabama (2003), we had already met both male leads and knew that, at some point, Melanie would have to choose between love and her career, and by extension between the country and the city. 8 Linda Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny: Women and Body Politics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 156. W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk,” in Literary Theory: An Anthology, ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (Malden: Blackwell, 1998): 869. 9 Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 159–60. 116

behavior based on the gaze, thus enacting an oppositional gaze. In her 1982 article, feminist scholar bell hooks discusses issues of black agency and the oppositional gaze:

Spaces of agency exist for Black people, wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see. The “gaze” has been and is a site of resistance for colonized Black people globally. Subordinates in relations of power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that “looks” to document, one that is oppositional. In resistance struggle, the power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating “awareness” politicizes looking relations—one learns to look a certain way in order to resist. 10 hooks’s oppositional gaze interrogates the white and the .

As coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey, in film the male gaze is a subject position that adopts the male perspective, in which the voyeuristic camera objectifies the woman as “isolated, glamourous, on display, sexualized.” For Mulvey, the oppositional gaze specifically challenges that of the white male colonizer.11 Feminist scholar E. Ann

Kaplan further theorizes the position of the imperial gaze in her book Looking for the

Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze:

The gaze of the colonialist thus refuses to acknowledge its own power and privilege: it unconsciously represses knowledge of power hierarchies and its need to dominate, to control. Like the male gaze, it’s an objectifying gaze, one that refuses mutual gazing, mutual subject-to-subject recognition. It refuses what I am calling a “looking relation.”12

Thus, when Shanté meets the man’s gaze in the elevator she is exercising an oppositional gaze against the white male colonizer; her returned gaze offers a looking relation that resists objectification. The oppositional gaze here involves reversing the power relation.

10 bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” (1982) in Film Theory & Criticism, 8th edn., 682. 11 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) in Film Theory & Criticism, 8th edn., 627. 12 E. Ann Kaplan, Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 79. 117

When Shanté exits the elevator and speaks to the camera she acknowledges the man’s gaze and dismisses its meaning, exercising agency over the situation.

Cued by “She’s a Bad Mama Jama,” the viewer comes to realize that Shanté’s power in these situations establishes her as the perfect woman. In this way, the introductory song self-consciously situates itself within the romantic comedy genre and the history of black cinema. To quote hooks once again,

Even when representations of Black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve—to enhance and maintain White womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze.13

By contrast, as we can see in Shanté’s opening monologue, Two Can Play That Game presumes a female audience and presents black womanhood as both the object and beholder of the gaze. Therefore, the opening of the movie both acknowledges and bends generic constraints; even before she makes her introduction to the camera, through the song and dialogue, Shanté is established as “an educated, strong sister who remembers where she came from and knows where she’s going.”

Subverting Conventional Expectations in The Sweetest Thing (2002)

The introductory song to The Sweetest Thing (2002) similarly avoids establishing the heroine’s relationship desires. The movie opens with men talking about Christina

Walters (). Through these interviews, we learn that each man is still grappling with the fact that Christina refused either to sleep with him or to call him back.

One man appears on screen multiple times and insists that because Christina didn’t sleep with him she must be a . He then apologizes stating that, inside, Christina is

13 hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” 684. 118

probably sad and alone; yet he immediately reverts to calling her a lesbian. Following the interviews, the introductory song, “Sexual Revolution” (Macy Gray, 2001), underscores

Christina listening to her mp3 player and dancing up a hill in San Francisco. “Sexual

Revolution” is “a mix up of classic soul, funk, rock, hip-hop, and techno” from Gray’s second album, The Id, which, according to Gray, “is about what you do before you think and before you edit your impulses.”14 While the song was not very successful upon its release, it peaked at number 4 on Billboard’s “Hot Dance Club Play.”15 With its dance club aesthetic and call for women to “express what is in you,” the song emphasizes

Christina’s sexual confidence.16 Moreover, while the men are upset about Christina’s leaving them, she remains unperturbed, and thereby avoids gendered societal constraints that call her to bow to male pressure and enter a relationship.

At the end of the film, Christina chases after her love interest, Peter (Thomas

Jane), whom she has spoken with for less than five minutes of the film. The chasing scene is underscored by light electric guitar strums and sparse drum hits that indicate the scene is light-hearted. Coupled with the subsequent dialogue conventions in which the couple would typically confess their feelings or comment on their kiss, the music cues the end of the film—this is the moment when the couple should reunite. 17 In this scene,

14 Teri Vanhorn, “Macy Gray Slips into Freud, Eurodisco, Hip-Hop, on The Id,” MTV, September 21, 2001, accessed March 3, 2018, http://www.mtv.com/news/1449070/macy-gray-slips-into- freud-eurodisco-hip-hop-on-the-id/. 15 “Hot Dance Club Play: Sexual Revolution,” Billboard, February 9, 2002, accessed March 3, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20080503140455/http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/esearch/chart_di splay.jsp?cfi=359&cfgn=Singles&cfn=Hot%2BDance%2BClub%2BPlay&ci=3044448&cdi=781 8930&cid=02%2F09%2F2002. 16 “Sexual Revolution” Recording, March 3, 2018, clip from The Sweetest Thing begins at 1:21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asyjUqrNIeQ. 17 Examples of this type of commentary include the final scene of Pretty Woman (1990) in which Vivian states that the woman rescues the man “right back” at the end of a classic love story;

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Christina states, “You better be a really good kisser.” Framed in a close shot, the kiss signals the end of the film—but the music stops and Christina pulls away, saying “Wow.

That was weak. Yeah. It’s okay, you can try again.” The couple kisses, the music restarts and stops again as she pulls away, “You were so much better in my dream.” Peter tries to kiss Christina again who laughs, “I thought this was mutual. No, I’m serious. Listen, I’ll call you, okay?” The music restarts as Christina walks away. Peter calls after her but

Christina just waves.

The film ends in the same way it began, this time interviewing Peter who recounts his story with Christina, who appears from behind the sofa; the camera then pans to a picture of Christina and Peter’s wedding day. By using music to cue the close of the film and then playing with the conventional presentation of the couple’s union, the film highlights the ridiculous nature of the happy ending and the way music can be used to manipulate audience expectations. Of course, when they kiss in the street Christina does not yet have true feelings for Peter—they met in a bar, had a brief conversation, and, essentially, know nothing about each other. Thus, the film emphasizes that, while true love may be possible, it does not result from chance meetings or romanticized notions of relationships but takes time to develop, as exemplified by the jump in time at the end of the film. This manipulation of convention and exposure of its unrealistic elements lays the groundwork for films like Trainwreck (2015), discussed later in this chapter.

Bridget in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) states, “Nice boys don’t kiss like that.” In Two Weeks’ Notice (2002), Lucy (Sandra Bullock) and George (Hugh Grant) agree that their relationship will work as long as Lucy does not have to work for him; Melanie in Sweet Home Alabama (2003) states her desire to marry Jake so she can “kiss him anytime she wants”; and in Life as We Know It (2010), Eric (Josh Duhamel) confesses his love for Holly (). 120

While The Sweetest Thing plays within the opening and closing conventions, other postmillennial romantic comedies, such as Made of Honor (2008), deploy a different message strictly within the introductory song. Made of Honor opens with a college party. A man (Patrick Dempsey) wearing a Bill Clinton mask makes his way through the crowd looking for “Monica.” He finds her supposed dorm room, uses the key from above the door, and climbs in bed with a woman (Michelle Monaghan), “Monica’s” roommate, who then screams and sprays him in the face with perfume. Cutting to the dorm’s common room, the man rinses his eyes and tries to seduce the roommate even when she is brutally honest with him:

Your nose is bent, it droops down at the bottom, a feature that is accentuated by the thinness of your upper lip. And your eyes are too far apart, but they’d have to be to accommodate that bent nose. And, I feel sorry for you, that you have to validate yourself through insatiable, meaningless, ego sport-sex with insecure girls like my roommate. I would never have sex with someone like you.

Charmed by her honesty, the man introduces himself as Tom and suggests that they be friends. She introduces herself as Hannah and, opening the door to her room to reveal her vomiting roommate, says, “She’s all yours, friend.” Tom closes the door and the title credits roll to the tune of “Love Song” (Sara Bareilles, 2007).

According to Bareilles, “Love Song” was a result of her growing frustrations while attempting to write a song that her would accept. “I started to get really insecure about it, and then I got really pissed off at myself for caring what anybody thought.”18 The result is “kind of a nasty song, but it was very tongue-in-cheek, which is

18 Gil Kaufman, “Sara Bareilles’ ‘Love Song’ ‘Basically Wrote Itself’ – After She Struggled For Years,” MTV, March 10, 2008, accessed March 3, 2018,

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so me to, like, be nasty in a passive-aggressive way!”19 While the original context of the song is Bareilles refusing to conform to the record company’s demands for a hit love song, in the context of the film, the song’s words reinforce Hannah’s insistence that she is independent and is not seeking a relationship that conforms to society’s standards.

Therefore, although the bright pop sound, lead female vocals, and simple piano, guitar, and drum accompaniment paired with a cityscape montage conform to the sonic and visual expectations of postmillennial romantic comedies, the song’s meaning resists convention. Although this moment of resistance is brief and the remainder of the film aligns with more traditional conceptions of romantic comedy convention—Tom and

Hannah marry at the end of the film—Hannah chooses her happiness with Tom over a

“perfect” life in Scotland with another man. Therefore, the film’s evasion of the desperate female protagonist trope and the emphasis on personal autonomy evince a shift in the genre that is signaled by the music.

These disruptive postmillennial romantic comedies exemplify the power of popular song conventions: establish female power within a genre that is traditionally classified by critics as conservative and over-reliant on gender stereotypes. While at first glance the films might appear to strictly adhere to convention—the couple meets, breaks up, and is reunited—the subversive power of the music lies in its ability to present alternate meanings within the conventions. Because these moments are not a wholesale subversion of generic expectations, film critics and scholars censure such films for their

http://www.mtv.com/news/1583067/sara-bareilles-love-song-basically-wrote-itself-after-she- struggled-for-years/. 19 Noel Vasquez, “Sara Bareilles: The Sweet Author of Tough Songs,” CBS News, January 5, 2014, accessed March 3, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sara-bareilles-the-sweet-author- of-tough-songs/. 122

reliance on the happy ending. However, these minor subversive moments lay the groundwork for later postmillennial romantic comedies which further subvert and play with the genre’s conventions.

Trainwreck and the Sounds of Subversive Parody

In the decade that followed early postmillennial romantic comedies, the genre increasingly relied on popular song to subvert generic expectations through irony and parody, and suggested that by conveying an alternate message, songs could transform the genre. Trainwreck (2015) opens with a man explaining to his two young daughters the reason he and their mother are divorcing. Putting infidelity in terms the girls can understand, the man makes a metaphor between sex and playing with a doll. “You like your doll, right? You love your doll. But, what if I told you that was the only doll you’d be allowed to play with for the rest of your life? You’d feel sad.” The scene ends with the girls repeating after their , “Monogamy is not realistic.” A steady, light rock guitar strums in the background as a title card cues a jump forward in time—twenty-three years later—we cut to a darkened room and a young woman (Amy Schumer) and man undressing as the guitar music continues in the background. “I never do this. This is so weird for me,” she says. The man pulls down his pants as the woman gets in bed and reaches for a condom. Seeing the man pant-less, the guitar music cuts off and she exclaims,

Oh, no! Shit! That’s your dick? Too big! Your dick doesn’t end. Why doesn’t your dick end? Have you ever fucked someone before? Where is she buried? That’s like a whole cast of Game of Thrones.

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Chuckling, the man climbs into bed and the woman confesses that she’s a little shy and suggests he “give a little warm-up”; the woman pushes his head under covers and he agrees to oral sex. “Just do the alphabet. Just hang up at the top. Everything important is up at the top.” The camera cuts to the woman’s scrunched face. She makes a few gasping noises, moans, and then promptly snores. The man resurfaces and tries to awaken her, complaining that it’s his turn, before giving up and falling asleep beside her. She opens one eye and gets out of bed as her voiceover begins.

Hey, guys, I’m Amy. Don’t judge me, fuckers! I’m just a sexual girl, okay? I am fine. I am in control. This is obviously not my first rodeo. The key is to never, ever let them sleep over. Look, I have a great job and my apartment is sick, and my friends and family are awesome, and I’m kind of seeing someone. This dude is not him [we see a man Amy is kissing in an alleyway]. This guy is who I’m seeing. [we see a muscular man Amy is walking with]. Kind of. He’s hot, right? He is great, but it is like fucking an ice sculpture.

This voiceover underscores a montage of Amy’s sex partners, exemplifying her skill at avoiding sleepovers and introducing us to Amy’s love life.

The montage ends with Amy mistakenly spending the night with a man in Staten

Island, stumbling in high heels through uneven streets, and taking a ferry back to

Manhattan, underscored by ’s “Do My Thang” (2013).

Every single night and every single day I’mma do my thing, I’mma do my thing So don’t you worry about me I’ll be okay I’mma do my thing, ‘cause I’mma do my thing (x6) [Cue “Trainwreck” Title Screen] We do it, we do it We don’t give a fuck Only thing we think about is turning up, turning up We do it, we do it We do it all the way [song fades]

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I have described this opening at length because it comes across as conventional. We’ve seen this gambit before—our female protagonist introduced as a little girl and then re- introduced as an adult. Even the placement and function of the song is nothing new: it reinforces vital attributes of the protagonist and comments on her current life status.

Through these tropes, Trainwreck is akin to The Wedding Planner or 13 Going on 30.

But when is the last time we saw the little girl learning to resist the “happily ever after”?

Or openly commenting on a partner’s penis size, having an orgasm, or being sexually free? Even The Sweetest Thing, which opens with men describing a sexually free woman, does not actually show her being such. Moreover, Amy—at least as she tells it—is “fine” and “in control.” She is “kind of seeing someone” but would likely be just as fine if she weren’t. We aren’t going to see Amy crying over a bottle of wine, singing “All by

Myself”; appropriately, her opening song reflects her “I’m fine” attitude.

Schumer’s Comedy Work, Sexuality, and Appropriation in Trainwreck

This eschewing of a traditional generic topic and its inherent gender roles should come as no surprise to observers of Schumer’s standup routines and her Comedy Central show (2013–present). In a New York Times article in 2015, columnist Melena Ryzik described Schumer’s politically-tinged comedy style.

By giving selfies and boy bands the same political and comic weight as rape and reproductive rights, Ms. Schumer, 34, has emerged as a feminist hero, able to transform from the butt of her own to a savvy debunker of double standards. Equal parts naughty cheerleader, self-deprecating Everywoman and fearless truth-teller, Ms. Schumer connects with women

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and men alike, all while she lampoons them and the media’s lopsided portrayals.20

The opening of Trainwreck certainly highlights the lopsided media portrayals of men’s and women’s sex lives. Whereas we have trouble remembering the last time we saw such a sexually liberated and honest woman in a film, the male equivalent is more common, even expected. James Bond has slept with countless women who rarely reappear in subsequent films; Patrick Dempsey’s character in Made of Honor (2008) makes a habit of not letting women sleep over; Daniel Cleaver is a womanizer and admitted sex addict in

Bridget Jones’s Diary; the entire plot of Wedding Crashers (2005) is predicated on men who attend weddings only to have sex with new women; and the list goes on.

Given this state of media portrayals, Schumer’s work consistently highlights these gendered disparities and the critical reception of women’s sexual freedom; therefore, it is useful to read Trainwreck alongside Schumer’s other works for how it critiques social disparities. In a 2015 interview with IndieWire, Schumer discussed the double standard of being branded a “sex comic”:

When I brought [stand up special “Amy Schumer: Mostly Sex Stuff”] to Comedy Central they said, “It’s mostly sex stuff.” And I said, “Well let’s just call it Mostly Sex Stuff.” They said, “Okay!” Sex sells…and I’m a sexual person so I like talking about it. But there’s a double standard. Some of my favorite male comics talk about sex a lot and they don’t get labeled that. The double standard of that bothers me.21

20 Melena Ryzik, “The Sneaky Power of Amy Schumer, in ‘Trainwreck’ and Elsewhere,” The New York Times, July 8, 2015, accessed February 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/movies/the-sneaky-power-of-amy-schumer-in-trainwreck- and-elsewhere.html. 21 Kevin Jagernauth, “SXSW: Amy Schumer talks ‘Trainwreck,’ Feminism, Comedy Double Standards, & Why Falling in Love Sucks,” IndieWire, March 17, 2015, accessed March 3, 2018, http://www.indiewire.com/2015/03/sxsw-amy-schumer-talks-trainwreck-feminism-comedy- double-standards-why-falling-in-love-sucks-266224/. 126

The initial reception of the character Amy in Trainwreck further highlights this double standard. Labeled a “skank” by radio host Matt Tilley, Amy transgresses acceptable women’s behavior. Reviewer Tim Kroenert pushes back against “skank-shaming” and emphasizes that such labelling only serves to further gendered stereotypes:

While some might debate the morality of the on-screen Amy’s behavior, the character is invested with the kind of sexual agency we are accustomed to seeing from male characters, especially as portrayed by Hollywood. It is a potent subversion of gender stereotypes, that skank-shaming such as Tilley’s only serves to undermine.22

Therefore, Amy’s honesty about her sexual partners and the enactment of her sexual agency onscreen in the opening of Trainwreck are groundbreaking for the romantic comedy genre that has historically struggled to portray women in a manner informed by feminism. At the same time, however, Trainwreck draws on the subversive nature of earlier examples of black women in romantic comedies (e.g. Two Can Play That Game) and the sound of that subversion (“She’s A Bad Mama Jama”) through its use of the hip- hop sound appropriated by Cyrus.

“Do My Thang” is the eleventh track on Miley Cyrus’s fourth album, Bangerz.

Released in 2013, the album confirmed Cyrus’s transformation from Disney girl and tween pop star “” to grown woman and sex icon. With tracks like the infamous “Wrecking Ball” and “We Can’t Stop,” the album is described by AllMusic reviewer Heather Phares as an “R&B and hip-hop-tinged coming-out party” that “[sells]

Cyrus as an independent woman.”23 In his review of the album, Billboard reviewer Jason

22 Tim Kroenert, “Skank-shaming Amy Schumer,” Reviews 25, no. 14 (July 20, 2015), eurekastreet.com.au. 23 Heather Phares, “Miley Cyrus: Bangerz,” AllMusic Review, accessed March 1, 2018, https://www.allmusic.com/album/bangerz-mw0002577863.

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Lipshutz states that it “finds Cyrus working with who she wants to work with, singing about what she wants to sing about, as if she’s a kid in an arcade with a pocket of limitless quarters.”24 Of “Do My Thang,” Lipshutz comments that the song “could have been a sneering declaration of independence but invites the listener to share Cyrus’s youthful glee… the and snapping percussion combine for a lovably ratchet cocoon.” The song’s incorporation of synthesizer, snappy percussion, bass drops, and

R&B and hip-hop elements contribute to a club aesthetic, inviting the listener to not only join in the song’s rebellious sentiments, but to embrace the resulting freedom.

Still, the song’s call to freedom is troubling because of Cyrus’s appropriation of hip-hop culture. In the song, Cyrus uses hip-hop culture as a status symbol and to diversify her music output, inviting censure from the hip-hop community. Despite positive reviews of album, the hip-hop community criticized Cyrus for using black culture only when it suited her purposes.25 In a 2015 New York Times interview, hip-hop artist criticized Cyrus’ sentiments. This interview followed an incident in which Cyrus admonished Minaj for tweeting that she was tired of black women not being recognized for their influence in pop culture.26 Minaj stated,

The fact that you feel upset about me speaking on something that affects black women makes me feel like you have some big balls. You’re in

24 Jason Lipshutz, “Miley Cyrus, ‘Bangerz’: Track-By-Track Review,” Billboard, October 1, 2013, accessed March 3, 2018, https://www.billboard.com/articles/review/5740707/miley-cyrus- bangerz-track-by-track-review. 25 Complex published a timeline of Cyrus’ appropriation of hip-hop culture and the resulting reception Kahl, “A Timeline of Miley Cyrus Appropriating Hip-Hop Culture,” Complex, May 4, 2017, accessed March 19, 2018, http://www.complex.com/music/2017/05/miley-cyrus- appropriating-hip-hop-culture.

26 Vanessa Grigoriadis, “The Passion of Nicki Minaj,” The New York Times Magazine, October 7, 2015, accessed March 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/magazine/the-passion-of- nicki-minaj.html.

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videos with black men, and you’re bringing out black women on your stages, but you don’t want to know how black women feel about something that’s so important? Come on, you can’t want the good without the bad. If you want to enjoy our culture and our lifestyle, bond with us, dance with us, have fun with us, twerk with us, rap with us, then you should also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us, what we feel is unfair to us. You shouldn’t not want to know that.27

In the song “Do My Thang,” Cyrus performs, commodifies, and fetishizes blackness with the words “I’mma” and “thang” while her white identity grants her visibility; rather than an ally to the hip-hop community, Cyrus acts as an appropriator, donning blackness to advance her own career rather than promote the visibility of others.28 Thus, in “Do My

Thang” Cyrus promotes a freedom and gains a critical recognition that is not fully granted to the black bodies and voices she imitates.

The use of the song as underscoring for Amy adds more layers of complexity; the song provides insight into Amy’s sentiments and aligns the sexually free Amy with and unabashed Cyrus. Moreover, unlike typical introductory songs that refer to the single woman’s desire for a romantic partner, “Do My Thang” does not mention relationship status, romance, or a man. Rather, it emphasizes the woman’s ability to make her own choices and then turns from “I” to “we,” encapsulating the power of a group of women and indicating that, together, women can become empowered.29 The song confirms our suspicions during the opening scenes—this is not a standard romcom—by adopting the sound of subversion heard in Two Can Play That Game. Whereas in Two

27 Ibid. 28 Richard A. Rogers, “From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation,” Communication Theory 16, no. 4 (2006): 489. 29 This rhetorical turn from the power of one to that of a group of women parallels earlier female empowerment songs such as Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” (2008), which suggests that single women should unite and garner strength from each other.

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Can Play That Game, “Bad Mama Jama” served to reinforce Shanté’s oppositional gaze, in Trainwreck the hip-hop aesthetic is equated with sexual license and plays into a persistent stereotype that aligns blackness with sexual promiscuity.30 These stereotypes reinforce hegemonic power relations and accentuate the way power structures misread and restrict subversion for marginalized groups. Therefore, as significant as the opening of Trainwreck and Schumer’s commentary are for destabilizing postfeminism, they also fall into the trap of white-only feminism that renders minority groups invisible.

As radical and confident as Amy is in the opening scene, we quickly learn that she is not “fine.” While Amy might have lots of sex, it is mostly unsatisfactory (as evidenced by a scene later in the film in which the man she is seeing has an orgasm but she does not); her “great job” is for a misogynist men’s magazine, Snuff, that teaches “strong- willed men how to dress, eat, and fuck” with articles on topics such as “How to Jerk Off at Work,” “You’re Not Gay, She’s Boring,” and “You Call Those Tits?” Her father has multiple sclerosis and resides in assisted living, and she self-medicates with alcohol, marijuana, and sex to remain emotionally detached.31 Thus, while Amy might “do her thing,” she remains trapped within an oppressive system that governs the parameters of her life.

These inconsistencies between the message of the opening scene and song and the truth of Amy’s life create a perspective of incongruity which, as scholar Lacy Lowrey describes it, “involves deliberately bringing together opposites, without resolving the

30 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 82. 31 Trainwreck, film.

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tension that exists between them.”32 This kind of irony “requires that the audience members participate in meaning making” while it also “highlights the limits of any one cognitive framework and produces new ways of seeing the world.”33 The opening scene establishes Amy as a woman informed by feminism who has full authority over her body and choices, flaunting a postfeminist ideology that, as defined by feminist scholar Meg

Tully, “centers on women’s empowerment through choice and consumption, hypersexuality, and unbridled confidence, ultimately insisting that feminism is unnecessary because women have finally achieved equality.”34 By revealing the pervasive sexism, misogyny, and discontent in Amy’s life, however, these tenets of postfeminism are destabilized through an emphasis on the irony between conception and reality and necessitate a feminist ideology.35 As feminist scholar Jason Middleton notes,

“If post-feminism promises a (delimited) form of agency and futurity, Schumer suggests that it produces instead a static condition of dysphoria and illegibility.”36 This undermining of postfeminist logic is central to Trainwreck and to Amy’s path to self- empowerment.

32 Lacy Lowrey, Valerie R. Renegar, and Charles E. Goehring, “‘When God Gives You AIDS… Make Lemon-AIDS’: Ironic Persona and Perspective by Incongruity in Sarah Silverman’s Jesus is Magic,” Western Journal of Communication 78, no. 1 (2014): 63. 33 Meg Tully, “‘Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Don’t Rape’: Subverting Postfeminist Logics on Inside Amy Schumer,” Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no. 4 (2017): 343. 34 Tully, “Subverting Postfeminist Logics,” 342. 35 Furthermore, by revealing the failings of postfeminism, Schumer highlights an uncomfortable reality of our current society. This emphasis on realism situates Trainwreck within the romantic comedy genre and its tradition of realism—or the portrayal of real life situtations. Although what constitutes realism has shifted since the genre’s inception—largely due to advancements in women’s rights and the feminist movement—the need to depict women’s lives has not. There can never be a completely accurate representation of women’s realities because every woman’s life and perspective is different. Amy’s reality is not every woman’s reality. 36 Jason Middleton, “A Rather Crude Feminism: Amy Schumer, Postfeminism, and Abjection,” Feminist Media Histories 3, no. 2 (2017): 125. 131

Romance and Song Conventions

As Trainwreck is a romantic comedy, the romantic couple is central to the plot.

Amy meets Dr. Aaron Connors (Bill Hader) on a work assignment. Aaron is a sports surgeon and the subject of Amy’s latest article for Snuff. Amy and Aaron have sex after their first interview and, as expected, Amy is resistant to post-coital intimacy, refusing to cuddle and placing a pillow between them. Despite her dismissive behavior, Aaron calls

Amy the next day and asks to see her again. Amy delays her answer, suggesting that they talk at their next interview. In a subsequent scene, Amy observes Aaron in where he sings along to “Uptown Girl” (, 1983). After the surgery, Amy asks him about the song choice.

Amy: Why Billy Joel? Why “Uptown Girl”? Aaron: I love that song. Amy: That’s probably the worst Billy Joel song. I’m pretty sure even Billy Joel hates that song. Aaron: He shouldn’t, it’s great.

We could ask the same questions as Amy: Why Billy Joel? Why “Uptown Girl”? The song is from Joel’s album An Innocent Man, a tribute to 1960s rock ’n’ roll.37 Joel has called “Uptown Girl” an homage to Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons; this reference to the 1960s group is evidenced through Joel’s falsetto vocals, doo-wop backup singers, and prominent drum set backbeat. The song’s lyrics refer to a “downtown” man’s love for an

“uptown” girl and his hope that, despite his inability to keep up with her lifestyle, that she will see what kind of man he is. The song’s content is the inverse of The Four Seasons’

“Rag Doll” (1964) which refers to an upper-class man’s love for a lower-class woman.

37 Billy Joel, “Billy Joel on An Innocent Man,” from The Complete Collection, accessed February 27, 2018, http://www.billyjoel.com/video/an-innocent-man-complete-albums- collection-video/. 132

Thus, through both its sonic and lyric qualities, “Uptown Girl” pays homage to 1960s vocal groups. Beyond its tribute to The Four Seasons, “Uptown Girl” was an international success, peaking at number three on the and became a top selling record in the (a ranking that was influenced by Princess

Diana’s choreographed dance to the song at the Royal Opera House in 1985).38 The song’s music video features Joel and his later wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley, further highlighting the comic oddity of the couple referenced in the song. Thus, “Uptown Girl” holds various meanings in our cultural memory—as a reminder of 1960s vocal groups, love across social divides, and a critical social moment in UK history—allowing for multiple audience identifications and associations.

The decision to use “Uptown Girl” in Trainwreck stems from director Judd

Apatow’s personal connection to Billy Joel and his music. In a 2015 interview with

Hollywood Reporter, Apatow stated “I’m from Long Island so there’s always going to be a lot of Billy Joel surrounding me… His music’s not in a lot of movies, so it was very effective.”39 While Apatow is unclear about what he hoped to achieve using the song,

Aaron’s preference for the song increases his likeability, hinting at potential undying devotion for his romantic partner. Furthermore, the imagery of Joel and Brinkley in the music video maps onto Aaron and Amy, reinforcing the idea that they are an ill-suited

38 Caryn Ganz, et al. “100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop’s Greatest Year,” , accessed February 27, 2018, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-best-singles-of-1984-pops- greatest-year-20140917/billy-joel-uptown-girl-20140917.; “Billy Joel,” OfficialCharts, http://www.officialcharts.com/artist/16696/billy-joel/.; Hannah Booth, “‘The Audience Gasped When Princess Diana Appeared,’” , July 14, 2017, accessed February 27, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jul/14/thats-me-diana-dance-wayne-sleep. 39 Hilary Lewis, “‘Trainwreck’ Premiere: Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow Talk Making Family- Centric Rom-Com,” Hollywood Reporter, July 15, 2015, accessed March 1, 2018, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/2017-black-list-best-unproduced-screenplays- unveiled-updating-live-1066272. 133

couple. Situated within an older, nostalgic sonic environment, we could hear “Uptown

Girl” as Aaron’s introductory song: a song that establishes his old-fashioned values and desire to be with a woman who he considers as “out of his league.” As if to support this role for the song, Aaron again asks Amy on a date after their discussion of “Uptown

Girl”; although Amy tries to avoid commitment, Aaron insists that if they like each other then they should date. Aaron fully commits to the relationship with Amy, accepting that she drinks, smokes, and has had a considerable number of sexual partners. Aaron’s ability to accept Amy and the lack of tension between the couple make Aaron an unusual romantic comedy man.

Amy and Aaron start dating and, despite her initial hesitation, Amy begins to fall in love. We see a relationship montage, which foreshadows the eventual breakup montage: the couple kissing in the subway, steering play sailboats in Central Park, and walking hand in hand; the montage has light orchestral underscoring and a voiceover by

Amy in which she mocks the relationship, calling them the “whitest couple ever” and remarking that it’s amazing they did not get mugged at the park. Amy’s comment on the couple’s whiteness further juxtaposes the character introduced at the opening of the film and the “transformed” Amy in the relationship. The opening of the film aligns Amy with a performed blackness that is marked as risqué whereas at this point in the film, Amy is marked as “boring.” Following the montage, Amy shares her anxiety about the relationship and depth of her feelings with her exceptionally well-adjusted sister, Kim.40

Her sister stresses that it’s normal to have feelings and it’s okay to fall in love.

40 Kim is married, has a step-son, and is pregnant. Throughout the film, Amy teases Kim and her family, stating that her husband is lame and that if she were to encounter her step-son in a CVS she would make fun of him. 134

Amy’s apprehensions about falling in love and her resistance to emotions in general become the couple’s central conflict. Again in Middleton’s words,

Amy’s ideal romantic partner, [Aaron], is more than happy to commit to her; no narrative tension attends either his suitability or his attainability (as it would in a more conventional romantic comedy). It is only Amy’s own anxiety that prevents their full union.41

Amy’s anxiety can be read as a feminist anxiety that pushes against the conventional solution of marriage, in line with Schumer’s comedic critiques of postfeminist culture.

The remainder of the relationship supports this reading; unlike a traditional romantic comedy in which the couple’s union is blocked from the beginning, Amy and Aaron’s issues arise after they are a couple. Feminist scholar Susan Cox refers to this struggle as

“undeniable moments of female perspective” in which the couple wrestles with relatable problems.42 Cox posits that Amy deals with the same problems as our previous romantic comedy heroines, namely:

How do they juggle their careers and their relationship? Where should Amy draw the line in being there for Aaron if it means sacrificing her own goals?43

Amy and Aaron struggle with defining the terms of their relationship given that she is still interviewing him for work. The balance between work and love reaches its breaking point after Amy’s father dies. Amy experiences an onslaught of emotions and struggles to keep them buried. She lashes out at Aaron and convinces herself that she is not worthy of his affection.

41 Middleton, “A Rather Crude Feminism,” 134. 42 Susan Cox, “Trainwreck: Feminist Progress or Postfeminist Warning?” Feminist Current, July 30, 2015, accessed December 10, 2017, http://www.feministcurrent.com/2015/07/30/trainwreck- feminist-progress-or-postfeminist-warning/. 43 Cox, “Trainwreck.” 135

At a Doctors Without Borders award ceremony for Aaron, Amy walks out of his speech to take a work-related phone call. When Aaron finds Amy in the hallway after his speech, she hastily blows smoke out a window and fans the air.

Aaron expresses his frustration that he needed her there during his speech and instead she’s smoking marijuana in the hall.

Aaron: You knew I wanted to do that speech to you! Amy: [sighs] Yeah, I’m so sorry. I really didn’t want to miss it but I’m afraid I’m gonna lose my job right now. Aaron: But it doesn’t matter! You shouldn’t have your phone on in the middle of my speech anyway. That was just so disrespectful, Amy. Amy: All right, goodbye. Aaron: No, Amy! Whoa, whoa, whoa! What are you talking about “goodbye”? Amy: What? I’m leaving! We’re fighting. We’re not gonna talk for a while. That’s how this works. Aaron: What are you talking about? No! We’re just having a fight. Amy: What are we doing? What do you want? Why are you with me? Aaron: I love you. Amy: Why do you keep saying that? Aaron: Because I mean it! I love you! I’m crazy about you! What do you want me to say? We’re just having a fight. You insulted me and we’ll talk about it, and we’ll work through it.

Amy insists that there must be something wrong with Aaron for him to look past her faults. The argument turns to how many men Amy has slept with and the couple walks out of frame; the scene cuts to Amy’s apartment. She suggests that he go to his apartment and they finish the argument later. Aaron counters that they shouldn’t go to bed angry. Amy concedes and then proceeds to berate Aaron for

“going down” on her too much. The scene cuts again to the couple kissing on the

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couch before restarting the argument, followed by a montage of Amy ranting about her life while Aaron tries to stay awake.

As a result of the night-long fight, Aaron is too tired to perform surgery the next day and returns to Amy’s apartment. Aaron confesses that it bothers him that Amy smokes, drinks, and has had sex with so many men. Amy twists his words and suggests that he should date someone else. He suggests that they take two days off while he prepares for his surgery and then they’ll work things out.

Again, Amy purposefully misconstrues Aaron’s meaning and says, “That’s fine.

That’s good. I think we’re done here. It’s fine that we’re done because I don’t need to talk to you anymore, because the interview is over. Because your article got canceled. My boss says you were too boring.” Aaron says, “You win.” and leaves while Amy cries. The scene cuts to Amy dancing in a club.

I have described this sequence at length to highlight the number of cues for a conventional breakup montage. At almost three quarters of the way through the film, the conventional expectation is that the couple will break up and, by the end of the film, will reunite. Therefore, the fight and Amy’s initial “goodbye” are strategically placed and prompt the audience to anticipate the breakup—but it does not happen. Again, when Amy walks out of frame, when Amy tells Aaron to go to his apartment, when Amy is ranting, when Aaron cannot perform his surgery, and when Aaron leaves, the scenes are set up to indicate that, really, this time it’s going to happen—but still, no breakup. It is as if Amy is expecting the breakup in each of these places too, and by the end of the scene, cuts the tension by breaking up with Aaron and forcing him to leave. Even then, though, the scene

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cuts to Amy dancing, rather than a conventional breakup montage in which the protagonist reflects on the relationship. Why?

Amy struggles with emotions and the breakup montage is, conventionally, the emotional height of the film for both partners, allowing them to wallow in their misery and evaluate the extent of their broken hearts. Instead, Amy suppresses her emotions and goes clubbing; the song “” ( &

Angger Dimas, featuring , 2012) plays in the background (an aural contrast to the standard love ballad of a breakup montage). The scene contains only a small portion of the song which repeats the lyrics “You win some, you lose some, but her, it’s her day.” The song’s EDM percussion, driving beat, and defiant lyrics recall the dance vibe of “Do My Thang”; this connection implies that Amy has come full circle.

As at the opening of the movie, Amy goes home with a new sexual partner, this time the new intern, Donald (Ezra Miller). The sexual encounter takes an unprecedented turn when Donald snorts Adderall off Amy’s forehead, tells her that his safe word is “pineapple,” and asks Amy to hit him. Donald repeatedly asks Amy to hit him, claiming that she’s not hitting him hard enough.

Amy punches him, he screams, “Pineapple!” and a woman enters the room.

Donald identifies the woman as his mother who tells Amy that he’s only sixteen years old.44 The scene cuts to Amy in her boss’s office; after a brief conversation,

Amy loses her job, which cues the breakup montage.

44 We can read this scene as an inversion of the “older man sleeps with younger woman” trope” and another example of Schumer’s gender reversals. 138

While the sequence of events that cue the montage is unusual, the montage itself follows generic conventions. The montage shows Aaron eating alone at a crowded restaurant; Amy alone at a café, writing in a journal; Aaron sitting on a park bench watching a woman light a cigarette; Amy talking with one of her dad’s assisted living friends; Aaron in surgery; and Amy in the park watching the toy sailboats (recalling the previous relationship montage).

The montage is underscored by “Please Be Patient With Me” (Wilco,

2007). The song’s light, sparse texture of acoustic guitar and whispered vocals mark a distinct departure from Amy’s previous EDM and hip-hop underscoring.

The montage is as much about Amy’s emotions as it is about the couple. Her encounter with the underage boy and being fired trigger a realization that her lifestyle is no longer tenable and something must change. We see a “raw” Amy on the path to recovery and the stripped-down song reflects this demeanor both through its sound and its words.

I should warn you When I’m not well I can’t tell Oh, there’s nothing I can do To make this easier for you You’re gonna need to be patient with me

The song reinforces Amy’s realization that she needs to address her emotions rather than repressing them with alcohol and sex. Coupled with Aaron’s montage scenes, the song implies that Aaron has sustained feelings for Amy and that he needs to be patient while she solves her problems.

Following the montage, both partners are forced to address their emotions.

Aaron’s best friend, Lebron James (played by himself), stages an intervention, telling

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Aaron that he cannot just run when he gets scared or when the relationship gets difficult and that he should try to work things out with Amy. Aaron is defensive and claims that he tried but Amy doesn’t want to be with him. Rather than immediately telling Aaron that she was in the wrong, as we might expect following a breakup montage, Amy visits her sister. Amy apologizes for her behavior towards Kim:

I want you to know that I act like everything you do in your life is so wrong and stupid, but it’s just because I don’t think that I can have that. I’m not okay. I know what I am, I know who I am, and I’m broken.

This sequence avoids romantic comedy convention by displacing the power of the couple; Amy apologizes to her sister, indicating that her path to self-improvement is not predicated on a man, but rather on her own happiness.

That scene is followed by a self-improvement montage which begins with Amy gifting her alcohol and drugs to the homeless man who stands outside her building; next,

Amy reads aloud a portion of her article on Aaron. The sound of her reading acts as underscoring for the remainder of the montage. Amy succeeds in publishing her article at

Vanity Fair and sends Aaron a copy. In a section reminiscent of How to Lose a Guy in 10

Days, Amy reflects on how Aaron has affected her life.

Life hurts. But spending time with Dr. Connors showed me that you can’t play scared. And maybe every drunken night, accidental ride on the Staten Island Ferry and awkward sexual encounter were just practice for this: The main event.

Although Amy alters her lifestyle to regain Aaron’s affections, she does not follow the traditional postfeminist track of empowerment via femininity; in other words, this is not a conventional makeover montage in which Amy restyles her clothes, hair, and makeup to

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become more desirable.45 Romantic comedy scholar Claire Hines explains that “the makeover is a device commonly used to unite the couple in the rom-com, where in films like Pretty Woman (1990) and She’s All That (1999) the beginning of closure is usually signaled by ‘the reveal.’”46 Furthermore, romantic comedy scholar Hilary Radner posits that in films such as Legally Blonde (2001), the makeover is the embodiment of a postfeminist consumerism that values overt femininity.47 Instead of employing this trope,

Amy removes the material and psychological elements that contribute to her discontent, namely, alcohol, drugs, and a misogynist work environment. By avoiding the makeover montage, Trainwreck denies postfeminist femininity in favor of self-empowerment through moral self-improvement.

Trainwreck ends with a standard romantic comedy convention: the grand romantic gesture. Following a Knicks basketball game, a cheerleader tells Aaron that one of the players is searching for him on the court; looking for the player, he instead sees

Amy with the Knicks cheerleaders. They perform a synchronized dance to a collection of songs, “Tambourine” (Eve, 2008), “Let’s Get Ridiculous” (Redfoo, 2015), “Uptown

Girl,” and “I Think I Love You” (The Partridge Family, 1970). While the first two songs are standard choices for a dance-team routine, “Uptown Girl” is an obvious reference to the earlier scene that featured this song. The song transitions seamlessly to “I Think I

Love You” and Amy mouths the lyrics to Aaron, who embraces her and the couple kisses as the song continues in the background. By reprising the earlier song and “I Think I

45 Claire Hines, “Armed and Fabulous: Miss Congeniality’s Queer Rom-Com,” in Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn, eds., Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 122. 46 Ibid. 47 Hilary Radner, “Le Divorce: Romance, Separation, and Reconciliation,” in Abbott and Jermyn, eds., Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema, 217. 141

Love You” in an explicit statement of Amy’s feelings, the scene becomes a conventional romantic comedy ending. But a new song begins (“B.O.B,” , 2000), once again subverting romantic comedy audience expectations through song style and placement as

Amy tells Aaron she has to go. Grabbing a basketball, she prepares for a trampoline- aided slam-dunk. She misses the basket and belly-flops onto the mat, her impact comically and undignifiedly punctuating the end of the song. Aaron rushes to Amy. In case the audience (or Aaron) missed the conventional function of the dance and “Uptown

Girl,” Amy explains its meaning:

Amy: I really wanted to impress you. I wanted to show you that I could work hard and really put myself out there, you know? Aaron: I got that. Amy: And not be afraid to fail. Aaron: No, I got the metaphor. Amy: ‘Cause with the dance, I wanted to show you us. Aaron: Yeah, I got the metaphor. Amy: It’s like I really wanna try.

Through this closure dialogue, the film hints, once again, this should be the end of the film. The couple express their love and kiss on the mat, cueing “A Matter of Trust” (Billy

Joel, 1986) which carries into the credits. Even though the song is not from the same record as “Uptown Girl,” its inclusion reinforces the importance of Joel’s music for the soundscape of the film and the song’s title acts as commentary on the situation.

Parody and Subversion

Trainwreck delays and then parodies the conventional ending. As scholar Robert

Hariman explains, “parodic imitation works by turning an organic moment into

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something mechanical, and so reveals the mechanization underlying the original communicative act.”48 When Amy explains the dance and song metaphor for Aaron and the audience, she highlights the function of the romantic gesture and calls the audience’s attention to the gesture itself rather than its romantic affect.49 Even with the parody, it is surprising that the grand romantic gesture and happy ending are present at all. As discussed in the previous chapters, feminist scholars often critique the happy ending in which the woman sacrifices her autonomy and ambitions to satisfy a man, criticizing this self-debasement as anti-feminist—in which the woman is subservient to the man—or at the very least a feminine support of postfeminism—in which equality has been achieved and women appear to be empowered through consumer goods. Moreover, Trainwreck operates in the wake of romantic comedies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(2004) and (2009) which actively subvert convention by not containing a happy ending.

Given Trainwreck’s resistance to romantic comedy tropes and Schumer’s critique of postfeminism, we might wonder why the film has this happy ending. In an interview

48 Robert Hariman, “Political Parody and Public Culture,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 3 (2008): 250. Hariman’s conceptualization of parodic imitation is similar to Henri Bergson’s definition of comedy as “something mechanical encrusted on the living”: in this theory, the repetition of gestures is what elicits laughter. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 37, 34. Musicologist Wye Jamison Allanbrook argues that stock phrases and conventions have a clear meaning to particular communities, make communication possible, and are thus vitally important for comedy. Allanbrook, The Secular Commedia, 99. 49 According to Hariman, “The parody replicates some prior form and thereby makes that form the object of one’s attention rather than the transparent vehicle for some other message.” Hariman, “Political Parody,” 253. Hariman’s definition of parody is similar to Bertolt Brecht’s theory of Verfremdungseffekt or “estrangement effect,” which works by explosing the mechanisms of the drama and calling into question its empathetic basis. John Willett, ed. and trans., Brecht on : The Development of an Aesthetic (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), 91. 143

with Complex, Schumer reinforced that while she and Apatow avoided certain generic tropes, audience expectations informed the romantic gesture:

Yes, [we avoided those tropes] like “we had a misunderstanding” or “you made a bet with your friend.” I wanted the movie to reflect what would really happen. I probably would have wanted to end it where it didn’t work out between them. But Judd is very smart and really knows the balance of comedic and dramatic that people are comfortable with. I think you really develop feelings for these characters—I do when I watch movies—and if it doesn’t end up good between them, you’re like “Well, fuck you!” But the truth is that putting yourself out there like that, having that grand gesture, just saying to this person, “I want to try,” is a huge step—definitely for me. And I don’t know what happens to them after the end of the movie. Maybe they go and have dinner and like, she gets drunk at dinner. So, it’s like, I don’t know what happens after that happy ending, but you’re left with that moment.50

Schumer highlights a tension between realism—the portrayal of what might happen in real life—and the happy ending. According to Schumer this tension is remains through the uncertainty evoked by the happy ending—an uncertainty that is characteristic of comic closure. According to musicologist Wye Jamison Allanbrook, eighteenth-century opera buffa audiences had similar reservations about the surety of the happy ending. To circumvent these doubts, the genre called attention to the act of celebration:

Precisely because we have some doubts about the fullness of the end, hard work must take place at the close of a comedy in order to persuade us from nagging unease. Hence one of buffa’s most striking habits, that of reaching out past the footlights to the audience at the close. The final celebration often consists of calling attention to music as music, meanwhile dissolving the proscenium arch and drawing the audience into communal song.… Carried away by rejoicing, the singers self-consciously sing, and hearing them, we the spectators are meant to surrender our doubts about the events on stage, compelled by the sheer exuberance of their choral song.51

50 Rachel Handler, “Amy Schumer Does Not Need Your Approval,” Complex, July 14, 2015, accessed March 3, 2018, http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/07/amy-schumer- trainwreck-interview. 51 Allanbrook, The Secular Commedia, 135. 144

Trainwreck deals with the happy ending in a similar manner—self-aware attention to the mechanisms underlying the grand romantic gesture and happy ending. Apatow echoed

Schumer’s sentiments in an interview with Vox where he explained the artistic choices that led to his decision to maintain the convention.

…in life, you do have great moments, and you don’t know what’s going to happen the next day. It doesn’t mean the road isn’t bumpy afterward, but you have moments of great elation where everything seems like it might work out. You deal with the good and the bad as it comes. It’s just as easy to do the dark ending as a happy ending. That’s the secret no one realizes. [laughs] You can shoot someone in the head at the end of a movie, and everyone says you’re daring, but it’s not that innovative.52

Apatow suggests that subverting the genre, which some critics might find appealing, is not necessarily innovative in and of itself: in his view, a change in the narrative would have to be motivated by an element in the plot, not exist simply to avoid the convention.

In these statements, Schumer and Apatow gesture at realism in the film—capturing moments when a couple puts forth effort in a relationship and is truly happy rather than displaying a contrived plot moment. Schumer also expresses an understanding of audience expectations within the conventions—the audience’s desire to see a happy ending for the characters that they have grown attached to throughout the film. Even though the longevity of the relationship is left open to interpretation, as Schumer states,

Amy and Aaron are happy in the moment.

Although Trainwreck is firmly rooted within the romantic comedy genre through its commitment to generic forms, it updates the conventions in crucial ways that contribute to the realism and socio-political message of the film. Through the

52 Rachel Handler, “Judd Apatow Explains the Genius of Amy Schumer,” Vox, July 17, 2015, accessed March 3, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8970317/judd-apatow-trainwreck-amy- schumer. 145

introductory song, we are presented with a character who is sexually free and does not need a long-term relationship to feel fulfilled. Even though Amy and Aaron end up together at the end of the film, Amy’s path to self-empowerment comes through a commitment to herself as exemplified by the placement of the breakup montage. Through the use of irony and parody, the film self-reflexively acknowledges the ridiculous nature of many of its tropes while also highlighting relatable moments that make the characters seem like real people with flaws and weaknesses. These realistic elements encourage women to detach themselves from a postfeminist culture and, as feminist scholar Meg

Tully states, “unsettle[s] the notion that feminism is located in the past.”53

Bridget Jones’s Baby, Music Nostalgia, and the

While films like Trainwreck subvert convention through irony and parody, other films play within conventions and convey alternate meanings. Premiering the year after

Trainwreck, Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) disrupts romantic comedy conventions by connecting with a franchise history and juxtaposing old and new generic practices. The culmination of the Bridget Jones franchise, this third film in the series takes place fifteen years after the first. When we saw Bridget (Renée Zellweger) in the second film, Bridget

Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), she and Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) were engaged and apparently headed for their happily-ever-after.54 Yet Bridget Jones’s Baby begins with

“All By Myself” (Jamie O’Neal, 2000) and production title screens that reveal Bridget in

53 Tully, “Subverting Postfeminist Logics,” 351; Middleton, “A Rather Crude Feminism,” 125. 54 I should note that while I did not analyze Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in this dissertation, it still follows the music conventions and fits within the sonic soundscape of the first film. However, when choosing which films to include as case-studies, I felt that Bridget’s character development and shift in convention was better exemplified by comparing the first and third films. 146

a familiar state: red pajamas, bottle of wine, alone in her apartment staring at a cupcake with a solitary candle. After a moment of nostalgic euphoria upon first hearing the song, we realize that something has gone wrong: we’ve seen this scene before. Bridget’s familiar voiceover asks, “How in the hell did I end up here again?” And we in the audience want to ask the same question. Where is Mark? What about their happily ever after? What happened? A disgruntled Bridget turns off the song and switches to “Jump

Around” (House of Pain, 1992); seeming satisfied with the new song, Bridget, glass of wine in hand, proceeds to lip sync and jump around her apartment while packing a suitcase. The choice to use “All by Myself” to open the new film is a direct reference to

Bridget Jones’s Diary and, coupled with the familiar mise-en-scène, places the aware viewer in Bridget’s world and the mindset of the first film—Bridget is a desperate singleton. However, whereas the song’s source was ambiguous in the first film, the diegetic use of “All By Myself” and the intentional switch to “Jump Around” conveys that Bridget is not grieving, she is excited at the prospect of being single and she is inviting us to be excited with her.

“Jump Around” was a mild success upon its release in 1992, peaking at number

14 in the charts, but it has since been included in various films and gained meaning as a rally song during sporting events.55 In both Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Whiskey Tango

Foxtrot (2016), the song underscores social situations (a children’s birthday party and a bar, respectively) in which people jump and sing the song.56 Perhaps the most famous use

55 “House of Pain: Jump Around Chart History,” Billboard, accessed March 1, 2018, https://www.billboard.com/music/house-of-pain/chart-history/r-b-hip-hop-songs/song/355420. 56 “Mrs. Doubtfire,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwmLo82iRhA.; “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot – (2016) – Jump Around,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MQ- vnYb1_g. Accessed March 1, 2018.

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of the song is between the third and fourth quarters at University of Wisconsin football games, in which every person in the stadium jumps to the beat of the song.57 Through these uses, the line “jump around” has become a literal demand. Thus, when Bridget jumps around her apartment, she is not only adhering to the physical demand of the lyrics—she is also implying that she belongs to a larger social network. Because of this implied communal meaning, the song acts as a juxtaposition to the meaning of “All by

Myself.” Moreover, by presenting “All by Myself” and “Jump Around” in opposition, the sequence rapidly encapsulates fifteen years of change in the genre of the romantic comedy. Similar to “Do My Thang” in Trainwreck, “Jump Around” reshapes the meaning of the opening song convention: our heroine has decided that her happiness is not contingent on a relationship.58 Therefore, the scene presents layered meanings: it is simultaneously informative of Bridget’s current state, a reference to the first film, and a display of the genre’s changing conventions. In this section, I examine these layered meanings of popular song in Bridget Jones’s Baby, including connections between song and character and the music’s manipulation of generic conventions.

Reception and Relatability

The layered meanings in the opening of Bridget Jones’s Baby call on the audience to engage with both the onscreen material and their recollection of the Bridget Jones

57 Jen Brown, “Wisconsin Football: More Than a Game,” ABC News, September 30, 2005, accessed March 1, 2018, http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/story?id=1172725&page=1. 58 Due to the prevalence of both the old and new conventions in romantic comedies, the opening song convention and its presentation of the female protagonist are “readable” to a lay audience who is experiencing the Bridget Jones franchise for the first time. Therefore, the message conveyed in Bridget Jones’s Baby does not require an “educated” audience member who has seen the previous Bridget Jones films. 148

franchise. The women in my study understood the connections between this opening scene and that of Bridget Jones’s Diary; however, they were critical of the suitability of the songs in the opening and closing scenes of Bridget Jones’s Baby. Compared to their warm reception of the Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually scenes, Susan and Edith did not think that the music worked well in the opening and closing scenes of Bridget

Jones’s Baby.

Edith: Uh… I like how the opening of this one tied into the opening of the last one and then she turned it off and . That’s funny. Susan: That was a good hard [ch— (cutting off noise)] to a different type of—I love that song too, but, um… in the first scene I think that they do more than any other movies than I’ve seen, they really put the scene in with the beginning credits, if that makes sense and it’s part of the movie. It’s not the, “here’s the opening credits and there’s some kind of weird background,” this is the it’s part of the movie and the opening credits are going through and the music is part of it. Edith: It’s good and the way she interacts with the music instead of just being part of the background. Like she’s dancing with it, she’s interacting with it instead of the music just being separate. It’s combined. Susan: Yeah, it is usually. Like, I said there’s a castle in the background— Edith: Like a cityscape. Susan: —and the movie starts once all of those have gone through, but this, it’s incorporated. And then the second scene… I don’t feel like that particular song matched— Edith: Yeah it didn’t really match. It seemed more like a credit song, but not like an end of the scene song. Like it should have switched to that once the credits started rolling. Susan: Yeah. That didn’t relate as much in that scene as it did to other ones. Edith: It just didn’t feel as relatable. The “Jump Around” sort of but it didn’t really connect with anything so it was kind of like oh I like this song and I know it. Susan: Yeah…yeah! Like I like this song, I know it, but it’s not connecting to her as the character, yeah. I agree to that.

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While both women recognized that the music played an integral role in the opening scene and title credits—as opposed to the credits playing over a static background—they did not think it made the character more relatable than any other musical instance. Instead, they felt the music was used because it was recognizable. Furthermore, in this segment of the focus group activity, Edith noted that the final song did not seem to function appropriately according to the conventions of the genre, stating that it was more of an end credits song than a closing scene song. While Edith did not expand on this statement, she may have noticed how much the scene diverged from the happy ending convention by framing Bridget alone and including a moderate-tempo pop song (instead of a slow love ballad).

The women in interview 2, on the other hand, felt that the opening scene worked well and displayed Bridget’s changing life outlook:

Pat: Um, they replayed part of the first one but then you—I kind feel like she’s been there she’s done that. Maggie: To hell with that. Pat: Changing the mood, yep. And then I love that song. [laughs] EK: The second song? Pat: Uh, “Jump Around,” yeah.

Although all three women thought the music conveyed the message well, Carol did not care for the in “Jump Around.” Additionally, like Susan and Edith, Carol thought the use of “Still Falling For You” in the last scene did not work as well as the music in the first film. Whereas in the closing scene Edith pointed to a mismatch between music and convention, Carol felt that the song did not convey enough emotional depth to match the scene.

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Carol: I just—I didn’t really care for the rap. I get that we’re going to do a different thing but I would have liked the “All by Myself” to go on a little longer because I like the line “I can’t believe I’m back here again.” Pat: Yeah. Carol: You’ve got to be kidding me, that I’m back here again. Which I thought was very funny to do that same kind of opening. Um, I don’t much care for rap music so it was kind of just challenging for me. And the last song I really liked I was just not familiar with it. But, um, yeah, it was ok. I—I like the music from the first one better. I feel like the music fit in the first one better. EK: Is that because you felt like it was classics in the first one versus new music? Carol: Yeah it probably—it could be my own bias in that I knew them— all the music in the first one and I’m not a real big fan of rap. And the last song, it’s interesting, because it’s a nice song, but I thought they were going to do something—and I don’t know what song that would be—but what struck me about it was—and we’ve all experienced it in our own life, I have just recently—that things can change in an instant. That your life changes [snap] on a dime. Maggie: And it does, yep. Carol: And, um, I would have liked them to hit that theme. To echo back to “I can’t believe I’m back here again” to I’m not a totally different life and life does change and I would have liked some song that echoed, you know, the mystery of that and how that works and why that works and… EK: So, more substance than just the “Still falling for you”? Carol: Right. Harkening back to the first and now we’re here and that life can change so quickly. Literally, life can change in a day, it can change in a week and it did for her. And dramatically! And I would—I think I would have liked a song that would have more echoed that. Maggie: I think that makes sense.

Carol and Edith’s dissatisfaction with the closing song confirms that filmmakers cannot insert any love song and fulfill the convention. Rather, audience members expect that the song will have a connection to the narrative, convey the character’s emotions, and be familiar enough to the audience that it evokes a psychological closeness between the audience and character.

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As opposed to the women in interviews 1 and 2, Linda thought that the music appropriately matched the onscreen action. She observed an almost identical coordination between the mise-en-scène of the opening scene with the first film’s beginning, and she noticed that the music matched Bridget’s changing mood.

I noticed—this doesn’t have to do with the music exactly but I noticed the way they brought—they started it the same way the other one did. She even has—looked like the same pajama bottoms on, and, uh, and the same music except she seemed to get out of her gloom faster and seemed to go—accelerated, you know, the music got… um, bigger and more bold and more confident very quickly. Um, and—and then in that one, you know, you saw the music get confident, there, after when she realized she was no longer—would no longer be alone. You know, it seemed happy, so the music seemed to fit with that too. I didn’t catch all the words in the last one, so… so I just got the sound of it—or the, uh, the mood of it, you know. Despite acknowledging the music’s purpose, Lisa adopted the distanced language she used in her response to the first scenes.

And they responded well, I mean it just brought out—I thought it was neat the way they choreographed their motions, often with the music, it fit right with the music. I know when I am watching—which I don’t watch very many movies—but I do really enjoy that, when it fits with the music, you know, and you can… but I thought that did…

Again, Linda noted that “they” choreographed Bridget’s motions. It seems, then, that while Linda enjoyed the scenes, she did not fully identify with the character. Indeed, she later commented that Bridget’s situation was far removed from her own but that she could still relate to her emotions.

Oh… I don’t know, I mean it’s a different—the whole thing is different for me, the drinking and the—all the other stuff… but I can relate to the emotions that they’re feeling in the—in what’s going on in their lives. So, yeah.

Linda’s comments further suggest the balancing act required of filmmakers and music supervisors as they attempt to convey onscreen action and evoke audience emotions.

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Responses from all the participants specified the emotional function of film music and its role in facilitating audience identification. Furthermore, although the women recognized the function of the songs they felt the songs could have connected even more with the first film to better convey Bridget’s character arc. It should be noted that I only showed the women the opening and closing scenes of the film and it is possible that knowing the full context of the film would have influenced their reception. In the following section I discuss further the relationship between the first and third Bridget Jones films and how the latter uses music style to connect with the former.

Song Style and Character Type

When we reunite with Bridget at the beginning of the third film, she is forty-three, a successful , at her ideal weight, and single. The end of the opening scene jumps us back in time to the beginning of Bridget’s birthday to explain how she ended up alone, drinking wine, and jumping around her apartment. We learn that

Bridget’s friends are now married with children and have all canceled plans to spend her birthday with her. After we get into the narrative of the new film, an uncoupled friend persuades Bridget to attend a music festival (hence the packing in the opening scene), where she has a one-night stand with an American, Jack (Patrick Dempsey). A couple of weeks later she attends a christening where, at the after party, she has a one-night stand with her ex-boyfriend, Mark. Bridget’s pregnancy is revealed and the remainder of the film follows Bridget, Jack, and Mark through the pregnancy and unknown paternity.

As discussed in the first chapter, Bridget’s relationships with Mark Darcy and

Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) in the first film are framed by the songs “Someone Like

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You” (Van Morrison, 1987) and “Respect” (Aretha Franklin, 1967). When Bridget races to confess her love for Mark at the end of the film and then later runs through the streets to clarify her feelings, her actions are underscored by “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”

(Diana Ross, 1970). Thus, through the songs associated with Bridget and her relationships, the film establishes an intimate link between character and song, in addition to providing an overarching R&B soundscape. This soundscape continues in the second film, as Bridget’s on-again-off-again relationships with Mark and Daniel are underscored with songs by Carly Simon, , Carol King, and Aretha Franklin. The similarity in musical style between the two films allows for continuity within the franchise and provides instant reconnection with the characters for the knowledgeable viewer.

Moreover, the songs are mainstream enough that listeners can easily discern their lyrics and associations. These songs thus allow new audience members to follow the emotional plot turns.

In the third film, music from the 1960s to the ‘80s is primarily associated with

Mark in order to situate him as the comfort and “home” among Bridget's love interests.

For example, Mark is underscored by “Walk on By” (, 1970), “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye, 1968), and “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”

(McFadden & Whitehead, 1979). Bridget’s new love interest, Jack (Patrick Dempsey), on the other hand, is underscored by more recently recorded songs such as “Hold My Hand”

(, 2015) and “Thinking Out Loud” (, 2014). Through this juxtaposition of old and new songs in relation to Bridget’s love interests, the film aligns with established romantic conventions. As exemplified in Sweet Home

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Alabama, discussed in the previous chapter, music style and genre convey character information and can at times emphasize character development.

At the music festival, Bridget's friend Miranda tells her to sleep with the first man she meets. Consequently, her night with Jack begins when she drunkenly stumbles into his yurt in the dark. Thinking it is her yurt, she begins talking to Miranda, “I have to admit, that was fun. And you’re right. What I need is a good shafting! Some good old- fashioned, lie-back-and-think-of-England bonking.” Jack turns on the light and exclaims,

“Well, sign me up!” After some hesitation, Bridget’s voiceover explains, “Well, he is the first man I met, and his yurt is a whole heck of a lot nicer than mine.” As the sex scene begins, Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” gains diegetic volume and the scene cuts between Bridget and Jack in bed and Sheeran performing at the festival.59

Although Bridget thinks that Sheeran is a young man she’s seen working at

Starbucks, it is unlikely that any of the audience members were similarly baffled by his identity. Bridget’s gaffe reminds the audience that while Bridget is more mature in this film, she is just as oblivious as she was in the previous films. Released in 2014,

“Thinking Out Loud” topped the UK charts and became the first song to spend a full year inside the UK’s Top 40.60 Additionally, the song earned Sheeran a Grammy award for best pop in 2016, earned a Diamond Certification in the US, and, at

59 The song’s lyrics suggest a potential longevity to their relationship, talking about falling in love and a couple that grows old together. At the same time, the newness of the song conveys that Jack is a new character to the franchise. 60 Lars Brandle, “Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’ Becomes First Single to Spend Year in UK Top 40,” Billboard, June 23, 2015, accessed December 12, 2017, https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6605691/ed-sheerans-thinking-out-loud-becomes-first- single-to-spend-year-in-uk-top-40.

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time of writing, the official video has close to 2 billion views on YouTube.61 Given the song’s dominance in the UK and US, we can assume it is immediately recognizable, imbuing the scene, and Jack, with a sense of familiarity.

Moreover, the song marks a departure from Sheeran’s typical subject matter of lost and unrequited love: “Thinking Out Loud” is about undying love and, as critic Jason

Lipshutz describes it, the song is a “sleek update of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On.’”62

Serving as an official introduction to Jack, the song suggests that he is a likeable character, a notion that continues throughout the film. Moreover, as an update of an R&B classic, the song aligns Jack with the sound of the first film. Bridget Jones’s Diary featured songs by Aretha Franklin and Van Morrison to create a sonic environment imbued with familiarity. By underscoring Bridget and Jack’s initial union with an updated version of this style, Jack is presented as a viable and safe romantic partner—a

“familiar stranger.” In a 2016 interview with Collider, Renée Zellweger commented on

Jack’s likeability, the way this circumvents the franchise’s previous character types, and what the character reveals about Bridget’s personal development:

It was a different slant on the triangles that she’s found herself in before… What Mark Darcy could always walk away with is that his moral compass is set correctly. But then, you’ve got this other fella who’s equally wonderful, and it makes for a different kind of rivalry. It’s interesting. I like it because I think it’s important that Bridget is not so naïve as before.

61 Taylor Weatherby, “Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’ Achieves Diamond Certification, More than 10 Million in Sales & Streams,” Billboard, October 27, 2017, accessed December 12, 2017, https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8014879/ed-sheeran-thinking-out-loud- diamond-certification.; Ed Sheeran, “Thinking Out Loud [Official Video],” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp-EO5I60KA, accessed December 16, 2017. 62 Jason Lipshutz, “Ed Sheeran, ‘x’: Track-by-Track Review,” Billboard, June 23, 2014, accessed December 12, 2017, https://www.billboard.com/articles/review/6128781/ed-sheeran-x-track-by- track-album-review.

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Maybe she has a little more clarity when it comes to the choices that she’s making, but maybe not with so much grace.63

The presentation of two equally valid partners is new to the Bridget Jones franchise and allows the central focus of the ultimate coupling to rest on Bridget’s happiness, rather than on the suitability of the partner.

Bridget awakens the next morning to an empty yurt. As she leaves she says (in voiceover), “Oh God! I’ve just slept with a complete stranger! I’m nothing but a feckless prostitute. No, no. I’m an elegant older woman taking men for my own pleasure. Or am I just a deluded, middle-aged fool?” Although she feels conflicted about societal conventions of how she should behave, Bridget does not contact Jack after the one-night stand, explaining to a friend that “it doesn’t work that way anymore.” It is not until

Bridget discovers she is pregnant that she attempts to find Jack, initiating the film’s central conflict: unknown paternity and Bridget’s choice between Mark and Jack.

Even though the film establishes strong links between music and character, there are some surprising song choices for Mark and Jack. One scene borrows Mark’s musical style in presenting Jack. Shortly after learning of Bridget’s pregnancy, Jack visits her, bringing gifts that represent hypothetical dates, had their relationship been more conventional: dinner, the fair, and building IKEA furniture. As Jack explains each dating scenario, we hear “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” (The Temptations,

1971) in the background.

63 Christina Radish, “Renée Zellweger on Finally Bringing ‘Bridget Jones’s Baby’ to Life and Shooting Multiple Endings,” Collider, September 15, 2016, accessed December 15, 2017, http://collider.com/renee-zellwegger-bridget-joness-baby-interview/.

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“Just My Imagination” is considered a “classic ballad,” with its doowop guitar, strings, and horns that recall the Temptations’ pre-psychedelic sound. The song reached number one in the charts upon its release and is listed among Rolling Stone’s 500

Greatest Songs of All Time.64 Due to the song’s lasting popularity, it is likely that audience members would recognize the song and its meaning; this knowledge facilitates their understanding of the song’s function in the scene. According to the song’s singer,

Otis Williams, the “lyrics are timeless: a guy is expressing his desire for a girl (‘Her love is heavenly’) but only towards the end do you realize it’s all in his dreams.”65 The song starts quietly with guitar and “oohs” in the backup vocals; this soft opening recalls

“Someone Like You,” the song that framed Mark and Bridget’s relationship in the first film. Through its style and authentic message, the song closely aligns with the soundscape of the franchise. Therefore, associating this song and its classic R&B sound with Jack, and his potential relationship with Bridget, confirms our suspicions from the

“Thinking Out Loud” scene—Jack is a viable romantic partner—and the song encourages the viewer to fall for the “shiny new American” along with Bridget. To an audience member who knows the song and its lyrics, however, the song also foreshadows the relationship’s outcome. The song is about unattainable love—a man imagines a perfect life with a woman who does not know he exists.

64 Dave Simpson, “How We Made: Just My Imagination by the Temptations,” The Guardian, March 25, 2012, accessed December 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/mar/26/how-made-just-my-imagination.; “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” Rolling Stone, accessed December 15, 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-20110407/the- temptations-just-my-imagination-20110526. 65 Simpson, “How We Made.” 158

Mark and Bridget’s one-night stand at the christening party is underscored by

“Re-Ignite” (Knox Brown and Gallant, 2016). Although the song is in R&B style and clearly represents an extension of Mark and Bridget’s typical accompaniment, it is considerably more erotic than the sincere “Someone Like You.” The song underscores the scene as Mark and Bridget make their way through the post-christening party, head upstairs to a bedroom, and have sex. Furthermore, the song overwhelms the soundtrack, silencing the sounds of the party and encouraging the audience to follow Mark’s gaze throughout the scene as Bridget walks upstairs. Enforcing the scene’s sensuality are a strong backbeat that supports Gallant’s soaring vocals and drum accents at the chorus’s

“re-ig-nite,” producing three musically enforced “thrusts.” This updated style fits the scene, more than a lyrical ballad could, as Mark and Bridget “reignite” their relationship.

Notable in Bridget’s one-night stand with Mark, as well as the sex scene with

Jack, is the way these scenes recall the “radical romcoms” of the 1970s. As described by romantic comedy scholar Tamar Jeffers McDonald, the radical rom-coms “stress that sexual fulfilment and pleasure, long acknowledged as significant to men, are vitally important to women also. These films show women asking for sex, enjoying sex, sometimes avoiding sex, but doing so at the dictates of their own bodies and desires, and not to please or appease their partners.”66

66 Tamar Jeffers McDonald, “Homme-Com: Engendering Change in Contemporary Romantic Comedy,” in Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn, eds., Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 149. 159

Music (12/8 meter) Lyrics Scene Synthesizer (continues) Falsetto “ooh” Bridget and Mark kiss Reverb guitar on 3 My only weakness Children and adults dancing pulse (continues) You know all my secrets Mark and Bridget in doorway I can’t stop loving you (x2) Bridget and Mark touch hands Your kiss is the sweetest Bridget’s gaze follows Mark Snare on 1; bass drum You look like magic Mark’s gaze matches Bridget’s on 3 (continues) One touch and I’ve had it Reverse close-shot of Bridget Drum roll I can’t stop wanting you Sequence of reverse shots (echoed) Long shot of Bridget looking at Girl, I’m an addict, Mark yeah Close shot of Bridget Drum roll I want to come with you Mark stopped by man in hallway I get undone with you Close shot of Bridget leaving party Let me be one with you, hey Mark’s gaze follows Bridget Oh, after all this time Sequence of reverse shots I want to make you mine Close shot of Bridget on stairs I want to Bridget in dark room Snare and drum on Reignite our love Mark enters room syllables Hey-hey (x3) Bridget walks across room Still after all this time Mark and Bridget kiss Send shivers up my spine, Mark tries to unbutton dress darling I Mark “How the fuck am I supposed Drum roll Song fades to get in here?” Both laugh and fall on bed Oh, let me reignite our love Kissing in bed Our love (Oohs in backup) Cuddling in bed I’m not here to judge you Reverb synthesizer (fades) Table 3. “Re-Ignite” Scene Analysis

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Following the night with Mark, Bridget leaves before he is awake, simply leaving a note on the pillow:

I’m so sorry, Mark. Had to leave. Probably sounds pathetic, but I got scared. The fact that we went round and round for the best part of ten years without ever making it across the finish line makes me think we did the best thing by ending it when we did. Sometimes it feels scary still being on my own at 43. But you and I have been here once before. We always loved the fantasy of us. But the reality, as we both know, is quite different. We could both come up with a hundred reasons of why we didn’t make it but in the end, I always felt that you were never there, and I was mostly alone. Throughout the film Bridget tries to choose between Mark and Jack and wonders how the baby’s paternity should factor into her decision, at one point asking each man if he would still want to be with her if the baby is not his. Despite the unknown paternity, Mark and

Jack work to remain in Bridget’s life, Jack going so far as to tell Mark that he did not use protection when he and Bridget had sex.67 Consequently, Mark is convinced that the baby is not his and that he has lost Bridget forever, cueing a breakup montage. Mark leaves

Bridget with Jack after a check-up; Mark ignores a phone call from Bridget; Mark misses a pregnancy class; Bridget sees Mark on TV winning a high-profile case; Bridget talks with one of her friends about Jack and her uncertainty about their relationship.

Altered Conventions

The breakup montage is underscored by “Stay” (, featuring Mikky Ekko,

2012), which, according to Rihanna, is “a story about having love that close and wanting

67 The audience knows that Bridget did, in fact, provide condoms when she had sex with Jack because the camera panned over the condom box and it is the outdated, eco-friendly dolphin condoms that caused the pregnancy in the first place.

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it to last forever.”68 Similar to “Thinking Out Loud” and “Re-Ignite,” “Stay” is a contemporary R&B song; just as this style is used to affirm Jack and Mark as appropriate romantic partners for Bridget, in this scene it is used to stress the emotional gravity of the scene.69 Because the scene cues a breakup montage (rather than a couple montage between Jack and Bridget), the song conveys the idea that Bridget has made her choice between the two men and wishes Mark to stay. This connection is also reinforced through dialogue in the subsequent scene. Talking to Jack about her feelings for Mark, Bridget explains, “Falling in love doesn’t happen on paper. Sometimes you love a person because of all the reasons they’re not like you. Sometimes you love a person just because they feel like home. I’ve got to find Mark.” However, when Bridget goes to Mark he is with his ex-wife, and Bridget leaves. By revealing Bridget’s true feelings through the breakup montage and Bridget’s voicing her decision to reconcile with Mark, the audience is led to believe that the reunion is imminent. Yet that event is prevented; thus, the filmmaker subverts generic convention. Through this subversion, however, the film allows Bridget to be self-sufficient. Bridget decides to be a single parent with the encouragement of her

OBGYN (Emma Thompson), who tells her that men are only useful for fitting the baby’s car seat and scapegoating.

68 Natalie Finn, “Rihanna Talks Chris Brown: ‘Now That We’re Adults, We Can Do This Right,’” March 1, 2013, accessed December 15, 2017, E News, http://www.eonline.com/news/393681/rihanna-talks-chris-brown-now-that-we-re-adults-we-can- do-this-right. 69 “Stay” won iHeartRadio’s Song of the Year award in 2014 and was nominated for a Grammy award the same year. The audience likely recognized it and would know its lyrics. MTV News Staff, “Rihanna Wins Big at iHeartRadio Awards,” MTV, May 1, 2014, accessed December 15, 2017, http://www.mtv.com/news/1818925/rihanna-wins-big-at-iheartradio-awards-see-the- winners-list/.; Billboard Staff, “Grammy Awards 2014: Full Nominations List,” Billboard, December 6, 2013, accessed December 15, 2017, https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5819883/grammy-awards-2014-full-nominations-list- complete-nominees. 162

Nevertheless, the film constructs another opportunity for Bridget and Mark’s reunion by providing another montage, styled as a breakup montage. Having accidentally locked her keys and belongings inside a bank, Bridget sits helplessly under an awning outside her apartment building. The scene cuts to Mark in his apartment, where he finds the iconic reindeer sweater from the first film; and this discovery cues a montage within a montage where we see, presumably from Mark’s memory, a flashback sequence from the previous two films: Bridget and Mark meeting, Bridget laughing, Mark defending

Bridget, and their kiss at the end of the first film. Returning to the present, we see Bridget sitting in the street and hear her, in voiceover, talking to her unborn baby:

Ok, new pre-birth resolution. I, Bridget Jones, am going to be the best mother in the world. I’m going to try not to leave you in a shop or put you in the washing machine like that woman in the newspaper with her cat. Look, I know I made you a promise that I would get things sorted before you got here. Well, the truth is, I haven’t. But you and me can do this together. Because knights in shining armor don’t exist anymore. Or… do they?

The montage ends with Mark finding Bridget on the street, breaking the window to get access to her apartment, and then confessing his love for her as she goes into labor. The sequence is underscored by ’s “Hurting Time” (2003). The song was released between the previous two Bridget Jones films, and its smooth jazz overlaid with electronically-produced sounds creates an ethereal atmosphere that recalls Gabrielle’s

“Out of Reach” (played during the breakup montage in the first film). The instrumentation and vocal similarities between the two songs recall the events and emotions of the first film. The presentation of the scenes from the first two films with the song creates a sense of nostalgia in the audience, asking them to remember the strength of

Bridget and Mark’s relationship.

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As serious as this scene is, the film cuts the tension with bodily humor reminiscent of screwball comedy: slapstick accidents and a race to the hospital. Having tossed his phone out the window as a sign of chivalry and commitment to Bridget, Mark has thrown away their only way of calling a cab to take them to the hospital. Mark then recruits their friend who owns an Italian restaurant and delivery business to drive them to the hospital. Humorously squished into a delivery truck that is meant to fit one, the trio’s attempt to reach the hospital is underscored by “Mambo Italiano” (Carla Boni, 1956).

Their path is blocked, however, by a women’s protest march led, ironically, by the women Mark defended earlier in the film. Determined to walk to the hospital, Bridget gets out of the car and Mark attempts to carry her. Mark lifts Bridget in slow motion, paralleled by the lyrics “Love lift us up where we belong,” (“Up Where We Belong,” Joe

Cocker, 1982), a humorous nod to the clichéd use of the song in moments of triumph in film and television.70 The stoic Mark only makes it a few blocks, however, before his knees begin to buckle and he complains, “Good God, Bridget. You’re immense! I think my lung’s collapsed, but this is not about me.”

Resting for ten seconds, Mark resolves to get Bridget to the hospital and new underscoring begins, “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” (McFadden & Whitehead, 1979), an obvious musical and rhetorical reference to the first film’s use of “Ain’t No Mountain

High Enough” as underscoring for Bridget’s efforts to unite with Mark. Jack finds the duo and takes over carrying Bridget, buckling under her weight. Jack insists that it’s a

“two-man job” and the men carry Bridget the remainder of the way to the hospital, get

70 “Up Where We Belong” was originally recorded for the film An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and plays in the final scene in which the male protagonist carries the love interest out of a factory. The song has since been used as parody. For example, in South Park season 9, episode 7, a young boy carries a prostitute through crime-ridden streets, underscored by the song. 164

stuck in the revolving door of the entrance, and place Bridget on the desk at the nurse’s station. By emphasizing slapstick humor, sexual freedom, and musical nostalgia, Bridget

Jones’s Baby becomes self-reflexive of both its position within the romantic comedy genre and the Bridget Jones franchise, thus situating itself within multiple cyclic traditions.

The close of Bridget Jones’s Baby further conforms to this hybrid tradition. In traditional romantic comedies the opening scene of a romcom mourns the female protagonist’s singlehood, the closing song confirms a satisfactory coupling, and the final scene features the new couple together in some capacity (for example, marrying, kissing, or riding off into the distance).71 The first two Bridget Jones films fit comfortably in this tradition. Bridget Jones’s Diary ends with Bridget and Mark kissing in a snowy street underscored by “Someone Like You.” Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) ends with Bridget and Mark at her parents’ vow renewal ceremony; the scene is underscored by two songs, first “Let’s Get It On” (Marvin Gaye, 1973) which fades into “Your Love is King” (Will Young, 2004). These songs and final scenes conform to the narrative where the (re)united couple is the ultimate goal, regardless of the female protagonist’s personal or professional goals. Throughout both films Bridget is (overly) concerned with entering a relationship, getting married, and having children to such an extent that, in the second film, she breaks up with Mark for not proposing marriage after two months of dating.

As evidenced through the aforementioned sex scenes and through the closing scene, however, Bridget is characterized differently in Bridget Jones’s Baby. The film

71 Deborah Jermyn, “Unlikely Heroines? ‘Women of a Certain Age’ and Romantic Comedy,” CineAction 85 (2011): 30. 165

ends with Bridget and Mark’s wedding (with Jack as Mark’s best man). Thus far, the film seems to follow convention: the two are married, share a kiss, and walk out of the church together. Surprisingly, though, Bridget then takes the baby from Jack. Mark and Jack walk off together, looking over their shoulders at Bridget as her final voiceover begins.

Dear Diary, And so I, Bridget Jones, am a singleton no more. Married? Yes. Smug? Well, it’s about time, so maybe just a little.

Underscoring the voiceover are oscillating chords on piano and synthesizer from a song created for the film, “Still Falling for You” (Ellie Goulding). As the voiceover ends the song’s vocals begin over what are now sustained chords. The camera focuses on Bridget, laughing, as a gust of wind catches her veil and it flies off; the camera pans behind

Bridget and follows her as she makes her way to (what we can assume is) the reception.

Although the song’s placement and sound situate the scene within the romantic comedy tradition, the particular sequence of shots, paired with the song, disrupts genre traditions and conveys an unconventional message.

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“Still Falling for You” Lyrics Bridget Jones’s Baby Scene

And just like that, all I breathe, All I feel Long shot behind Bridget walking to reception You are all for me, And then just like that Medium shot of Bridget facing camera, wind blowing All I breathe Veil in air All I feel, You are all for me, No one can Medium shot of Bridget laughing lift me catch me the way that you do *chords Camera pans behind Bridget I’m still falling for you Medium shot behind Bridget Brighter than gold, This love shining Long shot behind Bridget walking to brighter than gold, This love is like letters reception in bold, This love is like out of control (song continues through credits) Table 4. “Still Falling for You” Scene Analysis

“Still Falling for You” is a power ballad, a genre that—like the romantic comedy itself—is considered cliché for the directness of its emotion. These songs are marked by a specific formula, which musicologist David Metzer outlines as follows:

Power ballads climb up from relatively quiet, introspective openings through a series of expressive plateaus, each more intense than the last. The ascent is made through a gradual increase in dynamics and the size and density of the ensemble. A song usually begins with a lightly scored introduction for acoustic instruments and then switches over to electric instruments or unveils an orchestra.… Singers too start quietly and with a vulnerable tone, but they quickly ecstatic displays, including elaborate melismas and catapulted high notes. Most, but not all, songs conclude with a wrenching modulation up a step, the cliché hallmark of the power ballad.72

Power ballads are most often associated with the 1980s, but arose out of ballads from the

1960s. Power ballads display the vocal virtuosity of the singer and are meant to elicit intense emotion from the listener. Metzer describes the typical emotional transaction:

72 David Metzer, “The Power Ballad and the Power of Sentimentality,” Journal of American Studies 50, no. 3 (2016): 439. 167

“Listeners can draw whatever they want from that mist, including despair, resolve, comfort, and exultation… [Power ballads] deliver feelings of intensity rather than any one intense feeling.”73 “Still Falling For You” thus allows for a variety of responses depending on the viewer’s background, including joy for the couple or a mixture of joy and nostalgia for Bridget’s journey to marriage. This song differs from the closing songs of the first two films in that it is sung by a female vocalist. Paired with the shooting style of the scene, the song encourages the viewers to shift their attention away from the couple and to focus on Bridget alone.

The Female Gaze

Film scholar Paula Marantz Cohen suggests that romantic comedies construct a female gaze. In direct opposition to film theorist Laura Mulvey’s construction of the gaze, in which female audience members adopt a male point of view, in Cohen’s view, the romcom gives female audience members the opportunity to gaze

as women, disconnected from a conventional male economy of desire, whether or not a man made the film or a patriarchal perspective informs it. What constitutes the difference is that the plot-spectacle hierarchy, which Mulvey associates with the male gaze, is turned on its head. In romantic comedy, spectacle becomes central, and plot, secondary. As a result, these films have been denigrated as trivial or silly, and only recently have third- wave feminists noted that they offer unique pleasures. I want to go further and argue that women watch romantic comedies not just for the anomalous pleasures they afford but for more substantive reasons: to learn how to use the material world creatively and to assimilate things into a style of being that defines and empowers them.74

73 Metzer, “The Power Ballad,” 441. 74 Paula Marantz Cohen, “What Have Clothes Got to Do with It? Romantic Comedy and the Female Gaze,” Southwest Review 95, no. 1 (2010): 80. The notion that spectacle is central and plot secondary is related to Allanbrook’s discussion of the comic surface in eighteenth-century

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Cohen advocates for a balance between femininity and feminism where female characters assimilate consumer goods and the symbols of the feminine for self-empowerment and for constructing their own social position, while also acting as a model for the female audience, in direct opposition to the male gaze. To clarify this point, Cohen goes on to discuss a lengthy scene in One Fine Day (1996) in which the female protagonist

(Michelle Pfeiffer) dresses for an evening out:

Thus, it makes perfect sense that when Pfeiffer leaves the bathroom, dressed and coiffed to her own liking, the presumed goal of all this preparation, the locus of the male gaze, is fast asleep, leaving the finished spectacle entirely to us.75

The scenario in which the female protagonist is the object of the female gaze is similar at the end of Bridget Jones’s Baby; in this scene, the men walk away talking and, after one final look, leave her alone—Bridget is thus left to the viewer’s gaze. After a decade, is

Bridget still falling for Mark? Are we, the viewers, still falling for Bridget? In an interview with “Flicks and the City 2” from August 2016, Renée Zellweger answered questions about the audience’s relationship with the protagonist.

Interviewer: What do you think it is, though, about her that the audience at home loves, what is it about this character that makes her so relatable? Renée: She’s an authentic person. And I think people connect with her humanity, her vulnerability. She’s imperfect, she triumphs anyway. It’s inspiring. I think we cheer for her. And she, uh, kind of makes it ok for the rest of us to be human.76

music, in which the foregrounded superficiality contains the mimetic action and conveys meaning to the audience. In other words, the semantic is more important than the syntactic. Allanbrook, The Secular Commedia, 85. 75 Cohen, “What Have Clothes Got to Do with It?” 88. 76 “Bridget Jones’s Baby Interview,” Flicks and the City 2, August 31, 2016, accessed December 17, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DzmcnH8J2k. 169

For a viewer familiar with the first two films, the ending of the third certainly feels like

Bridget’s triumph—she is confident, self-reliant, and (relatively) graceful—and the pairing of power ballad with a smiling Bridget suggests decisive female power.

The popular songs in Bridget Jones’s Baby work within the romantic comedy genre’s conventions in conveying Bridget’s emotional states at the beginning and end of the film. Additionally, the songs introduce characters to the audience through marked styles that designate their romantic suitability. However, the songs also push the boundaries of these conventions by suggesting that Bridget is confident in being all by herself at the beginning of the film and that she retains that confidence throughout the film, whether coupled or not. By working both with and against the genre’s traditions,

Bridget Jones’s Baby situates itself within a broader trend in recent romantic comedies that portray strong female protagonists who come to relationships on their own terms.

To close this chapter, I offer a personal anecdote. When I saw Bridget Jones’s

Baby in theaters as part of a girl’s night out, the friend I attended the film with cried during the closing scene. While she wiped her tears during the credits, I asked if she was okay. “She’s just so happy!” my friend exclaimed. She went on to explain that when she was an undergraduate, Bridget Jones’s Diary was part of her break-up healing ritual. She would watch the film, relate to the way Bridget fumbled her way through relationships, and take comfort in her ability to persevere. Now in her late 20s, my friend is happily engaged and planning her wedding. She felt as if she were on a journey with Bridget, and was overcome with emotion when she realized they both had achieved their “happily ever after.” Although my friend’s reaction to the end of Bridget Jones’s Baby might be an outlier among women’s ways of identifying with the character, I don’t think she “missed

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the point” of the movie. Rather, she identified with the character and related it to her own experiences as a woman. his issue of character identification and the role music plays in audience reception of romantic comedies is also a theme in the audience responses referenced throughout this dissertation.

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Chapter 4: “Who Doesn’t Love a Happy Ending?” Conversations with Romantic Comedy Conventions

In the previous three chapters of this dissertation, I outlined and discussed the music conventions of postmillennial romantic comedies, including the introductory, breakup, and closing song conventions. Within my discussion of these conventions, I argued that recent shifts in filmmakers’ representations of female desires have changed the semantics of the genre and conveyed updated feminist attitudes. Based on conversations with audience members, I suggested that music could facilitate audience identification with the female protagonist, and concluded that audiences bring their previous music and film experiences to bear on their interpretations of the genre. The overarching assertion in these chapters is that postmillennial romantic comedy is a distinct generic cycle with musical conventions that have developed in tandem with societal shifts in feminism and representation of women. In this final chapter, I discuss the ways in which postmillennial romantic comedies function in conversation with previous generic cycles and the repurposing of musical conventions associated with the postmillenial romantic comedy in media not considered part of the romantic comedy genre.

As I discussed in the introduction to this dissertation, scholars understand the romantic comedy genre as a series of film cycles. These cycles highlight different portions of the narrative arc through varying emphasis on particular perspectives: that of the couple, for example, or that of the protagonist. According to film scholar Amanda

Ann Klein, film cycles differ from genres:

While film genres are primarily defined by the repetition of key images (their semantics) and themes (their syntax), film cycles are primarily defined by how they are used (their pragmatics). In other words, the

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formation and longevity of film cycles are a direct result of their immediate financial viability as well as the public discourses circulating around them, including film reviews, director interviews, studio-issued press kits, movie posters, theatrical trailers, and media coverage. Because they are so dependent on audience desires, film cycles are also subject to defined time constraints: most film cycles are financially viable for only five to ten years. After that point, a cycle must be updated or altered in order to continue to turn a profit.1

In other words, film cycles are meant to meet the audience’s current expectations and

“can serve as a cross-section of one specific moment in time, accurately revealing the state of contemporary politics, prevalent social ideologies, aesthetic trends, and popular desires and anxieties.”2 Different romantic comedy cycles have placed more or less emphasis of the female protagonist’s sexual freedom, reflecting societal trends of their respective decades. Although critics and scholars often contemplate each of these cycles in isolation, a consideration of how films recall and juxtapose elements of prior cycles grants a different understanding of the genre’s development. To facilitate the discussion of these elements in relation to romantic comedy, I begin with some background information on meaning-making processes and shifting generic forms in non-romantic comedy media.

In his discussion of viewing practices and reception, scholar Raminder

Kaur posits that diasporic viewers of Bollywood films participate in a triple consciousness of reflexive spectatorship, in which they view the film

(i) In relation to Hindi films; (ii) In relation to themselves as Indians/Asians in the West and the symbolic value that the Hindi film connotes—that is, as a cultural

1 Amanda Ann Klein, American Film Cycles: Reframing Genres, Screening Social Problems, & Defining Subcultures (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 4. 2 Klein, American Film Cycles, 9.

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repository of alterity, but not necessarily a total identification or immersion in the film texts; and, (iii) In relation to a larger repertoire of filmic references that made the film comparable to other filmic traditions and exemplars.3

Furthermore, Kaur argues that audiences use their prior knowledge of films and genres to create meaning within specific films. In this process, audiences relate to the film on three different levels:

(i) In relation to the particular film being watched; (ii) The familiarity with songs that are generally released before films come out, and along with music programs, visualized and therefore enjoyed for their performative power; and (iii) The extra-textual magnetism of the star—a reputation crystallized through the popularity of earlier films, gossip, good looks, and so forth.4

Although Kaur’s discussion centers on the reflexive spectatorship of Bollywood audiences, I propose that triple consciousness also applies to Hollywood romantic comedy audiences. Based on the experiences of the women interviewed in focus groups, we can posit that at least some female spectators view romantic comedies in relation to other films from the genre, in relation to themselves as women (and possibly as feminists), and in relation to a larger repertoire of films and Hollywood traditions.

Through this application, we can consider romantic comedies as texts with potential meaning-making properties that audiences understand in relation to other films and to their personal lives.

3 Raminder Kaur, “Cruising on the Vilayeti Bandwagon: Diasporic Representations and Reception of Popular Indian Movies,” in Raminder Kaur and Ajay J. Sinha, eds., Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens, (New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, and London: Sage, 2005), 321. 4 Kaur, “Cruising on the Vilayeti Bandwagon,” 322. 174

When audiences view a film they are considering it not only within the current moment of the genre but also within the genre’s history, its interaction with other genres, and its assimilation of conventions. Literary scholar Amy J. Devitt argues that this flexible understanding of generic form is one of four principles for the study of genre:

• The forms of genres are meaningful only within their full contexts— cultural, social, and individual • The forms of genres range widely, both synchronically and diachronically, and cannot be pinned down with closed or static descriptions • The forms of genres vary with each unique instance of genre, but unique instances share common generic forms • The forms of genres are inter-genre-al, interacting with forms of other genres5

Thus, to fully understand the genre, we must consider romantic comedies within their independent cycles as well as their social contexts and their interactions with any, or all, previous genre cycles. In this section I will first discuss how cinematic tropes are borrowed from previous cycles and then discuss how musical conventions are incorporated.

Conversations with Previous Cycles

While postmillennial romantic comedies do not always carry the tropes of previous cycles, such as slapstick humor, films such as Friends with Benefits (2011) draw on the audience’s knowledge of earlier cycles to alter the representation of the female protagonist. Whereas in previous romantic comedies, the female protagonist is portrayed as sexually inexperienced, in this film, it is the woman who initiates sex. Furthermore,

5 Amy J. Devitt, “Re-fusing Form in Genre Study,” in Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein, eds., Genres in the Internet, (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2009), 35. 175

while the pair agrees to have sex without the commitment of monogamy, the relationship is not without affection. The primary couple in Friends with Benefits, Dylan (Justin

Timberlake) and Jamie (Mila Kunis), are best friends before deciding to have purely physical sex, “like playing tennis.” Friends with Benefits is particularly self-aware as a romantic comedy and contains numerous references to romantic comedy cinematic and music conventions. There are a few passing references, made by Jamie’s mom (Patricia

Clarkson), to previous romantic comedies and the necessity of an update. She suggests that she and Jamie should have a mother-daughter weekend “like a Nora Ephron movie,” and comments that Dylan and Jamie’s casual sex is like the 1970s: “That was a better time. Just sex, a little grass, a little glue.” Further, she states that Jamie doesn’t want a man in a horse-drawn carriage, she wants someone who can take on the world with her:

“Your fairy tale needs updating.”

These comments connect to the opening scene’s commentary on the social role of romantic comedies. At the beginning of the film, Jamie waits for her boyfriend outside a theater showing Pretty Woman and says, “if a prostitute and a ruthless business man can fall in love, anyone can.” Before Pretty Woman starts, Jamie’s boyfriend breaks up with her; in the next scene, she complains to a friend about unrealistic romance expectations established by romantic comedies as they pass a poster for the film

(2009): “I really have to stop buying into this Hollywood bullshit cliché of true love. Shut up Katherine Heigl, you stupid liar!” Later in the film, Dylan and Jamie watch a romantic comedy (made for the film); both critique the film’s wall-to-wall music and its emotional parallels, the grand romantic gesture, and the end credits pop song (“Hey, Soul Sister,”

Train, 2009) that Dylan claims is “an ambiguously upbeat pop song that has nothing to do

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with the plot, they put in at the end to convince you that you had a great time at this shitty movie.” These opening scenes convey a humorous irony, because, as much as the characters critique the conventions of romantic comedies, the film follows the conventions: Dylan arranges a flash mob in Grand Central Station to apologize and reveal his feelings for Jamie and the end credits cue “Magic Carpet Ride” (Steppenwolf, 1968), which has no overt connection to the plot.

Although the film includes a happy ending in which the couple begins a monogamous relationship, it also emphasizes sexual gratification of both characters

(rather than just the male) and the path to happiness requires that both characters overcome the inner problem of their emotional insecurities rather than an external obstacle. Romantic comedy scholar Michele Schreiber argues that films such as this suggest a realignment for romance.

[Films like Friends with Benefits] suggest that the contemporary media can still provoke discussions about sexuality in ways that do not resort to convention or shorthand. New generations of female artists… are pushing such matters into the forefront of their creative work, absorbing and reflecting a changing and often virulent contemporary socio-political climate to offer a different glimpse into how feminist discourses, women’s sexuality, and romantic relationships can be realigned.6

Thus, Friends with Benefits works within generic conventions while acknowledging the pervasiveness of those conventions in popular culture. Furthermore, the film satisfies the conventional happy ending (and meets audience expectations) without diminishing the power of the female protagonist and at the same time emphasizes female sexual agency.

6 Michele Schreiber, American Postfeminist Cinema: Women, Romance, and Contemporary Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 137. 177

While Friends with Benefits highlights the traditional ending with the union of the primary couple, other postmillennial romantic comedies, such as Home Again (2017), recall the comedy of remarriage. Romantic comedy and literary scholar Stanley Cavell argues that the first genre cycle—screwball comedy or the comedy of remarriage— emphasized women’s struggle for “equality of consciousness between a woman and a man, a study of conditions under which this fight for recognition…is a struggle for mutual freedom.”7 Traits of screwball comedy that come in and out of focus in later cycles are the “ hero and heroine and their unpredictable behavior” and physical action, “clowning tumbles, car chases, [and] the race to a departing train or plane.”8

Furthermore, in these films, the narrative develops under threats of divorce and the female protagonist must decide between two men: her husband and her new lover. Films such as It Happened One Night (1934) and The Philadelphia Story (1940) epitomize the remarriage elements of the cycle, as each begins with an already married heroine and ends with her remarriage.

Home Again and the Comedy of Remarriage

As a postmillennial recall of the comedy of remarriage, Home Again follows a recently separated single mother, Alice Kenney (Reese Witherspoon), who moves with her two daughters from New York City to her father’s old house in Los Angeles. There,

Alice meets three young men, Harry (Pico Alexander), George (Jon Rudnitsky), and

Teddy (Nat Wolff), who eventually live in her guest house, and Alice begins a relationship with Harry, who is at least fifteen years her junior. However, Harry is

7 Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness, 18. 8 Linda Mizejewski, It Happened One Night (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), 22–25. 178

distracted by his burgeoning career as a filmmaker and fails to attend a dinner party with

Alice, who calls off the relationship, saying that she doesn’t deserve to feel abandoned.

Jealous that his wife is living with three men, Alice’s estranged husband, Austen

(Michael Sheen), arrives at the house ready to reunite, stating that “Alice doesn’t know what she wants.” Alice confirms that she wants a divorce. The film ends with Alice, her mother, the two girls, Austen, and the three men having dinner together.

The film recalls the comedy of remarriage through the looming threat of divorce and the woman’s choice between two men. The film could have aligned with It

Happened One Night had Alice and Harry continued to pursue a relationship, or with The

Philadelphia Story (1940), in which the female protagonist reunites with her ex-husband.

Because of Austen’s controlling language, he seems to hail from these early comedies.

We can see parallels between his comment that “Alice doesn’t know what she wants” and the male protagonist’s statement in It Happened One Night that the female protagonist

“needs a guy that’d take a sock at her once a day, whether it’s coming to her or not.”

Both men are overbearing and think that they know what is best, regardless of what the heroine thinks she wants. Yet, over the course of the film, Alice becomes self-assured, breaking off her relationships with Harry and Austen in favor of her own happiness.

Through this decision, the comedy of remarriage is updated to emphasize the heroine’s power over her own life. The happy ending is still present—Alice is content—but it does not require a couple to fulfill audience expectations. Furthermore, although the film opens with the Yes song “I’ve Seen All Good People” (1971) and establishes the decade of the female protagonist’s birth, popular music—in fact, music in general—is sparse.

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Music punctuates occasional moments in the film but is not usually present. In this way, the music further aligns the film with the screwball comedy tradition.

In his discussion of a flexible theory of romantic comedy, film scholar Celestino

Deleyto argues that genres and individual films, such as the cases discussed above, reproduce themselves in unexpected ways. Deleyto calls attention to the intersection of multiple genres which might generate new genres while erasing others.

Like fractals, individual films, scenes, or even shots often reproduce in themselves the structure and characteristics of the general system while, at the same time… often existing at the intersection between different generic systems. As with attractors, genres are often pulled in unexpected ways, bifurcate, generate new genres, or disappear (although not necessarily forever) when a combination of circumstances (both external and internal) bring about turning points in their evolution.9

According to Deleyto, films may be marketed as belonging to a certain genre, but their characteristics, plot structure, and narrative devices may be positioned at the intersection of multiple genres. Deleyto posits that filmic texts afford the opportunity for various genres to interact with one another: even if one genre dominates the others, genre mixing is an inherent possibility in the art of filmmaking.

Genres are categories used by the industry, the filmmakers, critics and spectators to communicate with one another and, consequently, they are also sets of expectations brought to the films by the spectators. From a textual perspective, these expectations are turned into abstract systems of conventions. Films are individual articulations of those conventions and each film carries out its own selection of conventions from one or several genres. This means that films as texts are not romantic comedies but, rather, use the conventions of romantic comedy in specific ways….10

9 Celestino Deleyto, The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2009), 8–9. 10 Deleyto, The Secret Lift of Romantic Comedy, 14; 46. 180

Elements of romantic comedy appear in other genre films, such as westerns, musicals, and action films, and these borrowed elements are often integral to the borrowing film’s success. Although Deleyto focuses on cinematic conventions of romantic comedies borrowed in non-romantic comedy films, the prominence of postmillennial music conventions offers ample opportunity for their implementation in other genres. In the remainder of this chapter, I will focus on examples of romantic comedy music conventions in non-romantic comedy genres and the varying ironic and straightforward effects of these intertextual applications.

Dance it Out: RomCom Music Conventions in Grey’s Anatomy (2005– )

Against the hazy image of gloved hands, surgical tools, and atmospheric music we hear a woman speak in voiceover: “The game: they say a person either has what it takes to play or they don’t. My mother was one of the greats. Me, on the other hand—I’m kind of screwed.” The shimmering music becomes the steady tone of a heart monitor flatline and a quick succession of drum hits align with a camera cut to a close-up of a woman’s face as she awakens. From a sofa, the woman looks to the floor where a man is sleeping, she pulls the blanket from his back, wraps it around herself, and begins to leave the room. The man awakens, hands the woman her bra, and suggests they “pick up where they left off last night.” The couple exchanges awkward small talk and she insists he needs to leave because she has work; she forgets his name, allowing a narrative opportunity to introduce us to Meredith () and Derek (Patrick Dempsey).

As Meredith hides her face and waves goodbye, music begins: “Portions for

Foxes” (Rilo Kiley, 2004). The song cues a montage complete with several cityscape

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shots of Seattle, close-ups of Meredith, shots of other characters, a meeting in an operating room, a speech by the chief of surgery, and a return of Meredith’s voiceover that closes the scene: “Like I said, I’m screwed.”

Thus begins the pilot episode of the TV drama Grey’s Anatomy; although the sequence only lasts three minutes, it establishes the co-existing narrative and genre tensions of the television series. Framing the sequence is the medical drama, established at the opening with the surgery backdrop and the closing with the operating room settings. These shots establish that this show is about medicine, specifically the story of first-year intern Meredith Grey and the pressure to follow in the footsteps of her mother.

From this genre we can expect high-pressure , medical mysteries, and the grim inner workings of a medical career.

Positioned within this medical frame, however, is Meredith’s personal life—an awkward morning encounter after a one-night stand and the eventual fallout when that one-night stand is revealed as her boss.11 This subordinate narrative borrows from the romantic comedy tradition. The opening scene conforms to the genre’s prescribed cinematic conventions—meet-cute and cityscape montage—and the introductory song convention. As I outlined in the first chapter, the introductory song establishes the female protagonist’s desires and the film’s primary conflict. The song “Portions for Foxes” fulfills this function through lyrics such as the repeated “it’s bad news” in the chorus to emphasize Meredith’s sentiment on her first day as in intern—she is “screwed.”

11 The intertwined nature of the medical drama and romance is also evident in the title sequence, which first appears in the second episode. Set to “Cosy in the Rocket” (Psapp, 2005), the sequence shows a fluid transition between the medical and personal worlds. Scrub shoes turn to high heels, surgical tools to an eyelash curler, a cocktail dress becomes scrubs, a saline drip pours into a martini glass, and a couple plays “footsie” in a hospital bed. 182

Furthermore, the song underscores Meredith and Derek’s encounter: “And the talkin’ leads to touchin’/And the touchin’ leads to sex/And then there is no mystery left.” Within the context of Meredith and Derek’s relationship, the repetitive “it’s bad news” in the chorus foreshadows doom. Therefore, the song reflects both the medical and romantic comedy frames through its double meaning.12 Of course, because the syntax of television conventions differs from that of film, Grey’s Anatomy does not strictly adhere to romantic comedy cinematic conventions throughout the series and the music in television operates differently than film. As musicologist K.J. Donnelly states television requires

“that certain moments are emphasized, noted as significant, monumentalized, and aestheticized. Pop music has proved adept at these…”13 Accordingly, the placement of the title sequence aligns with television syntax and contributes to the pacing of the show—the close of the title sequence signals the imminent first commercial break.14

Overall, music in television serves a different purpose than in film, but the opening sequence in Grey’s Anatomy borrows the semantics of romantic comedy music conventions to establish the desires of the female protagonist and frame audience expectations.15 The music highlights the significance of Meredith and Derek’s introduction and the beginning of Meredith’s life as an intern before switching back to

12 In terms of sonic qualities, the song’s early 2000s pop rock aesthetic sets the tone for the show which often features indie artists and is a vehicle for artists to promote their music. A prime example of this promotional quality is the song “Chasing ” by the Northern Irish-Scottish rock band Snow Patrol. The band was relatively unknown in 2006 when the song was used in a pivotal scene in season 2 of Grey’s Anatomy. Following the episode, the song moved onto U.S. download and pop music charts. 13 K.J. Donnelly, “Tracking British Television: Pop Music as Stock Soundtrack to the Small Screen,” Popular Music 21, no. 3 (2002): 331. 14 For more information on how music placement provides structure in television, see Robynn J. Stilwell, “‘Bad Wolf’: Leitmotif in (2005),” in James Deaville, ed., Music in Television: Channels of Listening (New York: Routledge, 2011), 120–1. 15 Ibid.; Donnelly, “Tracking British Television,” 331. 183

television semantics. While such moments are brief, it is worth highlighting these filmic moments within the television context to understand the ways in which film informs television expectations.

Developing in parallel to the romance between Meredith and Derek is Meredith’s relationship with her best friend and fellow intern, Cristina. Meredith and Cristina meet in the first episode when they team up to solve the medical mystery of one of Derek’s patients. Meredith betrays Cristina by scrubbing in on the surgery rather than giving the opportunity to Cristina, as promised. Although she is hurt, Cristina forgives Meredith, thus solidifying their relationship in a scene that functions as their meet-cute.

Cristina: It was a good surgery. Meredith: Yeah. Cristina: We don’t have do that thing where I say something, and then you say something, and then somebody cries, and there’s, like, a moment. Meredith. Yuck. Cristina: Good. You should get some sleep. You look like crap. Meredith: I look better than you. Cristina: That’s not possible.

In her dissection of Grey’s Anatomy’s non-traditional fairy tale elements, scholar Amy

Long argues that this scene is indicative of the way the show avoids difficult conversations about systemic racial and class-based privileges, specifically Cristina’s

Asian descent and Meredith’s famous surgeon mother.

And although Meredith and Cristina made amends before the episode’s end, they base their reconciliation not on a straightforward conversation about the structural forces that lay behind their “misunderstanding” but on a mutual agreement that they would prefer not to….16

16 Amy Long, “Diagnosing Drama: Grey’s Anatomy, Blind Casting, and the Politics of Representation,” The Journal of Popular Culture 44, no. 5 (2011): 1073. 184

The perceived superficiality of the reconciliation plays into romantic comedy tropes in which large moral and social obstacles are overlooked in favor of the relationship.

Furthermore, without intending to diminish the importance of Long’s overarching argument about privilege, I think she is missing a crucial point in this example: the reconciliation subverts audience expectations of female friendships and behavior. In the conversation, the show-makers acknowledge the convention of teary-eyed women stating the all-encompassing importance of their relationship and, instead, choose to portray confident women who feel that such a display of emotion is unnecessary.17 Important in this scene is the lack of music—there is no guidance or commentary to tell the audience that this is a conventional emotional scene. In this way, the scene establishes the nature of

Meredith and Cristina’s relationship throughout the series: direct, humorous, and competitive, which is set in contrast to the scenes that show raw emotion. Their relationship is hindered by a series of obstacles, including professional disagreements and personal differences; however, throughout the series they are each other’s “person,” a term coined by the show to denote a bond that runs deeper than friendship and which might be analogous to “soul mate” in a romantic relationship. The meet-cute in the pilot foreshadows the couple’s union; more specifically, the scene foreshadows Cristina’s exit from the show in which one of them does say something, both cry, and there is a moment in which the women acknowledge the importance of their relationship. The exit scene recalls the emotional reserve of their meet-cute and conveys the depth of their relationship a decade later.

17 Furthermore, the dialogue mirrors that of Meredith and Derek’s first scene: “We don’t have to do the thing.” 185

In season 10, episode 24, Cristina prepares to move to Zurich to head a cardiothoracic surgery research center and Meredith is tasked with helping her leave.

Feeling like she is “not finished,” Cristina insists that they should “dance it out” one last time—a reference to their tradition of taking thirty-second dance breaks to relieve stress.

Alone together in an on-call room, Meredith cues up a song on her phone: “Where Does the Good Go” (Tegan and Sara, 2004).18 Before leaving the room, Cristina turns to

Meredith and states, “You are a gifted surgeon with an extraordinary mind. Don’t let what he [Derek] wants eclipse what you need. He’s very dreamy. But he’s not the sun, you are.” “Where Does the Good Go” was previously heard in the first season and encourages a sense of nostalgia in the audience.

According to the show’s creator, , this harkening back to the first season and the beginning of Meredith and Cristina’s relationship was intentional. In her book, Year of Yes, Rhimes discusses the decision-making process behind the song.

We need to find a song from Season One. And it has to be a song that captures the feelings of joy and newness of two interns just getting to know surgery and each other…. Tegan and Sara’s anthemic song “Where Does the Good Go.” … The song evokes longing and nostalgia and joy and love and it’s not too slow or too fast. It soars… We open up a full minute of uninterrupted screen time to watch Cristina and Meredith express themselves in the best way these two brilliant women can without scalpels in their hands—we watch them dance it out… This dance is joyful. This dance is triumphant. This dance is a celebration of what you can become.19

As in the scene in the pilot episode, the women do not talk about how much they mean to each other or the formation of their friendship; in this case, however, the music speaks for

18 Meredith and Cristina’s dancing scene is online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FXtfGBNT60 19 Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 256–7. 186

them. Functioning like the closing song in a romantic comedy, the song asks the audience to recall the experiences that led the couple to this moment. Furthermore, “Where Does the Good Go” is a love song about a break-up and the loss of a great love which reinforces the emotional weight of Cristina’s departure:

Where do you go with your broken heart in tow What do you do with the left over you And how do you know when to let go Where does the good go (x2) Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t find me attractive Look me in the heart and tell me you won’t go Look me in the eye and promise no love’s like our love Look me in the heart and unbreak broken, it won’t happen It’s love that leaves and breaks the of always thinking you would be Real happy and healthy, strong and calm Where does the good go (x2)

Further, in the Season 10 DVD bonus feature, “Beautiful Relationship,” Rhimes discusses the importance of Meredith and Cristina’s relationship as exemplified in

Cristina’s final episode:

It’s a lovely reminder that the show is…not —it’s never been about a boy—the show has always been a love story between Meredith and Cristina.20

The show borrows romantic comedy semantics to establish the importance and strength of Meredith and Cristina’s love story. Although only portions of the songs are heard in the show, and the lyrics might be overshadowed by dialogue or the intensity of the scenes, the way in which the show cultivates “knowledgeable” listeners through soundtrack albums and repeated inclusion of songs in later seasons suggests that audiences recognize the songs and know the lyrics.

20 “A Beautiful Relationship,” Grey’s Anatomy: Season 10, ABC Studios, September 2, 2014, accessed February 16, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWAsmyD1-ho

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The first volume of the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack was released in September

2005, following the show’s season finale in May.21 Although the soundtrack might have functioned as a marketing ploy to entice viewers to tune in for the second season (also premiering in September), it also served as a contribution to the fan culture of the show— a trend that continued with a total of four soundtrack albums. reviewers for the compilation volume stated:

If you like the TV show, you must buy this set. No one song in this set is alike. So, you won’t feel like you are listening to the same beat over and over. The songs are easy listening but they are definitely not boring elevator music. Most importantly, the lyrics from the songs are very touching just like the show. It is a beautiful collection of wonderful music. It is involving and infectious. And if you are a Grey’s Anatomy fan, well you cannot miss the soundtrack. It will recall at your memory the peculiar moment of the serial. [sic] I love Grey’s Anatomy, and I’m always noticing the awesome music choices in each episode. When I saw this box set for such a great price, I had to snag it. Listening to the music bring[s] back the memories of certain episodes.22

The soundtracks encourage listeners to re-visit their favorite moments of the show through the music and elicit similar emotions as that found in the show. This scenario conforms to musicologist Ron Rodman’s theory of television viewership, described as follows:

21 Grey’s Anatomy Soundtrack, accessed February 16, 2018 https://www.amazon.com/Greys- Anatomy-TV-Soundtrack/dp/B000AXWHQW. The information for this album lists the “original release date” as March 27, 2005, which is the show’s premiere date; and then the audio CD date as September 27, 2005 which is when the soundtrack was released. 22 Grey’s Anatomy (Original Soundtrack), Amazon, accessed February 16, 2018. https://www.amazon.com/Greys-Anatomy-Original-Soundtrack-ANATOMY/product- reviews/B000VT2U4O/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_paging_btm_5?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews &sortBy=recent&pageNumber=5

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Television relies on the audience to be both a receiver and an interpreter of the pictures and sounds it transmits. This audience must be able to understand and comprehend the other two facets, both the technical aspects of broadcasting and the theatrical and narrative conventions. Thus, television can be envisioned as a tripartite phenomenon consisting of the physical television apparatus, the images and sounds that convey stories and information on the television screen, and the audience that interprets those images and sounds.23

We can thus imagine a situation in which songs become increasingly audible to fans who might listen to the soundtrack and re-watch episodes (facilitated by the show’s inclusion on Netflix and network television syndication). This audibility of the soundtrack increases the affect when songs are re-used in later seasons, such as the use of “Where

Does the Good Go.” Moreover, through repeated listening, the connection between song, lyrics, and narrative strengthens, further highlighting the songs’ function and increasing audience pleasure when they discover these connections.

The songs in Grey’s Anatomy introduce characters, foreshadow relationships, and evoke feelings of nostalgia in the audience by asking them to recall the importance of

Meredith’s relationships. These music moments succeed because Grey’s Anatomy relies on romantic comedy cinematic and music semantics to establish the romance narrative within the medical drama frame. This method of borrowing conventions to suggest romance is not restricted to emotionally-aligned genres; rather, such moments co-exist with genres not typically connected with romance.

23 Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 20. 189

A Romantic Hero: RomCom Music Conventions in Deadpool (2016)

While romantic comedy conventions might be expected, or at least unsurprising, in emotionally charged shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, they are surprising in ultraviolent films such as Deadpool (2016). Approximately a month before the February 12, 2016 release of the film Deadpool, the marketing team unveiled a new poster, shown below in

Figure 1.

Figure 1. Deadpool advertisement. Photo credit: dorkly.com

Even though Deadpool’s plot features a cursing, fourth-wall-breaking anti-superhero, the advertisement featured a design that recalls ad strategies for a film adaptation of a

Nicholas Sparks book, such as A Walk to Remember or . Online, some fans began using the poster to lure their partners into seeing the film for Valentine’s Day.24

The marketing strategy was successful and humorous because it positioned the film in time for the romantic holiday and capitalized on Reynolds’s reputation as a romantic comedy lead. Prior to Deadpool, Reynolds was best known for his roles in the romantic comedies Definitely, Maybe (2008) and The Proposal (2009); the advertisement created a

24 Andrew Bridgman, “This RomCom Deadpool Poster is Helping People Trick Their Loved Ones,” Dorkly, January 12, 2016, accessed February 1, 2018, http://www.dorkly.com/post/77006/cant-wait-to-see-the-breakup-texts-on-feb-13th.

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sense of irony in the way it juxtaposed Reynolds’ reputation as wholesome romcom star and his crude, violent performance as Deadpool.25

Moreover, the advertisement foreshadowed the intertextual nature of the

Deadpool film, which makes numerous references to both the real and comic worlds; for example, Deadpool mentions Ryan Reynolds (“Do you think Ryan Reynolds got this far on his superior acting ability?”), the Fox-owned Marvel franchise (“It’s almost like the studio could only afford two X-men”), and superhero tropes (“Watch out, she’s going to do a superhero landing!”). In the comic books, Deadpool is similarly intertextual and often breaks the fourth wall to comment on construction (“This is the recap page”) or other superheroes (“How does Batman make this look so easy?”); therefore, fans of the comic series likely expected the film character to align with comic expectations.26 As humorous as Deadpool fans found the film advertisement, however, it is unlikely that they expected the film itself to contain any romantic comedy characteristics. Indeed, as online writer Andrew Bridgman states in his article on the advertisement (before the film’s premiere), “Okay, it’d be a pretttttttty far stretch to consider Deadpool anything resembling a romantic comedy—it’s a rare R-rated superhero film, after all.”27

25 Reynolds also starred as the titular character in the unsuccessful DC film Green Lantern (2011). 26 Kofi , “Deadpool vs. the 4th Wall: A History of the Character’s Meta-Humor,” Comicbook.com, September 6, 2016, accessed February 18, 2018, http://comicbook.com/marvel/2016/09/06/deadpool-4th-wall-breaking-history-references- quotes/.; Mark Poynter, “Confirmed: Ryan Reynolds’ ‘Deadpool’ Will Break Fourth Wall, Nerdbastards.com, November 3, 2015, accessed February 18, 2018, http://nerdbastards.com/2015/11/03/confirmed-ryan-reynolds-deadpool-will-break-fourth-wall/. 27 Bridgman, “This RomCom Deadpool Poster is Helping People Trick Their Loved Ones.” 191

Even though Bridgman and other Deadpool fans might think it highly unlikely, or even impossible, that romantic comedy could figure into an R-rated superhero film,

Deadpool contains numerous romantic comedy tropes. The title sequence of Deadpool opens with the song “” (Juice Newton, 1981). Rather than listing the cast and crew, the sequence provides humorous titles for each role, including “God’s

Perfect Idiot,” “A British Villain,” and “A CGI Character.” The backdrop for these titles is a 360-degree, freeze-framed view of an action scene; the camera pans through different areas of a crashed car, showing a screaming man struck by a bullet, a cup of coffee mid- spill, People Magazine with Ryan Reynolds on the cover, a man crashing through the car window, and Deadpool. This opening scene aligns with the in-medias-res trope of many superhero films that introduce the hero by plunging the audience into the middle of a battle. Furthermore, by showing items such as the People Magazine cover, the film immediately fulfills the audience’s expectations for intertextuality.

At the same time, the song’s musical style and lyrics are ironic. Juice Newton’s smooth vocals, the sparse texture of the ballad, and the song’s lyrics about the morning following a one-night stand provide oddly sentimental accompaniment for a calamitous scene of death and destruction. Juice Newton’s 1981 recording was specifically chosen for the film for the ironic affect when coupled with the opening montage. In an interview with , the film’s director, Tim Miller, commented that Ryan Reynolds and the film’s screenwriters, Rhett Reese and Paul

Wernick, wanted Deadpool to have music from the 1980s and 1990s. Talking about

“Angel of the Morning” specifically, Miller said,

Deadpool the character is so eclectic in terms of his references and his taste—and so what better way to set the tone of a movie than with Juice

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Newton?… It’s weird that you hear it at first and realize that it’s an ironic choice. But the ironic choice can also work in an unironic, very earnest way. The song is there because we love it.28

According to Miller, the song was chosen for aesthetic reasons. The song is a musical extension of Deadpool’s intertextual references and sets the tone for the film, both in the literal and figurative sense—it establishes the 1980s and 1990s soundtrack and the tension between ironic and non-ironic moments. Thus, the song introduces the audience to Deadpool as a character, his unique personality, and sets our expectations for the film.

Through these aspects, the song aligns with the introductory song convention in romantic comedies.

Of course, this single musical instance is not enough to say that the film borrows from romantic comedy. After all, other superhero films, such as Guardians of the Galaxy

(2014), have opened with a popular song. Because of this tenuous connection to the genre, the opening song functions as a humorous irony that may temporarily evoke the romantic comedy genre but is quickly forgotten as the film proper begins. The film then plunges us back in time and we watch as the fight scene and car crash begin. Deadpool defeats his enemies with ease and the film freezes again, this time impaling an enemy with two swords. This action cues a monologue to the audience:

You’re probably thinking, “My boyfriend said this was going to be a superhero movie but that guy in the red suit just turned that other guy into a fucking kabob.” Well, I may be super but [chuckles] I am no hero. And, yeah, technically this is a murder. But some of the best love stories start with a murder. And that’s exactly what this is, a love story. And to tell it right I’ve got to take you back to long before I squeezed this ass into red spandex.

28 Joe McGovern, “Deadpool Playlist: How Juice Newton’s Angel of the Morning, Other Songs Made the Soundtrack,” Entertainment Weekly, February 14, 2016, accessed February 18, 2018, http://ew.com/article/2016/02/14/deadpool-soundtrack-angel-of-the-morning/. 193

In this fourth wall break, Deadpool subverts our generic expectations by resisting the

“superhero” label and asserting that the story is about love, not heroism. Despite this claim, the film presents itself as a superhero origin story—the transformation of Wade

Wilson into Deadpool—yet with the trappings of a Hollywood love story.

In the next scene, we watch as Wade meets his love interest, Vanessa (Morena

Baccarin), in a bar. In a verbal sparring match, Wade and Vanessa debate who had the worse upbringing. Their encounter constitutes a “meet-cute”— “an accidental meeting which leads to or is followed by romantic involvement”—as they leave the bar, play skee ball, and eventually have sex.29 Wade eventually proposes to Vanessa and their relationship seems perfect until Wade is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The final scene also fulfills the romantic comedy expectations established at the beginning of the film. After killing Francis, Deadpool excuses himself from the superhero group with words that recall an iconic line from the romcom Notting Hill (1999), “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just a boy, about to stand in front of a girl, and tell her—what the fuck am I going to tell her?!” Deadpool apologizes to Vanessa and, in a conversation that recalls their initial meeting, explains that his life has been rough because he lives in a crack house. Vanessa counters that at least he lives in a house. The relieves the tension between the couple and Vanessa removes Deadpool’s mask to reveal his scarred face, which Vanessa dismisses as unimportant.

29 “meet cute,” Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed January 21, 2018, http://www.oed.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/view/Entry/115845?redirectedFrom=%22meet+cute%22#eid37583048. 194

The couple kisses and Deadpool pulls away to reveal his phone, playing “Careless

Whisper” (Wham!, 1984), then kisses Vanessa again. The song volume increases as it moves to the nondiegetic underscoring and we hear a voiceover by Deadpool:

See? You don’t have to be a superhero to get the girl. The right girl will bring out the hero in you. Now, let’s finish this epic wide shot. Pull out. There we go, that looks nice. It’s going to be the only thing pulling out tonight. Who doesn’t love a happy ending, huh? Till next time, this is your friendly, neighborhood ‘pool guy, singing, “I’m never going to dance again the way I danced with you.”

Here, Deadpool waves convention in front of us by situating the scene within the romantic comedy tradition through its intertextual reference to Notting Hill, the wide shot of the couple kissing, and the love song. According to the director, Miller, the song was

“in the script from day one” and epitomizes the 1980s vibe of the film’s soundtrack.30

Writing for Bustle, columnist Johnny Brayson discusses the song’s function:

At first glance, this track, the sappiest of sappy love songs, seems like an odd fit for an R-rated superhero movie. But that’s the point. Deadpool is a fun-loving character who loves irony, so including the song in the violent film actually makes sense. But then the movie does something even more masterful and uses the song in such a way that it actually comes across as being sincere. So how did they do that?31

Brayson goes on to argue that the song is successful because of references to Wham! earlier in the film and, thus, the final scene recalls the sincerity of the relationship. Of course, connecting the song to scenes across the film justifies its inclusion at the end, but the song is successful and sincere because it borrows a convention that we have seen time and time again. In fact, Deadpool points out the conventions for us, drawing our attention

30 McGovern, “Deadpool Playlist.” 31 Johnny Brayson, “One ‘Deadpool’ Soundtrack Song Stands Out By Perfectly Capturing the Spirit of the Character,” Bustle, February 24, 2016, accessed February 1, 2018, https://www.bustle.com/articles/144022-one-deadpool-soundtrack-song-stands-out-by-perfectly- capturing-the-spirit-of-the-character. 195

to the music, the wide shot, and the happy ending. This combination of music, camera shot, and resolution cue are satisfying and comforting—we know that Deadpool is safe and the relationship is okay (at least for now).

With its inclusion of the opening and closing song conventions, meet-cute, and romcom references, is Deadpool a romantic comedy? Well, no, at least not according to the studio genre label.32 Nonetheless, we should not overlook these elements simply because the studio label says “superhero.” In Deadpool there are elements of romantic comedy that are enveloped in the superhero conventions in ways that are clearly planned by the film’s creators and satisfying for the audience. Part of the pleasure derived from this conversation between genre conventions is the irony created from the unexpected.

Parodying RomCom Music Conventions in South Park (1997– )

Similar instances of romantic comedy conventions in the “wrong” genre appear in the Comedy Central show South Park. South Park is known for its incorporation of popular culture and its tendency to parody anything and everything—from other shows, such as Family Guy, to the Mormon religion. Furthermore, the show’s creators, Matt

Stone and Trey Parker are known for their parodying of music conventions in the show and in their films: South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut (1999) and Team America:

World Police (2004). For that reason, the quotation of romantic comedy convention is unsurprising. However, rather than one-off moments that poke fun at the “superficiality” of the genre, the show quotes key moments from the genre’s history and mirrors its conventions.

32 Deadpool is considered an action-adventure comedy. 196

In season 7, episode 14, one of the main characters, Stan, attempts to win back his girlfriend, Wendy, and seeks guidance from her best friend. The girl tells Stan, “If you really want Wendy back, try doing the most romantic thing you can think of.” Stan presses for further advice and she tells him to stand outside Wendy’s window, hold a boombox over his head, and play Peter Gabriel. As if the audience could not anticipate the reference to the iconic scene in Say Anything (1989), the shot cuts to Stan, wearing a leather jacket, outside Wendy’s house. Holding the boombox over his head, Stan plays

“Shock the Monkey.” Wendy comes to the window and is joined by her new boyfriend; they look at Stan and then close the window curtain. The music stops and the scene ends.33 The humor in this scene is based on the audience’s familiarity with Say Anything and the boombox scene featuring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Stan, obviously unfamiliar with the scene, chooses the “wrong” Peter Gabriel song and “Shock the

Monkey” is utterly incongruent with the mood of the scene.34 In this case, it is the misquoted trope that makes the scene work. This scene operates as straightforward parody, with its quotation of the original film and the mismatched music eliciting humor.

Another romantic comedy reference in South Park is more complicated. A scene from the 2015 “Tweek X Craig” episode of South Park, is a representative example of the conversation between the show and romantic comedy conventions. In the episode, a rumor—sparked by a series of jaoi paintings by members of the Asian-American club— spreads around South Park Elementary that two male characters, Tweek and Craig, are in

33 “Shock the Monkey” scene on Hulu, accessed February 1, 2018, https://www.hulu.com/watch/262096 34 Compounding the humor is the friend’s insistence that the romantic gesture will succeed in reuniting Stan and Wendy, even though it is not successful in the film. In this way, we can view the scene as subtle commentary on popular culture’s influence on romantic expectations.

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a relationship.35 The boys deny the relationship but decide that the only way to convince the town that they are not together is to stage a breakup; the boys meet in the crowded cafeteria to maximize the impact of their fight.

Craig (C): Hey Tweek, wait up. Listen, it’s just not going to work. Tweek (T): What? Why not? C: I’m sorry, Tweek, but we can’t lie to ourselves anymore. Yes, we are gay. But we do not belong together. T: We don’t belong together? What suddenly changed, Craig? C: It’s just that people are different. That’s all. T: Uh-huh. And who the hell is Michael? Huh? You want to tell me that?! C: Uh, what are you–what are you talking about? T: I went through your phone when we went out last night, Craig. I saw your text to Michael about hooking up with him! C: Wait, uh–t-that’s not what happened. T: Oh, it’s not?! C: No. L-look, we both know this is for the better. T: Oh, don’t use that lame shit on me, man. You don’t want to feel bad, so you try and tell me what I want?! C: Tweek, don’t make me out to be the bad guy here. T: No, you’re not the bad guy. You’re never the bad guy, are you?! You– you just step on people and you use them! C: You’re going too far, dude. This is, like, totally not necessary. T: I’m going too far?! What is wrong with you?! C: This wasn’t part of the plan. T: Well, guess what, Craig?! Love doesn’t follow a plan! (Butters: Yeah!) T: I was totally wrong about you. I opened myself up and let you in, but you’ve got spikes, man. You’ve got spikes. [Cue: A Great Big World’s song “Say Something”]36

The song cues the start of a montage in which we see the affect the boys’ breakup has had on the town’s people.

Despite the surface-level emotional gravity of the break-up and montage scenes in

South Park, they are humorous in their parodying of romantic comedy conventions,

35 Jaoi is a form of Japanese art which features fictionalized relationships, often between two boys. 36 I quote this scene at length so I can draw parallels between the dialogue in this scene and that of a scene from the film Can’t Buy Me Love later in the chapter. 198

particularly masquerade and the hierarchy of knowledge—the audience knows that the boys are staging the break-up but the other characters believe it is real. Perhaps even more apparent is the correlation between a fake relationship/staged breakup and other similar romantic comedy plots, such as that of Can’t Buy Me Love (1987), in which the high school nerd, Ronnie (Patrick Dempsey) convinces the most popular girl in school,

Cindy (Amanda Peterson) to pretend to date him in exchange for replacing a ruined suede outfit belonging to Cindy’s mother.37 When Cindy approaches Ronnie to end the farce, he dramatizes a breakup in the school courtyard.

Cindy (C): Um, I did a little thinking about last night, and I think that now is the time that we had our little talk. Ronnie (R): About what? C: Us. You know, me. R: *whispers* Now? C: [nods] R: Okay, great. *raises voice* Well, um, I did a little thinking too! No, actually! I did quite a bit of thinking! And I decided that you’re breaking me. C: What? R: Broke. Bankrupt. Chapter 11. C: [whispering] What are you talking about? R: This. I’m dry. [opens wallet] Hey, I can’t keep up with you. I’m not a bank. *whispers* They love it. C: Would you stop it, please? This isn’t dignified. R: Dignified? C: Yeah. R: For one month you draped all over me like a cheap fucking suit! Now I’m not dignified? C: This is not necessary. Would you show some maturity? R: Like your precious Bobby? C: Yeah. R: Yeah. Well, if I was as mature as him, I probably wouldn’t have called you either. I’m tired of you comparing me to Bobby, and, in fact, I’m tired of you. Period! [Cindy slaps Ronnie and leaves; crowd gasps]

37 Later romantic comedies also feature fake relationships that often result in a reconciliation of the farcical couple including The Wedding Date (2005), The Proposal (2009), and Just Go With It (2011), to name a few. 199

The similarities between these two scenes are striking: the side-eye glance of the berated character; shocked onlookers; one partner going too far in dramatizing the breakup and mentioning another partner; and the attempt to deescalate the situation that instead adds fuel to the argument (“going too far” and “this isn’t dignified”). Furthermore, the shots are similar, as seen in figures 2 and 3. The parallels between “Tweek X Craig” and Can’t

Buy Me Love contribute to the effectiveness of the parody. Taking the cinematic conventions alone, we could read this scene as a take on 1980s teenage films. The inclusion of the song adds another level of parody, as the scene presents us with a perfectly executed breakup montage. The humor here is derived from the scene’s accuracy—the convention is deployed so perfectly that it is humorous.

At the same time, because the breakup montage and its association with heartbreak are so prevalent, cueing the audience to gloom rather than humor, the scene was met with mixed reception. Responses to the montage posted on YouTube vary: while some people said it was the hardest they have laughed at the show in several years, other viewers indicated that they were crying while watching the scene. For some viewers, the scene captured an ironic tension between the two emotions; one viewer stated, “The combination of song, emotion, and symbolism…even though they arent [sic] gay. It’s sad, and ironically hillaroous [sic] at the same time.”38 Through its use of romantic comedy convention, the scene is coded as genuine—but within the context of the narrative, it becomes ironic.

38 Tweek X Craig “Say Something” scene, accessed February 1, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBM-R7343zE 200

Figure 2. Still from Can't Buy Me Love (1987)

Figure 3. Still from “Tweek X Craig” (2015)

The women in my study reacted to the scene much as the YouTube commentators did. Although Susan and Edith had not seen this episode, they were familiar with the show and thought it was “hysterical.” While watching the clip, Edith recognized the song and directed Susan, “Listen to the song! [laughing]” After the scene, Edith confirmed that she knew the song. Furthermore, Edith thought this ironic use of the song aligned with its previous connotations; she noted that she and her friends often use the song’s title as a joke to mock the severity of a situation.

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Yeah, I was familiar with it but I never thought it was really good and then people would use it as a joke, you know, the first line, “[whispering] say something I’m giving up on you” [laughing] just as a joke…

Both women thought the scene’s irony aligned with their expectations of the show.

Edith: It’s very dramatic. Susan: The heavy piano, dramatic [laughing] in the scene, it’s just, it’s funny—I mean it’s not a funny subject—but it becomes funny with the characters— Edith: Yeah, I feel like that’s just kind of South Park’s way that they do things, though. They kind of parody things which—they kind of parody that song. Ironic usage. Susan: Very much so, yeah.

Susan’s comment that the scene shows transforms a serious subject into a comic one, highlighted her awareness of the original meaning of a breakup montage. Edith’s comment that this scene is just “the way that they do things” indicated that she understood and recognized the original convention and its distortion in the parody version.

In interview 2, Maggie thought South Park was “vulgar, crude, and rude,” although she admitted to enjoying at least one episode that her daughter showed her.

Carol and Pat knew of the show but had not watched it. The clip subverted Maggie,

Carol, and Pat’s expectations through its emotional depth and connection to convention.

Carol: I thought it was really touching, it was supposed to be a joke and you feel so bad. [all laughing] Pat: Right. Carol: You know, I just kept thinking that this is supposed to be a joke but, god, you feel awful for them. They’re not even together!

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Pat: Well, because it started out that cheesy horror movie and then breaks into that sad song and at first, I started giggling like, oh, that’s funny, but then these people are crushed. Maggie: Right. And the pictures like oh they’re together and now they’re not. Pat: Right! The whole town is, like, rooting for them! And, the song just made it so sad. Carol: It would be nice if people actually felt that way about the breakup of a gay couple—which they don’t, either—so it was really kind of a nice tribute to gay people that don’t feel like that and to have, um, a town grieve for the breakup of a relationship like they do straight people, like they do a divorce, and things like that, so it was very interesting. Pat: I think that they showed that small town wanting to be up and coming, like you said, and they’re getting on the bandwagon and all the sudden it’s not happening anymore and it was such a letdown for them, yeah. But that, yeah, the music really helped in that scene. Carol: It’s not what I expected at all when you set it up. Maggie: No… Carol: It’s not, you know, I thought this is going to be some stupid cartoon thing. Pat: Yeah! Carol: But it was very moving, yeah. Pat: Yeah. I thought so too. Carol: It really changed—the music totally changed that scene. Without that song— Maggie: It wouldn’t have captured— Carol: —it would not have had the depth that it does. Pat: Right, right. Carol: Right? Pat: I think the length, too. If they would have just played 10 seconds of that song it still would have been funny but the fact that they kept the song going moved from what I felt was a funny scene to a “aw,” this is a little more serious and a little more in depth with the feelings of this whole town, yeah, there could be a lot said about that scene. Maggie: The loss of love and how painful it is. Pat: Yeah.

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Maggie: Huh!

These comments reinforced the subjective and variable nature of irony’s reception. Carol,

Pat, and Maggie recognized that the scene was intended as humorous, but they also felt that the scene conveyed emotional depth that aligned with, and ran counter to, everyday life. Pat and Maggie observed that the scene captured the “loss of love and how painful it is” and that the song enhanced these feelings by encouraging them to take the scene seriously. Carol, on the other hand, described irony in the scene between how a homosexual breakup is typically treated and how it is portrayed in the scene, and stated that it would “be nice” if the scene portrayed reality. This discrepancy between reality and fiction, increased the emotional gravity of the scene.

Linda, in interview 3, also noted that the scene was sad and conveyed a realistic sense of confusion about life and failed plans.

Yeah, I don’t know. I guess it fit with it, it got kind of sad and… yeah. Hm. I—I’m glad you showed it to me. I’ve never seen it before and it does—yeah, I can see how it speaks for people with the—there’s several messages in there, I think. I wasn’t sure, I couldn’t catch all of them right now. ‘Cause that was my first time watching that kind of thing… Not because there was anything wrong with it. I thought “Oh.” Yeah, no, I thought the music fit with it. It was sad. And you know you found—you saw in the music too that confusion when things don’t go the way of the plan. You know, the music… ok, well, I don’t know. There was too much for me to take in on that one. It was too—it was too new for me. [laughs]

Although the women in interviews 2 and 3 had no prior experience of South Park’s tendency towards parody, as Susan and Edith did, they recognized a discrepancy between how they thought the creators wanted them to feel (“this is supposed to be a joke”) and how they felt (“you feel awful for them”). This tendency to feel sorry for the characters and empathize with their emotional pain points to the ingrained conventional

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understanding of romantic comedy breakups. These audience members recognize that the song is supposed to align with character emotions and guides the emotional connection between audience and character. Thus, even when the scene presents the song as ironic, it can be difficult for some audiences to disconnect from a receptive mode guided by familiar conventions.

Audience Research Final Thoughts

At the end of each focus group interview, I turned the conversations toward general ideas about music in romantic comedies. Edith remarked that individual romantic comedies often feature a memorable song: she related the scenes in the study to those from other romantic comedies.

Edith: I think what we said earlier about the opening credits being really incorporated with the actual movie and what’s happening I haven’t really seen anything else like that that I can recall. I think with romantic comedies there’s always that one song that you think of like with the romcom. So like, with the “Benny and the Jets” scene or, like, um… what’s the one with ? Susan: Oh god, I love that movie too. Friends with Benefits! Edith: Friends with Benefits where he sings “It’s Closing Time” and he think it’s by Third Eye Blind but it’s not by Third Eye Blind. Like, there’s always that one song that you remember. So, like, I could see these songs being pretty memorable but I liked the way they incorporated those in the opening credits.

In interview 2, Carol also connected the clips in the study with other romantic comedies, specifically Pretty Woman.

Carol: So like, I think the music in Pretty Woman, every song works. Like they picked every—and I—that movie was so popular, you know it launched Julia Roberts and it was so picture perfect. And, if you go back—I watched it the other day because it’s always on TV.

Pat: Oh yeah, if it’s on I’ll watch it.

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Carol: And they put real thought in the script. That movie is really well done and all of that music matches up from the opening scene to the closing scene (Pat: Yep.), every song in that movie, they, you know, put real thought in to that as opposed to just, you know, and I think it made the movie even better and it’s one of the reasons why it’s made it such a classic.

Here, the meaningful connection between music and the content of the film seems so important that Carol feels it is the feature that makes the movie.

Furthermore, Susan and Edith discussed the importance of lyrics in their understanding of romantic comedy scenes:

Edith: I think [the songs] probably relate more to what’s happening rather than just being in the background. Like in the Joni Mitchell scene, that song was super pertinent to what was happening in that, whereas, I don’t know, if it was a different type of movie it might not have related as much. Susan: And they’re saying the words, you can hear the words. Like in other movies you’ll hear the music part of it and it might have words but they don’t have the words part of it in that song so you can hear it playing in the background, do you know what I mean? Edith: Yeah, I think it’s more background because like they’re actually interacting with the song, like singing them and jumping around and stuff. Susan: Like a —I’m just trying to think of another genre—in Star Wars it’s background without the words, but in romantic comedy there’s the words and you’re picking up on those and the characters are too. EK: And you feel like that helps your viewing experience? Edith: Mhm, yeah. Susan: Oh I do, definitely, yeah. Especially if you know the song already, too. Because sometimes it makes you realize, “Oh yeah that is what that song is saying,” “Oh yeah that is about a husband or a love gone wrong” or whatever it may be. Edith: Yeah.

Susan and Edith’s assertion that the music and lyrics enhanced their viewing experience confirms the previous statements made by the women in interview 2 who associated the

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cueing function of music in romantic comedies to that of other film genres. Here, however, Susan and Edith felt that because the music was diegetic the specific relationship between the music and the narrative was more apparent than in nondiegetic music scenes. This explicit connection made them aware that the characters related to the music and invited them to relate with both the music and the character. In this way, the music guided the audience through the narrative and emotional plot points.

Conclusion Genre films do not exist in isolation—they draw on the narratives, characters, and tropes of their history and may combine them with those of other genres. As Raminder

Kaur has noted in his theory of reflexive viewership, audience members may watch films through multiple genres—each of with its own conventions, coded with meanings recognizable to the audience. As spectators, audiences draw on previous experiences, both real and fictional, to understand each scene. Thus, even if audiences do not recognize the exact to a previous film or cycle, they understand what the convention is “supposed to” mean. Furthermore, as explained by Celestino Deleyto, these allusions may then juxtapose the genre’s history with the present moment: in the case of romantic comedy, this comparison articulates changes in women’s rights and current social issues. Music conventions in romantic comedy have as much allusive power as cinematic conventions and indicate character type, mark narrative structure, and establish expectations. By borrowing romantic comedy conventions in non-romantic comedy genres, mediated stories establish expectations of romance—as seen in Grey’s Anatomy and Deadpool—or create ironic humor—as in the scenes from South Park. These

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quotations of multiple genres in one film or media example are, in part, what make films pleasurable.

I began this dissertation by questioning music’s function in postmillennial romantic comedies and suggested that music conventions pointed to a new genre cycle beginning in the early 2000s. Throughout this dissertation I have focused on music’s function within the narrative, its relation to the cinematic conventions of earlier forms, and the way music conventions are borrowed, reconfigured, and combined outside the romantic comedy genre. Further, I argued that musical conventions are established and altered in postmillennial romantic comedies, transforming the genre in subtle and not-so- subtle ways. Within this line of investigation, I spoke with audience members about their interpretation of music in romantic comedy films and the role of music in shaping viewership. While it is impossible to encompass the stories of all women, it is clear that the music in romantic comedies plays an integral role in some women’s viewing practices and enhances their ability to relate to the female protagonist. Additionally, my analysis in this dissertation makes clear that the music in romantic comedies is not “low hanging fruit” that is inserted by filmmakers without consideration of its narrative and emotional role. Popular music provides narrative structure in postmillennial romantic comedies—it introduces the primary heroine, underscores the anguish of the breakup, and ensures the validity of the happy ending. These conventions align with the cinematic conventions of the genre’s earliest cinematic form in which the couple meets, breaks up, and reunites.

Music expands on this conventional structure and acts as an extension of the heroine’s thoughts, granting the audience knowledge of her fears and desires.

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This function of music as inner monologue is then reconfigured in later postmillennial romantic comedies, in order to convey the heroine’s independence from a male partner and self-reflexively critique the conservative history of the genre. Because of the pervasiveness of the former message—in which the music tells us that the woman needs a man to feel complete—audiences recognize this semantic shift. This change is especially noticeable when the two are juxtaposed, as in the opening of Bridget Jones’s

Baby discussed in the introduction of this dissertation. These conventions do not exist in isolation. Rather, they are products of feminist movements—as were previous romantic comedy cycles—and they work in conversation with other film and television genres to elicit romance and humor.

My overarching goal in this dissertation is to foster further research on music in romantic comedies. This genre is too often dismissed by film critics and scholars as superficial. Romantic comedy scholars Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn posit that this low critical esteem results from multiple factors:

First, its audience is enduringly presumed to be predominantly female and “chick flicks” in all their incarnations are frequently critically constructed as inherently trite or lightweight. Second, romantic fiction generally is thought to be essentially calculating in its execution, cynically manipulating an emotional and sentimental response from the viewer… Furthermore, the genre is widely depicted as slavishly formulaic, adhering to well-worn and obvious conventions… Finally, the perception of comedy per se as inherently frivolous and anti-intellectual has resulted in its critical and cultural marginalization, where it is presumed that eliciting laughs from the audience is antithetical to “serious” reflection.39

39 Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn, “Introduction—A Lot Like Love: The Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema,” in Stacey Abbot and Deborah Jermyn, eds., Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 2. 209

These claims that the genre is rendered unworthy of critical acclaim by its various characteristics—the female audience, the emotional manipulation, the conventions, and the humor—has been combatted by several romantic comedy scholars. Kelli Marshall reaffirms Abbott and Jermyn’s critical conclusions when she explains the stereotypes, explaining how “with their uncomplicated characterization, fixed iconography, and repetitive narrative structures— [romantic comedies] are simple, formulaic, and artistically deficient.”40 Marshall argues that these features are what allow directors to reshape narratives and manipulate conventions to convey new meanings.

Thus, romantic comedies do serious cultural work, even providing a space to mark the changes in social relations between men and women. Romantic comedy scholar

Deborah M. Sims argues that “romantic comedies are excellent vehicles for social commentary not only due to their focus [on romance and sex], but also because they are humorous.”41 The genre’s humor allows romantic comedies to critique and subvert social conventions because it restores the balance by the film’s end. Of course, Sims’ assertion about the critical power of romantic comedies is not exclusive to the genre, rather, it can be found in previous mediated art forms.

By considering previous art forms, such as opera buffa, we can better understand the social function of humor in romantic comedies. Musicologist Mary Hunter describes the comedy of the opera genre as follows:

If the outermost framework of opera buffa is its reception and self- presentation as sheer pleasure, the inner frame, so to speak, is its

40 Kelli Marshall, “Something’s Gotta Give and the Classical Screwball Comedy,” Journal of Popular Film & Television 37, no. 1 (2009): 14. 41 Deborah M. Sims, “Genre, Fame, and Gender: The Middle-Aged Ex-Wife Heroine of Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give,” in Aaron Barlow, ed., Star Power: The Impact of Branded Celebrity (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014), 192.

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representation of immutable hierarchy as the social fundament of the genre. However, opera buffa would not be comedy if it did not routinely test and stress those conservative frames with a variety of disruptive elements.42

In the same way, romantic comedy provides a conservative structure that rests on a monogamous (and usually heterosexual) relationship. Within this structure, however, romantic comedies—especially those of the recent postmillennial cycle—emphasize female sexual agency and autonomy within a relationship. These social statements are not covert: they are foregrounded through the music that operates on this surface level and conveys the weight of the social statement. The popular and commercial nature of this music compounds the genre’s negative reception and marks the songs as a marketing ploy. Although I do not deny that there is a marketing aspect to these popular songs in romantic comedies (and to all music in film, for that matter), I refute the claims of scholars such as Peter Stapleton, Jeff Smith and Ian Garwood, who say that these songs merely market the film.43 Popular songs encourage audience identification with the female protagonist, highlight moments of humorous irony, and guide the audience through the narrative. We should take note of the transformative power of surface level meaning for, as musicologist Wye Jamison Allanbrook said, “surfaces are what catch the light.”44

Although scholars and critics alike have claimed that this inferior genre is only fit for easily duped female audiences who thoughtlessly consume media and mindlessly

42 Mary Hunter, The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 71. 43 For a full discussion of their respective arguments, see the introduction. 44 Wye Jamison Allanbrook, The Secular Commedia: Comic Mimesis in Late Eighteenth-Century Music, ed. Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 84. 211

purchase any song with emotional meaning, such critiques only serve to further a hegemonic system in which films designed for a male audience are deemed superior to those intended for women. Moreover, those posing such critiques ignore the important social commentary on female sexual and social agency that filters through generic conventions, and the power of music to convey these meanings. Therefore, instead of critiquing a genre for deploying the conventions that help define it for its audiences, we should consider how the genre reconfigures these conventions as a way of subverting social hierarchies and the pleasures they afford.

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Appendix A: IRB Materials

Principal Investigator: Dr. Danielle Fosler-Lussier Co-Investigator: Elizabeth Kirkendoll Research Protocol

I. Objectives The purpose of this study is to examine film audiences’ understanding of, and reaction to, popular music in romantic comedy films. The investigator will seek to determine the audience member’s awareness of popular music conventions in romantic comedies through the viewing of multiple examples. Within this series of inquiries, the investigator aims to consider how an audience member’s prior engagement with the film and popular song in question alters or enhances audience reception. II. Background and Rationale In a series of focus group interviews conducted in 2007 and 2008 (and published in 2011 and 2012), media scholar Lauren Anderson aimed to understand how audiences expressed their relation to scenes from multiple films, including two scenes from the romantic comedy, Love Actually. The majority of Anderson’s studies concentrate on the viewer’s prior knowledge of the songs and how this knowledge does or does not impact their understanding and interpretation of the scenes. While Anderson’s studies are helpful for understanding audiences’ relation to songs in Love Actually, Anderson does not question larger trends in romantic comedy spectatorship and the understanding of songs’ conventional functions in the genre. III. Procedures A. Research Design The proposed research will be qualitative, consisting of focus group interviews. B. Sample The investigator will greet people in the lobby of the Kroger at Stoneridge Plaza in Gahanna, OH on a Saturday between 10am and 3pm and request their participation. The investigator will have individual forms with information about the purposes of the study and a section for the participant to select their name, gender, age range, and preferred form of contact. The goal is to include approximately 25 participants in the study who will be divided into focus groups based on gender and age range, modelling Anderson’s aforementioned focus group interviews. The study will exclude participants who are younger than 18 years of age. C. Measurement/Instrumentation N/A D. Detailed study procedures To minimize risk to the participant, upon completion, information sheets will go into a manila envelope that the investigator will keep on her person at all times during the 213

collection. After collection, the envelope will be kept in a locked filing cabinet. Should persons not be selected to participate in the study, their forms will be destroyed. The study will take approximately 1–2 hours of the participant’s time. Before beginning the study, each participant will sign an informed consent form that will be kept by the researcher in the same manner described above. of signing the consent form, the participant will be given the option to use a pseudonym. The focus group interviews will be conducted at the Columbus Metropolitan Library – Gahanna Branch. The investigator will reserve meeting spaces after the focus groups have been determined. During the study, each participant will be shown the following film and television scenes: - Opening and closing scenes of Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) - “Both Sides Now” and “Jump (for My Love)” scenes from Love Actually (2003) - Breakup montage from “Tweek X Craig,” South Park (2015) - Opening and closing scenes of Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) Before viewing each group of clips, the participant will be told the title of the film/show and will be asked about any prior knowledge of the film/show and any pre-conceived ideas about the film/show. Following each group of clips, the participant will be asked about their awareness of the music in the scene; any prior knowledge of/relationship to the music; what they think the music is doing in the scene; how the music relates to the characters, relationships, or plot; if the participant personally relates to any of the characters and if that relationship is enhanced or prohibited by the music; and how watching the scene out of its context alters their opinion of the scene. After viewing all the scenes, the interviewer will ask the participants if they perceive any trends across the scenes or if they understand the scenes as similar to any other media they have seen outside of the study. Participant responses will be recorded on audio and video recording devices (and will have the option to decline being videotaped). Following collection, the responses will be transferred to a password protected folder on a password protected personal laptop and, after use, will be deleted from the recording devices. E. Internal/External Validity The greatest potential for bias in this study is experimenter bias; to reduce this potential bias the investigator will position herself so as to keep herself out of the participant’s view during the screenings. There is also a potential that participants in the study will influence each other’s reactions during the screenings; however, these influences reflect how audience members would react in a traditional theater experience and contribute to the external validity of the study. F. Data Analysis The investigator will rely on discourse, textual, and intertextual analysis for interpretation of the qualitative data. G. Bibliography

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Anderson, Lauren. “Dancing about Architecture? Talking Around Popular Music in Film Soundtracks.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 8/1 (2011): 188–215. ———. “‘That’s How it’s Supposed to Make You Feel’: Talking with Audience about ‘Both Sides Now’ and Love Actually.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Receptions Studies 9/2 (2012): 206–238.

Recruitment Form Study Title: Popular Music in Romantic Comedies Investigator: Elizabeth Kirkendoll Study Supervisor: Dr. Danielle Fosler-Lussier Institution: The Ohio State University Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine film audience’s understanding of, and reaction to, popular music in romantic comedy films. The investigator will question the audience member’s awareness of popular music conventions in romantic comedies through the viewing of multiple examples. Within this series of inquiries, the investigator aims to consider how an audience member’s prior engagement with the film and popular song in question alters or enhances audience reception. Procedures/Tasks: You will be placed in a focus group which will be shown a series of clips from romantic comedy films and TV shows. The group will be asked questions about their prior knowledge of the film/show, relationship to the music in the scene, and what they think the music is doing in the scene in regards to the characters, plot, and genre. Duration: The study will take approximately 1–2 hours. Incentive: Should you be chosen to participate in this study, you will receive a $5 Kroger gift card at the time of the focus group interview. Should you not be chosen to participate in this study, your form will be destroyed. Should you be chosen to participate in this study, you will be contacted by Elizabeth Kirkendoll

Email: [email protected] Phone: 817-456-0775 If you would like to participate in this study please fill out the following:

Name ______

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Age Range ____18–25 ____26–40 ____40+ Gender ____Male ____Female ______Other Contact Information ______

IRB Interview Questions Clips: Opening and closing Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) “Both Sides Now” and “dancing scene” Love Actually (2003) South Park breakup montage from “Tweek X Craig” (2015) Opening and closing Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016)

Questions before each group of clips*: - Have you seen this scene/film/episode before? - Do you have any opinions about it? Questions after each group of clips*: - Did you notice anything about the music in this scene? - Have you heard the song used in this scene before? - If so, what is your relationship to it? - Do you feel like the music relates to any of the characters in this scene? - Do you relate in any way to the characters in this scene? Is this enhanced or prohibited by the music? - Does watching the scene out of its context alter your perception of (what you think about) the scene? After watching all clips*: - Do you notice any trends among these clips? - Do these clips relate to anything you’ve seen outside of this study? *I might ask other questions depending on participant responses during the interview

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Bibliography

“A Beautiful Relationship.” Grey’s Anatomy: Season 10. ABC Studios. September 2, 2014. Accessed February 16, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWAsmyD1-ho. Abbott, Stacey and Deborah Jermyn. “Introduction—A Lot Like Love: The Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema.” In Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema, edited by Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn. 1–8. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Allanbrook, Wye Jamison. The Secular Commedia: Comic Mimesis in Late Eighteenth- Century Music, edited by Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014. Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” (1999). In Film Theory & Criticism, eighth edition, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 495–505. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. ———. Film/Genre. London: BFI, 1999. Anderson, Lauren. “Dancing about Architecture? Talking Around Popular Music in Film Soundtracks.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 188–215. ———. “‘That’s How It’s Supposed to Make You Feel’: Talking with Audiences about ‘Both Sides Now’ and Love Actually.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 9, no. 2 (2012): 206–238. Ashby, Arved. “Introduction.” In Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers After MTV, edited by Arved Ashby, 1–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by Cloudesly Brereton and Fred Rothwell. New York: Macmillan, 1911.

Biancorosso, Giorgio. Situated Listening: The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Billboard Staff. “Grammy Awards 2014: Full Nominations List.” Billboard. December 6, 2013. Accessed December 15, 2017. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5819883/grammy-awards-2014-full- nominations-list-complete-nominees.

“Billy Joel.” OfficialCharts. Accessed December 15, 2017. Accessed February 27, 2018. http://www.officialcharts.com/artist/16696/billy-joel/.

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jul/14/thats-me-diana-dance- wayne-sleep.

Brandle, Lars. “Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’ Becomes First Single to Spend Year in UK Top 40.” Billboard. June 23, 2015. Accessed December 12, 2017. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6605691/ed-sheerans-thinking-out-loud- becomes-first-single-to-spend-year-in-uk-top-40.

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