In Love in a Movie : Women and Contemporary Romantic Comedy
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IN LOVE IN A MOVIE: WOMEN AND CONTEMPORARY ROMANTIC COMEDY By ANDREA ROCHELLE MABRY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2004 Copyright 2004 by Andrea Rochelle Mabry For Olivia and Grace ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is very much a collaborative effort, and for its existence I am indebted to a great many people. I first wish to express my appreciation to the faculty of the University of Florida Department of English, particularly the members of my dissertation committee. Professor Maureen Turim, my advisor and dissertation director, has been an invaluable mentor, not only over the course of this project, but throughout my studies at Florida. Her guidance in the writing of this dissertation, from the original seed of an idea to the final reading, has been invaluable. I am also truly grateful to Professors Susan Hegeman, Roger Beebe, and Nora Alter for their enthusiasm, their advice, and their encouragement to take my work to new levels. My thanks also go out to my fellow graduate students in the Florida English Department for their friendship and their good humor. The camaraderie of other students helped lighten many a stressful day as I worked to complete this journey. Finally, my family—Mom, Dad, Linda, Christine, Tony, Olivia and Grace—have always provided me with love and support, not just as I wrote this dissertation, but all along the road I have taken to get to this point. For that they have my love and my thanks. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS gage ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT vi INTRODUCTION: “THAT’S A CHICK’S MOVIE”: CONTEMPORARY ROMANTIC COMEDY AND THE FEMALE SPECTATOR viii CHAPTER 1 MANHATTAN AND THE MATERNAL: THE MEG RYAN ROMANTIC COMEDIES 1 2 PRETTY WOMEN AND RUNAWAY BRIDES: THE JULIA ROBERTS ROMANTIC COMEDIES 42 3 WHEN DID YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH HIP-HOP? CONTEMPORARY BLACK ROMANTIC COMEDY 88 4 HURRAH FOR SINGLETONS ! THE “BRIDGET JONES-ING” OF CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE 129 5 CONCLUSION: LOVE ACTUALLY IS ALL AROUND 171 WORKS CITED 181 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 195 v Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy IN LOVE IN A MOVIE: WOMEN AND CONTEMPORARY ROMANTIC COMEDY By Andrea Rochelle Mabry December 2004 Chair: Maureen Turim Major Department: English This dissertation looks at the romantic comedies of the 1980s and 1990s in their historical context—that is, post-Sexual Revolution, post-Civil Rights, post-AIDS America. More specifically, I examine how these texts speak to women attempting to navigate this uncertain sexual and social climate. Like Tania Modleski, I see feminine popular culture—and women’s responses to it—as complicated and often contradictory. Because they often present quite constrictive fantasies for women attempting to make sense of modem sexuality, romantic comedies are generally dismissed as patriarchal wish-fulfillment. I argue, however, that they can also be read for more progressive views of gender and contemporary sexual relationships. One of my primary concerns in this study is the tension between these two positions—a tension that grows directly out of the moment in which these films are produced. In this project I explore women’s highly complex relationship to romantic comedy through textual analysis of specific film texts and stars (I include chapters on the vi romantic comedies of both Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts, as well as sections on race and romantic comedy and the recent emergence of the “Bridget Jones” narrative and its implications for the genre across forms) and contextual analysis of the genre’s specific and moment. I draw on a number of critical methodologies, including Janice Radway Tania Modleski’s studies of popular culture for women, the feminist psychoanalytic work of such critics as Jessica Benjamin and Laura Mulvey, writings on race and ethnicity by Franz Fanon, bell hooks and others, and the studies of stars and stardom by critics such as Richard Dyer. I examine contemporary romantic comedy as part of a larger conversation for and about women, including both popular representations and institutional discourses on sex, the family, and female employment. vii INTRODUCTION: “THAT’S A CHICK’S MOVIE”: CONTEMPORARY ROMANTIC COMEDY AND THE FEMALE SPECTATOR Things are a little different now. First you have to be friends. You have to like each other. Then you neck. This could go on for years. Then you have tests, and then you get to do it with a condom. The good news is you split the check. Jay (Rob Reiner), Sleepless in Seattle Near the middle of Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Meg Ryan and Rosie O’Donnell sit in Ryan’s apartment tearfully watching the classic Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr romance An Affair to Remember. After a particularly poignant exchange between Grant and Kerr, O’Donnell sobs, “Men never get this movie!” This scene is a clear presentation of an image with which I both identify and want to contend: a woman 1 watching and being moved by a romantic movie. I begin with Ephron’s film, partly because it is a longtime personal favorite, but mainly because it evokes the questions I will address in this project. How do contemporary romantic comedies reinforce traditional (patriarchal) notions of sex and (hetero) sexual relationships? What position(s) do they construct for the female spectator? What moments of pleasure or resistance do they offer her? And how, despite their often conservative overtones, do these films continue to appeal to women-many of whom would identify themselves as feminist? I will argue contemporary romantic comedy’s appeal lies mainly it its direct address to women’s anxieties about modem sexuality. 1 This opening borrows, at least in part, from the first chapter of Mary Ann Doane’s The Desire to Desire. Doane begins her study of women and the 1940’s melodrama with a similar image of female spectatorship—in this case, Mia Farrow as the “enraptured” film fan in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1). viii In the 1980s, critics such as Tania Modleski broke new theoretical ground by arguing for “mass-produced fantasies for women” as subjects of serious intellectual inquiry. Modleski’s work on gothic novels, Harlequin romances, and soap operas has revealed the complexities of these texts and their relationship to their female consumers. The “enormous and continuing popularity” of romance novels and soap operas, Modleski argues, “suggests that they speak to very real problems and tensions in women’s lives” (Loving 14). In her study of female romance novel readers, Janice Radway likewise argues the romance does not simply force its (often conservative) ideology on its readers. Radway’ s study reveals “the complicated and contradictory ways in which the romance recognizes and thereby protests the weaknesses of patriarchy and the failure of traditional marriage even as it apparently acts to assert the perfection of each” (221). Like the Harlequin novel and the soap opera, the romantic comedy is a complex text that addresses its viewers in contradictory ways. Yet, while Modleski, Radway and others have produced important work on various “female” popular forms, very little has been done on romantic comedy’s (particularly contemporary romance’s) address to women. To date, there has not been a full-length work on contemporary Hollywood romance that focuses on the genre’s appeal and address to female spectators. Romantic comedies (particularly contemporary films) are often dismissed as “fluff’ at best and regressive, patriarchal wish-fulfillment at worst. Yet, we should not underestimate the importance of these films in our culture. Box office figures indicate that they continue to appeal to large numbers of (presumably female) viewers. Of the films I will discuss here, several earned over $100 million during initial theatrical release. Pretty Woman (1990), for example, grossed nearly $180 million, and Sleepless in Seattle IX . just over $125 million (Rubenfeld 71). Although ticket sales may not be a foolproof measure of a film’s cultural importance, it is difficult to deny that a picture earning $180 million has some sort of cultural significance, especially when we consider that that figure is in 1990 dollars. “Fluff’ or not, these films are designed for and marketed to a mass audience, and they often succeed in reaching that audience. Perhaps more significant than box office receipts is the way a number of romantic comedies have become part of our popular lexicon. “Harry and Sally,” for example, has become a kind of shorthand for a long-term platonic relationship that finally becomes romantic. Similarly, “Bridget Jones” has recently become a popular signifier both of the single, slightly hapless urban working girl and of a new popular genre known as “chick lit.” The huge financial and cultural impact of romantic comedy is one compelling reason to give the genre as much critical attention as has been given other more ostensibly weighty texts. More importantly, romantic comedy can be an important indicator of a culture’s anxieties and expectations about sex roles and relationships. As Frederic Jameson argues, following Norman Holland, one of the jobs of a cultural text is to manage the fears and desires of that culture. Jameson writes that the psychic function of the work of Art must be described in such a way that . two inconsistent and even incompatible features of aesthetic gratification—on the one hand the wish-fulfilling function, but on the other the necessity that its symbolic structure protect the psyche against the frightening and potentially damaging eruption of powerful archaic desires and wish-material—be somehow harmonized and assigned their place as twin drives of a single structure.