Romantic comedy: a critical and creative enactment by Toni Leigh Jordan B.Sc., Dip. A. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University June, 2019 Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Dedication iv Exegesis 1 Introduction 2 The Denier 15 Trysts and Turbulence 41 You’ve Got Influences 73 Conclusion 109 Works cited 112 Creative Artefact 123 Addition 124 Fall Girl 177 Our Tiny, Useless Hearts 259 Abstract For this thesis, I have written an exegetic complement to my published novels using innovative methodologies involving parody and fictocriticism to creatively engage with three iconic writers in order to explore issues of genre participation. Despite their different forms and eras, my subjects—the French playwright Molière (1622-1673), the English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), and the American screenwriter Nora Ephron (1941-2012)—arguably participate in the romantic comedy genre, and my analysis of their work seeks to reveal both genre mechanics and the nature of sociocultural evaluation. I suggest that Molière did indeed participate in the romantic comedy genre, and it is both gender politics and the high cultural prestige of his work (and the low cultural prestige of romantic comedy) that prevents this classification. I also suggest that popular interpretations of Austen’s work are driven by romanticised analysis (inseparable from popular culture), rather than the values implicit in the work, and that Ephron’s clever and conscious use of postmodern techniques is frequently overlooked. Further, my exegesis shows how parody provides a productive methodology for critically exploring genre, and an appropriate one, given that genre involves repetition—or parody—of conventions and their relationship to form. Extracts from three of my five published novels—Addition (2008), Fall Girl (2010), and Our Tiny, Useless Hearts (2016)—have been curated for this thesis because they participate in the romantic comedy genre in ways that resonate with the work explored in the exegesis. ii Acknowledgements I’ve been fortunate in receiving feedback and encouragement from many clever and kind academics and writers. Both Dr Jodi McAlister and Dr Antonia Pont were insightful and generous with their comments. Associate Professor Hsu-Ming Teo suggested references that proved instrumental in my thinking and Dr Paddy O’Reilly inspired me with the possibilities of academic writing. Dr Sian Prior gave me the perfect advice—‘this is your opportunity to do something weird’— at the perfect time. My friends and fellow doctoral candidates Alison Goodman and Carrie Tiffany provided encouragement, fellowship and, on occasion, alcohol. For their professionalism and enthusiasm in filming part of The Denier, I’m grateful to Dylan Hornsby, Nelson Gardner, Joanne Redfearn, Samantha Velona, Liam Gordes, Marlene Olsson and Jacob McNeillage. My novels Addition (2008), Fall Girl (2010), and Our Tiny, Useless Hearts (2016) were expertly published by Text Publishing. I’m grateful to Michael Heyward and Mandy Brett. This thesis would never have been started or finished without the wisdom, brilliance and attention of Associate Professor Maria Takolander, who inspires me to be a better thinker, and to whom I owe so much. iii Dedication I am the descendent of a long line of working women who spent their considerable intelligence and energy cleaning other people’s houses and ironing other people’s clothes. They had no choice in their life’s work because they did not have the opportunities that I have had. To them— especially Alice Maud, Muriel Grace and Margaret Anne—I dedicate this. iv Exegesis 1 Introduction From the perspective of the author of a work of fiction, the question of genre classification can be problematic. Lev Grossman suggests that genre ‘[c]onventions are more like the rules of chess: a small set of constraints that produces near-infinite complexity. They’re not restrictive, they’re generative.’1 This suggests there is benefit to be gained from a writer’s practical understanding of the conventions of the particular genre in which she works. At the same time, as Anne Lamott makes clear, ‘[v]ery few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.’2 In my own process as a novelist whose work has been intermittently classified as romantic comedy, this ‘not knowing’ includes the genre in which the work-in-progress is said to participate. This leads to a question that has occupied me for some time: how can a novelist benefit from the generative possibilities of genre conventions while being unaware of the specific genre participation during the writing process? What makes a play, novel or film a 'romantic comedy’? While Regis defined the romance novel itself to be a subgenre of comedy3 and McDonald considered a romantic-comedy film to have as its ‘central narrative motor a quest for love, [and} which portrays this quest in a light- 1 L. Grossman, ‘Literary revolution in the supermarket aisle: genre fiction is disruptive technology’, Time, 23 May 2012, para. 20, <http://entertainment.time.com/2012/05/23/ genre-fiction-is-disruptive-technology/>, accessed 26 October 2017. 2 A. Lamott, A. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Scribe, Melbourne, 2008, p. 22. 3 P. Regis, A Natural History of the Romance Novel, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2003, p. 16. 2 hearted way and almost always to a successful conclusion’,4 I’m drawn to Derrida’s proposition that works have ‘a sort of participation without belonging—a taking part in without being part of, without having membership in a set.’5 Grossman’s ‘near-infinite complexity’ suggests the breadth of variation that occurs in work which nevertheless clearly participates in a specific genre. My central thesis, therefore, is this: parodic fictocriticism can be used to determine the degree of participation of work in the romantic comedy genre, and further, to highlight specific aspects of that work that lead to its participation. Considering the romantic comedy or rom com genre as existing in the Venn Diagrammatic intersection between the genres of romance and that of comedy, and thinking about genre affiliation as fundamentally unfaithful in a Derridean sense, allows for a close examination of the broader aspects of genre participation, including both the paratextual and textual specifics that lead to a perception of genre; the impact of external gatekeepers (critics, publishers, etcetera) and ideology (especially pertaining to gender); the effect of voice on genre; and the intertextual, ‘knowing’ quality of a work that consciously identifies itself as belonging to a specific generic tradition. In this exegetic complement to my published novels, I use parodic fictocriticism as a methodology to creatively engage with three iconic writers and their work in order to analyse the specific ways their work might be said to function as romantic comedy. Parody itself is not simple to define— Hutcheon argues that ‘there are no transhistorical definitions of parody…its 4 T.J. McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre, Columbia University Press, New York, 2012, p. 9. 5 J. Derrida, ‘The Law of Genre’, Critical Inquiry, 7(1), 1980, p. 59. 3 meaning changes’6 though she settles on ‘repetition with difference. A critical distance is implied between the backgrounded text being parodied and the new incorporating work, a distance usually signalled by irony.’7 Fictocriticism is similarly evasive; Gibbs argues that it ‘is a way of writing for which there is no blueprint and which must be constantly invented anew in the face of the singular problems that arise in the course of engagement with what is researched,’8 though Kerr and Nettlebeck defined it as 'hybridised writing that moves between the poles of fiction ("invention"/"speculation") and criticism ("deduction"/"explication"), of subjectivity ("interiority") and objectivity (“exteriority”).’9 Thus my novel term ‘parodic fictocriticism’ means writing that incorporates aspects of both fiction and criticism while repeating aspects of a backgrounded text. For the creative component of this thesis, extracts from three of my five published novels—Addition (2008), Fall Girl (2010), and Our Tiny, Useless Hearts (2016)—have been curated because they participate in the rom com genre in ways that resonate with the work explored in the exegesis. These resonances include genre tropes, like the meet cute and mistaken identity; aspects of craft, like the use of subtext in dialogue and narrative voice to increase sexual tension; and techniques like intertextuality, used to locate the work in the mind of the adept popular-culture reader. 6 L. Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms, Methuen, New York, 1985, p. 32 7 Ibid. 8 A. Gibbs, ‘Fictocriticism, affect, mimesis: engendering differences’, TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses [online journal], 9(1), 2005, para. 4, <http://www.textjournal.com.au/ april05/gibbs.htm>, accessed 15 October 2019 9 Cited in C. Rhodes, ‘Writing organization/romancing fictocriticism,’ Culture and Organization [online journal], 21(4), 2015, 289-290, <doi:10.1080/14759551.2014.882923> accessed 15 October 2019. 4 In considering issues of methodology and style—or genre—for this exegesis, I weighed a number of factors. I hold a Bachelor of Science in Physiology and worked for some years as a research protein chemist, so a traditional academic voice would have been a familiar and comfortable choice. I was conscious, however, of the trap of ‘scientism’ and, inspired by the creative- writing theorists Watkins and Krauth, became interested in interrogating ‘the idea that empiricism provides the only way to determine authentic knowledge.’10 I also found myself compelled by Rhodes’ description of ‘(t)he minds of my generation…haunted by the spectre of scientific discourse, shoehorned into dry genres and bullied by audit regimes that try to wring out the passion and romance of thought.’11 The term ‘romance’ predictably caught my attention, given that the object of my inquiry here is romantic comedy.