London School of Economics and Political Science Celluloid Love
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
London School of Economics and Political Science Celluloid love: Audiences and representations of romantic love in late capitalism BENJAMÍN DE LA PAVA VÉLEZ A thesis submitted to the Department of Media and Communications of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy London, March 2017 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 95,071 words. 2 Abstract My doctoral research analyses contemporary North American romantic films and the meanings brought to and made from them by socially and economically diverse audiences in London. It does so in the context of a historicised and ideologically alert account of connections between biological, psychoanalytic, anthropological and sociological theorisations of romantic love and its screen depictions. In particular, my audience-led textual analysis of discourses of Euro-American romantic love is driven by an engagement with three claims: First, that neoliberal or late-capitalist individualism has engendered a ‘crisis of romantic love’ which has reshaped the social and personal promises of coupledom and intimacy. Second, that popular film, the prime contemporary medium of representation for romance, cynically portrays this supposed crisis in an effort to capitalise on audience fears; and third, that audiences of these films experience the ‘crisis’, fashioning their romantic identities and practices in its shadow. Methodologically, the study involved a reflexive and recursive textual analysis of five North American films: Blue Valentine, (500) Days of Summer, Don Jon, Her, and Once. Using these films, I carried out 36 group interviews with (87) inhabitants of the multicultural Borough of Hackney, in East London, the results of which then fed into and informed my readings of the films. Subsequent thematic coding of group interviews revealed overlapping areas pertinent to the project: Technology, class, gender and coupledom. Findings include the suggestion that both romantic films and their audiences in Western Europe are currently adapting strategies, practices and ideas of romantic love and relationships to a new environment of precarious intimacy, technological mediation, and anxiety over economic, professional and personal stability. My analysis concludes that while intersections of class, race and gender continue to inflect audience experience and meaning-making, the current romantic environment that audiences are navigating - and that romantic films purportedly represent - is indeed markedly different from that of the last century. However, claims about the crisis of romantic love are not only greatly exaggerated, but usually also erroneously conflate the pain, anxiety and frailty of contemporary relationships and intimacy with a narcissistic, ego-centric definition of love as a form of consumption. 3 Table of contents Declaration ...................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 3 Table of contents .............................................................................................................. 4 List of Tables and figures .................................................................................................. 7 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 8 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Dipping my toes into the water ......................................................................................... 11 1.2 First research question. Gender, Class and films ................................................................ 15 1.3 Second research question. Romantic love in film and audiences ........................................ 16 1.4 Third research question. Identity and film audiences ......................................................... 17 1.5 The thesis ......................................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER 2: CELLULOID LOVE: ROMANCE, IDEOLOGY AND SELF COMMODIFICATION ...... 20 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 20 2.2 Biological approaches to love ........................................................................................... 23 2.3 Psychosocial approaches to love ....................................................................................... 24 2.4 Psychoanalytic theory and Eros ......................................................................................... 28 2.4.1 Eros and Plato ...................................................................................................................... 29 2.4.2 Narcissism, identification, and difference ........................................................................... 33 2.5 Feminist and queer theories on love ................................................................................. 37 2.6 Historical and sociological approaches to love ................................................................... 44 2.6.1 Denis de Rougemont and the foundational myth of romantic love ................................... 44 2.6.2 Intimacy in contemporary sociological approaches to love ................................................ 47 2.6.3 Self-commoditised love ....................................................................................................... 49 2.7 (Romantic) Identity .......................................................................................................... 51 2.7.1 (Projective) identification .................................................................................................... 53 2.8 Ideology ........................................................................................................................... 54 2.8.1 Marx and Althusser ............................................................................................................. 54 2.8.2 Gramsci and counter-hegemony ......................................................................................... 57 2.9 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 59 CHAPTER 3: AUDIENCE RESEARCH, AUDIENCES OF ROMANCE ......................................... 61 3.1 Spectatorship, gendered viewing and verisimilitude .......................................................... 61 3.2 Effects, Uses & Gratifications approaches and cognitive film theory................................... 66 3.2.1 Cognitive film theory ........................................................................................................... 69 3.3 The Incorporation/Resistance paradigm and the ethnographic turn ................................... 71 3.4 Liminality ......................................................................................................................... 76 3.4.1 Van Gennep and Turner’s Liminal ....................................................................................... 76 3.4.2 Communitas and liminoid ................................................................................................... 77 3.4.3 Romance, cinema-going and the liminoid ........................................................................... 78 3.4.4 Liminality and ideology ....................................................................................................... 82 3.5 From the women’s films and melodrama to the bromance ................................................ 83 3.6 Romantic Audiences ......................................................................................................... 90 3.6.1 New orientations in audience research .............................................................................. 96 3.6.2 New (studies of) romance ................................................................................................... 97 4 3.7 Today’s audiences .......................................................................................................... 101 3.8 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 104 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................... 106 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 107 4.2.1 Film sampling .................................................................................................................... 109 4.2.2 Early