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UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Not So Tender Trap: Romantic Comedy and Revolt in the Fifties and Fifty Years Later Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7q10071k Author Weinman, Jenna Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California ! UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE! ! ! The Not So Tender Trap: Romantic Comedy and! Revolt in the Fifties and Fifty Years Later DISSERTATION! ! submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree! of ! DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY! in Visual! Studies ! by! ! Jenna Weinman! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Kristen Hatch, Chair Associate Professor Victoria E. Johnson ! Associate Professor Lyle Massey ! ! 2016 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! © 2016 Jenna! Weinman DEDICATION ! ! ! In Memory! of ! Alex !Doty ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ii ! TABLE OF CONTENTS ! ! Page !ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv !CURRICULUM VITAE v !ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Virgin Islands 71 “Desecrating Everything the Minute Men Fought For” in That Touch of Mink 83 “Putting the Pussy on a Pedestal” in The 40-Year-Old Virgin 113 CHAPTER 2: Balls and Chains 146 The Tunnel of Love:“Entertainment That Will Raise Your Temperature!” 158 ! Knocked Up: “What if This Guy Got You Pregnant?” 209 CHAPTER 3: Second Bananas and Gay Chicken 263 Blossoming Bromance in Send Me No Flowers 275 Manning Up for Man-love in I Love You, Man 339 EPILOGUE: 40-Year-Old Vulgarians 402 !BIBLIOGRAPHY 411 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS! It has been a great professional and personal joy working with my stellar dissertation committee. Many thanks to Kristen Hatch, Victoria Johnson and Lyle Massey for their continued support, !feedback, and thoughtful conversations. I am especially honored and thrilled to share this achievement with my committee chair, Kristen Hatch, with whom it has been a tremendous privilege and pleasure to work. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for her truly exceptional mentoring and encouragement, as well as for her smart, generous responses to my writing. I’d also like to give special thanks to Vicky Johnson, whose enthusiastic support for my research, teaching, and professional development helped me to thrive !within and beyond my graduate program. In addition to my outstanding committee, I am thankful for the supportive community within UCI’s Visual Studies department. Thank you to faculty members Bert Winther-Tamaki, Bliss Cua Lim, Peter Krapp, and Lucas Hilderbrand, and to my colleagues, especially Eric Morrill, Erik Watschke, Dan McClure, and Meghan Chandler, who were kind enough to offer their feedback at !various stages of this project. I also feel fortunate to have connected with generous and brilliant scholars beyond UCI, !especially my fellow “bromancers” Michael DeAngelis, Ken Feil, and Nick Davis. The big ideas in this dissertation began during my graduate studies at Lehigh University, where I wrote my thesis on millennial brom-coms under the supervision of Alex Doty. Alex continued to offer his input and guidance while I was writing my dissertation prospectus, and I am so very grateful to have known him as both a mentor and friend. During my time at Lehigh, I also worked with John Pettegrew and Seth Moglen, and I remain thankful for their influences on my !scholarship and professional development. There are many dear friends (old and new, near and far) I wish could thank here personally, but I’d like to express sincerest thanks to Raisa Sidenova, Lara Schweller, and Peter Schweigert, who not only read and responded to many different versions of this project, but whose friendship !and solidarity has been incredibly important to me throughout this long and challenging process. I’m also grateful for the tremendous support of my immediate and extended family. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for always welcoming me home and believing in me. Thank you to my bright and supportive sister, JoEllen, who eagerly read through drafts, kept me laughing, and kept me going. Thanks to Lemon for the cute distractions. And endless thanks to my very sweet and hardworking husband, Zach (the Rock to my Doris and to my Tony), for his constant love and !light. ! ! iv CURRICULUM VITAE ! ! Jenna Weinman 2006 B.A. in Communications, Arcadia University 2007-2008 Research and Graduate Assistant, American Studies Department and South Side ! Initiative, Lehigh University 2008 M.A. in American Studies, Lehigh University 2009-2012 Teaching Assistant, Film and Media Studies Department, University of California, Irvine !2011-2012 Summer Teaching Associate, University of California, Irvine 2012 Curator, “Romantic Comedy: Couples and Complaints,” UC Irvine Free Summer ! Film Series, University of California, Irvine 2016 !Ph.D. in Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine ! ! ! FIELD OF STUDY !Gender and Genre in Hollywood Cinema ! ! PUBLICATIONS “Second Bananas and Gay Chicken: Bromancing the Rom-com in the Fifties and Now.” In Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television, edited by Michael !DeAngelis, 29-51. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014. ! ! ! ! ! ! v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ! The Not So Tender Trap: Romantic Comedy and! Revolt in the Fifties and Fifty Years Later By! Jenna Weinman! Doctor of Philosophy! in Visual Studies University of California,! Irvine, 2016 Associate Professor Kristen! Hatch, Chair The Hollywood romantic comedies of the 1950s and early 1960s fashioned sex and marriage from the struggle between dapper playboys and prudish career women. In the twenty- first century, the dominant mode of the genre forces a similar heterosexual life narrative through a refigured struggle between immature male slackers and sexually liberated career women. Why would such similar romantic comedy cycles emerge in such distanced and dissimilar contexts? In employing a research based, cultural studies approach to the above question, this dissertation engages the surprising generic and ideological intersections between the midcentury sex comedy and the raunch/romantic comedy hybrid known as the millennial “brom-com,” in order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the power struggles informing the dominant intimate culture in the twenty-first century. Each chapter compares the key representational strategies and thematic conflicts between a sex comedy (e.g. That Touch of Mink, The Tunnel of Love, Send Me No Flowers) and a brom- com (e.g. The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, I Love You, Man), as situated in relation to the films’ respective historical contexts. Such a comparative engagement demonstrates that while the vi specific figurations of the immature male, the heterosexual couple, and the broader socio- political landscape may change, the cycles’ overlapping thrills, anxieties, and limitations present a similar set of heteronormative expectations rooted in the postwar breadwinner ethic. In reinventing the sex comedy’s flirtations with false liberalism and male regression, the brom-com suggests that such expectations are deeply unsatisfactory. The brom-com’s male revolt against these gendered expectations is especially evident in the cycle’s celebratory, albeit nervous indulgence in the queer-straight form of male homosocial intimacy popularly known as “bromance”—a prominent yet unnamed phenomenon in the sex comedies. Despite the brom- coms’ spirited stagings of revolt, however, the cycle remains curiously resistant to detaching from the patriarchal fantasies of postwar optimism. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! vii INTRODUCTION I. A Disenchantment As a reward for her ambition, skills, and conventional beauty, a young woman named Alison accepts an opportunity to work as a correspondent for a nationally recognized entertainment news outlet. In celebration of her sparkling new career, she attends a popular nightclub with her older sister, Debbie, who ends up leaving early in order to attend to her sick children and helpless husband, Pete. Alison, however, decides to stay at the club, where she meets an unkempt but likable man, Ben. After a night of heavy drinking and dancing, the unlikely pair engage in sloppy, unprotected sex. In the sober light of day, Alison finds herself repulsed by Ben’s slovenly appearance, and increasingly consumed with regret during their awkward morning interactions. She learns, for instance, that Ben has never been employed, lives off the government’s dime, and spends his days experimenting with drugs and absorbing smut in a flophouse full of equally indolent male housemates. With no intentions of seeing him again, Alison compartmentalizes her shame and focuses intently on her professional endeavors. It is not long, however, before Alison discovers she is pregnant with Ben’s child. Despite her low opinion of his character and lifestyle, as well as the tremendous demands and potential of her new career, she accepts her unwanted pregnancy without deliberation. In an effort to do what she, and the people around her, believe is the “right thing,” Alison tracks down the reluctant father of her unborn child. In following the same path as Debbie and Pete, who rushed into marriage after Debbie’s accidental pregnancy–a decision that has since consigned them both to a !1 life of constant misery, boredom, and resentment–Alison and Ben try to force a romantic relationship before the baby is born. After an explosive argument over Ben’s apathy and irresponsibility,