An exploration of the romantic comedy genre and why it's so poorly regarded. A look at the history and different forms within the genre.

1. ROMANTIC
COMEDIES
ROM COMS, CHICK FLICKS AND HOMME COMS

2. CONTENTS
• Confusion between ‘rom com’ and ‘chick flick’
• Definition of romantic comedy
• The meet cute
• The sex comedies of the 1950s
• A female aesthetic?
• The homme com
• A focus on Silver Linings Playbook and Crazy Stupid Love
• The future of the romantic comedy
• How this will inform my film
• Conclusion

3. CHICK FLICK/ROM COM
‘Cinematic romantic comedies are often referred to under the
rubric of chick flicks. In an earlier era, they were called
women's pictures, and you can go further back still, to their
literary antecedents, where they were called domestic novels’
(Cohen, 2010)
This statement suggests that the rom com and the chick flick
are essentially the same thing.

4. CHICK FLICKS-URBAN
DICTIONARY
1) A film that indulges in the hopes and dreams of women and/or girls. A film that has a
happy, fuzzy, ridiculously unrealistic ending.
2) A film that has the following formula:
Two people fall in love
They get along fine
There is some kind of misunderstanding
They break up
They get back together
The end.
3) A poor excuse for a movie that usually ends of with people crying, not because of the
plot, but because of how they wasted $6.50 on a movie ticket. Also it seems that the only
type of people that watch them are either chicks and guys who go out with the chicks.

5. CHICK FLICKS
‘the movies that are truly chick flicks are those that feature
gal pals. In these, girls and women are friends to the end,
while men are sidelined and at best peripheral to the plot’
(Berry & Errigo, 2004)

6. WOMEN’S FILM
This term seems only to be used in academic writing, it
seems to have no bearing on current film genres.
Is this because they have died out?
One of the only film I
can think of in recent
years that may fit the
bill is the Sex and the
City film but I would be
loathe to include it as
the plot focusses on
marriage and the
attainment thereof.

7. ROMANTIC COMEDY:
URBAN DICTIONARY
The most vile, insipid, sanity-destroyingly horrible genre in the history of
cinema. The romantic comedy is a genre of movie, usually mainstream, that
follows a fairly consistant formula: boy meets girl, silly shit happens, low-intensity
comedy insues, mild disasters averted, boy and girl get married and
live happily ever after, the end. This formula never changes, for if there were
the slightest deviation, it would not ba a romantic comedy. This genre exists
solely for the entertainment of obnoxious, highly sentimental housewives who
feel that their gender must consign them to this terrible fate. For them, to be
feminine is to be an obnoxious, hand-wringing milksop. This is similar to the
viewpoint among men that to be masculine is to be an obnoxious, belligerent
neanderthal who crushes beer cans with his forehead. Romantic comedy is
cinematic anti-matter. It is the opposite of art, and can not, by nature, be
creative or original in any way. Romantic comedies are as plentiful as they
are unbearable, due to the consistent market for sappy, brain-dead
entertainment. A watcher of romatic comedies never gets tired of the same
plot, over and over and over again, and therefore can watch the same movie,
with subtle variations, thousands of times over a lifetime, viewing each new
clone as if it were the first.

8. THE ROM-COM GENRE
Traditionally, classic Hollywood romantic comedy focussed
on the apparently mismatched hetrosexual couple,
overcoming conflicts and obstacles in order to move towards
their happy union. (Hines, 2008)

9. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH
A feature of the romantic comedy is the
‘meet cute’ a:
‘Scenario in which two individuals are
brought together in some unlikely, zany,
destined-to-fall-in-love-and-be-together-forever
sort of way (the more unusual, the
better).’ (Urban dictionary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPdIWk
097ls

10. WHO IS THE AUDIENCE?
The dramatic comedy and comedy genres such as screwball
comedy were considered films with broad-based appeal,
directed and advertised to both sexes (Turin, 2008)
So why do we assume that it’s a women’s genre?

11. SEX COMEDIES OF THE ‘50S
It was assumed that a female
audience was responsible for
the success of the so called sex
comedies of the 1950s because
of the valorisation of female pre-marital
chastity (Jeffers
McDonald, 2008)
However a close reading of
these films including ‘Pillow
Talk’ (1959) suggests that both
the male and female
protagonists want sex, but
women want respect too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=W_WxvjzvKLI

12. ARE ROMANTIC COMEDIES
JUST FOR WOMEN?
Paula Cohen suggests that women like romantic comedies
because
‘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.’ (2010)

13. I disagree with this theory as I believe it is not the spectacle
that drives the romantic comedy but the plot; the dialogue
and the story.
To state that female audiences are interested in spectacle
suggests that women occupy a similar spectatorship to men.

14. A FEMALE AESTHETIC?
‘To ask whether there is a feminine or female aesthetic, or a
specific language of women’s cinema, is to remain caught in
the master’s house and there, as Audre Lorde’s suggestive
metaphor warns us, to legitimate the hidden agendas of a
culture we badly need to change.’ De Laurtis (1989)
Does this mean then that perhaps….women and men
are….perhaps equal?

15. WHY ARE ROM COMS SO BAD?
"Making a good romantic comedy is no harder than making
a good drama or crime story or musical or Western. It's hard
to make a good picture, is the problem’ Woody Allen
Vilkomerson and Breznican question why it’s so hard to
make a good romantic comedy and among their conclusions
the following stand out:
‘Men don’t want to star in romantic comedies, or go see
them’
‘Filmmakers are afraid to get personal’

16. HOMME COMS
Jeffers McDonald suggests that there is a new sub genre of
romantic comedy which puts the male as the central
protagonist.
A key feature of this is an element of gross out.
However this doesn’t seem to always have to be a feature.

17. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
This film is interesting in that there is a male (Bradley Cooper) in
the central role who is also mentally ill and therefore vulnerable
being pursued by the intelligent and active Jennifer Lawrence.
This scene shows Tiffany literally chasing Pat down the street.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwnXBO1VjWs

18. CRAZY STUPID LOVE
We also see something although more explicitly depicting
the female character’s pursuit of sex in this scene.
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDjz2jU2oAg

19. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
This scene shows Tiffany out smart Pat and his father.
She shouts at him but is not portrayed as a nag or neurotic
woman but as intelligent and on a par with the male
characters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwwAhX3fwlQ

20. CRAZY STUPID LOVE
A long tradition of chick flicks features a seemingly
unattractive (but secretly talented) girl who following a
transformation into an attractive woman wins the man she
dismisses but secretly pines for’ (Ferriss, 2008)
However this makeover is on the male lead rather than the
female
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwwAhX3fwlQ

21. THE NEW ROM COM
These new romantic comedies are an improvement to the
women’s genre films but is it because of the focus on the
male protagonist and the fact that they are not marketed as
typical rom coms the reason they are commissioned at all?

22. HOPE FOR THE CHICK
FLICK OR WOMEN’S FILM
We have looked at rom coms that cater for men but
where are the female protagonists?
Bridesmaides is an example of a film that could have
marked a new era in women’s film but felt the need
tack on a romantic comedy plotline.
Lena Dunham’s TV series ‘Girls’ also represents
female writing and representation

23. HOLLYWOOD AND WOMEN
Maybe Hollywood needs to start making smart romantic
comedies like these with female leads!
Or chick flicks that respect the audience they are intended
for?
To maybe trust the female audience?

24. CONCLUSION
As we have seen there seems to be some confusion about
the romantic comedy genre.
Some have lumped it in with the chick flick which probably
has closer links to the women’s film and the domestic novel.
We have also seen a rise in the number of rom coms for men,
or at least with men in the lead. This makes them definitely
not women’s films!

25. HOW WILL THIS RELATE TO
MY FILM?
As a romantic comedy I would like my film to be appealing to
both men and women and stick more closely to the romantic
comedy than to the chick flick.
Equality in comedy!

26. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbott, A and Jermyn, D (2009). Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. London: IB Tauris & co . p1-7.
Berry, J and Errigo, A (2004) Chick Flicks: Movies Women Love, London: Orion
Bonilla, P (2005) Is There more to Hollywood low brow than meets the eye?, Quarterly journal of film and video, 22, p17-24
Bovenschen, S Is There a Feminine Aesthetic? trans. Beth Weckmueller, New German Critique, no 10 (Winter 1977): 136. [Originally published in Aesthtik
und Kommunikation 25 (September 1976)
Cohen, P. (2010). What Have Clothes Got to Do with It?: Romantic Comedy and the Female Gaze. Southwest Review. 95 (11), p78-88.
De Laurtis, T. (1989). Rethinking Women's Cinema: Aesthetics and Feminist Theory. In: Heath, S, MacCabe, C and Riley, D Technologies of Gender:
Essays on Theory, FIlm and Fiction. London : Macmillan Press. p127-146.
Doane, M. (1992). Film and the Masquerade:Theorising the Female Spectator . In: The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality . London: Routledge.
Dyer, R. (1992). Don't Look Now: The Male Pin-up. In: The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality . London: Routledge. p265-276.p277
Ferriss, S and Young, M (2008). Chick flicks : contemporary women at the movies. New York: Routledge.
Hines, C. (2008). Armed and Fabulous: Miss Congeniality's Queer Rom-Com. In: Abbott, S and Jermyn, D Falling in love again: Romantic Comedy in
Contemporary Cinema. London: Routledge.
Jeffers McDonald, T. (2009). Homme-Com: Engendering change in Contemporary Romantic Comedy . In: Abbott, S and Jermyn, D Falling in love again:
Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. London: IB Tauris & co . p146-159.
Mulvey, L Feminism, Film, and the Avant-Garde, Framework, no. 10 (Spring 1979)
Neale, S. (1992). Masculinity as Spectacle . In: ? The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality . London: Routledge. p277- 287.
Orr, C. (2013). Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad? Atlantic Monthly (10727825). 311 (2), p42-43.
The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (1992) Routledge London Screen
Turin, M. (2008). Women's Films: Comedy, Drama, Romance. In: Ferriss, S and Young, M Chick flicks : contemporary women at the movies. New York:
Routledge.
Vilkomerson, S and Breznican, A. (2011). Why is it so Hard to Make a Good Romantic Comedy?. Entertainment Weekly. 1167 (7), p50-53.