What happened to romantic comedies?
I mean, we might all know what happened to romantic comedies; I just wanted to sound like an old-timer. There was such a golden age, from the 80s through the first several years of the new millennium. As a teen, I’d chew through these bubblegum movies with delight.
But slowly I realized something that had actually always been true: they were all stories that dudebros decided women would like. (Dudebros is the technical term, btw). The bubble burst, leaving behind a sticky mess of stereotypes that linger in my head to this day.
Luckily, I came to my senses and realized that love stories didn’t look like a mildly handsome journalist stalking me before my wedding. That I could marry who I want, when I wanted, and that a marriage to a relentless (c)harmer was not an arrival. That those stories were in fact, creepy. Male gazey. Predatory, even.
(I just rewatched Runaway Bride last year, and BOY do I have questions).
It’s not all bad news. In all my enjoyment of romantic comedies, I clung to the first half of the story that featured women as writers, as lawyers, as entrepreneurs. As...well, as men.
I wanted to move into that reality—a place I was only marginally allowed to be in the first place—not escape back out of it to a small cottage upstate. The thing that those male characters initially found abrasive about a woman and yet somehow, in all their graciousness, learned to love once it softened: I wanted it. I wanted to be it, to live it, and to not be “saved” from it.
Romantic comedies, in their heyday, were the equivalent of putting a pink scented handle on a razor and charging two times more. It was a repackaging we never asked for, but were given anyway.
Anyways. All I’m saying is this: stories should be told by the people who know how to tell them, not by powerful people who feel like they want to. Oh, and womxn aren’t a niche. Oh, and...
Stories have staying power, let’s tell them right.
In unrelated news, a notecard poem for your perusal about losing something you might not have needed in the first place.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, choose a woman-directed comedy directed to watch this weekend (meager lists here and here—good news though, you just learned Shrek was directed by a woman), and step out of the mainstream to find some new filmmakers to support.