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Το κείμενο δημοσιεύτηκε στον τόμο Gendering Popular Culture:
Perspectives from Eastern Europe and the West, K. Slavova & K.
Daskalove (επιμ.), Sofia: Polis. 258-271.
The essay was published in the volume Gendering Popular Culture:
Perspectives from Eastern Europe and the West, K. Slavova & K.
Daskalove (eds.), Sofia: Polis. 258-271.
Cycles and Clusters of the Millennial Hollywood Romantic Comedy:
An Overview1
Betty – Despoina Kaklamanidou
Film Studies Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
My scholarly interest in the Hollywood romantic comedy started in 2005, and initially
led to a book for undergraduate students, published in Greece in 2007, where I
attempted to trace the genre’s evolution since the coming of sound in the 1930s, and
also discuss gender representations through close textual analysis of one exemplary
romantic comedy of each decade (from the 1930s to the 2000s). In June 2009, I had
the fortune to be invited and participate in the International Gender and Genre
Summer Program at the University Charles de Gaulle, Lille 3, where I presented a
paper on the millennial romantic comedy in Hollywood, outlining some new trends,
based on a corpus of romantic comedies I have been assembling since 2000. During
the research for this paper and my Greek book, I discovered that a lot of older and
more recent academic studies cover the majority of film genres, such as the western,
the thriller, the musical, the melodrama, but, more importantly, acknowledge the
allegories, social relevance, and importance of these generic Hollywood groups.
However, I also noted that only a few books center on the romantic comedy, and
especially contemporary romantic comedy. Most studies deal with the screwball
comedies of the 1930s and 1940s as well as the sex comedies of the 1950s and 1960s
(see Stanley Cavell, 1981, James Harvey, 1988, Christopher Beach, 2002, Wes D.
Gehring, 2002, and Kathrina Glitre, 2006), while only a few books examine the
romantic comedy of the 1980s to the 2000s (see Peter Williams Evans and Celestino
Deleyto, 1998, Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn, Tamar Jeffers McDonald, 2007,
Claire Mortimer, 2007, Celestino Deleyto, 2009, and Leger Grindon, 2011). This
bibliographical ‘deficiency’ led me to a book-length study, forthcoming by Routledge,
which aims not only to present the various cycles and clusters of the genre but also
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The chapter is based on the introduction of my forthcoming book on the millennial romantic comedy
(UK: Routledge) where I outline the genre’s trajectory in the first decade of the new millennium, and
discuss the effects of neoliberalism on the various genre cycles and clusters. The chapter also includes
parts of my 2009 essay “The New Millennium Hollywood Romantic Comedy: Charting a Genre’s
History,” which was first published in Gender and Genre in the Humanities, eds. Kornelia Slavova &
Isabelle Boof-Vermesse, (Sofia: University Press of Sofia University, 2010), pp. 167-178.
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demonstrate the connection between this ‘light’ generic category of films to the sociopolitical climate it is produced in. This chapter will therefore introduce the diversity
and variety that the romantic comedy genre presents in the first decade of the new
millennium.
It has been already stated that the Hollywood romantic comedy is regarded as an
‘inferior’ film genre by both the Press and many scholars due to a variety of reasons.
Replaced more than often by the slang noun ‘chick flick’, which implies its audience
consists exclusively of female viewers, it is also accused of maintaining a superficial
and highly conventional narrative formula. The main arguments ‘against’ the
millennial Hollywood romantic comedy films include the representation of a utopian
cosmos, the genre’s ‘inability’ to address societal issues, and its narrative
predictability which mainly refers to the more than often happy ending. However, I
believe that these assumptions deserve a more careful approach.
First, I will begin by admitting the obvious; by definition, romantic comedies focus on
romantic relationships, ‘sprinkled’ with a dose of comic situations, in a middle to
upper-class milieu, where money is almost never an issue. Nevertheless, it would be
hasty to argue that these texts are unable to provide social commentary. Comments
regarding the lack of sociopolitical critique do not accompany, for instance, the
screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s whose protagonists are rich, whose
settings are luxurious mansions and whose costumes are lavish. For example, My
Man Godfrey (1936) narrates the story of a spoilt Fifth Avenue socialite who changes
gowns in every scene while her mother and sister are only interested in parties and
fun. Similarly, The Philadelphia Story (1940) revolves around one of the wealthiest
heiresses of Philadelphia while the setting is an estate against which the majority of
the stylish New York apartments featured in millennial rom coms would simply pale
in comparison. Nevertheless, the screwball comedy is considered today as a
paradigmatic instance of not only the romantic comedy genre but also of class
articulation, and astute social observation (see for example Beach and Gehring).
Even though most of the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s include criticism
against the upper classes, they do so in a comic and more than often subtle manner. In
addition, I would argue that the ‘hypothetical’ exclusion of explicit sociopolitical
commentary in the contemporary rom com does not imply its absence. Every
cinematic text, irrespective of generic boundaries, is a product of a specific societal
environment and carries the ideological stamp of the filmmaking team. Barry Keith
Grant observes that “[p]opular culture does tend to adhere to dominant ideology,
although this is not always the case. Many horror films, melodramas and film noirs,
among others, have been shown to question if not subvert accepted values” (33). As a
result, the millennial romantic comedy cannot be discarded a priori as a mere product
of a neoliberal society which seeks profit irrespective of content. On the one hand,
there are contemporary romantic comedies which reflect this socioeconomic climate
but there are many examples of cinematic texts which criticize, assess, and/or propose
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alternatives to the dominance of neoliberalism, and/or the representation of a
‘gendered’ status quo. Furthermore, the quantity and diversity of the genre’s
production in the first decade of the new millennium cannot lead to a single
conclusion since even films that were shot and/or released in the same year
incorporate contradicting views on societal issues.
Furthermore, like their cinematic precursors, contemporary Hollywood romantic
comedies are popular texts that can have multiple readings. First, they explore issues
of intimate relationships, friendship (male-male, female-female, male-female)
marriage, and work and as such they may serve as conveyors of helpful paradigms
and/or food for thought for the global audience as they allow reflection “upon
romance as a personal experience and a social phenomenon” (Grindon 2). Despite the
insistence on the union of the heterosexual couple at the end of the narrative, I would
claim that it can be more productive “to move away from the Althusserian
determinism that still pervades much contemporary generic criticism and towards a
view of genre as culturally and historically mediated” (Deleyto 18). Deleyto argues
that most of the time, critics and scholars alike tend to evaluate a romantic comedy
based on its ending – which mainly consists of the heterosexual union, and/or reunion –, thus validating its conservative nature, and also ignoring the main body of
the narrative where subversive and/or progressive elements are often included. Lastly,
it should be noted that there are millennial texts that end with two single people, such
as Prime (2005), The Break-Up (2006), and (500) Days of Summer (2009), which
“suggest[s] that the final separation of the lovers is becoming more and more usual as
part of the happy ending” (Deleyto 25).
The third argument against the genre regarding its narrative predictability can be
applied to every genre, since from acclaimed dramas to sci-fi, horror films, and
comedies, the three-act structure, the character-driven plot, and the final dénouement
irrespective of the form it may take (from the death of the villain, and/or monster in
the action, and horror films to the catharsis in the drama) are conventions the audience
is expecting and is always looking forward to watching. What is more, there are also
romantic comedies that surprise and/or play with the conventions by either ending
with the two main characters apart (The Break-Up), by hinting at the possibility of a
new relationship which has not been consummated (It’s Complicated), and/or by
following a non-linear narrative ((500) Days of Summer). In addition, the several
instances of intertextuality that are present in many contemporary cinematic texts can
be considered as enriching and assisting the evolution of the genre. Gérard Genette (7)
uses the term “transtextuality”, influenced by Mikhail Bakhtine’s concept of
“dialogism,” and Julia Kristeva’s “intertextuality,” to refer to anything that “puts a
text in an overt or covert relation with other texts.” For example, when Jake (Alec
Baldwin) tries to get back with his wife Jane (Meryl Streep) in It’s Complicated
(2009), he rents the classic romantic comedy The Graduate (1967) for the whole
family to enjoy at home. The use of shots from such popular films as The Graduate
and Jerry Maguire (1996) in films such as It’s Complicated, Hitch (2005), and (500)
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Days of Summer serve a double function; first they engage the older audience in a
playful game of irony, but also introduce the younger viewers to significant genre
films of the past.
Finally, romantic comedies are frequently undervalued as exclusively addressing the
female audience. However, if we treat the genre as a narrative that places a woman or
a girl at the center, then the genre itself instantly becomes the ‘Other’ to a norm that is
never explicitly articulated in the Press. On the one hand, no one ever writes that
male-centered blockbusters, and/or male-centered dramas are the canon to which the
female-centered rom coms should compare. On the other hand, nowhere is it
mentioned that male-driven films target their own specific audience. It is therein that a
social and at the same time theoretic impasse lies; for as long as one keeps separating
female cinematic narratives from an established but unnamed ‘norm,’ the dichotomy
between the dominant/male and the submissive /female films will regrettably be
carried on. At the same time, this disparity will keep producing academic work which
strives to examine the genre in detail and show that the close reading of these films
may assist the emergence of complex meanings that not only address gender politics
but also provide a societal, however hidden and subtle, critique.
Nevertheless, despite its mostly negative reputation, the last three decades witnessed a
steady increase in the numbers of romantic comedies, which positions the genre
among the most popular ones in the globally dominant Hollywood film industry.
Since the genre’s film production is still thriving in the second decade of the 21st
century, it is only natural if not imperative to keep on investigating its evolution
through the creation of new cycles as well as the readjustment or maintenance of old
formulae as recent research confirms that the genre “will survive by adapting to
changing historical circumstances” (Evans and Deleyto 1).
The identification of the cycles and/or clusters is based on a corpus I have assembled
which includes 161 Hollywood romantic comedies produced in the U.S.A. and
released domestically and worldwide from 2000 to 2010. The criteria used for the
compilation of the films were the following: first, each film text had to be classified as
a romantic comedy by at least two sources – which include the two major internet
databases imdb.com and boxofficemojo.com as well as reviews from major
publications such as the New York Times and/or the Chicago Sun-Times –. Second,
my exclusive focus on Hollywood productions excludes by definition several popular
both commercially and/or artistically acclaimed romantic comedies, such as the
British Bridget Jones’ Diary (2000), Love Actually (2003), and Bridget Jones’ Diary:
The Edge of Reason (2004), in addition to such US productions as Brown Sugar
(2002), Breakin’ All The Rules (2004), and Just Wright (2009), which target the
African-American niche audience and were not distributed internationally. Third, and
most importantly, however, the ‘dominant’ feature of all the rom coms had to be the
pursuit of love by two individuals couple combined with a lot of comic moments.
According to the Russian formalist, Roman Jakobson (751), “[t]he dominant may be
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defined as the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines, and
transforms the remaining components.” It is “the element which specifies a given
variety of language [or any narrative element] dominates the entire structure and thus
acts as its mandatory and inalienable constituent dominating all the remaining
elements and exerting direct influence upon them”. Thus, also absent from the corpus
are films that may be considered as romantic comedies by the Press, such as Bride
Wars (2002), I Love You Man (2009), and Morning Glory (2010), among others,
because the dominant features are female friendship, male bonding, and career
orientation respectively, while the romantic relationships of their protagonists are
included in a subplot.
Although I cannot argue that the corpus is exhaustive, I believe it provides a
comprehensive starting guide of the genre production in the first decade of the new
millennium and can serve as a valuable methodological tool from which a number of
interesting conclusions will be drawn. First, the corpus confirms the continuing
popularity of the genre in the beginning of the 21st century; the numbers of films may
fluctuate from 11 in 2006 (the lowest) to 19 in 2009 (the highest), but the average
number of 14,7 demonstrates that the genre is among the film industry’s production
priorities. The second observation confirms that male power is dominant in what is
mainly considered a female genre. From the 124 directors of the 160 films, only 16
were women (13%), and directed only 20 films (12,4%). An improvement was
observed in the writing department as 53 (32,7%) romantic comedies were written or
co-written by female writers. It should be noted, however, that this obvious gender
inconsistency does not only concern the genre in question but unfortunately
constitutes a norm in the film industry. According to a study by the Center for the
Study of Women in Television and Film “women made up 18 percent of all directors,
producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 highestgrossing movies” in 2011 (Rebecca Ford). Although, these numbers are certainly
unsatisfactory, a more thorough discussion on the role that women play in film
production and distribution exceeds the goal of this essay book and should be set
aside for future and I might add necessary academic study.
After these preliminary remarks, I divided the corpus into nine major cycles and
clusters. Cycles are group of films that surface within a film genre once the film
industry feels it can capitalize “on the (often unexpected) success of a specific film
that offers a new twist on an old genre” (Glitre 20), by investing in similar cinematic
texts films that include what Rick Altman calls “common features.” For instance, the
“new career woman” cycle of the new millennium focuses on a group of films whose
fundamental narrative device is how the heroine manages her professional ambitions
in relation to her love life. On the other hand, the term ‘cluster,’ used by Grindon
defines an assemblage of films that do not include “a coherent model or common
motifs among productions from the same period” (25), yet they share a major
thematic, and/or narrative ingredient. For instance, the cluster I call the ‘man-com’
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may include diverse in theme, tone, and narrative structure romantic comedies; yet all
the films are narrated by a central male point of view.
The first cycle is the ‘battle of the sexes’ cycle, which has had a long history starting
with the screwball comedies of the 1930s. However, the Hollywood film industry still
continues to produce rom coms that focus on the stereotypical differences that are
thought to exist between men and women and try to impose the perception that men
are indeed from Mars and women from Venus. The ‘dominant’ element of these
romantic comedies is the witty verbal exchange targeted mainly at the differences of
the sexes between the hero and the heroine who begin their narrative journeys as
enemies of some sort only to end up together and in love. This cycle comprises films
such as Someone Like You (2001), Down With Love, Intolerable Cruelty, How to Lose
a Guy in 10 Days (all three 2003), and Leap Year (2010). The palpable tension and
hostility that are at first created between the man and the woman constitutes a fruitful
ground for the examination of whether or not the two sexes actually long for different
things regarding love, commitment, relationships and marriage. At the same time,
these millennial rom coms place their protagonists in either the same working
environment, and/or make them rivals of some sort, therefore creating tensions that
have to do with professional ambitions in a neoliberal climate which promotes
individualism and consumerism. Thus, although the battle of the sexes almost always
ends with a ‘truce,’ it also provides interesting conclusions as to the part played by the
surrounding socio-economic climate in the formation and/or the endurance of the
millennial romantic relationship.
The origins of the second cycle go back to another popular 1940s genre cycle; the
career woman comedy (His Girl Friday, 1940, Adam’s Rib, 1949). The ‘new’ career
woman comedy, which includes such films as The Wedding Planner (2001), Life, or
Something Like It (2002), Two Weeks Notice (2002), View From the Top (2003), New
in Town (2009), and The Proposal (2009) initially portray the modern career woman
as neurotic, and misguided. The narrative often charts how the life of this careerfocused heroine becomes disrupted by the male protagonist. Although the happy
ending can easily lead to the conclusion that the heroine’s professional aspirations
were just the wrong path and that what is really ‘important’ in life is love, marriage
and a family, it is interesting to note, once again, how most endings of this cycle’s
films preserve the professional identity of the heroine and propose that female career
ambitions can accompany a healthy romantic relationship.
The third cycle is the fantasy romantic comedy, yet another generic category whose
history can be traced back to the 1930s and Topper (1937), the screwball romance,
whose protagonistic couple, the Kerbys (Constance Bennett and Cary Grant), die in a
car accident, become ghosts, and decide to make the most of this unfortunate
situation. The combination of fantasy and magic (13 going on 30, 2004, Bewitched,
2007, When in Rome, 2010), super powers (My Super Ex-Girlfriend, 2006), the
afterlife (Just Like Heaven, 2005, Over Her Dead Body, 2008, Ghost Town, 2008),
and fairy tales and animation (Ella Enchanted, 2004, Enchanted, 2007) produces
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hybrid romantic comedies with a twist. Billy Mernit (27) underlines that in this hybrid
cycle, “the conflicts revolve around issues typical of the genre norm” whereas
“climaxes often involve an obligatory “recognition” scene” (i.e., Jack (Will Ferrell)
finally realizes that Isabel (Nicole Kidman) is a witch in Bewitched, or when Jenny
(Uma Thurman) reveals to Matt (Luke Wilson) that she is in fact a super-heroine).
Nevertheless, leaving the palpable escapist side of these narratives aside, the
‘dominant’ feature is still the search for love. By “bending reality” (Mernit 28), these
rom coms create a world where love is always a possibility and can beat even death.
At the same time, however, the fantasy element “frame[s] social reality” (Joshua
David Bellin 9). Therefore, these hybrid rom coms are socially relevant insofar as
they “function as mass-cultural rituals that give image to historically determinate
anxieties, wishes, and needs,” and “simultaneously function by stimulating,
endorsing, and broadcasting the very anxieties, wishes, and needs to which they give
image.” (ibid).
The fourth cycle is a relatively new one as its cinematic life started in 1984 with the
release of Romancing the Stone. Films such as Serving Sara (2002), Fool’s Gold
(2008), The Bounty Hunter, Killers, Date Night and Knight and Day (all released in
2010) combine action/adventure with romance to provide pleasure to both female and
male viewers. These narratives assist the examination of the dynamics of the
heterosexual couple who are faced with extremely dangerous situations. Whether the
couple is already married (Fool’s Gold, Date Night and Killers) or has just met
(Knight and Day) it is interesting to see whether the female assumes a passive or
active role and/or acts as an equal to her male counterpart. It should be noted that
during the end of the 1990s as well as the new millennium a significant number of
female heroines and/or super-heroines emerged in both television and film; shows
such as Alias (ABC, 2001-2006), Charmed (WB, 1998-2004), and Buffy the Vampire
Slayer (WB, 1997-2003), and films such as the two Lara Croft and Charlie’s Angels
installments, Underworld (2003), Catwoman (2004), Aeon Flux (2005), and Elektra
(2005) were ruled by super female strength and resourcefulness, and proved that
women are as competent as men to undertake any type of perilous mission. In
addition to this analysis of female active participation in the face of danger, the action
romantic comedy offers many instances of male objectification, thus demonstrating
that the cinematic gaze is not exclusively male, but can also be female, and/or LGBT.
The fifth cycle is the teen romantic comedy which, interestingly enough, consists of
films whose central character is a teenage girl, perhaps following the rise of the Girl
Power movement and its constant presence and/or propagation in media culture for
the past two decades. Films such as Get Over It (2001), Chasing Liberty (2004), and
Sydney White (2007) not only address adolescence, which in almost every respect
(from personality development, to the acquisition of tastes in music, fashion, cinema,
educational abilities, and sexual identity among others) is one of the most important
periods in the life of an individual, but also provide valuable food for thought for an
entire society system. Since most of these films take place in the US school system,
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which can be compared to society at large, if one is to take into account the different
‘categories’ students belong to (the jogs, the cheerleaders, the nerds, the artists, etc.),
then the teen romantic comedy can be used to unearth the critique included in the
narrative against the inequalities and injustice that exist in a larger societal scale.
Cycle six, the “of a Certain Age” cycle is a ‘new entry’ in the romantic comedy
cosmos and constitutes a most welcome addition to the genre. The films of the cycle
renegotiate gender roles by investing in mature protagonists. Either exploring a
reversed May-December romance (Under the Tuscan Sun, 2003, Prime, 2005, Sex
and the City, 2008, The Rebound, 2010), marital problems (Trust the Man, 2006,
Couples Retreat, 2009), or the re-birth of romantic and/or sexual vitality (Something’s
Gotta Give, 2003, It’s Complicated, 2009), these romantic comedies depict how the
millennial mature woman, who more than often has already had marriage and
children, finds herself in a new chapter, where romance is discovered, or rediscovered.
Cycle seven is a group of films that center on a new narrative stratagem and therefore
constitutes a new cycle; in the ‘baby-crazed’ romantic comedies, such as Baby Mama
(2008), The Back-Up Plan, and The Switch (both 2010), the narrative revolves around
the heroines’ initial decision to experience motherhood without a partner. By placing
motherhood before romance, because the heroines are considered ‘unlucky’ in the
love department and/or because their age and the infamous biological clock leave
them no choice but to take matters into their own hands, these films become not only
socially relevant but assist the evolution of the genre at the same time as the
introduction of a sperm donor, and/or a surrogate mother, offers the possibility for a
new syntax in the genre’s structure. However, even though it can be argued that these
narratives celebrate the third feminist wave’s emblem of ‘choice,’ a number of
significant issues arise when the question turns from a woman’s desire to become a
mother to the possibilities offered to her to do so without a partner. Whether the
heroine chooses an unknown donor, or a surrogate, it becomes clear that a substantial
amount of money has to exchange hands. Thus, the baby-crazed romantic comedies
not only address motherhood as a desire but also hint at the neoliberal insatiable need
for profit that can even turn life into another form of commodity.
The next group of romantic comedies is the cluster that I call the ‘man-com.’
Although the romantic comedy genre is almost invariably labeled female, the data
provided by the corpus not only confirmed that the greatest percentage of romantic
films are produced and created by men but a surprisingly important percentage is also
focused on male protagonists. The man-com cluster includes diverse films whose
‘dominant’ element is that they are filtered through a male perspective. These
romantic comedies can be further divided into the following cycles: the ‘Peter Pan’
cycle includes films such as What Women Want (2000), The Bachelor (2000), 40
Days and 40 Nights (2002), Wedding Crashers (2005), Hitch (2005), Failure to
Launch (2006), A Good Year (2006), Made of Honor (2008), and Ghosts of
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Girlfriends Past (2009) focus on a ‘man’s man,’ respected by his male friends, adored
by women, and highly successful professionally. The ‘neurotic’ cycle comprises the
recent Woody Allen’s films, such as Hollywood Ending (2002), Anything Else (2003),
and Whatever Works (2009), but also films such as Along Came Polly (2001), and
Sideways (2004), which examine male neuroses and usually place the female lead in
the role of the male psyche healer. Finally, the ‘high-maintenance’ cycle is made up
of films such as Me, Myself & Irene (2000), Shallow Hal (2001), About a Boy (2002),
The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005), Dan in Real Life (2007), and Ghost Town (2008),
which revolve around 30 or 40-something men with various emotional troubles. It
becomes clear that the man-com cluster present different types of masculinities, which
depending on the films’ release year may or may not adhere to the prevailing
masculinity model of the Bush administration. More importantly, however, the
different representations of male behavior towards life, career, and love show how the
concept of a single masculinity model is not an adequate theoretic tool and should
also be always examined with regard to the specific sociopolitical context of its
representation.
The corpus included mainstream Hollywood romantic comedies, which by definition
exclude the great number of independent productions that provide interesting insights
as to the paths the romantic comedy genre can take. That is why, cluster nine is
devoted to those independent romantic comedies, which assist the evolution of the
genre as well provide alternatives to gender performativity. In 2002, Frank Krutnik
remarked that in the early 1980s, the Hollywood romantic comedy “has been
remodeled for niche audiences defined by ethnicity, sexual orientation or age” (130).
For instance, the independent, low-budget productions Kissing Jessica Stein, (2001),
Gray Matters (2006), and Puccini For Beginners (2007) destabilize the omnipresence
of the central heterosexual couple and focus on same sex love and strong friendships
between women despite the fact that the grammar of the genre has dictated for many
decades that the mainstream cinematic love stories always involve white, heterosexual
and middle to upper class characters who struggle to find love in the urban jungle of
each time period. The ‘women who love women’ cycle does indeed include white and
bourgeois heroines but it puts forward their bisexual and/or homosexual identity. This
change in grammar results in a number of syntactic alterations which may include
“plot structure, character relationships or image and sound montage” (Altman 89).
Character relationships are indeed altered in these lesbian romantic comedies and lead
to quite significant narratives, if considered in a wider social context. These films
achieve to become sites of contestation for lesbian anxiety and representation as they
view desire as solely based on the individual rather than a socially, ideologically and
ethically constructed mechanism and they stress the difficulties homosexuality and/or
bisexuality pose to their heroines, even if they do it in the safe world of the romantic
comedy, in which no-one expresses an overtly homophobic opinion.
According to Altman (26) “genre films […] maintain a strong connection to the
culture that produced them” and “film genres are functional for their society.” If we
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associate Altman’s view with the aforementioned charting of the various cycles and
clusters of the romantic comedy genre in the first decade of the new millennium, we
could conclude there is an attempt to uphold the societal status quo, but at the same
time, there are signs of progression and subversion. Finally, if one is to take the sociopolitical climate of the same period into consideration, as well as the supremacy of
neoliberalism, some interesting points could be put forward. The George W. Bush
administration (2001-2009), the 9/11 attacks, the subsequent War on Terror and the
fear, the government spread to the U.S. through the media gave rise to a new-found
conservatism and a need to return to the family core and embrace traditional values.
However, the 2008 global recession, and the first African-American President in 2009
brought about changes whose consequences cannot be thoroughly examined until a
substantial historical distance is attained. Therefore, the romantic comedies as popular
texts, produced and released during the 2000-2010 period provide an invaluable
terrain for the investigation of not only gender representations and the obvious
limitations of the strict femininity/masculinity but also of the existing and significant
correlations between romantic relationships and the neoliberal regime.
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Beach, Christopher. Class, Language and American Film Comedy. Cambridge:
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Bellin, Joshua David. Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation. USA:
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Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness. USA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
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