Romantic comedies: A writer’s paradise
During my last year of college I lived with nine other girls surrounding a common area. In our “pod” we watched copious amounts of romantic comedies, not in a cliché-way, but in a let’s-avoid-homework-and-rewatch-the-old-favs-way. We were ten girls on a mission of laziness. The thing is, as an English major, my brain has been hard-wired for criticism and there’s no easier target than a romantic comedy script.
The realization happened when we were watching How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days during the middle of second semester. We were all suffering from senior slump, eating unnecessary pizzas, skipping the gym because we procrastinated all of our work, and living on the common room couches. In front of us is Kate Hudson as Andy, eating a burger at her desk and working toward her dream job of being a journalist in New York. I asked the question, why does every romcom star work in a writing profession?
Not only does Kate fall in love on a writing assignment but the story she writes allows her to find her ideal job writing about the things that smart girls are interested in, like politics and foreign affairs. Anyone else skeptical? Writing is so romanticized that it seems like the writers of the films themselves are inviting irony.
Let’s look at the academically English inclined heartthrobs of the romcom community.
1. The perfect Englishman Graham in The Holiday; Graham is a vague “editor” and book lover living in rural England with perfect daughters. Does this man exist? Is the industry just trying to appeal to the vulnerable female English major population? It’s working. I watch The Holiday two to three times a year and melt when Jude Law as Graham says “I’m a major weeper” with his cute little accent.
2. Mr. Sam Coulson, the perfect and overly intelligent high school English teacher in Never Been Kissed, a supermodel who loves Drew Barrymore for her Shakespeare brain. The statutory undertone of his affection is completely diminished by his dazzling smile. Coulson might be my favorite sonnet spouting romcom star. And even though I’m put off by the overuse of English professionals in romantic comedies, I still get goosebumps when Coulson runs down the stadium stairs.
3. The Proposal is a double whammy of New York publishing with a strong female lead played by Sandra Bullock who falls for her aspiring writer assistant once she meets his family at their Alaska estate. Of course the female boss is portrayed as an evil demon and hunky Ryan Reynolds as the poor discouraged writer angel. The pity we feel for Ryan’s coffee runs pumps up his perfect image. He has a giant coastal house in Alaska, Betty White as a grandmother, and he writes books despite his father’s wishes, AKA a dream.
I’m not saying that this trick isn’t working on me and millions of other viewers of these films. The thing is, I’m annoyed at how romanticized these professions are. Anyone can be a writer. Every writer is the perfect man. THIS IS FALSE. No one knows better than an English major at a private school that floods money into science research and STEM fields, that it is not easy to become a writer let alone the head of a publishing house or a successful journalist.
One last example to drive the point home: Julie & Julia. Julie wants to be a writer but can’t catch a break. She decides to take on this crazy challenge, start a blog, and then gets a book deal alongside a great relationship with her husband and Julia child’s cooking skills. Are grandiose experiences the only way to get a book deal? Julie has to live in a small apartment above a pizza shop and work at a horrible phone-answering job. I guess I’m not happy with any portrayal of writers in the movies, I just want the truth. If they want to explore extremes, can the producers choose some other field? There’s a severe lack of romcoms about equal opportunity officers, the hard surface and cabinet partnership businessmen, and frozen yogurt food service workers.
The conclusions is, I don’t get it.
