The Death of Happily Ever After
“We’re used to thinking of certain genres … as being essentially dead — the musical, for example, or the Western. It doesn’t seem possible that something as basic as the romantic comedy could join their company, and yet that’s what seems to be happening.” Peter Rainer
Last night a buzzfeed-like article de haute importance came up in my news-feed, it was suggesting that Jack wasn’t real. The theory being that Jack was just a figment of Rose’s imagination, a heroic figure that she needed to conjure in order to survive her relationship with Cal and, spoiler alert, the ship is sinking.
The article got me thinking about the last romantic movie or rom-com I’ve seen, or the lack of. Are we at the point where we, as a society, hate romantic-comedies enough that we’re willing to make alternative theories that involve deep mental illness by fear of..something? But more importantly, could it be that rom-coms are dead? How in the name of Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts did this happen?
As in an Agatha Christie novel, there are many suspects. Adults blame teenagers, who aren’t interested in any romance that doesn’t involve some guy in some capes with some power. Women blame men who think they’ll lose sperm-count if they buy tickets to any movie with a whiff of chick flick. Still others simply argue that as a culture we’ve simply stopped believing in love.
Stop saying ‘chick flick’ like it’s ‘pile of rotten meat’ and stop saying ‘chick lit’ and ‘chick book’ and ‘chick movie’ and anything else that suggests that love stories are less than war stories, or that stories that end with kissing are inherently inferior to stories that end with people getting shot.’’ Linda Holmes
But yet... another suspect is to blame: time and what-a-girl-wants.
Hollywood created tons of rom-coms that were exactly that — two souls finding their counterpart. Elizabethtown, Garden State, Almost Famous, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, etc. But Hollywood being Hollywood fell short. They created female characters that were too damn good to be true. They were nothing like us. They didn’t remind us of us, our friends or our exes.
As women became more empowered, we no longer needed romantic tales to tell us we could be saved. We needed to be heroes. We needed Katniss Evergreen to lead the rebels against the Capitol and save District 12. We needed Wonder Woman to kill Ares and end the damn war.
But is there no middle ground?
Thanks to female icons like Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham whose rom-coms are all about women still trying to get their shit together. We might be entering the Golden Age of funny, romantic films that are for women, by women. These films feature women who are unapologetically themselves, flaws and all. These films don’t create caricatures, they instead break down any misconceptions about how a woman should act.
Maybe this is the moment in the evolution of romance where the heroine and her muse, split by contrivance, realize that they should get back together accepting her with all her flaws.
Maybe my happily ever after isn’t dead. Maybe.
