No place for romantic comedies in feminist Hollywood!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZwgoVmILQU
The year was 2006, when I first watched a rom-com which didn’t follow the traditional rom-com formula.
Before I introduce you to the movie, lets take a look at the rom-com formula. A man and a woman meet in an outlandish situation, mostly having opposing viewpoints e.g., social status, cultural conflict or political perspective. The situation doesn’t change until the pair falls in love with each other.
In a typical rom-com, finding and getting the love of your life solves the main dilemma of the protagonist, but not in Penelope!
Meet Penelope! The Girl with the Pig Snout! But why does she matter?
New wave of feminism in Hollywood was not riding back then. Penelope was released in 2006 and the story would had finalized an year or two before. Now imagine a film maker pitching the story to a studio executive back then that the damsel in distress need not to find her one true love to transform into une belle fille.
She needs to find herself.
No wonder it was not a Disney movie. It was a hard to imagine movie, but it was an absolute eye-opener for me. Only if it was made a decade earlier, it could had saved me from a teenage full of self-loathing.
- What is it about which makes it a rare commodity?
- Moreover, what is shown in rom-coms, is it love or a reflection of our deepest desire of societal validation encapsulating in one form of relation?
- Is our love for that significant other a ruse to showcase that ‘we have it all’?
Questions! Questions! Questions!
Lets get back to the movie in question. The charm of Rebel Wilson is here to stay. No questions asked. The movie also stars Adam Devine, Priyanka Chopra, and Liam Hemsworth. Less than a romantic comedy, it is more a comedy about romance.
The very first clip of the movie is a good hook for the female audience where Natalie’s Mom told her that rom-coms are for pretty women and …
We ain’t Julia Roberts
Natalie grew up hating the unrealistic treatment of character in rom-coms. One evening, she got mugged in a subway station and rendered unconscious. After waking up, she realized that she was in an alternate world which was, much to her chagrin, a rom-com. She figured out that, to get back to the real world, she need to find her one true love.
The movie had its moments and you will remember it for sometime. However, if I only look at the message of the movie, the climax was unfulfilling and poorly written. It lacks a serious moment of enlightenment and self-realization.
On the other hand, the stakes were much higher in Penelope. It was her real life which was messed up. She would be a normal girl if she married to a person of a noble birth. (But don’t forget that the actual words of the counter to the curse were ‘when one of her own kind learn to love her’.) However, despite of having all arrangements in place, Penelope gave up her only chance of living a normal life because she did not want to marry only to break the curse.
From being desperate enough to kill herself if the curse doesn’t break after marriage to the realization that marriage should serve a higher purpose than to get social acceptance.
Despite of the similar message of both movies, the climax demands a serious scenario to hit the point home which is the only flaw in otherwise good movie ‘Isn’t it romantic’.
The question remains why rom-coms cannot survive in the feminist wave of cinema? Or on a deeper level, can we only love one person in life which has to be either our self or the significant other? The chess board is set. The troops have taken their positions. True love v/s self-love.
Which side are you on? Tell me in comments.
Watch it for Wilson. Rating 6 out of 10.
