“Hey Michelle, what are your favorite movies?” “Oh, rom-coms.” “Wow. Really.”
A look of disdain and eyeroll ensue, and the conversation ends on an unhappy note. This is usually what happens when I admit my love for rom-coms. In this article, I will delve into the culture of romantic comedies, list reasons why I love rom-coms, and defend the genre from the most common criticisms.
History and Development of the Rom-Com
There is a basic framework that most rom-coms follow: two (usually young and attractive) lovers meet, fall in love, encounter some obstacle (be it socio-economic class difference, family feud, or life-altering tragedy), overcome it and end up happily ever after. This age-old formula can be traced way back to Much Ado About Nothing, in which protagonists Benedick, Beatrice, Claudio, and Hero find love and come together despite Don John's trickery.
Since Shakespeare’s time, rom-coms have come a long way. Screenwriters, eager to make their movies stand out among a sea of rom-coms, compete to incorporate plot twists and fall outs. The lead characters in Stuck in Love (2012) are a divorced couple struggling to connect with their adolescent children, who also embark on journeys to find the loves of their lives. In the classic rom-com Roman Holiday (1953), Princess Ann and Joe don’t actually physically stay together, but both realize their love for each other. Regardless of whatever plot twists that rom-com writers weave in, the fact that the movie is labelled as a rom-com basically guarantees a non-traumatic ending. Even though Will turns down Anna in the bookshop, the audience of Notting Hill (1999) is assured that the two will resolve their differences, if not eventually become a couple before end credits are shown.
Reasons I Love Rom-Coms: #1 They Are Emotionally Renewing To Watch
Although some bemoan the overall predictability of rom-coms, it is for this precise reason why I love them. Rom-coms are easy to watch. After a week of lectures and pounding out essays, the last thing I need is a cliff hanger or a traumatic ending that leaves me emotionally distraught. No thanks to the hiker-trapped-under-a-rock movie, to the killer-ghost-in-haunted-hotel movie, to the escape-from-sharks movie. No, thank you very much. Rom-coms provide stress-free entertainment in the sense that I would not experience an existential crisis afterwards, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get my fair share of emotions when watching rom-coms. In fact, A successful rom-com takes its audience on an emotional rollercoaster ride, making us invest our feelings in the characters’ lives and relationships within two short hours. By the end of cult-favorite When Harry Met Sally (1989), the audience is cheering on Harry as he declares his love to Sally. I still cry my eyes out every time I watch Harry say, “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Good rom-coms leave its audience emotionally renewed as we laugh and cry together with the protagonists, relating to their experiences.
Reasons I Love Rom-Coms: #2 They Inspire Me for Work Harder in Relationships
The obstacles facing rom-com protagonists are often dramatized and exaggerated, and it takes an unbelievable (in the literal sense of the word) amount effort to overcome such obstacles. Although the protagonists’ fight for love can seem cliché and even saccarine to the most skeptical viewer, rom-coms teach us that love requires hard work. The love of our lives doesn't just fall from the sky and land in our arms. We have to stay true to our feelings and be willing to work for them. If Baby and Johnny can come together despite the oppressing opposition of Baby’s father, Jake, I too can work harder for my relationships.
Reasons I Love Rom-Coms: #3 I Get to Live Vicariously Through Characters
Not everybody can be like Frances in Under the Tuscan Sun, who packs up and leaves for Italy to search for her life’s purpose when mid-life crisis hits. If you are one of those people, I congratulate you for your carpe diem attitude. I love that. Not everybody is insane enough to walk off with a stranger at Grand Central Station in the middle of the night like Brooke does in Before We Go (2014). Rom-coms give us the opportunity to live vacariously through the characters, getting a taste of what it’s like to do something that we have always wanted to do, without actually having to do them in real life for obvious safety reasons.
Criticism Against Rom-Coms
Real-life relationships don’t really involve people dancing in water fountains like Sylvia and Marcello do in La Dolce Vita (1960). People who decide to take a wade in public monuments would usually get arrested. Some rom-coms walk the line of justifying unacceptable and even criminal behavior in the name of love. According to Dr. Jess Carbino, PhD in sociology, people often compare their real-life relationship to the romanticized relationships in rom-coms. Carbino claims that “there’s an unwillingness to compromise on an ideal that represents the romanticized version of love popularized in film.”
Real-life relationships also shouldn’t be abusive like the one between Emma and Marcello in the same movie. Not only do some rom-coms create unrealistic expectations of love for viewers, but some also romanticize unequal and abusive relationships. Movies such as There’s Something About Mary (1998) justify the absolutely unacceptable behavior of stalking, which is defined by the National Institute of Justice as “a course of conduct directed at a specific person that involves repeated (two or more occasions) visual or physical proximity, non-consensual communication, or verbal, written, or implied threats, or a combination thereof, that would cause a reasonable person fear.”
Importance of Critical Thinking
Although some rom-coms rightfully deserve the aforementioned criticism, it would be wrong to claim that all rom-coms are guilty of promoting such toxic views in popular culture when movies such as How to Be Single (2016) promote the positive and feminist message that self-worth doesn’t have to come from relationships. Just like everything else in our lives, problems arise from the way people interpret information rather than the information per se. Blaming the movies for people's blind intake of information is falling victim to bad generalization of an entire genre of entertainment. As critical thinkers, we should note the difference between dramaticized plots and real life situations. Instead of blinding believing everything that we watch on screens, it is of monumental importance that we process and judge for ourselves how to take that information in. We can either avoid the problematic movies altogether, or watch them with the understanding that real-life relationships should not look like that. There is no reason to hate on rom-coms when we can block out the toxic messages and extract important lessons of self-love from the two hours of light entertainment.
