Romantic Comedies 101

Rom coms were invented thanks to Hollywood censorship. In this introduction to a five-episode series exploring the vintage screwballs to the modern screwups, Cristen and Caroline spotlight the hallmarks, hijinks and heteronormativity of the romantic comedy movie genre.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and this episode on romantic comedies
is kicking off our summer series all about rom Coms.

(00:24):
I know you guys were so excited about the suggestions,
so I'm I'm hoping you're all listening yes, because we've
got a lot to talk about this intro episode. It's
gonna cover a lot of ground. It's gonna cover the
history and evolution of romantic comedies, where they came from,
the role that censorship played Shakespeare. We've got it all.
Are we gonna have a meat cute somehow? Yeah? Well
every day is a meat cute. Every day stuff Mom

(00:47):
never told you? Um, yeah, we have a lot of
ground to cover. And I gotta say, Caroline, this was
some of the most fun stuff I've never told you
research totally ever because I got to just watch some
rom comsat and seen a ever or be not a
long time. Yeah, so I watched for the first time
ever to prepare for this. Um His Girl Friday fabulous,

(01:09):
starring the dashing Carrie Grant and one of my faves
Rosalind Russell. Yes, but I fell asleep because my brain
was too tuckered out with all of that fast paced,
quick witted, sparkling dialogue. Oh yeah, the old screwball comedy

(01:29):
back and Forth. It is a super screwball comedy and
I loved it, and like you spend the whole time
being like, I love that they're at odds because that
is such a rom com troupe, the Man and the
Woman at Odds, UM, and I loved it my favorite.
Some of my favorites, though, are I would have to say,
like high Fidelity. I love Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. UM.

(01:53):
And if if you're looking at like shows not just movies,
I think You're the Worst is a great example of
like a new age romantic comedy because it is like
two people being terrible but they are hilarious and in love. UM.
I watched for this episode bringing up Baby last Night, UM,
which is another one of my faiths for listeners who

(02:16):
don't know UM. I watched a lot of old movies
as a kid because it was mostly the only thing
I was allowed to watch. UM, and I had so
little appreciation for Katherine Hepburn when I was growing up,
I was all about Audrey Hepburn. I was like Catherine
Hupburn or whatever. But oh my gosh, she is fantastic

(02:36):
and Bringing Up Baby is one of her earliest films
and she plays this zany heiress whom Carrie Grant, who's
playing a zoologist in this episode, a zany zoologists. He's
not zany at all. No, he's just like trying to
get her out of his life. But Katherine Hepburn's character
was like, no, I'm gonna marry you, and I'm gonna

(02:56):
marry you. I knew it when I first saw you.
So she just like bamboos all him into essentially having
to um stay with her the whole time. And I
don't want to spoil it. Um, So that was fantastic
to watch. I also went back and watched Stuff Mom
Never Told You. Fans is number one favorite rom com

(03:18):
based on the very unscientific Facebook survey that we took
a while back. Now, um just asking folks what their
favorite rom com was, and the one that came up
the most in a close, very close to love actually,
which was number two, was You've Got Mail that I
think it's so funny. Yeah, especially going back and watching

(03:42):
You've Got Mail in. Well, that's dude roommates favorite rom com.
Oh wow, why does he love it so much? You've
Got Me? I don't know, but he like unabashedly. I
mean he jokes about it, but like he loves that movie. Well,
I gotta say Tom Hanks is very charming in it.
You know when I watched that movie when it came

(04:02):
out years and years and years ago, now twenty years ago,
Oh my god. Um, I hated it because I was
just like, you're tricking her. You're the big bad Barnes
and Noble guy. And I mean, obviously I know that
it's based on the Shop around the Corner, which is
an older movie. Um, but like you're the big bad
bookstore guy who is bamboozling Meg Ryan and her little

(04:23):
local bookstore. Support your local bookstore. There's always so much
bamboozling happening in rom coms, so much deceit. Seriously, Yeah no,
that is literally when you read academic works on rom coms,
of which there are some, uh, they talk about the
masquerade or the deceit as being one of the major tropes,

(04:44):
plot devices, what have you that drives the plot forward. Um.
Also I gotta give a quick shout out and You've
got mailed to Parker Posey. Forgot she was in it.
She plays Tom Hanks's girlfriend and she's terriffed there because
she's just she's Parker Posey. I mean, what else you
need to say. By the way, listeners, if you don't

(05:04):
already follow Parker Posey on Instagram and do it, oh
I don't because it's bizarre. It's just her snapchat. But
it's really funny. Um. But yeah, I mean like You've
Got Mail though, really crystallizes so many of the common
elements of more modern rom coms because Nora fron, Meg Ryan,

(05:25):
Tom Hanks and her hair and her hair. Um. Also,
I love a Greg Canear. Oh yeah, he would show up.
And I don't know if Sabrina. I guess Sabrina is
considered a rom com, the remake and the original. Um,
but yeah, it was. It was really interesting to go
back and watch that, and also in terms of the
deceit and masquerading that's so common in rom coms, sitting

(05:48):
there and being like, oh, now Facebook, would Facebook would
take care of all that? Oh no, she can google him? No,
she was just Google. Yeah. I mean smartphones really just
ruin all romance in movies. Yeah, whether it's like an
action movie with kidnapping or what like, Yeah, ruin everything.
But those fantastical worlds where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks

(06:11):
and you've got males somehow would not figure out who
each other is. You know, you have all of these
plot devices that requires some magical thinking A lot of
times when we watch rom coms. And I was listening
to Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast UM about rom coms
in preparation for this podcast, and one of them mentioned

(06:34):
a piece at Mindy Kaling wrote a while back UM
in the New Yorker, and when she says, I regard
romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci fi in which
the world operates according to different rules than my regular
human world. For me, there's no difference between Ripley from
Alien and any Katherine Heigel character. And I had never

(06:55):
thought about it before, but it's so true totally. Oh absolutely,
I yes, I have long considered romantic comedy, specifically of
that like nineties flavor um to be fairy tales. Oh
Sleepless in Seattle. Oh yeah, I mean yes, when you
go back and watch I did watch Sleepless in Seattle

(07:17):
like a year ago probably, and was like, are you
kidding me with this? I mean, if someone going to
tell you, Okay, so a woman here's a boy on
the radio and g by virtue of hearing the boys story,
falls in love with the dad and then kind of
stalks simpathies but works out and then they fall in love.

(07:37):
How many rom coms are just flat out stalking god,
A lot of of consented lines that are, yeah, you're
not you're not wrong, And I mean it's interesting to watch.
I think that rom com evolution because we are out
of the age of the Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Julia

(07:58):
Roberts kind of deal, Hugh Grant, Hugh Grant, Yes, thank you.
He have the bumbling Grant era, the whole Matthew McConaughey,
Kate Hudson's stuff. And we've moved into what I think
is a really interesting era for romantic comedy. And I
was trying to come up with some examples of modern

(08:19):
romantic comedy, and I act accidentally side note, kept just
coming up with like self romantic comedy, where like the
woman learned something about herself, but it's like real quirky
and funny along the way, like Francis Ha, have you
seen that movie? I have one of my favorite movies.
I think it's precious and it's like women's relationships and
with their bestie and with themselves and growing and all

(08:40):
this stuff. And I kept writing those down in my notes,
is like, this is my favorite rong. Oh it's it's
not a rom comp okay, Um, but I love. The
one movie I did keep coming back to was Obvious
Child with Jenny Slate, where it's you've got the the
tropes of meat cute and in a way and uh,
a little bit of deception and masquerading and awkwardness and

(09:04):
uncomfortable nous um and you know, boy gets girl or
girl gets boy. Uh, all framed around an abortion and
and it's a fantastic movie. And it starts out with
maybe one of my favorite jokes in the world. If
you haven't seen it, you really need to see it.
We can't really say it on the podcast. Um, so yes,

(09:24):
see Obvious Child asap. Um. You also noted Robbia Patel's
Meet the Patel's, which is another one I watched this weekend. Um.
You can ps get a lot of rom com watching
done when you're making wedding crafts. So that was very helpful.
So get married, Yes, we'll just get engaged because after

(09:44):
after you get married and you have no time. I'm
assuming I don't know. Um. And I've been wanting to
watch Meet the Patel's for a long time because I
had heard rave reviews about it um and also because
it's told documentary style UM. And it was really well done.
I mean it was a com also through a completely
different culture, obviously through an Indian culture, um, that we

(10:06):
do not see in Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson films. Right.
And also it won the top prize at the Traverse City,
Michigan Film Festival. What up Northern Michigan. Um. But speaking
of Matthew McConaughey, you know, he's faced a lot of
cocked eyebrows basically for his crappy rom com I'm gonna
say it, I'm sorry for a lot of his really

(10:27):
terrible rom coms that he's been in and leaving those
behind in favor of starring and things like True Detective
and Dallas Buyer's Club, things that have a lot of
dramatic clout. And he basically he told this interviewer. I
think it was for Variety that he's sick of this
then and now narrative in terms of his career, and
he says, because the thing behind it that people assume

(10:49):
is that rom coms aren't critical hits and that they're easy,
and they're not easy. It's a hard challenge, he said,
to make it work, to tell a story you've seen
time and time again that you know what the ending
is going to be. And he's right, but it's like,
I just by the time, I don't know if it
was my age or if it was just Matthew McConaughey
and Kate Hudson that I couldn't take anymore, but I

(11:11):
definitely hit a point where it's like I cannot want.
Maybe it's Jennifer Lopez to a lovers. Great actors cannot
take her romantic comedies, but they do. They come off
as so dumb and saccharin and easy to dismiss because
they're just so tropy and easy to predict, and they're
so coded. You know that if a movie has Kate

(11:33):
Hudson and Matthew McConaughey and you know they're going to
end up together, there's no drama. But then it wouldn't
be a romantic comedy if there were. Well, it's a
very specific genre. I gotta tell you that if Paddle
is a guy in ten Days just happens to be
on a screen in front of me on a weekend,
I will watch it. I really enjoy I mean like,

(11:54):
and that is it is super tropy, of course, and
of course you know that there's going to be some conflict,
they'll lose each other and then they'll on each other again.
But there is a comfort in the formulaic nature of
it too. Um. But all of those things that you
just noted in terms of how predictable they are and
how much they rely on gender stereotypes, and how even

(12:17):
all the rom coms that are set in New York,
everyone lives in impossibly huge apartments and they're all in
like publishing and marketing and newspapers and magazines. Oh yeah,
I love that Kate Hudson is like a magazine writer
and apparently makes like well over six figures um to
have the apartment and the wardrobe that she does. And

(12:37):
because of those kind of sci fi rules, as Mindy
Kaley describes them, they are easily dismissed, And in our
conversation about this, we're going to be referring to tomorrow
Jeffers McDonald's book Romantic Comedy, Boy Meets Girl, meets Genre.
That's right, And only five romantic comedies have won the

(12:59):
Academy Award for Best Picture. And I'm honestly surprised it's five.
It's that many. Um, it happened one night from thirty four,
which is basically cited as like the o G romantic
comedy that started at the screwball genre, which of course
we'll talk about more and more in depth later. Uh,
you can't take it with you. Nineteen sixties, The Apartment seven,

(13:23):
Annie Hall, and Shakespeare in Love, which I love. Still
never seen Shakespeare and looks really good. It is really
good and and obviously so is Annie Hall. And unfortunately
I haven't seen the other three. The Apartment is fantastic. Yeah,
it'll um, it'll throw you for a loop in a
good way. Um. And of course they all follow the

(13:43):
same basic formula, the same basic heteronormative formula of boy
meets girl, boy loses girl, and boy does everything that
he can or vice versa to regain the girl. Um.
Things that tend to happen, include weddings derailed at the
last minute. I mean, really, if you count up all

(14:04):
the west wasted wedding money, just millions of dollars didn't
occur to me until I was an adult. But Chief Um,
you also have the masquerade, as you mentioned, and Um,
the embarrassing gesture, which is essentially like submitting to humiliation
in order to prove your love, like I'm putting everything
out there for you, like what a fool I am.

(14:27):
I'm standing in front of your house with a boom
box on my shoulder, right, And again that goes back
to the sci fi nature of so many rom coms,
because if you're standing up, if I've rejected you and
you're standing outside of my house with a boombox, I'm
calling nine one one any who. And of course, another
element of the formula is the meat cute, which is
basically the two characters meet in a way that forecasts

(14:49):
their union. And Billy Wilder, the twentieth century screenwriter director
uh is one of the foremost proponents of the cute. Yeah,
he told Um an interviewer at the Paris Review, that
at the time, he and other screenwriters would just keep
notebooks of meat cutes. Anytime a meat cute idea would

(15:12):
come to mind, they'd be like, oh, that's another one,
because you had to have a meat cute. Well yeah,
And in case you're like, I'm still not clear on
what a meat cute is, here's an example from a
Wilder script, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, features the couple first crossing
paths in a department store where the guy wants to
buy just the top of the pajamas and the woman
wants to buy just the bottom. I mean, how often

(15:34):
does that happen to you? Care? Oh, my god, all
the time when I'm shopping in the men's section of
the department store for pajamas, for pajamas. Um. And you
also see very familiar conflicts that tend to arise. You
have the whole parent child conflict, which is um super common,
whether it's parents you know, disapproving of relationship or parents

(15:58):
just generally being disappointed in their children, are being overly
um ambitious in terms of what they want for their kids.
And then you have conflicts with courting men and women
that struggle to find common ground, and the opposition of
the gender cultures. I mean, I think, uh, how to
lose a guy. Inton Days plays that up so much.

(16:20):
It's like you bring over tampons to a man's bathroom
and he'll throw you out mid intercourse. But one thing
that McDonald notes about this whole gender based conflict thing
that is so trophy in rom comms is that the
dual protagonist perspective actually does offer really great characters on

(16:43):
the men's side and the women's side. So it's obviously
you have romantic comedies that are more from the woman's
perspective or more from the man's. But when you have
a Sleepless in Seattle case where it is like Tom
Hanks is the main character and so is Meg Ryan,
it gives you that chance to see how men and
women can both be strong and weak, can be trophy

(17:04):
masculine and trophy feminine, but can also go against those
gender norms. And she points out great traditional rom com
actors like Carrie Grant, James Stewart and Hugh Grant who
are allowed to be and expected to be handsome and
strong and elegant and witty, but they also want intimacy
and they're ready to laugh at themselves. And then of

(17:25):
course you've got the classic women like Katherine Hepburn, Meg
Ryan and Julia Roberts, who are obviously beautiful and playful,
but they can also be aggressive and assertive and sassy
and independent. And it goes to the Yen and the Yang,
the uh renee Zellwigger, Tom Cruise. You complete me. And
that's a byproduct of having these two great characters, even

(17:47):
if they do exhibit a lot of trophy gross stuff
that we're sick of, it allows for really well rounded
characters that essentially serve to complete each other well. And
it also shows how you portrays these characters as both
fallible when it comes to love and a lot of
times they are tripped up by those very gender stereotypes

(18:08):
that a lot of times rom coms are propping up right,
But again, like if you maintain the gender conflict throughout
the whole movie, they might never get together. So you've
got to like have a way for them to overlap
their sensibilities so that they can have that happy ending.
And of course, the central ideology, the central idea driving

(18:31):
rom coms is the primary importance of the couple, which
of course traditionally has been white and has been heterosexual.
Although we did start to see like in the nineties,
more attempts to include more LGBT storylines, more people of
color falling in love because who knew it's not just white,
straight people falling in love in real life. Um. But

(18:54):
regardless of who is falling in love in these movies,
monogamy rules the day uh settle in a relationship. Sex
is at the heart of the rom com because monogamy
and you know, one partner only relationships stand in for
basically social stability. Um. But it is interesting. Several of

(19:15):
the writers that we read to prepare for this episode
point out that romance, grand romance, and actual relationship stability
kind of have different goals. So you know, these characters
are are pursuing and infecting our minds with the drive
for constant, eternal butterflies in stomach romance, but they're also

(19:38):
going for marriage and babies eventually, like that's also the goal.
And you know, your traditional long term relationship is not
always going to be butterflies in the stocks some sometimes
you're going to fight about the dishwasher or the toilet seat. Hence,
we don't want to see people mid relationship in rom coms.
We want to see single people. We want to see

(19:58):
the conflict in sexual tension, and the anxiety that all
leads up to the final climax. That's why I love
the movie to day is it two Days in Paris
Um where they are mid relationship and they go to
Paris to see her parents and massive conflict ensues, and

(20:21):
that's so fascinating to me. I'm so over rom com Troops.
But that doesn't mean we're done talking about it, because
of course we've been talking about gender, but we've been
talking about gender within the film itself. But the fact
that rom coms are so strongly associated with female audiences
is a huge reason that they face a lot of criticism.

(20:41):
I mean, these movies are marketed to women, and they
are assumed therefore too largely appeal to women, and so
it's for these reasons that a lot of scholars and
critics alike consciously or unconsciously disparage them. It's like the
whole conversation we had a couple of summers ago about
Chicklet and how marginalized it as simply because it's marketed

(21:04):
to women well, and female fandom at large, you know,
like teeny bopper type of stuff. Girls and women being
dismissed for what they like in pop culture. Um, but
it's interesting when you think about these plots of these movies,
it's not like it's only the woman who gets the happy, warm,
fuzzy fields. The man's getting it too. And it's this

(21:25):
myth of perfect love that appeals to everyone, not just men,
not just women, not just straight people. And these narratives
that we see so often in rom coms demonstrate that
both the woman and the man have to change and
adapt to come together basically. And it's interesting that it's again,

(21:46):
it's not just the woman in the audience who's like, hey,
you should change to fine love. The man watching the
rom com is also being presented with these images, whether
it's Carrie Grant or Hugh Grant or whoever, these you know,
handsome guys and great apartments who are living these great lives,
drinking martiniz and whatever, and it's like, here here's an

(22:08):
image for you to try to aspire to as well.
So you see, as rom coms evolve from their origins,
and then especially once you hit the fifties and sixties,
of like kind of this con slick consumer culture getting
wrapped up in them as well. Well. If we talk
about the origins of rom coms as a genre. We

(22:29):
have to go back before film was invented, before Oscar
Wilde and Jane austen Um to Shakespeare, because really a
lot of the rom com formulas that we still see
today on screen came straight from the Bard. Well yeah,
and I mean you see, you know, love triangles in

(22:49):
Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night, and in Taming of
the Shrew you see the crude sister who ends up tame.
It's also what Tim thinks I Hate about You is
based on bt dew um you see and much of
You about Nothing, couples ripped apart by scandal and getting
back together, And I mean that they're total direct ancestors

(23:10):
to a movie like How to Lose a Guy in
Ten Days, which is like the entire plot is based
on deception and getting ripped apart and then getting thrown
back together, that dramatic irony that Shakespeare was so expert
at well, and also playing around a lot with status
and someone ending up with maybe an unexpected person, but

(23:33):
the right person. So um. One example that Jesse catle
Over at Hyperbole mentioned was how that happens in both
Midsummer Night's Dream and also legally blonde. Yeah, and once
we get into Hollywood, even in the silent era, we
have rom coms, which are kind of hard to imagine
silent rom coms, but old Cecil by the Mill was

(23:56):
making them. You know, who hasn't seen the classic nineteen
old Wives for New you know, or nineteen nineteens Don't
Change Your Husband. I love the titles of these films
because then in n I'm assuming this is a sequel
to Don't Change Your Husband, DeMille put out why Change
your Wife? They sound like chapters in a book. Yeah.

(24:20):
I think was Cecil be the Mill just like working
out some marital issues through through the camera. I don't know,
but yeah, these are basically essentially moralistic early rom com
type films. You also have in Sherlock Junr and Girl
Shy that follow the Shakespearean meat have conflict and then

(24:43):
have happy reunion plot device. But as you can imagine,
the whole silent thing kind of puts the damper on
the rom comm stuff because you're like watching and you're
here on all the piano or the organ music, and
you're like, oh my god, they're having witty dialogue and
you've gotta wait, wait, wait, and you get the little
car that like and get out of here, you brute.
And then it goes on. You're seeing more dialogue and

(25:05):
she's being you know, roped to a set of train
tracks and you're like, what's going on and it's like, oh, actually,
I love you, thanks for saving me. It kind of
like Screws with the pacing. I would really like Mystery
Science three thousand with you, but just with silent films.
I would also like that if anyone wants to sign
up and start a campaign, that would be great. Um.

(25:27):
But it was really this, this is a twist, here's
a plot twist. Listeners. Censorship was really what propelled screwball comedies,
classic screwball comedies, And this was something that David Denby
wrote about in The New Yorker. Because of course, sensors
always existed because people were, you know, worried about the

(25:49):
effects of film on young people. So the moral standards
have been around since nineteen two, when the Motion Pictures
Producers and Distributors Association, which would later become m p
a A recruited oh Will Hayes as president to administer morals,
which was at first basically just a verbal agreement with

(26:10):
producers like, hey, you know, don't do anything that will
corrupt the minds of the youth. Um. But of course
with Hayes came to Hayes Code. Yeah. So at first,
censorship was pretty inconsistent. Things would be banned in some
cities and not others. But interestingly, of course bands on
female sexuality we're pretty consistent. You had theoto beras Vamp

(26:31):
movies band. Anything about adultery was like super taboo. Even
Margaret Sanger's film Birth Control, which I somehow didn't know existed,
even though we talked about her a lot in our
episodes on abortion, that was banned. And in the early thirties,
post sound, you get a lot of newspaper comedies, gangster flicks, musical's, horror, melodrama,

(26:52):
things that could really finally take advantage of sound. But
at this time you also see a lot of movies
despite the fact that we're having those moral standards, remember
they're not being consistently applied yet, So you see a
lot of movies with bad girls and scandal like Gene
Harlow and The Red Headed Woman as an unstoppable and
unpunished home wreckerd working from a script by Anita Lose

(27:15):
By the way you see Miriam Hopkins in the story
of Temple Drake, she's a woman who lives with a
gangster before she returns to respectability, and may West in
a lot of her films where she's the super sexual
being who took her pick of men. And a lot
of feminist film critics love this period in film history
because even though you know, not all portrayals of female

(27:37):
sexuality are positive and some are exploitive, during this period,
you still don't see women necessarily having to fit into
a strict moral pattern or a specific box about how
to act, and they're not yet being killed off for
being sexual. But with the Hayze Code comes those super

(27:59):
strict serds for what could be shown on screen, and
it really grew out of essentially this group of Catholic
folks who developed a set of standards that would become
the official Hayes Code. Prohibited profanity, licentious or suggestive nudity,
sexual perversions, and rape. And this is also where you

(28:20):
get married people in the movies sleeping in separate beds,
because you can't even suggest that even a married man
and woman might sleep together. And so in ninety three,
you get the Catholic based legion of decency, which sounds
either terrifying or lame. I can't really decide um that's
crusading against Hollywood as a moral threat. At the same

(28:42):
time that you see women's groups protesting depravity and the
mp p d A has to review screenplays before they
go into production. They demand changes, and this is when
you see the punishment of sexual women of loose women
basically be officially instituted. This film group adds the practice

(29:06):
of moral compensation. Basically, sin could be shown, women could
be living it up sexually, but they have to be punished.
So the woman who has sex or commits adultery or whatever,
she's got to drive off a cliff or she's got
to lose everything. Uh. Films, literally, films in the early
thirties that had already been made were recut to show

(29:27):
the woman who basically was like, oh, I had a
hard life, but I'm happy now, Like she had to
lose everything. They were like, nope, you got a film
and Louisa just go off a cliff. Yeah. And so basically,
once the Hayes Code came into effect, filmmakers had to
get creative. So this is happening in the mid nineteen thirties,
and the challenge put to producers, directors, and writers was

(29:53):
to create sex without sex. Essentially, you had to somehow,
um depict sexual tension without of course, um igniting the
ire of the haze code. So this actually produced really
fantastic results for romantic comedy, and it really led to

(30:14):
the whole genre of screwball comedies because you get this
physicality with these early rom coms to where you know,
you can't really show them in a certainly not in
a bed together, even like bedrooms are a little bit
off limits, so sex becomes playful or a lot of dance.
I mean, if you have seen um films with Rettistaire

(30:34):
and Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly and any number of
the women that he co starred with, their dance numbers
are essentially sex scenes in a lot of ways, I mean,
because that's how that's how they woo the woman was
through you know, tap dancing, which why doesn't that happen
in real life? Um? And even in the movie Bringing

(30:59):
a bay Be with Carrie Grant and Katherine Hepburn, which
came out I believe in nineteen eight I was thinking
about this when I was watching it, because there's this
scene where they're in a nightclub and carry Grant steps
on the back of Katherine Hepburn's gown and it rips
off the back so her the pent loons are exposed,

(31:21):
and he's like, oh, no, no, no, and she finally
realizes what's happened, and so to get through the restaurant,
he like, you know, holds her from behind, you know,
and they like walk in it's a really funny way,
like two by two um through the restaurant, but they're
so close there's no room for the Holy Spirit between them,

(31:41):
not at all. And I was like, oh, there it is.
They're creating sex without sex. I had no idea that's
what I was watching. Okay, that's right. And and I
love the context of this because you know, we've moved
obviously from the silent era, but you still have those
people working in Hollywood, and they had been expert at
communicating comedy silent late, so you had still a lot

(32:02):
of those uh, silent comedy directors who were so adept
at weaving in visual comedy. Pratt falls hilarious little moments
into those films. But you also had a lot of
that sparkling, quick dialogue that you obviously couldn't have in
silent films, um being written by both men and women

(32:22):
from back East, people who were veterans of Broadway, who
were so skilled at writing that all consuming dialogue that
apparently can put me to sleep if my brain gets
too tired watching it. But it did create these great
speaking roles for women who could carry these films. Oh man,
like Katherine Hepburn just and also Rosalind Russell were I

(32:45):
mean so terrific at that just missed machine guns tocato,
Oh my god, I know? And Denby credits uh, William
Powell and Merna Lloyd in The Thin Man and Carrie
Grant and Catherine Hepburn in y eight Holiday Uh with
sort of setting the tone, displacing sex with wit, affection

(33:06):
and style and setting the ball rolling on the era
of screwball comedy and thank goodness. By the early fifties,
movies finally get First Amendment protection through a Supreme Court ruling.
But a lot of the film scholars we read were like,
I don't know, I kind of took something away when
they were when filmmakers were forced to work around these regulations,

(33:28):
so If we look at the timeline of rom coms
in Hollywood, the entire genre can be broken down into
many genres. So in the nineteen twenties and thirties, with
those earliest rom com talkies, they were really comedies of
manners that played a lot with status, revolving around relationships

(33:49):
between people of different social classes, the high Low, and
one of the films often cited is It Happened One Night,
four with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. And you will
later see this theme in movies like two Thousand Nins,
The Proposal and two thousand Ones bridget Gen's Diary, basically
people of different social classes winding up together and becoming

(34:09):
better people. Although I could argue that Hugh Grant never
becomes a better person and burns, Oh yeah, he really
doesn't Hugh Grant the person. No, Oh, well, I don't know,
but you know this is coming out. This is the
midst of the Great Depression, and despite the fact that
people were losing their jobs they had no money, movies
still remain popular, especially movies like It Happened One Night,

(34:31):
because these screwy romantic comedies were portraying the problems of
the depression, but with characters that ultimately triumphed over them,
and so you get exposed for instance, and it happened
one night to the upper class life of Ellie, but
you then watch she has to cross the country with
no money and this is an enriching experience that helps

(34:54):
her grow. And a lot of people were attracted to
the ideas in these films that poverty was more orally
superior to wealth, and that your book learning or your
city learning was no better and definitely not superior to
the school of hard knocks that a lot of people
were living through during this time. And um I gotta
mentioned one side fact about Clark Gable in this movie

(35:16):
Caroline that goes back to our episode on toplessness and
how we talked about um maile. Toplessness was not accepted
for a while in the twentieth century as well. Male
nipples not okay at the beach, but it happened one
night contains a scene in the bedroom where Clark Gable

(35:36):
takes his shirt off and he's got nothing on underneath.
Oh my gosh, I know. And this was I mean
talk about creating sex without sex. I mean the side
of Clark Gables. Nipples were a pretty huge deal in
Hollywood at the time, especially since he had like seven
of them. He had so many extra nipples. Um. And
one source that I read said that correlation causation, sure,

(35:58):
but under sure. Sales plummeted after the movie came out
because it was wildly popular and people were like, it's
just Clark Gable winning Claudet Colbert with no under shirt on.
Look at those nips, look at those nips. Uh. But anyway, uh,
once we get into the thirties and forties, it happened
one night really did pave the way for the screwball

(36:21):
era UM, which specifically lasts between two ish if you
want to get technical about it, and screwball. Romantic comedies
are basically ninety minutes of a guy and a girl
just putting each other through hell yeah and also just

(36:42):
like injuring themselves over and over again, um, in the
process of falling in love. Yeah. And it's the movie
twentieth Century that's also cited as a paved the wayer
in this genre, and it really ushered in that idea
that people who love each other can and will do
anything they possibly can to torment one another. And this

(37:03):
is also a great era like I said, for women characters,
because you finally have a lot of league characters who
are driving the story and are able, like a Catherine
Hepburn or a Rosalind Russell to give as good as
she gets. She knows her in mind. She isn't above
humiliating the guy. She's smart enough to outsmart him, and
she can even be aggressive or a little predatory. But

(37:26):
writing about film genre, specifically romantic comedy, Julie Selbo says
that as big a fans as so many feminist film
critics are of this era, others have written that the
threatened violence between couples, especially toward female characters, is a
sign that they weren't necessarily celebrated as independent and active women,

(37:50):
but that there is some anxiety around women's independence that's
getting acted out on screen. I completely disagree. Well, no,
go tell me I completely disagree. I mean as an
armchair like twelve year old consumer of these films. Um.
And also I was I was thinking about this specifically

(38:11):
when I was watching Bringing Up Baby last night, because
it's very physical and Katherine Hepburn and Carrie Grant both
are constantly tripping and falling. Like I said, just somehow
hurting themselves, having car accidents, you name it, um, And
I don't think that it is any way of trying
to punish Katherine Hepburn's strong willed heiress, but rather, I

(38:36):
mean I thought it was really fantastic to see a
woman being as active on screen as the lead man,
you know. I mean that was my initial reaction to
reading that was, like, these women, like you said, they
give as good as they get and sometimes, just like

(38:57):
the dudes in screwball comedies, specifically that involves tripping and falling,
Like I mean, there's a lot of banana peals everywhere,
so to speak. Yeah, And so you've got these screwball
comedies that are so popular there they are the genre
of romantic comedies during this time. And I mean, you've
got elements still of those early nine twenties comedies of manners. Uh,

(39:20):
You've still got that reverse class Nobbery role play masquerade um,
a conventionally repressed person male or female being brought out
of his or her shell by the zany person in
that case of zany heiress um. And then you know,
being like, oh my god, you're so weird. Oh but
I think I love you now, especially if that person

(39:42):
takes off his or her glasses. This is also a
genre that loves the magical makeover, which yeah, it really
just requires like classes removable, you're beautiful. But what's interesting
to see, because nothing exists in a vacuum, is that
this whole screwball name fature. Although it never truly goes away,

(40:02):
as we can see in our romantic comedies today, it
starts to fade and get a little darker post World
War two. So you go from a plot like Philadelphia
Story where the divorced couple reunites and that's the tension, uh,
to that of the film The Marrying Kind, which focuses
instead on the path to divorce. And of course it's

(40:24):
not like divorce was like super common or accepted back
then necessarily, but it was showing up in our pop
culture definitely as a reflection of the times. Oh yeah,
I mean in the fifties and sixties you start having
x is as common parts of rom coms, and the
late fifties through the early seventies is known as the

(40:45):
era of the sex comedy. Yeah, so through the early
from the early fifties through the mid sixties particularly, the
genre definitely lightens again. But that entails masculine and feminine
roles becoming super black, white, oversimplified, and very explicit. Men
were painted as wanting sex without strings. Women were painted

(41:07):
as wanting financial security. If you've seen How to Marry
a Millionaire, the seven year rich, some like a hot gentleman,
prefer blonde's pillow talk, all of that stuff, you know
what we're talking about. And so the the defining characteristics
of these sex comedies were revolving around those gender differences
about when sex should happen, because obviously the woman didn't

(41:27):
want it till she was married, because that was what
created the tension, right. The man's like, how about how
they give it to me now, baby, and the woman's like, no,
not until we're married. It's like, oh, but I'm a
bachelor with a martini and a record player. Uh, marriage
is tragic and awful and it's gonna hamper my lifestyle.
And she's like, well, then you're just not good enough
for me. And then he's like, oh no, let me
take off my glasses. I really love you. So that's

(41:50):
early sex comedy. It turns out they were just drunk
on martinis and woke up the next day completely hungover
and they were like, this is a terrible idea. Oh man, well, yeah,
a terrible idea because I fell in love with each other.
And that's why the whole masquerade thing is one of
the largest plot devices for these sex comedies. And usually
with sexual motives, you've got a man like Rock Hudson

(42:12):
and lover comeback pretending to be a shy scientist to
seduce storist day. But when the woman does it, it
tends to be to like get one up on a
female rival, or to get the dirt on a female rival,
rather than necessarily to get back at the dude. And again,
nothing exists in a vacuum. I can say that all
the time for everything we ever record because the sex

(42:36):
comedy was ushered in by a very specific set of
cultural circumstances happening at the same time. So in nine
three you have the release of the Kinsey Reports that
gets everyone talking about sex. You also have the birth
of Playboy happening. There are more people becoming fed up
with sexual double standards and these assumptions that women don't

(43:00):
want or like to have sex. Uh. In nineteen sixty
we get the pill. I mean, you also have Cosmopolitan
magazine UM and Helly Helen Gurley Brown taking it over later,
I believe in the sixties or early seventies, and in
nineteen sixty six the strict moralistic film codes were replaced

(43:21):
with rating systems, thanks to efforts by Otto Preminger to
go around the codes and find distribution for his sexually
frank nineteen fifty three films that I have not seen,
Uh The Moon Is Blue, which apparently is a rom
com that investigates sexual desires and double standards. But even still,

(43:42):
even if it's not like in Your Face, there were
so many like double entendres and all these films like
How to Marry a Millionaire in the Seven Year Itch,
which is where you have the famous scene of uh,
Marilyn Monroe standing above the subway great in her dress
blows up and the guy's like, I don't know if
I with my wife. Well, so, from the mid sixties on,

(44:06):
you know, rom coms are becoming way more frank when
it comes to sex. But in return we see the
whole faith and traditional romantic outcomes becoming a little ambivalent
or even pestimistic. We're getting into the seventies where we
get movies like Annie Hall and the Graduate and Harold
and Maud, which is the era of the radical romantic comedy,

(44:26):
which is like, is love even real? Yeah? Apparently, you know.
The seventies is known as the me decade, when the
sexual revolution is overhauling sexual morays and you have more
women achieving more financial independence. I believe it was nine
when we're finally unmarried. Women were finally allowed to uh

(44:46):
have credit cards. Good for them, I know, and that
way clueless could happen. Um and women's roles, though around
this time in films became diminished with the rise of
comedies and action adventure plots. And if you look, you
know that's happening. And simultaneously I r L. Men and

(45:09):
women are becoming more open about sex and desire. So
what kind of tension can you build in a rom com?
I mean love this old school? Yeah, So you have
people like Woody Allen and others investigating whether true love
even exists, our soulmates a thing? Do we even need
to have love in our lives to be fulfilled? Or

(45:32):
you know the sad seck I'm so empty because I
no longer believe in the importance of love. And these
films are really characterized by this cynicism that eventually moves
toward acceptance of romantic love, but without necessarily losing their identities,
without necessarily having the all consuming fairy tale going on.

(45:53):
And so characteristics of these rom comms include that sexual
frankness and that questioning of the important of love. They're
also breaking social conventions, so you're seeing divorce and children
out of wedlock being depicted. And because it is the
Me generation or the Me decade, that emphasis on the self,
You're seeing more characters in therapy or analysis. You're seeing

(46:14):
more people talking about and reading self help books and um.
In the movie Starting Over, for instance, the character alludes
to a women's self defense class. She's talking about the
right and wrong kinds of orgasms and post divorce support groups,
and on a clear day you can see Forever and
an unmarried woman. Those films emphasize the importance, oh my God,

(46:38):
of women's sexual fulfillment, because you can, finally post Hayes Code,
admit that like, oh yeah, women are sexual too. They're
like the other half of this equation. Well, and talk
about a sex comedy of this era that just came
to mind as you were talking about that is Um.
I don't know the year that it came out, but
I believe it was either late nineteen sixties early nineteen seven.

(47:00):
These starring the beautiful Natalie wood Um and it's called
I'm going to mess up these names, the name order,
but it's something along the lines of Bob Carol Allison Ted. No,
I think it's Bob Carol Ted and Alice And it's
about these two couples that are wondering whether they should
swing or not, and like everything revolves around that. I

(47:23):
mean talk about something a theme that you would not
see in a rom com. Well, yeah, I mean you've
got the idea too. Around this time, especially with Annie Hall,
were like, yes, we're questioning the existence of true love
and soulmates and you might not even end up together
with that person, but still love is there. So like
you know, uh, Diane Keaton's character and Woody Allen's character

(47:43):
don't end up together spoiler, but she finds love and
happiness with someone else, and he admits at the end
of the movie, like, oh well, just love is this
like crazy stupid thing that you know everybody wants and
has to have even though it's ridiculous, that crazy little
thing called love, crazy little thing called love, and so yeah,
the idea deal of love is still there, but we're
finally admitting like, oh, we can depict not tragic scenes,

(48:05):
but you know, just more like bumbling, unfortunate romances that
don't work out, even if they might work out with
other characters. Well, and when we get into the nineties
and onward, I mean that to me is such a
classic era of rom coms, because I mean, you have
Nora Fron making when Harry met Sally. I know that

(48:27):
came out in UM, but yeah, I mean it seems
like this there's really a resurgence of of rom coms.
Oh yeah, totally. I mean, so Harry met Sally is
widely considered to be an homage to Woody Allen, but
again it concludes on a totally different tone or a note,
with that amazing scene at the end where Billy Crystal

(48:50):
is confessing his love to Meg Ryan in the middle
of the parted, I just love it, and then Meg
Ryan says, no spoiler kidding. Um. So this is when
we see narratives returning that are focused on romance to
the exclusion basically for most of them, of sex. We

(49:11):
see sex. No longer being primary or even important the couple,
the romance, the fairy tale prince charming stuff is what
is of primary importance, and it's up to the protagonist
to figure out how and whether she wants it. And
this person is usually damaged in some way, uh, maybe

(49:33):
has gone through a painful experience and now they're cynical
about love because inevitably they're in New York City and
no good men are left in New York City and
they've really got to come to terms with whatever their
pain or damages to be able to come together with
prince charming, like you see again with the proposal with
Ryan Reynolds and uh, Sandra Bullock, who's also a rom

(49:56):
com queen who I just love, like Sandra Bullocks probably
one of my favorite people. I say that, like, I know,
are bandy? Are you listening, Sandy? Um? But yeah, that's
a plot where the woman is a super independent, career
driven and doesn't want love and then finally has her
cold dead heart warmed by Ryan Reynolds adorable family which

(50:18):
I believe as coach and Mary Steen Virgins it is coach. Yeah. Um,
But you see more plots like that where it's like
We're not even trying to get in bed together. We
just love each other so much. And romcom characteristics around
this time include things like nostalgia around romance, which you
absolutely see with When Harry met Sally. Um. You have

(50:40):
references to older films, stories and songs to fill characters
and moods. You actually have a d emphasis on sex
and emphasizing his place, romantic compatibility and still marriages the
end goal. Everyone wants to find that someone someone. Why
I think that whole referencing back to old films and

(51:02):
songs and stuff is so interesting because I never thought
about it that way. But when you have a movie
like My Best Friend's Wedding that's got a lot of
those great old songs in it, when you have a
Sleepless in Seattle like part of the plot is based
around and affair to remember, and so there is a
lot of that winking to the audience of like, look
at what we're trying to do. We're bringing romance back.

(51:25):
But a big exception to this very American conversation we've
been having because we are American UM is the British
rom com which did feature premarital sex Um, but they
excuse it by making the sexually aggressive partner both female
and American a lot of times, for instance, in four

(51:47):
weddings in a funeral, notting Hill and Wimbledon, which I've
never seen. I have not seen Wimbledon either, but yeah,
I think that's so funny. Again, this is a point
I literally had not considered before, but it's so true
for weddings in a funeral though, like bless Andie mcdwell's heart.
She is so pretty, but she is a terrible actress.
But Groundhog Day, that's a fun one. It was so fun.

(52:08):
But she's so like, she's just that pretty face that's
like vacant behind the ass. I have a follow up
question related to rom coms and Andy McDowell to ask you,
and also Matthew McConaughey. Is Magic Mike a rom com?
I haven't seen it. Caroline Listeners, please write me and
let me know everything that you think about Magic Mike

(52:30):
and Magic Mike XXL. Because Andy McDowell is in the
follow up, I would argue that it is a rom com.
I believe you and terrific. But anyway, well, I mean,
I think to close out, I mean, we've given you
a really huge history to introduce this topic, but I
think to close out, obviously, the calm part of the
rom com is indispensable, because if you didn't have the calm,

(52:52):
it would just probably be a rom dram and which
can be okay, you know, English, patient, whatever, but you know,
it's it's weird that, like the defining characteristic of what
makes this genre is also what makes it so dispensable.
Like it's so easy to just poo poo them and
and gloss over them and ignore them because it's something

(53:16):
that's funny and it is prat falls and it's joking,
and it's wit and snark and sarcasm, and it is
happy endings. But like I love that. Sometimes sometimes I
don't watch them as much anymore, um, and I was wondering.
I was like, do I not watch anymore because they're
terrible and I'm so sick of Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson,

(53:36):
Or do I not watch them anymore because I'm like
older and an established relationship. I don't know, And it
also makes you want to see some some scholarly analysis
of uh film criticism regarding Judd Apatow's rom coms, because
obviously that's like a whole new phase of it where
you have more of the raunch calm, but all of

(53:57):
those women still end up Like I'm waving my finger
at this because like all of those women still end
up in the traditional feminine Like I'm gonna get married
and be reformed by love things and I am going
to be pretty emotional about it, and I'm going to
be pretty well yeah, yeah, so well. I can't wait
to talk about this more now summer um, and I

(54:17):
think that we should give listeners a preview of what's
to come, because this is an overview, but we're going
to dive into more specific topics such as well, for one,
the cold, deadhearted career woman who finds love she mentioned earlier.
We're also going to dedicate an episode to l g P,

(54:40):
d Q rom coms, and also people of color and
rom comms, who are usually sidekicks. Yeah, yeah, exactly, or
the rom com is sort of a niche as a
black comedy right right, and ignored by the mainstream. And
then finally we're dedicated any one to the sidekicks themselves. Yeah,

(55:02):
I can't wait. Oh my god, there were so much
like as I was taking notes for this episode, I
was like, oh, this is this is there so much
in here for everything, and I had to stop myself
from just reading for hours, although I did read for
hours and never mind, it's really fun, um, and I
bet you have some fun letters to share with us,
including your favorite and least favorite rom coms and why
mom stuff at house Stuffworks dot Com is where you

(55:22):
can send your letters. You can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got
a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well,
I've got a letter here from Erica in response to
our episode on the comfort women of World War two. Uh.
Erica says, I found the episode very timely as I

(55:45):
just finished a paper about ethnic struggles in Japan for
my college finals. There may be several reasons behind the
disturbing fact that Japan won't acknowledge the comfort women from Korea.
One maybe because it would essentially open a can of
worms about the entire Japanese sex industry and how they
foreign women overall. This additional mistreatment has happened outside of
war and still continues today. Japan has had an influx

(56:07):
of migration since their economy boomed in the nineteen eighties,
Filipino women often traveled to Japan under entertainment visas, and
Japan allowed this, knowing that these women would turn to
or be forced into prostitution. Additionally, Filipino women were brought
into the country to marry rural farmers who couldn't find
Japanese wives. These women were forced to adopt Japanese names

(56:27):
and denine cultural identity. The point here is that this
is all very recent and may still be going on.
Japan also has a recent tradition of recruiting half Japanese
women for modeling. These girls, as young as ten, are
collected from areas with large migrant populations, usually Brazilian, and
quote unquote adopted by modeling agency staff to live with them,

(56:48):
where they are molded into the perfect Japanese citizen. This
is another way to strip a girl of her own
cultural identity and objectify her. There are several more examples
of Japanese mistreatment of foreign women, but I didn't want
to make the email too long. Thank you for all
your work and I look forward to learning more from
your podcast, and thank you Erica for your notes. We
always appreciate filling in the gaps of our episodes in

(57:09):
that whole having to take a Japanese name thing was
also going on with Korean women who were forced into
prostitution around World War Two, who uh men and women
alike had to adopt Japanese names. So thank you. So
I've got a letter here from Lauren in response to
our episode on the American military and prostitution. And Lauren

(57:30):
graduated from West Point In and served five years in
the military, including a deployment in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and she writes,
upon arrival in theater service, women received numerous lectures and
were told anecdotes urban legend or real. I'm still not
certain of women being violently sexually assaulted, as if our

(57:51):
greatest threat wasn't enemy combatants but our fellows soldiers both
American and Allies on base inside the secure perimeter. It
was so frightening that for the majority of the deployment
I carried a quick draw knife on my belt and
practice unsheathing it in case I was attacked in close quarters.
And this was on top of carrying a loaded pistol
on my hip. Female soldiers were not allowed to go

(58:13):
anywhere without a battle buddy, especially after dark, and could
get in trouble if found walking alone. I felt as
if the military was saying, ladies, is up to you
to protect yourselves, because we know these military men have
needs and eventually they won't be able to contain themselves.
I mean, really, one of the most ludicrous arguments against
women serving in combat arms, branches, and unions is that

(58:35):
women will have sex with members of their units and
damage unit cohesion and morale. So basically, men can't keep
it in their pants, so let's keep discriminating against women,
or worse, women are temptresses who will seduce helpless men
who can't resist their charms and must be kept away
from our military heroes. I can't help but wonder and
hope that by the time my daughter is of age
to serve in the military, if she chooses, women will

(58:57):
no longer be expected to prevent their own sexual assault.
Oh well, Lauren, First of all, thank you for your service,
and thank you for sharing that with us um and listeners.
If you have thoughts to share with us. Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
and for links to all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with

(59:17):
our sources so you can learn more about rom coms,
head on over to stuff Mom Never told you dot
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