SMNTY Classics: Rom Coms 101

Rom coms were invented thanks to Hollywood censorship. Give yourself the gift of a crash course on Rom Coms in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff moll
Never told you. Recently, I was visiting family for the holidays,
and this is about the only time of year I

(00:26):
watched television like on TV, like satellite or cable whatever
it is, and we were flipping through the channels I
and I noticed a plethora of options in the holiday
romantic comedy genre, which I was kind of baffled by,
and then later I confirmed the sheer number of them

(00:47):
when I was searching through Amazon Primes holiday movie selection. Um.
And I've admitted on this show before I do not
have much knowledge of romantic comedies holiday or otherwise. So
so for any of those out there like me, or
maybe you do love rom coms and just want to
hear so much more about them, here is a crash

(01:09):
course on the rom com enjoyed. 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

(01:33):
summer series all about rom coms. I know you guys
were so excited about the suggestions, so 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

(01:53):
cute somehow? Yeah? Well every day is a meat cute.
Every day stuff mom never told you. Um, yeah, we
have a lot of ground to cover. And I got
to say, Caroline, this was some of the most fun
stuff I've never told you research total ever because I
got to just watch some rom coms that and seen
a ever or be not a long time. Yeah, so

(02:14):
I watched for the first time ever to prepare for this. Um,
His Girl Friday fabulous, 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,

(02:38):
the old screwball comedy 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

(03:00):
Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. UM 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,

(03:23):
which is another one of my faves for listeners who
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
Hepburn or whatever. But oh my gosh, she is fantastic

(03:47):
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 zoologist. He's
zane at all. 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 marry you. I

(04:08):
knew what when I first saw you. So she just
like bamboozles 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 based on the very unscientific Facebook

(04:33):
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 You've Got Mail in Well, that's

(04:57):
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. But you know,
when I watched that movie when it came out years
and years and years ago, now twenty years ago. Oh
my god. Um, I hated it because I was just like,

(05:20):
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 local bookstore. Support your
local bookstore. There's always so much bamboozling happening in rom coms,

(05:41):
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, plot devices
what have you that drives the plot forward. Um. Also,
I got to give a quick shout out and you've

(06:02):
got mail to Parker Posey. Forgot she was in it.
She plays Tom Hanks's girlfriend and she's terrific because she's
just she's Parker Posey. I mean, what else do you
need to say? By the way, listeners, if you don't
already follow Parker Posey on Instagram and do it. Oh,
I don't because it's bizarre. Really it's just her snapchat,
but it's really funny. Um. But yeah, I mean like

(06:24):
You've Got Mail, though, really crystallizes so many of the
common elements of more modern rom coms because Nora Fhron,
Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks and her hair and her hair. Um. Also,
I love a Greg Canere. Oh yeah, he would show up.
And I don't know if Sabrina. I guess Sabrina is

(06:45):
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
there and being like, oh now Facebook, would Facebook would
take care of all that? Oh no, she can google him? No, no,

(07:05):
she was just Google. Yeah. I mean smartphones really just
ruin all romance 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 and
you've got males somehow would not figure out who each

(07:25):
other is. You know, you have all of these plot
devices that requires some magical thinking a lot of times
when we watch rom comms. And I was listening to
Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast UM about rom coms in
preparation for this podcast, and one of them mentioned a

(07:46):
piece that Mindy Kaling wrote a while back um in
The New Yorker, and when she says, I regard romantic
comedies as a sub genre of sci fi in which
the world operates according to different rules than my regular
human war old for me, there's no difference between Ripley
from Alien and any Katherine Heigel character. And I had

(08:06):
never 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

(08:28):
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 she, by virtue of hearing the boy's story,
falls in love with a dad and then kind of
stalks him but works out then they fall in love.

(08:48):
How many rom coms are just flat out stalking. There's
a lot of god, a lot of of consented lines
that are yeah, you're not You're not wrong, And I
mean it interesting to watch. I think that rom com
evolution because we are out of the age of the
Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts kind of deal, Hugh Grant,

(09:12):
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 romantic comedy, and I act accidentally
side note, kept just coming up with like self romantic comedy,

(09:37):
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 this stuff. And I kept writing those down
in my notes, is like this is my favorite rom
Oh it's it's not a rom com, okay, um, But

(09:58):
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 a little bit of deception and masquerading and
awkwardness and uncomfortable nous um and you know, boy gets

(10:18):
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,
see Obvious Child asap. UM. You also noted Robbie Patel's

(10:40):
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
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 Hotels for a long time because I

(11:02):
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 rom com also through a
completely different culture, obviously through an Indian culture um that
we do not see in Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson films. Right.
And also it won the top prize at the Traverse City,

(11:23):
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
terrible rom coms that he's been in and leaving those
behind in favor of starring and things like True Detective

(11:44):
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
is that rom coms aren't critical hits and that they're easy,
and they're not easy. It's a hard challenge, she said,

(12:06):
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
definitely hit a point where it's like I cannot want.
Maybe it's Jennifer Lopez too, A love her great actress,

(12:27):
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 trophy and easy to predict, and
they're so coded. You know that if a movie has
Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey and you know they're going
to end up together, there's no drama. But then it

(12:49):
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 screwing in front of me on a weekend,
I will watch it. I really enjoyed. I mean like,
and that is it is super tropy. Of course, and
of course you know that there's going to be some conflict,

(13:09):
they'll lose each other and then they'll find 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
all the rom coms that are set in New York,

(13:30):
everyone lives an impossibly huge apartment 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 to have
the apartment and the wardrobe that she does. And because
of those kind of sci fi rules, as Mindy Kale

(13:52):
describes them, they are easily dismissed. And in our conversation
about this, we are going to be refering to tomorrow
Jeffers McDonald's book Romantic Comedy, Boy meets Girl Meets Genre.
That's right, and only five romantic comedies have won the
Academy Award for Best Picture. And I'm honestly surprised it's five.

(14:14):
It's that many. Um, it happened one night from nineteen
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,
seventy seven's Annie Hall and Shakespeare in Love, which I love.

(14:37):
I 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 same basic formula, the same basic heteronormative

(14:57):
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 the west wasted wedding money, just millions

(15:19):
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. I'm standing in front of your house with

(15:40):
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 on 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
four casts their union. And Billy Wilder, the twentieth century

(16:05):
screenwriter director uh is one of the foremost proponents of
the meat 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 come to mind, they'd be like, oh,
that's another one, because you had to have a meat cute. Well, yeah,

(16:26):
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
does that happen to you? Care? Oh my god, all

(16:47):
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. Uh.
You have the whole parent child conflict, which is um
super common, whether it's parents you know, disapproving of relationship

(17:08):
or parents 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

(17:31):
so much, or 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 coms
is that the dual protagonist perspective actually does offer really

(17:52):
great characters on 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,

(18:14):
can be trophy 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.

(18:36):
And then of course you've got the classic women like
Catherine 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 if they do exhibit a lot

(18:59):
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 know,
it 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, and a lot of

(19:19):
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 rom comms is

(19:43):
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 new it's not just white, straight people
falling in love in real life. Um, But regardless of

(20:06):
who is falling in love in these movies, monogamy rules
the day uh settled 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 the writers that we

(20:26):
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 going for marriage and babies eventually,

(20:51):
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 gonna find 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 the conflict in
the sexual tension and the anxiety that all leads up

(21:16):
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 that's so
fascinating to me. I'm so over rom com troops. But

(21:37):
it 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.
I mean, these movies are marketed to women, and they
are assumed therefore too largely appeal to women. And so

(22:01):
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
to women well, and female fandom at large, you know,
like teeny bopper type of stuff girls and women being

(22:21):
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
myth of perfect love that appeals to everyone, not just men,
not just women, not just straight people. And these narratives

(22:44):
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,
it's not just the woman in the audience who's like, hey,
you should change to fine love. The man watching the

(23:05):
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 martinis and whatever, and it's like, here, here's an
image for you to try to aspire to as well.
So you see, as rom coms evolve from their origins,

(23:27):
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
have to go back before film was invented, before Oscar
Wilde and Jane austen Um to Shakespeare, because really a

(23:48):
lot of the rom com formulas that we still see
today on screen came straight from the Bard. Well yeah,
I mean, you see, you know, love trying angles in
Midsummer Night's Stream 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

(24:09):
based on btw um you see and much ado about
nothing couples ripped apart by scandal and getting back together,
and I mean that they're total direct ancestors 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,

(24:32):
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 the right person.
So um. One example that Jesse catle Over at Hyperbole
mentioned was how that happens in both Midsummer Night's Dream

(24:54):
and also Legally Blonde. Yeah, and once we get into Hollywood,
even in the silent era out we have rom coms,
which are kind of hard to imagine silent rom coms,
but old Cecil be to Mill was making them. You know,
who hasn't seen the classic nineteen eighteen Old Wives for
New you know, or nineteen nineteens Don't Change Your Husband.

(25:18):
I love the titles of these films because then in
nineteen I'm assuming this is a sequel to Don't Change
your Husband. Demil put out why Change your Wife? They
sound like chapters in a book. Yeah. I think with
cecil be to Mill just like working out some marital
issues through through the camera. I don't know. Yeah, these

(25:48):
are basically essentially moralistic early rom com type films. You
also have in nine Sherlock Junr and Girls Shy that
follow the Shakespearean meat have conflict and then have happy
reunion plot device. But as you can imagine, the whole
silent thing kind of puts the damper on the rom

(26:09):
com 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, having witty dialogue and you've gotta wait, wait, wait,
and you get the little car that's like and get
out of here, you brute. And then it goes on.
You're seeing more dialogue and 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,

(26:31):
thanks for saving me. It kind of like screws with
the pacing. I would really like Mystery Signs 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. But it was
really this, this is a twist. Here's a plot twist. Listeners.

(26:52):
Censorship was really what propelled screwball comedies classic screwball comedies,
and 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 effects of film on young people.
So the moral standards has been around since nineteen two,

(27:15):
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 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.

(27:38):
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
Theodo Bearra's Vamp 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

(28:00):
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 flix, musical's, horror, melodrama, 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

(28:21):
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. By
the way, uh, 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

(28:45):
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
sexuality are positive and Summer explore wative, during this period,
you still don't see women necessarily having to fit into

(29:05):
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 Haze Code comes those super
strict standards for what could be shown on screen, and
it really grew out of essentially this group of Catholic

(29:26):
folks who developed a set of standards that would become
the official Haze Code. Prohibited profanity, licentious or suggestive nudity,
sexual perversions, and rape. And this is also where you
get married people in the movies sleeping in separate beds,
because you can't even suggest that even a married man

(29:46):
and woman might sleep together. And so in nineteen thirty
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 Holly would as a moral threat. At
the same time that you see women's groups protesting depravity
and the mp p d A has to review screenplays

(30:09):
before they go into production, they demand changes, and this
is when you see the punishment of sexual women of
loose women basically being officially instituted. This film group adds
the practice of moral compensation. Basically, sin could be shown.

(30:30):
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 the woman who basically was like, oh,
I had a hard life, but I'm happy now, Like

(30:51):
she had to lose everything. They were like, nope, you
got a thlman, 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 to create sex without sex. Essentially, you

(31:16):
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 the whole genre of screwball comedies because

(31:37):
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 Rettisterre and Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly

(31:57):
and any number of the women that he co start 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 a Baby with Carrie Grant and

(32:22):
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
Carrie Grant steps on the back of Katherine Hepburn's gown
and it rips off the back so her pentaloons are exposed,
and he's like, oh no, no, no, and she finally

(32:43):
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. It was 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,
not at all. And I was like, oh, there it is.

(33:03):
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 silently. So you had still a lot of
those uh, silent comedy directors who were so adept at

(33:26):
weaving in visual comedy pratfalls, 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 from back East,
people who were veterans of Broadway, who were so skilled

(33:47):
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 care these films, oh man, like Katherine Hepburn
just and also Rosalind Russell were I mean so terrific
at that just missed machine guns toccato, Oh my god,

(34:10):
I know? And Denby credits uh William Powell and Merna
Lloyd in The Thin Man and Carrie Grant and Catherine
Hepburn in ninety eight Holiday. Uh with sort of setting
the tone, displacing sex with wit, affection and style and
setting the ball rolling on the era of screwball comedy

(34:31):
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.
So if we look at the timeline of rom coms
in Hollywood, the entire genre can be broken down into

(34:55):
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
between people of different social classes, the high Low, and
one of the films often cited is It Happened One

(35:16):
Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. And you'll later
see this theme in movies like two thousand nine, The
Proposal and two thousand ones bridget Gen's Diary, basically people
of different social classes winding up together and becoming better people.
Although I could argue that Hugh Grant never becomes a
better person and burns, Oh yeah, he really doesn't, Hugh

(35:37):
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, because
these screwy romantic comedies were portraying the problems of the depression,

(35:59):
but with character 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 her grow.
And a lot of people were attracted to the ideas
in these films that poverty was morally superior to wealth,

(36:21):
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 mention one side
fact about Clark Gable and this movie Caroline that goes
back to our episode on toplessness and how we talked
about um mail. Toplessness was not accepted for a while

(36:46):
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 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

(37:06):
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, but undershirt sales plummeted
after the movie came out because it was wildly popular
and people were like, it was just Clark Gable winning

(37:26):
Claudet Colbert with no under shirt on. Look at those nips.
Look at those nips. Uh. But anyway, once we get
into the thirties and forties, it happened one night really
did pave the way for the screwball era um, which
specifically lasts between and nine two ish if you want

(37:47):
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 like
injuring themselves over and over again, um, in the process
of falling in love. Yeah. And it's the movie Twentieth

(38:11):
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 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

(38:33):
Hepern 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
writing about film genre specifically romantic comedy, Julie Sealbo says
that as big a fans as so many feminist film

(38:55):
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,
but that there is some anxiety around women's independence that's
getting acted out on screen. I completely disagree. Well, no,

(39:18):
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
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

(39:41):
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
mean I thought it was really fan tastic to see
a woman being as active on screen as the lead man,

(40:07):
you know. I mean that was My initial reaction to
reading that was likely these women, like you said, they
give as good as they get and sometimes just like
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

(40:28):
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 ninet twenties comedies of manners. Uh,
you've still got that reverse class nobbery role play masquerade
um a conventionally repressed person male or female being brought

(40:50):
out of his or her shell by the zany person
in that case, a 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
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

(41:15):
to see, because nothing exists in a vacuum, is that
this whole screw ball nature, although it never truly goes
away 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,

(41:37):
uh to that of the film The Marrying Kind, which
focuses instead on the path to divorce. And of course
it's 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

(41:58):
x is as in parts of rom coms, and the
late fifties through the early seventies is known as the
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 and white, oversimplified, and very explicit.

(42:23):
Men were painted as wanting sex without strings. Women were
painted as wanting financial security. If you've seen How to
Marry a Millionaire, the seven year rich, some like at
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

(42:44):
gender differences about when sex should happen, because obviously the
woman didn't 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 going to hamper
my lifestyle. And she's like, well, then you're just not

(43:04):
good enough for me. And then he's like, oh no,
let me take off my glasses. I really love you.
So that's 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

(43:27):
these sex comedies. And usually with sexual motives, you've got
a man like Rock Hudson and lover come back pretending
to be a shy scientist to seduce storist day. But
when the woman does it, 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

(43:48):
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 comedy was
ushered in by a very specific set of cold your
real circumstances happening at the same time. So in nineteen
fifty three you have the release of the Kinsey Reports
that gets everyone talking about sex. You also have the

(44:10):
birth of Playboy happening. There are more people becoming fed
up with sexual double standards and these assumptions that women
don't want or like to have sex. In nineteen sixty
we get the pill. I mean, you also have Cosmopolitan magazine,
UM and Helly Helen Gurley Brown taking it over later,

(44:31):
I believe in the sixties or early seventies, And in
nineteen sixty six, the strict moralistic film codes were replaced
with rating systems thanks to efforts by Auto Preminger to
go around the codes and find distribution for his sexually
frank nineteen fifty three film that I have not seen, Uh,

(44:53):
The Moon Is Blue, which apparently is a rom com
that investigates sexual desires and double standards. But even still,
even if it's not like in your Face, there were
so many like double entendres and yeah, all these films
like How to Marry a Millionaire in the Seven Year Itch,
which is where you have the famous scene of Marilyn

(45:14):
Monroe standing above the subway great and her dress blows
up and the guy's like, I don't know if I
stay with my wife. Well, so, from the mid sixties on,
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

(45:37):
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,
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

(45:59):
women than achieving more financial independence. I believe it was
nineteen when we're finally unmarried women were finally allowed to
uh have credit cards. Good for them, I know, and
that way clueless could happen. Um and women's roles though
around this time, and films became diminished with the rise
of buddy comedies and action adventure plots. And if you look,

(46:25):
you know that's happening. And simultaneously I r L men
and 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

(46:48):
even need to have love in our lives to be fulfilled?
Or you know the sad sack 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

(47:11):
going on, and so characteristics of these rom comms include
that sexual frankness and that questioning of the importance 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.

(47:34):
You're seeing 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

(47:56):
the importance, oh my God, of women's sexual fulfilm 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 other

(48:18):
late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies, starring the beautiful Natalie
Wood Um. And it's called I'm going to miss up
these names, the name order, but it's something along the
lines of Bob Carol Allison Ted. Now I think it's
Bob Carol ted an Alice, and it's about these two
couples that are wondering whether they should swing or not,

(48:41):
and like everything revolves around that. I 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,

(49:01):
Diane Keaton's character and Woody Allen's character 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 of love is still there.
But we're finally admitting like, oh, we can depict not

(49:24):
tragic scenes, 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 f bron making when Harry met Sally.

(49:47):
I know that 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 and homage to
Woody Allen, but again it concludes on a totally different
tone or a note with that amazing scene at the

(50:08):
end where Billy Crystal 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. But
so this is when we see narratives returning that are
focused on romance to the exclusion basically for most of them,

(50:29):
of sex. We 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

(50:50):
some way. Uh maybe 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 or left to
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

(51:11):
with the proposal with Ryan Reynolds and uh Sandra Bullock,
who's also a romcom queen who I just love, like
Sandra Bullocks probably one of my favorite people. I say that,
like I know are Sandy Sandy Um. But you know
that's a plot where the woman is a super independent,
career driven and doesn't want love and then finally has

(51:33):
her cold dead heart warmed by Ryan Reynolds adorable family
which 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

(51:55):
around romance, which you absolutely see with When Harry met Sally. Um,
have references to older films, stories and songs to fill
characters and moods, you actually have a d emphasis on
sex and emphasizing its place, romantic compatibility and still marriages

(52:16):
the end goal. Everyone wants to find that someone. Why.
I think that whole referencing back to old films and
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

(52:38):
lot of that winking to the audience of like, look
at what we're trying to do. We're bringing romance back.
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

(52:59):
excuse it by making the sexually aggressive partner both female
and American a lot of times, for instance, in Four
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.
Four weddings in a funeral though like bless Andie mcdwell's heart.

(53:22):
She is so pretty, but she is a terrible actress.
But Groundhog Day, that's a fun one. It was so fun,
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 comms and Andy McDowell to ask you,
and also Matthew McConaughey. Is Magic Mike rom com I

(53:43):
haven't seen it. Caroline Listeners, please write me and let
me know everything that you think about Magic Mike 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

(54:03):
really huge history to introduce this topic, but I think
to close out. Obviously, the calm part of the rom
calm is indispensable because if you didn't have the calm,
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

(54:25):
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
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

(54:48):
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,
Or do I not watch them anymore because I'm like
older and in a stab this 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,

(55:10):
because obviously that's like a whole new phase of it
where you have more of the raunch calm, but all
of 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

(55:33):
wait to talk about this more now all summer, Um
and I 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

(55:55):
you mentioned earlier. We're also going to dedicate an episode
to l g P, 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.

(56:18):
And then finally we're dedicating one to the sidekicks themselves. Yeah.
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

(56:40):
Stuff at house stuffworks dot Com is where you 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. Well, I've got

(57:02):
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 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

(57:23):
worms about the entire Japanese sex industry and how they
treat foreign women Overall. This additional mistreatment has happened outside
of war and still continues today. Japan has had an
influx 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

(57:44):
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
and denined 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

(58:07):
collected from areas with large migrant populations, usually Brazilian, and
quote unquote adopted by modeling agency staff to live with them,
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

(58:28):
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
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

(58:48):
I've got a letter here from Lauren in response to
our episode on the American military and prostitution, and Lauren
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

(59:11):
were told anecdotes, urban legend or real. I'm still not
certain of women being violently sexually assaulted, as if our
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

(59:31):
practice unsheaving 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
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.

(59:54):
I mean, really, one of the most ludicrous arguments against
women serving in combat arms, branches, and unions, is that
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

(01:00:16):
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
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

(01:00:37):
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
our sources. So you can learn more about rom coms,
head on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot
com for moral this, and thousands of other topics. Is

(01:00:57):
it how stuff works dot com. Three