Everything Wrong with the Modern Rom Com
Graphics by Hannah Chung.
The decision is yours once again. Your compatriots have placed the entertainment effigy in your nervous, but determined care. Answers in and around “something fun” will ring out, and thus your journey on the Streaming Silk Road has begun.
You’ll start off strong, going from Hulu to HBO Max, just around the riverbend of Amazon Prime, and past the second star on the right of Netflix. With the caveat of nothing “stoner funny” or “cheesy”, the only choice left is Romantic Comedy. The rolodex of what to choose is simple: it’s My Best Friend’s Wedding, it's 27 Dresses, it’s When Harry Met Sally.
Our minds connect the term Rom Com with a myriad of movies all made before 2010. Yet what about everything after the Golden Age of Rom Coms? What does our relegation say about the modern Romantic Comedy (RC) — and furthermore, its future?
Palm Springs, Chemical Hearts, and Plus One are all films that have made a case for the modern Rom Com. Yet these films are less exceptions and more emblems for the problem.
Somewhere in their history, a scathing critique on classic RCs is the notion that they’re formulaic. The plot of most popular RCs being: boy meets girl, they fall in love, they fight, but then come back together. The nuances around each tenet of plot is how the genre has been able to divide itself; sometimes boy gets mad at girl, sometimes they end up together on a condition, etc, etc. The nuances however soon become mutations, as the film industry gets wind of the critique and starts trying to solve for X.
Before we as viewers know it, RCs have completely overcompensated for relatability. We’re no longer spectators oohing as Kate Hudson comes out in a gorgeous yellow gown, or clutching our hearts when Meg Ryan finds out who NY152 really is, we’re forced into roles we don’t know the lines for.
Thus, the birth of modern RCs, which can be boiled down into three simple lines:
“I’m fucked up. You’re fucked up. Let’s be fucked up together.”
While the previous sentiment may feel more realistic, it is completely antithetical to the point of romantic comedies. I don’t give a shit if those two people end up together or not. The magnetization of two cynics in a time loop, or bitter friends who attend weddings together until tolerance turns into love, make us feel disillusioned, not connected.
Graphics by Hannah Chung.
RCs leave us to the devices of hopeless romanticism — and by adding honesty to the mix, you’ve disturbed the escapist fantasy. Of course, no one relates to Emma Stone growing up in a bitingly sarcastic but gorgeous family, while being persecuted into wearing a red A by a religious zealot (If that is your story, we love and support the outlier community).
Audiences need Meryl Streep flirting with Steve Martin over Croque Madame. We beg to sit on the edge of our seats waiting for Michael Vartan to join Drew Barrymore on the baseball field. If I wanted to watch a film about being ghosted and the anxiety around emotional manipulation and playing games, I would just go back on Tinder.com.
Modern RCs beg the question, what indulgences do we have when everything mimics real life?
While the list of offenses against the Modern Rom Com are scathing, there are changes implemented since the Golden Age that are an undeniable improvement. The facade of classic RCs is undoubtedly cis, straight and white. At the rare instance of representation, marginalized identities are often tokenized (Fools Rush In) and or stereotyped (In & Out). Now with films like Broken Hearts Gallery and The Love Birds, most of our leading cast is finally not white.
In Together, Together and Love, Simon, we have cis couples but the love interest for one is played by the infallible Patti Harrison, the other is a played by Keiynan Lonsdale — two queer people of color. As the genre expands we finally bring others into the narrative that deserve to be there.
Furthermore for films yet to be released, we see Dating and New York starring Jaboukie Young-White and What If, directed by Billy Porter, and starring Eva Reign as the lead. The inclusion of these individuals, but furthermore the nuances to their perspective from everyone in front of and behind the camera is detrimental to the Romantic Comedy genre.
Naturally there are people out there who enjoy the modern day RC and don’t understand the point of going backwards instead of forward. The implication of that notion, however, is fixing what isn’t broken to the nth degree. It is so often we see people preaching about the frivolity of classic RC and therefore mitigating their perspective. RC have always been vessels for emotional depth, watch A Lot Like Love, 50 First Dates, Something’s Gotta Give, or Keeping The Faith.
Graphics by Hannah Chung.
If you can sit in a room and hear Julia Stiles choke back tears on, “But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all,” without clutching your heart — congratulations you don’t have one. The issues with Rom Coms was never that they were silly and unimaginable —
it’s that their existence has been degraded by the “chick flick” moniker and therefore, like anything feminine in society, deemed lesser.
When we inspect the grand scheme of Cinema, in a sea of reboots, remakes, and sequels, what has changed for them? We see movies made for marginalized identities, we apply creativity to keep the story fresh, and we implore the themes even deeper… Simply put, we expand on what's already there to make it better.
Why then for Romantic Comedies must we upheave the entire process? Where was the flaw in the system? When we pull at the thread of unabashed trauma masked as poignancy, we realize the stories told in RCs have heart, gumption, and make us feel. Instead of forcing a new narrative of two “real” (read: real shitty) people falling for one another and calling it believable, let’s make more movies like Saving Face and The Photograph. Let’s make movies that want us to let us bask in our feelings.
Let’s make movies that proudly fall in love with love and everything that comes with it.