My Big, Fat, Unavoidable Wedding: A Look Into the History of Romantic Comedies and their Leading Ladies
by Rachel Suleymanov
At the end of Annie Fletcher’s The Proposal (2009), Andrew Paxton and Margaret Tate finally make out. This is just one example in a sea of happy endings that define the formulaic nature of romantic comedies. Though it has faced significant shifts within the past century due to congruent changes in women’s liberation and feminist attitudes, the herculean pursuit of the “rom com” remains the same: correct the unruly behavior of its leading lady and get her married.
But why do Andrew and Margaret have to make out by the end? In other words, from where does the rom com derive its formula? To answer this, one might look to the advent of screwball comedies in the 1930’s. Screwball comedies combined slapstick with witty crossfire, and they often featured a battle of the sexes between two main characters who, in trying to outwit each other, end up falling in love. Screwball comedies also forged a rather distinct leading lady, contextualized by contemporary historical changes in women's liberation: the United States saw socio economic shifts in which bourgeois women began independently earning money, getting divorced, and using birth control. Such liberties were reflected by unruly female characters who rejected Victorian ideals of femininity or, in the words of Kristen Wagner, “the True Woman” who was “known for her morality, passivity, and spirituality...”
At the same time, these women rejected archaic notions of marriage: marriage now had less to do with class, and everything to do with love. The ‘companionate marriage’, it was called, was defined by egalitarianism, joy, and sexuality. However, the institution of marriage was not completely rejected in these films. In fact, The female character’s unruliness was seen as a short-lived rebellion that would soon be foiled by the love interest she would end up marrying. Films like It Happened One Night (1934) helped establish this formula for romantic comedies and simultaneously cemented a distinct place for women in comedies.
The unruly woman (the leading lady) developed in various iterations. Generally, she might exhibit levels of promiscuity, she might be pregnant, overweight, old, androgynous (as defined by Kathleen Rowe)… But, once we get to the early 2000’s, an era famous for its romantic comedies, we can derive a very specific kind of leading lady: the career woman. Films such as The Proposal, 13 Going on 30, View from the Top, You’ve Got Mail, the Devil Wears Prada, etc. all depict women struggling with balancing romance and their careers. In most cases, the career woman has no time for anything romantic because her career takes center stage. This ought to be corrected, of course, as per the laws of romantic cinema; the career woman cannot survive because her career thwarts her romantic success. One must die for the other to survive. The herculean pursuit mutates into a contrived dialectic wherein her individual life is antithetical to what she “ought” to pursue.
The woman’s “unwomanliness”, that is, her failure to be romantic or monogamous, becomes the conflict of the film. In The Proposal, Maggie is constantly critiqued by her coworkers and widely despised by them too. Jenna must sacrifice her entire career just to go back in time to marry the right guy in 13 Going on 30. In You’ve Got Mail, Kathleen loses the bookstore her mother raised her in, and still falls in love with the guy who takes it from her. There are numerous examples of the enormous professional sacrifices these women must make. It doesn’t matter the city, the actress, or even the decade the film was made in: the unruly woman, no matter the type, must succumb to a monogamous union right before the final credits roll. It is the very force that corrects her career-orientation.
In recent years, the unruly woman has become overtly sexual. In the words of Rowe, her behavior is “whorish” and “loose”. Comedians such as Amy Schumer helped reinforce brazen sexuality as an integral characteristic to this unruly woman. In Trainwreck (2015), Amy Townsend holds little professional power but a lot of sexual prowess. In fact, her sexual finesse becomes an obstacle that her eventual partner must overcome. At the same time, marriage (or just the monogamous union) is not at all lost on the sexually unruly women of romantic comedies today. Amy’s character in Trainwreck still gets her happy monogamous ending as does Donna in Obvious Child (2014).
Funnily enough, the film spends a lot of time making Amy’s body the site upon which the gags occur. In the final scene, however, Amy employs the aid of the very cheerleaders she was jealous of earlier in the film. The shadow of female perfectibility is cast over even the most sexually liberated of female characters: Amy becomes more acceptably feminine by the end.
Most recently, Kat Coiro’s Marry Me (2022) has served as an attempt to resurrect the early 2000’s romantic comedy. To many people’s disappointment, the film did not suffice. Perhaps we have outgrown our desire for formulaic romantic comedies. Perhaps our feminist values and cynicims towards archaic marital practices have tainted the genre. The marital telos of the past might be lost on many modern women, and I do not know where the ship heads next. In general, romantic comedies have been fantastically entertaining and provided much hopeful fodder for women who are socialized to dream of their wedding day. But some of them just feel outdated. And anyways, being inundated with messages on how to be a perfect woman, finding the perfect man, and living the perfect love story is exhausting, particularly when the real world lacks such saccharine plot lines.
I do not know what I am asking for. Maybe I’m just asking for a better rom com. Or maybe — a new place for women in comedy.
Works cited:
Karnick, Kristine B., Henry Jenkins, and Kathleen Rowe. “Comedy, Melodrama and Gender.” Essay. In Classical Hollywood Comedy. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Wagner, Kristen Anderson. "“Have Women a Sense of Humor?”: Comedy and Femininity in Early Twentieth-Century Film." The Velvet Light Trap 68 (2011): 35-46. doi:10.1353/vlt.2011.0012.