‘Guilty Pleasures’: European Audiences and Contemporary Hollywood Romantic Comedy 9781350163034, 9781350163065, 9781350163041

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‘Guilty Pleasures’

Library of Gender and Popular Culture From Mad Men to gaming culture, performance art to steampunk fashion, the presentation and representation of gender continues to saturate popular media. This series seeks to explore the intersection of gender and popular culture, engaging with a variety of texts – drawn primarily from Art, Fashion, TV, Cinema, Cultural Studies and Media Studies – as a way of considering various models for understanding the complementary relationship between ‘gender identities’ and ‘popular culture’. By considering race, ethnicity, class, and sexual identities across a range of cultural forms, each book in the series adopts a critical stance towards issues surrounding the development of gender identities and popular and mass cultural ‘product’. For further information or enquiries, please contact the library series editors: Claire Nally: [email protected] Angela Smith: [email protected] Advisory Board: Dr Kate Ames, Central Queensland University, Australia Dr Michael Higgins, University of Strathclyde, UK Prof Åsa Kroon, Örebro University, Sweden Dr Andrea McDonnell, Emmanuel College, USA Dr Niall Richardson, University of Sussex, UK Dr Jacki Willson, University of Leeds, UK

Published and forthcoming titles: The Aesthetics of Camp: PostQueer Gender and Popular Culture By Anna Malinowska

Gay Pornography: Representations of Sexuality and Masculinity By John Mercer

Ageing Femininity on Screen: The Older Woman in Contemporary Cinema By Niall Richardson

Gender and Austerity in Popular Culture: Femininity, Masculinity and Recession in Film and Television By Helen Davies and Claire O’Callaghan (Eds)

All-American TV Crime Drama: Feminism and Identity Politics in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit By Sujata Moorti and Lisa Cuklanz Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies: Sex, Performance and Safe Femininity By Gemma Commane Beyoncé: Celebrity Feminism in the Age of Social Media By Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television Period Drama By Katherine Byrne, Julie Anne Taddeo and James Leggott (Eds) Fat on Film: Gender, Race and Body Size in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema By Barbara Plotz Fathers on Film: Paternity and Masculinity in 1990s Hollywood By Katie Barnett Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema By Katharina Lindner

The Gendered Motorcycle: Representations in Society, Media and Popular Culture By Esperanza Miyake Gendering History on Screen: Women Filmmakers and Historical Films By Julia Erhart Girls Like This, Boys Like That: The Reproduction of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures By Victoria Cann The Gypsy Woman: Representations in Literature and Visual Culture By Jodie Matthews Love Wars: Television Romantic Comedy By Mary Irwin Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema: Cyborgs, Troopers and Other Men of the Future By Marianne Kac-Vergne

Moving to the Mainstream: Women On and Off Screen in Television and Film By Marianne Kac-Vergne and Julie Assouly (Eds) Paradoxical Pleasures: Female Submission in Popular and Erotic Fiction By Anna Watz Positive Images: Gay Men and HIV/AIDS in the Culture of ‘PostCrisis’ By Dion Kagan Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins By Darren Elliott-Smith Queer Sexualities in Early Film: Cinema and Male-Male Intimacy By Shane Brown Steampunk: Gender and the NeoVictorian By Claire Nally Television Comedy and Femininity: Queering Gender By Rosie White Gender and Early Television: Mapping Women’s Role in Emerging US and British Media, 1850–1950 By Sarah Arnold

Tweenhood: Femininity and Celebrity in Tween Popular Culture By Melanie Kennedy Women Who Kill: Gender and Sexuality in Film and Series of the post-Feminist Era By David Roche and Cristelle Maury (Eds) Wonder Woman: Feminism, Culture and the Body By Joan Ormrod Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film By Sarah Hill Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies: Sex, Performance and Safe Femininity By Gemma Commane Are You Not Entertained?: Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media By Lindsay Steenberg Screening Queer Memory: LGBTQ Pasts in Contemporary Film and Television By Anamarija Horvat

‘Guilty Pleasures’ European Audiences and Contemporary Hollywood Romantic Comedy Alice Guilluy

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Alice Guilluy, 2022 Alice Guilluy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Charlotte Daniels Cover image: Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde (2003) (© MGM / Courtesy Everett Collection / Mary Evans) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Guilluy, Alice, author. Title: Guilty pleasures : European audiences and contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy / Alice Guilluy. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Series: Library of gender and popular culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020049784 (print) | LCCN 2020049785 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350163034 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350240353 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350163041 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350163058 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Romantic comedy films–United States–History and criticism. | Motion picture audiences–Europe. | Motion pictures, American–Europe. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.C55 G85 2021 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.C55 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/6543–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049784 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049785 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-6303-4 ePDF: 978-1-3501-6304-1 eBook: 978-1-3501-6305-8 Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For Felix, whom I cannot wait to introduce to romantic comedies, and to my amazing mum, Sophie, because there was only one lobster present at the birth of Jesus. Duh.

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Contents List of Figures List of Tables Series Editors’ Foreword Acknowledgements Transcription Conventions Introduction: ‘Lights, action … and pure treacle’ 1 ‘Health warning: High-sugar content’: The rom-com and the critics 2 ‘The pudding works splendidly’: Genre, emotions and pleasure 3 ‘Candy-pink cage?’: Gender, feminism and the phantom viewer 4 ‘Chomping on a burger with a glass of coke’: The Americanness of romantic comedy Conclusion: ‘Cinder-fuckin’-rella’ Appendix 1: Semi-Structured Interview Questions Appendix 2: Participant Tables Appendix 3: Sweet Home Alabama Synopsis References Index

x xi xii xiv xvi 1 29 67 109 167 225 237 238 244 247 279

Figures 1 Interior of Jake’s Southern house in Sweet Home Alabama (2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures 2 Melanie’s New York apartment (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures 3 Scarlett Johansson in Don Jon (Gordon-Levitt, 2013). Courtesy of Relativity Media 4 Andrew’s renewed proposal (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures 5 Pearl and Melanie’s reaction (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures 6 Sweet Home Alabama’s final shot (2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures 7 Andrew’s first proposal (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures 8 Jake’s revelation (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures

32 33 80 81 81 95 116 172

Tables 1 Gender preference for biggest-grossing rom-coms (Germany and UK, 1989–2012)  2 Corpus: Top 26 rom-coms at the worldwide box office (1989–2012)  3 Corpus of press sources  4 List of German participants  5 List of French participants  6 List of British participants 

22–3 30–1 33–4 238–39 240–41 242–43

Series Editors’ Foreword For a time, the romantic comedy, or rom-com, was a staple of Western film outputs. So many were produced that they are often regarded as being frivolous, throw-away cinema that is not worthy of serious critical attention. However, as Alice Guilluy shows here, the rom-com holds a very special place in popular culture. Like the fairy tale in literature, they have seeped into our consciousness and the narrative structure demands the same sort of ‘happy ending’ as traditional fairy tales, however unrealistic this might be. Like many traditional fairy tales, the structure of rom-coms is generally aligned with what Guilluy refers to as a recognisable ‘meet-lose-get’ construction. The boy-meets-girl cliché that is so widely employed in these films highlights their overwhelmingly heterosexual nature, and also the role of female passivity in attracting the male character. The rom-com is so resolutely tied to femininity that by the dawn of the twenty-first century it had become known colloquially as the ‘chick flick’, where ‘chick’ is used to trivialise and infantalise the supposed female audience. As other books in this series have shown, engagement with the audience or consumers can elicit fascinating insights into the issues the text raises, and in this case, challenges the ‘media effects’ notion of rom-coms damaging women’s romantic expectations. There is a long history of audience studies of popular films and TV shows, but Guilluy’s exploration of the rom-com across national boundaries adds a new dimension to this existing work. The detailed responses to Sweet Home Alabama also inform of an awareness of a distinctive Americanness to certain forms of rom-com. Again, the distinctive national flavour of film and TV texts is something that other books in the Library of Gender and Popular Culture have identified. As many books in the Library show, there is much to be said about texts when explored through the tri-partite intersection of gender,

Series Editors’ Foreword

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class and culture. Whilst the Western idea of the rom-com is resolutely heterosexual, other books in this Library have explored LGBTI romance in film, thus providing a more detailed and nuanced approach to gender and sexuality in romantic narratives.

Acknowledgements This project would not have happened without the support of a great deal of people: First and foremost, heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated in the research, from the anonymous survey participants to, especially, the kind interviewees who generously took time out of their busy lives to watch Sweet Home Alabama with me. There wouldn’t be a book to write without your responses! Second, I am enormously thankful to my PhD supervisors, Erica Carter and Ginette Vincendeau, for their expert advice and constant support throughout my thesis and beyond. Thank you also to my examiners Tamar Jeffers MacDonald and Helen Taylor for their very kind and detailed feedback on my thesis, which has greatly shaped this book. Thank you to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my PhD project, to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Centre Marc Bloch for supporting the Berlin fieldwork. Enormous thanks to all the administrative and teaching staff in the Departments of Film Studies and German at King’s College London for their support during the PhD, to Deborah Jermyn for her inspiration and invitation to share my early findings with her students, and to the London Film Academy for granting me time off to finish this book. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers and series editors Claire Nally and Angela Smith for their feedback, and to Camilla Erskine, Karthiga Sithanandam and the team at Bloomsbury for their patience and support. Part of Chapter 4 comes from my essay in the edited collection Love Across the Atlantic, published by Edinburgh University Press  (2020). I was also lucky to benefit from support and resources from the following organizations: the Deutsche Kinemathek and Filmförderungsanstalt, the Bibliothèque du Film, the BNF, and the

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BFI and British Libraries. Thank you to the entire BFI Education Team and the Bechdel Test Fest. Huge thanks to Jennifer Gaschler and Tecla Raynaud for transcribing the German and French interviews, and Conny Opitz for the translation advice. Thanks also to the very great number of friends and family members who provided intellectual and emotional support through the PhD process and writing of this book, including the awesome Drs of Film Studies, the Modern Languages Fishbowl-residents, La Horde du Hurlement, les Creusois, and Mat & Marili. Love and thanks to my dad Vincent and brother Wilko, and most of all my mum Sophie, without whom none of this would’ve happened. Finally to Andreas, my very own rom-com hero: thank you for our happily-ever-after.

Transcription Conventions Interview transcripts make use of the following conventions. NB: Unless otherwise stated, most of the interview extracts quoted in the book have been edited for clarity. [  

Denotes one or more speakers talking at the same time. e.g. A: I really didn’t like this film, [because….  [B: No, me neither.

=   Signifies no gap between one utterance and the next, usually when one participant interrupts another. e.g. A: And then we went to= B: =Paris, that’s right! //  

Indicates a participant speaking over the film dialogue.

word   Bold font indicates a stress or amplitude in the voice or tone. WORD  Capital letters indicate a very loud sound, such as shouting. -   Cutoff or self-interruption. e.g. A: I think it was a – no wait, that’s wrong. ( )  

Empty brackets indicate unintelligible utterances.

(word)  Words in parentheses indicate possible hearings of which the transcriber is unsure. [ ] 

Indicate an author’s note or description of non-verbal utterances. e.g. [they laugh] or [she pauses].

…

Voice trails off at the end of a sentence or utterance.

Introduction: ‘Lights, action … and pure treacle’ 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a genre as sweet and syrupy as romantic comedy must be harmful to women. The fieldwork for this book was conducted between 2013 and 2015, at a time when the prolific production of big-budget rom-coms which had characterized 1990s and 2000s Hollywood was markedly over. Stars had fled, audiences dwindled and superheroes had taken over the major studios. Not for the first time in its history (Henderson, 1978), the genre was widely pronounced to have died. The culprits? Clichés, and a peddling of dangerous retrograde ideals (Morris, 2019; Nicholson, 2014). Indeed, the general consensus within mainstream media, most scholarly literature, and indeed rom-coms themselves was and remains that the genre – which has been accused of promoting unrealistic romantic expectations, encouraging stalking and even causing plane hijackings – has a negative influence on its (mostly feminine) audience. Blaming the rom-com for one’s romantic woes has thus in recent years become as nearly ubiquitous a cliché as the happy ending, the ‘snarky’ best friend, or indeed the misuse of Jane Austen’s most famous line of prose. Only a few years later, and the genre’s resuscitation by streaming is already being touted (Bonos, 2018). As scholars have noted, however, the genre’s demise had been widely exaggerated (Cobb and Negra, 2017: 764). Beyond Hollywood tent pole films, genre production has continued or indeed increased significantly in countries such as France (Harrod, 2015) or China (Shearer, 2019: 352). In the United

With the exception of Chapter 4, all title quotes are taken from film reviews. The first is from The Times’ review of Sleepless in Seattle (Llewellyn Smith, 1993).

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States meanwhile, the genre has adapted to a different format via the ‘rom-comification’ of the sitcom (Newman, 2016), as demonstrated by the success of shows such as The Mindy Project (2012–17), Jane the Virgin (2014–19) or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–19). And whilst more recent productions have been praised for their more progressive representation of gender, race and sexuality (Chaney, 2017; Sigee, 2020), the genre’s relationship to feminism continues to be debated (Cobb and Negra, 2017). Are these cultural anxieties cause for celebration, proof of the definite mainstreaming of feminism, which has long emphasised the role of the media in perpetuating gender stereotypes? Or do they signify a continued mistrust of both popular culture and women audiences? This book will argue the latter, questioning the genre’s ‘triple aesthetic exclusion’ (Colling, 2017: 11) by analysing how issues of gender, class and culture intersect in the reception of contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy in Europe. I argue that dismissals of the rom-com as harmful fluff feed into long-standing patronising attitude towards women audiences. Rather than undertake a close textual analysis of films which have increasingly been the subject of scholarly interest (see the selected bibliography in San Filippo, 2021), my investigation turns to the audience. Indeed, whilst audience is key to the genre’s definition, as evidenced by the frequent use of the term ‘chick flick’ as a synonym for ‘romantic comedy’, there has been little scholarly analysis in film studies of the way in which the genre is consumed.

Methodology This book seeks to address this consumption by undertaking a qualitative study of the genre’s reception across three European countries: Britain, France and Germany. A detailed account of the theoretical and epistemological underpinnings of my research protocol, as well as some of the methodological issues and challenges I encountered, is available elsewhere (Guilluy, 2018), but in short, the research was undertaken as follows:

Introduction

3

Between 2013 and 2015, I conducted thirty-four interviews with a total of ninety-two rom-com viewers in Britain, France and Germany. To avoid an overly academic and unnatural viewing-environment, interviews were held at either my or participants’ homes. These began with a participant-observation session, where I sat with the interviewees to watch the 2002 rom-com Sweet Home Alabama (Tennant), starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey – further detail on why this particular title was selected is included in Chapter 1, and a full synopsis of the plot is available in Appendix 3. As Helen Wood has demonstrated, watching the film alongside the participants caused some awkwardness – many directly commented on or keenly demonstrated awareness of being ‘under observation’ – but this ‘texts in action’ method allows for a live examination of ‘how connections between textual products and subjectivities are made and reproduced’ (Wood, 2005: 120). The screening was followed by a discussion of the film in particular, and the rom-com genre more broadly: the interview guide for this discussion is available in Appendix 1. This structure served to stimulate the discussion with a concrete example known by all participants, and was inspired by other audience studies projects in film and television, particularly Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes’ comparative study of Dallas viewership in Israel, Japan and the United States (1993), but also Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn’s research on fans of Star Wars and Sex and the City, respectively (2002, 2004). Outside of fan studies, where participant recruitment is often facilitated by the existence of already-established community groups around specific objects of interest (see for example Brooker, 2002: xiii), scholars have frequently highlighted the practical challenges of recruitment for audience studies projects, particularly pre-Internet and pre-social media (Moseley, 2000: 329; Taylor, 2014: viii). This project was advertised mostly online, but recruitment was made more difficult by the length and relative-intrusiveness of the research protocol, which put off several potential participants, so participants were recruited via a combination of ‘snowballing’ and ‘network’ strategies (Hennink et al., 2011: 100–5). Once a ‘contact person’ (Gamson, 1992: 189) was recruited, they would gather other participants for the interview: whilst

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some preferred to be interviewed alone, many chose to be interviewed with groups of friends or family members. All in all, I conducted eleven individual interviews and twenty-three focus groups, varying between 2 and 4 hours in length. In total, 91 hours of recordings totaled approximately 1,500 pages of transcripts: these, along with my notes from these discussions, form the primary material for my analysis. To contextualise the interviews, I determined a secondary corpus, consisting of the twenty-five top-grossing romantic comedies at the worldwide box office between 1989 and 2013. I then analysed reviews of these films across forty-five British, French and German publications, which serve as the basis for my analysis in Chapter 1. The nature of the recruitment process naturally affected the research sample: the internet-based call for volunteers meant that the pool of participants skewed relatively young (Bryman, 2016: 235; Odih, 2004: 288), though I did manage to conduct interviews with participants in their sixties in both France and Germany via snowball recruitment. Additionally the network recruitment approach means this project falls partly into the category of ‘insider research’, defined by Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger as research ‘where the investigator studies herself, those like her, her family or community’ (Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 2013: 251). Moreover, this means most participants – like myself – speak from a position of significant privilege, the vast majority being white and middle class. Other scholars have discussed the challenges of conducting research across social class (Duchesne et al., 2013: 168–9; Jerslev et al., 2016): one limiting factor in my case was the limited research funding available, which meant it was not possible to compensate all participants. Another intersection of privilege which this research does not explore is that of sexual orientation and gender identity, which participants were not asked to disclose as this seemed particularly intrusive within a focus-group setting (Waldron, 2004: 123). As Chapter 2 will explore, group discussions of the genre’s erotic pleasures often caused embarrassment and laughter. At the same time, one of the rom-com’s central appeals, according to participants who both demonstrated and analysed it throughout the

Introduction

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interviews, was its catering for a straight female gaze. The following analysis will endeavour to take participants’ (and my own) privilege into account. Much of the inspiration for this project comes from feminist cultural studies, whose practitioners have since the 1980s approached women’s pleasure, and the forms of popular culture aimed at women, seriously. This includes Janice Radway’s study of romance novel readers (1991), Angela McRobbie and Liz Frazer’s work on teen girl magazines (Frazer, 1987; McRobbie, 2000), Helen Taylor’s audience study of Gone With the Wind (2014), Jacqueline Bobo’s work on black women as an ‘interpretive community’ (1995: 33), Jackie Stacey and Helen Moseley’s work on feminine stardom and fandom (Moseley, 2002; Stacey, 1994), and last, but not least, the significant body of work on soap operas, particularly Ien Ang’s (1985; see also Brunsdon, 2000). It has been argued that ‘there is nothing inherently progressive about pleasure’ (Seiter et al., 2013: 5), but what all of the above projects have in common is an emphasis on the pleasure experienced by women, as well as a desire to nuance audiences’ engagement with what are often assumed to be simple objects, often inflected by intersecting issues of class, culture and identity. As such, I consider this project to be a feminist one. This is not just reflected in the object of my research, but in my methodological approach, and has impacted every aspect of the fieldwork (for more on this see Guilluy, 2018). Qualitative research, as Sharan Merriam neatly summarises, is focussed on ‘understanding the meaning people have constructed, that is, how people make sense of their world and the experiences they have in the world’ (Merriam, 2009: 13, my emphasis). Thus, I am interested in the minutiae of the rom-com viewing process, and what it means to its viewers: with whom do they watch it? Do they speak to each other during the film, and what about? How does genre impact audience behaviour and expectations? What motivates my interview participants to pick a rom-com off the shelf, and what viewing pleasures are they looking for when they do? Are they looking to laugh, cry or, to quote one of my participants, ‘tingle’? What are their reactions to genre tropes such as

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the proposal, the montage and the ubiquitous happy ending? How do issues of gender and high culture intersect with all of the above? In particular, how do my participants position themselves in regard to a genre that has continually been vilified for its poor artistic quality and its purported harmful influence on its audience? And, crucially, how do participants’ reactions vary from one country to the next? Andrew Higson has famously emphasized that the study of national cinema must include the study of its audiences (1989). Following this call, then, I ask whether cultural and national specificities affect the viewing of Sweet Home Alabama, or rather the ‘performance(s)’ of viewership (Hills, 2005: ix) recorded via my interviews. Indeed, this project does not purport to offer a definitive cataloguing of rom-com audiences’ tastes or opinions, nor do I believe these exist. Rather, I wish to account for how these individual and collective identities are performed and constructed through both film texts and contexts (in the form of popular media discourses), as well as the interview as a ‘constructed research event’ (Skeggs et al., 2008: 12). Indeed, as a resolutely feminist project, it was essential for me to take into account how my own positionality as a middle-class, highly educated white woman, as well as a feminist ‘aca-fan’ (i.e. both a scholar and a fan) (Hills, 2002: 31) of rom-com affected all aspects of the research process (Burn and Walker, 2004; McRobbie, 1982), from data collection to writing-up. I approached the interview materials through both thematic and discourse analysis, with a focus on both the content and the form of participants’ responses, including pauses, interruptions or laughter – all significant utterances (Sedgman, 2016: 11). Whilst most responses have been edited for clarity, some sections are quoted verbatim and at length, to examine how individual and collective identities are constructed via speech. Having quickly introduced my chosen research method, the rest of this chapter is concerned with mapping the contours of contemporary romantic comedy: I begin by outlining the rom-com’s enduringly poor reputation, followed by reviewing current scholarship on the genre, with a focus on issues of definition and legitimacy. Finally, I present

Introduction

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some of the difficulties of utilizing clear-cut genre definitions when using an audience studies approach.

Who’s afraid of romantic comedy? Anxieties about the effects of romantic-comedy consumption permeate mainstream media. In a 2016 episode of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour programme that points – funnily enough – to Sweet Home Alabama as proof that the genre has created ‘a generation of sociopaths’, the presenters accused 1990s romantic comedies of having ‘ruined dating [because] they expect love-at-first-sight kind of stuff, and none of them portray the work that goes into having a successful relationship’ (Holmes, 2016). The Huffington Post, meanwhile, has cited Love Actually’s (Curtis, 2003) infamous placard declaration scene to warn us that ‘romantic comedies teach women that stalking is a compliment’ (Angyal, 2016), whilst the Guardian has blamed the genre for the 2016 hijacking of an Egyptian airplane, concluding that ‘romcoms warp our idea of love. But it can take a real-life drama to make us notice’ (Iqbal, 2016). In the last decade moreover, several psychology studies examining the impact of romantic comedy on audiences’ perceptions of real-life relationships and romance have received widespread media coverage. Whilst a close analysis of those studies falls outside the scope of this book, the coverage they received is significant. Indeed, studies that demonstrated the negative influence of rom-coms on audiences received significantly greater media coverage than those representing the genre’s impact as benign. For example, a study by researchers at Heriot-Watt University analysed the representation of romance in forty rom-coms with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) certification of 12 and under, and argued that young audiences looking to the genre for models of romantic relationships may be misled by its conflation of short- and long-term relationship traits. The authors noted that teenage girls in particular may be conditioned to expect

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‘grand gestures’ of romance in real life, as they are normally performed by the films’ male characters (Johnson and Holmes, 2009). The study also included questionnaires and interviews with university students. In a separate article based on the study, Bjarne Holmes concluded that there was a correlation between the preference for ‘romance-orientated media’, prevalent amongst women students, and ‘relationship-asdestiny-orientated beliefs’ (2007). The study received wide coverage in international mainstream outlets, including BBC News, the Daily Telegraph or Time. Importantly, the study’s focus on adolescents was ignored, and the genre’s harmful effect was extended to any and all audience members: ‘rom-coms “spoil” your love life’ wrote the BBC News website, whilst the Daily Mail warned against ‘The Notting Hill Effect: how romantic comedies can harm your love life’, and the Los Angeles Times decried ‘the dangers of rom-coms’ (BBC News, 2008b; Derbyshire, 2009; Rodriguez, 2008). More recently, a 2015 study by Julia Lippman from the University of Michigan on the media representation of ‘persistent pursuit’ attracted significant journalistic attention, with outlets such as the Guardian, the Atlantic and the New Statesman running headlines such as ‘Rom-coms Teach Female Filmgoers to Tolerate “Stalking Myths” ’, ‘Rom-coms Undermine Women’, or ‘Cute or Creepy, How Rom-coms Romanticise Stalker-like and Controlling Behaviour’ (Child, 2016; Garber, 2016; Leszkiewicz, 2016). Most of the reporting significantly overstated the findings of the study, in which participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire measuring their agreement with stalking myths after having watched an edited version of a feature-length film. A third of participants watched thrillers in which a woman is stalked by a former romantic partner, a third watched romantic comedies in which persistent pursuit is presented as romantic (such as There’s Something About Mary (Farrelly and Farrelly, 1998)), whilst the remaining control group watched a nature documentary. Lippman found that whilst participants who had watched the thrillers were less likely to agree with statements minimizing the dangers of stalking, there was no difference between participants who had watched the nature documentaries and the romantic comedies, except for a minority number of participants

Introduction

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who had ‘perceived the romantic films as more realistic or who experienced higher levels of transportation’ (Lippman, 2015: 412). This nuance was overwhelmingly ignored in the press coverage for the study, as evidenced by the alarming headlines cited above. On the contrary, a study by Veronica Hefner at the University of Urbana-Champaign, based on interviews with 335 undergraduate students on their film-watching habits and romantic beliefs, found that romantic comedy was not the only genre to impact on participants holding idealized romantic beliefs, and that this impact was not as strong as predicted (Hefner and Wilson, 2013: 169; Hefner, 2019). Unlike the Heriot-Watt or the University of Michigan study, however, this work received very little media interest.2 Other studies drawing similar conclusions were more widely reported on, but the tone of the coverage was more skeptical than in the case of Holmes and Johnson or Lippmann’s studies. For instance, a 2009 study argued for a positive relationship between rom-com viewing and long-lasting romantic relationships. Ronald Rogge et al. found that newly married couples who frequently watched and discussed romantic comedies together were less likely to get divorced (Rogge et al., 2013). Though the research was relatively widely reported on, the tone of the coverage was often ironic. For example, the Guardian noted that Rogge’s study ‘seems like odd advice, because romantic movies – rom-coms in particular – are loaded with all sorts of terrible relationship tips’ (Heritage, 2014). The article went on to compile a list of films which shouldn’t in any circumstances be emulated, including three of the films in this book’s secondary corpus: Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You’ve Got Mail (1998) and Mamma Mia! (2008). By contrast, coverage of Lippman’s and Holmes’ studies broadly supported their conclusions, often treating them as scientific confirmations of existing beliefs: ‘study confirms watching Love Actually is bad for you,’ wrote The Cut (June, 2016), whilst a Guardian article opened with, ‘If you ever felt a little uncomfortable watching Andrew At the time of writing, Nexis has only two articles indexed on Hefner’s research, compared to twenty-three for Lippman’s study and thirty-nine for Johnson and Holmes’ (last accessed 28 July 2020).

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‘Guilty Pleasures’

Lincoln’s cue-card delivered confession of devotion for Keira Knightley in Love Actually … it turns out science is on your side’ (Child, 2016). A few articles also suggested that the findings were so obvious as to make the studies redundant: ‘did we need a study to tell us this? Probably not,’ remarked one outlet of Lippman’s study (DiDomizio, 2016). The Sunday Times’ review of Holmes and Johnson’s study was even more scathing: ‘The findings of the study? That romantic comedies do not accurately portray people’s everyday experience of love … welcome to the University of the Bleedin’ Obvious’ (Montague, 2008). A truth universally acknowledged, indeed. Significantly, this criticism is so prevalent that it has also been integrated into the genre itself. Film scholars have noted the contemporary rom-com’s tendency towards self-reflexivity since the late 1980s (Garrett, 2007: 118). But more recent genre productions have arguably gone further by not only telling us that ‘love lies’ (Krutnik, 1998), but by blaming themselves for this very deceit: ‘We just keep believing in this fucking lie that a relationship evolves and gets better,’ rails Gus, the hero of Judd Apatow’s ‘anti-rom-com’ (Fienberg, 2016) television series LOVE (2016–18). Who does the character blame for this sorry state of affairs? ‘Fucking movies. Pretty Woman? Fuck you. Sweet Home Alabama? Lies! When Harry Met Sally? Fucking lies.’ Nor are the protagonists of LOVE alone in blaming rom-coms for their failed relationships: ‘I’ve got to stop buying into this bullshit Hollywood cliché of true love. Shut up Katherine Heigl, you stupid liar!’ screams Jamie (Mila Kunis) at a poster of The Ugly Truth in the opening sequence of Friends with Benefits (Gluck, 2011). In contrast with this self-awareness, the cliché of the hopelessly gullible rom-com viewer is personified by the character of Whitney (Betty Gilpin) in Netflix’s Isn’t It Romantic? (Strauss-Schulson, 2019). The film, which is a spoof of 1990s romantic comedies, makes-under the usually glamorous Gilpin with ill-fitting clothing and mousy brown hair.3 As she gushes about Michele Schreiber (2015: 51) has noted how the same technique has been used to transform Katherine Heigl into ‘girl-next-door’ Jane in 27 Dresses (Fletcher, 2008).

3

Introduction

11

the rom-com’s escapist pleasures, she is chastised by the film’s heroine Natalie (Rebel Wilson), who tells her that ‘all those movies are lies set to terrible pop songs. … it’s unhealthy for little girls to watch that stuff and think that’s how life is going to be’. It seems, then, that the romantic comedy’s bad influence has become one of the genre’s defining traits. In fact at the time of writing, the Wikipedia entry for ‘romantic comedy film’ includes a full section on the ‘effects’ of the genre on society and audiences, with a subsection dedicated to ‘the illusion of love’ citing Holmes et al.’s study (Wikipedia, n.d.). Hence, the rom-com has come to be defined both by its poor cinematic quality (Deleyto, 2009: 3), and by the harmful influence it has on its viewers. Other genres have of course also been defined by the emotions they seek to evoke in cinema-goers – the thriller, the horror, the ‘tear-jerker’ of Hollywood’s Golden Age – but the rom-com’s ‘dangers’ (Rodriguez, 2008) are, allegedly, different: well hidden under layers of ‘treacle’ (Llewellyn Smith, 1993), they are portrayed as ultimately more pervasive. This book sets out to explore how such negative discourses surrounding the genre ‘resonate’ (Moseley, 2002: 93) with viewers, and particularly with women audiences’ consumption of such films. In short, I am interested in the way viewers engage with a genre publicly defined as ‘bad (for you)’. And, in particular, I wish to interrogate the way the genre’s often conservative gender politics affect the pleasure of the feminist viewers who enthusiastically responded to my call for participants.

Review of literature: The contemporary rom-com As the scholarly interest in the romantic comedy has grown exponentially in the last decade or so, a number of comprehensive reviews of the literature already exist elsewhere (see for example Angyal, 2014; Schreiber, 2015). I will endeavour to keep the following section brief, focusing in particular on issues of genre definition and legitimacy.

12

‘Guilty Pleasures’

The early 2010s is not the first time the romantic comedy’s death has been prematurely declared. It is somewhat ironic that one of the founding texts of rom-com scholarship was one which predicted the genre’s impending demise. In 1978, Brian Henderson argued that changing social and industrial norms had nulled the genre’s primary narrative drive, which he phrased as a single question: ‘why aren’t we fucking?’ (1978: 21). The second key contribution to the creation of romantic comedy studies was Stanley Cavell’s influential monograph Pursuits of Happiness in 1981, where he coined the label ‘comedies of remarriage’ to describe a number of screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, thereby reframing critically acclaimed films as romantic comedies. Since the publication of Pursuits of Happiness, other scholars have entered the breach opened by Cavell in his re-appreciation of screwball romance (e.g. Glitre, 2006; Harvey, 1998). However, this discussion will focus on scholarly discussions of the contemporary romantic comedy. And whilst scholars differ in their appellation for this newest cycle, the broad consensus is that it began in the late 1980s, heralded by the release of When Harry Met Sally (Reiner, 1989) (Neale, 1992: 287).

Defining the genre Scholarly definitions of the rom-com usually centre upon two aspects, tone and narrative, and there is a general consensus around Celestino Deleyto’s broad definition of the genre as ‘a love story with a happy ending’ (2009: 24) – though others have highlighted the declining prevalence of romance within the genre (Jenkins, 2013: 170). For Tamar Jeffers McDonald, the genre is indeed characterized by two features: (a) a focus on romantic relationship(s) using a (b) ‘light hearted’ mode (2007: 9). The second point distinguishes the rom-com from the melodrama – the other main Hollywood genre historically aimed at women. Indeed, whilst both focus predominantly on women protagonists and ‘feminine’ issues (particularly social expectations of women’s place in society), they are markedly different in tone. If ‘courtship provides the plot’ of

Introduction

13

romantic comedy, concurs Leger Grindon, then ‘humour establishes the tone’ (2011: 2). Other scholars have also defined the romantic comedy according to its narrative features and character traits: Steve Neale emphasizes the centrality of the ‘meet-cute’ (1992: 291), whilst Kathrina Glitre highlights the ubiquitous happy ending ‘with a kiss’ (2006: 1). And whilst she and others have emphasized that not all romantic comedies end with a united couple (Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 78–9; Kalviknes Bore, 2008), films departing for this norm, such as Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) or (500) Days of Summer (Webb, 2009), continue to address the trope directly, often via self-reflexivity. Celestino Deleyto, finally, draws on Shakespearean literary scholarship to emphasize what he calls the ‘forgotten middle’ of the romantic comedy narrative, which creates a ‘magic space of transformation’, a change of scenery which, along with the comic mode of the text, allows for the transgression of social rules and the union of the couple (2009: 30–8). Significantly, the rom-com is one of the few genres which is rarely defined in aesthetic terms – despite Billy Mernit’s assertion (supported by many of my interview participants) that ‘you recognize it the moment you see it’ (2001: 11). In fact, some of the most detailed aesthetic definitions of the genre have come from journalistic, rather than academic, sources, with noted key features including the ‘popfilled soundtrack’, the ‘bright, colourful visual palette’ and use of montages (Siede, 2018b). This is not to say that rom-com scholars do not take, say, framing or colour into consideration in their analyses,4 but these are generally not seen as distinctive of the genre. For instance in her analysis of Pretty Woman (Marshall, 1990) as an iconic ‘girly film’, Hilary Radner argues that ‘though “style” in terms of consumer culture may be important to the protagonists, film “style” is not developed as a meaningful aspect of the filmic experience’ (2011: 39). Claire Mortimer further suggests that in terms of visual style ‘the romantic For a discussion of how the screwball comedy’s gender politics was reflected in framing choices, see Glitre (2006: 71–3); Grindon (2011: 36–7).

4

14

‘Guilty Pleasures’

comedy is not as immediately recognisable … as are some other genres, such as the western, the gangster film and horror’ (2010: 9). Further when style is recognized as a feature of rom-com and its subgenres – as in the work of Nancy Meyers – it is dismissed as superficial and consumerist (as noted in Jermyn, 2017: xv). Notable exceptions of indepth engagement with rom-com style are Sarah Kozloff ’s work on the distinctive use of voice-over in contemporary romantic comedy (2012), Lauren Jade Thompson’s discussion of the gendering of set dressing in the contemporary rom-com cycle (2013) and Tamar Jeffers McDonald’s emphasis on the singular ‘iconography’ of the genre (2007). Academic studies of the genre have also tended to distinguish between ‘romantic comedies’ and ‘chick flicks’. For instance, two edited collections published in the late 2000s discuss many of the same films, such as the Bridget Jones series or the films of Jennifer Lopez (both volumes in fact dedicate an entire chapter to the star’s films) but under different names. Indeed whilst Deborah Jermyn and Stacey Abbott use the term ‘romantic comedy’ to describe these films, Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young define them as ‘chick flicks’ (Abbott and Jermyn, 2009; Ferriss and Young, 2008). This distinction is partly explained by a variety in focus (one of texts vs. audiences) and is reflected in the volumes’ different methodologies: ‘romantic comedy’ volumes such as the works of Jermyn and Abbott analyse films’ narratives, characters and ideology based on close reading of the films. Scholars such as Ferriss and Young meanwhile view the films as part of the wider phenomenon of ‘chick culture’, and also examine the films’ production and exhibition conditions. Hilary Radner, for instance, has described contemporary American ‘chick flicks’ as ‘neofeminist’, demonstrating how these films associate women’s emancipation with consumerism (‘I shop therefore I am’), focusing on marketing strategies and the targeting of a specifically feminine audience as well as the films themselves (2011). Few scholars use both terms interchangeably in a sustained manner, but for a number of feminist scholars, the use of the term ‘chick flick’ as a dismissive moniker for the rom-com points to the sexism underlying the genre’s poor critical reputation (Abbott and Jermyn, 2009: 2; Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 16). This is certainly true,

Introduction

15

and I will demonstrate in Chapter 1 further ways in which the genre’s negative critical appraisal is bound up in its appeal to a mostly feminine audience. One might also argue for the use of two separate terms to highlight different aspects of the genre: narrative and audience. However, as I explain in more detail below, this seems a problematic delineation for a reception studies book such as this one, because it does not reflect the popular use of both terms amongst audiences.

Ambivalence and legitimacy The growing scholarship on romantic comedy is moreover permeated by an ambivalence towards its subject matter. On the one hand, due to the genre’s poor reputation in both academic and popular criticism, scholars have worked hard to demonstrate the legitimacy of the genre within film studies research. At the same time, the same scholars are often very critical – or indeed even suspicious – of the genre’s contemporary offerings. In Pursuits of Happiness, Stanley Cavell was explicitly making a case for the analysis of the film medium in philosophy (1981: 265–74). However decades later, most additions to the field – this book included – still begin by highlighting the genre’s poor reputation (see for example Abbott and Jermyn, 2009: 2; Deleyto, 2009: 2–3; Ferriss and Young, 2008: 1; Grindon, 2011: 2; Harrod, 2015: 15; Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 7; Kaklamanidou, 2013: 8; San Filippo, 2020: 4), and most actively argue for the legitimacy of the genre as object of study. One strategy is to emphasize the rom-com’s longevity and continued popularity with audiences: thus Abbott and Jermyn point to the genre’s ‘virtually constant presence in popular cinema in some shape or form since the 1930s’ (2009: 2), whilst Maria San Filippo highlights its ‘endurance and adaptability’ (2020: 7). This is often accompanied by a retracing of its long-standing history: thus Tamar Jeffers McDonald (2007), Celestino Deleyto (2009) and Leger Grindon (2011) take a chronological approach to the genre, charting its evolution across different ‘cycles’, from the screwball comedy in the 1930s and 1940s, through to the sex

16

‘Guilty Pleasures’

comedy of the 1950s, the ‘nervous romances’ of the 1970s and finally the ‘neotraditional’ or ‘conservative’ comedies produced since the late 1980s. Other scholars trace romantic comedy back centuries before the creation of cinema itself – to the works of William Shakespeare or Jane Austen (Angyal, 2014: 51; Deleyto, 2009: 20–6). A number of scholars also highlight the genre’s salience as a barometer of social change. For example, Jeffers McDonald demonstrates the influence of the Depression on the screwball comedy’s pairing of upper-class heiresses and middleclass intellectuals, and traces the death of the 1950s ‘sex comedy’ to the rise of the women’s liberation movement and the creation of the birth control pill (2007: 21, 43). Within recent scholarship, Celestino Deleyto is the most explicit in his attempt to re-legitimize and re-define the genre as a whole, arguing for the re-appreciation of romantic comedy and its influence on films not normally included in the genre: his analysis, therefore, includes works such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998). Significantly in the context of this research, he also argues that the genre has now become defined by a lack of cinematic quality: A circular argument has been more or less universally accepted, whereby only those films that include certain conventions and a certain ‘conservative’ perspective on relationships are romantic comedies and, therefore, romantic comedies are the most conventional and conservative of all genres. If a film threatens to be mildly interesting in cinematic, narrative or ideological terms, then it cannot possibly be a romantic comedy. (Deleyto, 2009: 3)

As numerous scholars of rom-com are engaged in legitimizing the study of romantic comedy, they are also often very critical of the genre’s recent productions, particularly with regard to the genre’s representation of gender and sexuality. For Steve Neale, a political reactionism is inherent to the genre’s contemporary ‘new romance’ cycle and its glorification of heterosexual coupling (1992: 298–9). Similarly, Diane Negra suggests

Introduction

17

in her analysis of post-9/11 rom-coms that ‘the “chick flick” is far from politically innocent or neutral. In many of its recent incarnations, it exhorts the obligations of masculinity in a nationalized rhetoric that is both timely and strategically “postfeminist”’ (2008: 52). Indeed, a number of scholars have underlined the perfect alignment of contemporary romcom – with its emphasis on consumption, self-policing and ‘choice’ feminism – with post-feminism (Angyal, 2014; Bowler, 2013; Schreiber, 2015; Winch, 2013). In fact, Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary column and book, as well as their subsequent film adaptation (Maguire, 2001), were central to Angela McRobbie’s influential theorization of the concept (2004). Chloe Angyal even considers the contemporary rom-com so deeply rooted in the simultaneous ‘embrace and undermin[ing of] feminism’, that she simply labels the genre’s newest cycle, ‘the postfeminist cycle’ (Angyal, 2014: 11). Beyond such very-valid critiques, however, other scathing reviews of the genre often rely on assumptions about the passivity of audiences and the ‘hypodermic needle’ model of media consumption (Seiter et al., 2013: 223), which can have problematic connotations considering the genre’s overwhelmingly feminine audience. For instance in her analysis of the success of Working Girl (Nichols, 1988), Chantal CornutGentille concludes that the film ‘can also be viewed as a barely disguised form of fairy tale that contributes to “cultural control” by the pressure it exerts upon women to emulate fairy tale prototypes’ (1998: 127). Similarly Mark Rubinfeld’s denunciation of the anti-feminist discourse permeating romantic comedy is based on the assumption that ‘to some degree, our identities are shaped – not determined – by the stories we see and by the accumulation of the stories we see’ (2001: 152). This, as Ferriss and Young note, is deeply problematic, as it robs women spectators of agency: ‘to assume that women are the unwilling and unknowing victims of manipulation, however, may be to demean and discredit them – and even to suggest that they are incapable of making choices for themselves’ (2008: 16). This is not to argue that romantic comedies’ often-regressive politics should not be critiqued, on the contrary. But, contrary to most of the

18

‘Guilty Pleasures’

recognized wisdom cited above, rom-com audiences may not (and, this book will argue, they often do not) always buy wholesale into the regressive fantasies put forward by the genre. Simply put, a conservative message does not automatically equate with conservative audiences. Indeed, the number of very enthusiastic responses I received from selfidentified feminist viewers makes this plain. Rather, the pleasures of rom-com consumption are complex and multiple. Ferriss and Young, for example, emphasize the particular significance of escapist viewing for women: ‘it is just as likely that chick flicks allow women to enjoy imaginative possibilities or to indulge in vicarious experiences which assist them in returning to the challenges that face them’ (2008: 16). Meanwhile, Alison Winch has suggested that the rom-com’s utopian portrayal of contemporary women’s work–life balance offers multiple viewership positions. She argued that by suggesting that women can ‘have it all’, the genre affirms positive agency for women whilst at the same time failing to engage with real-life difficulties. She even identifies a potential for women’s empowerment within the genre: ‘the look of the spectator is just as complex and conflicted [as the films], and … the films’ radical potential lies in how far the spectator unpacks the emotional knots of her gaze’ (Winch, 2012: 82). This book takes this theoretical reading as a starting point, shifting the emphasis from spectators to audiences. One of my key objectives is to examine more closely the forms of enjoyment that these scholars identify, and to investigate why and to what extent audiences are attracted to the romcom genre. In order to do this, I turn away from textual analysis and towards the reactions of viewers themselves, embedded within three distinct national contexts.

Genre in national context I began the project aiming to compare the reception of Hollywood rom-com in Britain, France and Germany, but translation issues occurred as the research developed, as it became clear that the genre categorization I was working from wasn’t always translatable or indeed

Introduction

19

immediately recognizable in all three languages or national contexts (more on this in Chapter 1). This is exemplified by the industry data (or lack thereof) on rom-com audiences available in each of the three countries. Indeed, in the annual reports of the German Federal Film Board (FFA) or French National Centre for Cinema and Moving Image (CNC), romantic comedy is almost always subsumed under the broader general umbrella of ‘comedy’: the FFA, for instance, refers to films such as Sex and the City (King, 2008) 27 Dresses (Fletcher, 2008) or, more recently, Book Club (Holderman, 2018) and Last Christmas (Feig, 2019) as ‘comedies’ in its annual box-office round-up (Filmhitliste Jahresliste (international), 2008, 2018, 2019). Meanwhile, the CNC’s own annual report includes separate ‘comedy’ and ‘dramatic comedy’ categories but does not single out rom-coms (see for example Anon 2019: 45). By contrast, the BFI’s Statistical Yearbooks consistently distinguish a ‘romance’ sub-genre (see for example Ian Cade et al., 2016, 2019). Thus, genre definitions fluctuated significantly from one country to the other. Useful to understand why the rom-com label is not systematically used in box-office data are the works of Dudley Andrew and Rick Altman. As both have long emphasized, genre occupies a special position between production, film text and audience (Andrew, 1984: 87). Altman’s understanding of genres as ‘blueprints’ or ‘labels’ that regulate production, distribution and exhibition helps pinpoint the reasons why ‘rom-com’ as a label is not always applied consistently in British, French and German data, since these are countries with very different production, distribution and indeed exhibition contexts (Altman, 1999: 13–16). What they have in common, however, is that in all three countries the films I investigated (the corpus is outlined in Chapter 1) attracted a majority feminine audience. Whilst the CNC’s data proved limited within the remit of the study, the latest edition of a decennial survey organized by the French Ministry for Culture and Communication on French cultural practices provided useful insight: one of the questions around participants’ cinema-going habits included a question on their favourite film genre, and although

20

‘Guilty Pleasures’

the survey doesn’t use the term ‘romantic comedy’, it does include the category ‘sentimental or romantic films’. This is notably one of the most popular categories for women audiences, but also the category with the biggest disparity between men and women viewers: women viewers were ten times more likely than men to say enjoyed the genre (21 to 2). By contrast, when the question was reversed, men were five times more likely than women to name romance as their least-favourite genre (15 to 3) (Donnat, 2008). This gender disparity is echoed in a 2011 UK Film Council Report on diversity and audiences, in which ‘romantic comedy’ was also the second-favourite genre named by women under 35 (after comedy). Again, the rom-com was one of the genres with the biggest difference between men and women respondents: nearly four times more young women (61%) than young men (18%) said they enjoyed rom-coms, and double the number of women over 35 (47%) compared to men of the same age (24%) (FitzPatrick et al., 2011: 105). The BFI’s most recent Statistical Yearbook also underlined the particularly strong gap between young men and woman: ‘Young audiences have very definite genre tastes with romance far and away the preference of young women whilst young men are most likely to make up the audience for horror films’ (Cade et al., 2019: 148). These surveys are further supported by data available for individual films: according to data from the UK Film Council/BFI Statistical Yearbook, over the last two decades rom-coms have almost systematically featured in the year-end list of ‘films with significant greater female audience share’. Examples include Love Actually (65% women audience share in 2003), The Holiday (69% in 2006), Sex and the City (81%) and Mamma Mia! (75%) in 2008, Sex and the City 2 (73% in 2010), Bridesmaids (79% in 2011), Bridget Jones’s Baby (82% in 2016) and, most recently, Book Club (80% in 2018) (Anon, 2003: 42; Cade et al., 2017: 177; Cade et al., 2019: 146; Perkins et al., 2006a: 98; Perkins et al., 2011: 127; Perkins and Maine, 2012: 145; Steele et al., 2009: 116). This is not limited to cinema-going but also extends to television reruns, which have recently been included in the survey: in 2017, Bride Wars (Winick, 2009) topped the list of films shown on television with

Introduction

21

an 82% women audience share (Cade et al., 2018: 136) and in 2019, the Hallmark romance Coming Home for Christmas (Damski, 2017) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (Jones, 2016) scored 84% and 75%, respectively (Cade et al., 2019: 146). Whilst no similar data was available for individual films in France, the German figures available were very similar to those found in Britain. The FFA’s annual reports, available from 1999 onwards, include a demographic breakdown of the seventy-five top-grossing films in the country (Filmförderungsanstalt, n.d.). Table 1 contains a demographic analysis of the twenty-five most successful rom-coms at the worldwide box office from 1989 to 2013, the year my fieldwork began. Column 4 shows that all the films in this corpus had a majority feminine audience, albeit with some fluctuation. At the lower end of the scale is – perhaps surprisingly – Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want (2000) with a 52% women audience share (Neckermann, 2002: 19). At the other end, and rather less surprising, is Sex and the City 2, whose audience had an 80% women audience share (Nörenberg, 2011: 6). Overall ‘grossout comedies’ or sexually more explicit comedies such as Bridesmaids (2011) or What Happens in Vegas (2008) attracted an approximately 60% women audience share (Nörenberg, 2008: 6, 2012: 9). Meanwhile, more squarely women-centric ‘chick flicks’ like The Devil Wears Prada (2006) or It’s Complicated (2009) attracted an over 70% women audience share (Beigel, 2007: 6; Nörenberg, 2011: 6). Also interesting is the fact that rom-com audiences in Germany seem to have polarized over the last fifteen years: whilst women made up 60% of the audience for films such You’ve Got Mail (1998) or My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) (Deiseroth, 2004: 17; Neckermann, 2000: 61), the ratio of men to women audience members for more recent rom-com productions, such as Meyers’ It’s Complicated (2009) or Sex and the City 2, is usually around 30:70. There is, of course, a problem with identifying the rom-com audience purely through box-office figures. Both the FFA and, until recently, the BFI Statistical Yearbooks only record cinema attendance. According to my interviews however, the cinema is not the location of choice for rom-com consumption. Data from the YouGov Profiler website,

Table 1  Gender preference for biggest-grossing rom-coms (Germany and UK, 1989–2012) Proportion of women viewers Germany Film Title

Year

Worldwide BO FFA Box-Office (in millions) Report

United Kingdom

YouGov Profiler Germany

YouGov Profiler UK

UK Statistical Yearbook

When Harry Met Sally

1989

$92.8

-

74%

62%

-

Pretty Woman

1990

$463.4

-

80%

65%

-

Sleepless in Seattle

1993

$227.8

-

-

69%

-

As Good as It Gets

1997

$314.2

-

-

54%

-

My Best Friend’s Wedding

1997

$299.3

-

-

81%

-

There’s Something About Mary

1998

$369.9

-

-

54%

-

Shakespeare in Love

1998

$289.3

62%

73%

65%

-

You’ve Got Mail

1998

$250.8

61%

-

69%

-

Runaway Bride

1999

$309.5

66%

-

84%

-

What Women Want

2000

$374.1

52%

73%

67%

-

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

2002

$368.7

59%

-

80%

-

Sweet Home Alabama

2002

$180,6

61%

-

76%

-

Something’s Gotta Give

2003

$266.7

62%

-

63%

-

Hitch

2005

$368.1

56%

-

68%

-

The Devil Wears Prada

2006

$326.6

70%

-

78%

78%

Knocked Up

2007

$219.1

70%

-

64%

-

Mamma Mia!

2008

$609.8

69%

72%

73%

75%

Sex and the City

2008

$415.3

75%

85%

92%

81%

What Happens in Vegas

2008

$219.4

61%

-

68%

-

The Proposal

2009

$317.4

72%

-

80%

-

It’s Complicated

2009

$219.1

75%

-

79%

-

Sex and the City 2

2010

$288.3

80%

90%

84%

73%

Valentine’s Day

2010

$216.5

71%

-

-

-

Bridesmaids

2011

$288.4

60%

-

74%

79%

Silver Linings Playbook

2012

$236.4

-

-

69%

-

24

‘Guilty Pleasures’

available for both the UK and Germany (though not France), is helpful here.5 YouGov’s database collates information from a pool of 200,000 participants aged 18 and over, who regularly complete questionnaires on everything from political opinions to consumer choices, including which films they enjoy. This includes film consumption at the cinema, but also on DVD or through VoD platforms. The data is somewhat patchy, but partial results (see Table 1, columns 5 and 6) confirm the box-office data obtained from the FFA and BFI reports. For each film, the majority of consumers who have stated they enjoy it are women. As in the German case, results seem to polarize with time, ranging from 54% women audience share for the ‘gross-out-rom-com’ There’s Something About Mary (1998), to 84% for the Julia Roberts–Richard Gere reunion Runaway Bride (1999), and even 92% in the UK for the first Sex and the City film. In addition to the difficulties discussed above in obtaining gendered box-office data, the clear theoretical distinction between ‘rom-com’ and ‘chick flick’ in film studies presents difficulties for audience scholars engaging in empirical research.6 My interviews confirm via qualitative reception studies what the inconsistent box-office data above suggest, which is that ‘rom-coms’ and ‘chick flicks’ are often used as synonyms in popular and public discourse. Additionally, definitions of the romcom do not just fluctuate between France, Britain and Germany, but even within the countries themselves. This is exemplified in the variety of genre classifications used in the BFI’s Statistical Yearbook. Between 2002 and 2005 ‘romantic comedy’ is consistently cited in the report as one of women audiences’ favourite genres: ‘Women’s preferences were for relationship dramas, romantic comedies and films with family or young children appeal,’ states the 2002 report (Perkins et al., 2003: 37),

Whilst the German data is still available, some of the UK data is no longer publicly accessible. See https://yougov.de/profileslite#/ (YouGov Profiles LITE, n.d.). 6 This point has been made about qualitative research more broadly by practitioners of grounded theory, who argue that the research process must be inductive: rather than apply existing theory to fieldwork, they argue, theory must be generated (or ‘discovered’) from the data (see Glaser and Strauss, 2009: 1). 5

Introduction

25

whilst the 2005 report announces that ‘romance, whether allied to comedy or drama, figured highly in the list of films with large female audience shares’ (Perkins et al., 2006b: 53). More recently, however, the BFI reports have used the label ‘romantic comedy’ less and less, often referring instead to ‘films with women in leading roles’ or ‘comedies with female leads’, such as, for example, The Holiday (2006) or Sex and the City (2008) (Perkins et al., 2006a: 97–8; Steele et al., 2009: 115). Additionally, as the production of larger-budget romantic comedies has decreased in recent years, the BFI reports indicate a larger range of genres favoured by women audiences, with the 2013 annual report, for instance, noting that women preferred a ‘broader range of genres’ than men with regard to the top 20 best-selling films in the UK (Maine et al., 2013: 169). On the one hand, then, there is no clear distinction between rom-com and chick flick from a box-office and industry perspective, firstly because definitions of the genre have been fluid over the past several years, but also, crucially, because rom-coms have consistently appealed to a majority of women viewers. One possible reason for this might be that the films often foreground women’s subjectivity and, as Kathleen Rowe has argued, ‘build the feminine into the construction and resolution of the narrative conflict’ (Rowe, 2008: 160). As study after study demonstrates, this continues to be a rarity in the mainstream media landscape (Thomas, 2017). There are, in sum, numerous problems with applying a strictly text-based definition of the rom-com to interview-based research or industry reviews. But this project has nonetheless demanded a working concept with which to select its corpus of films. Significantly, although the films in my corpus are referred to under different labels in the box-office reports, they all have in common that they are ‘love stories with a happy ending’ (Deleyto, 2009: 24) which appeal mostly to women audiences. Rick Altman has famously described genre as a ‘contract, as the viewing position required by each genre film of its audience’ (1999: 16). In the case of romantic comedy, that position is largely gendered and, and I have noted above, ambivalent, as even the films themselves highlight their own nefarious unrealism whilst

26

‘Guilty Pleasures’

simultaneously promoting emotional escapism as the preferred mode of consumption. Indeed, the rom-com’s definition is mediated by a public (and academic) discourse on the genre’s alleged harmfulness to its viewers, majoritarily women. And it is precisely because viewership is so key to the rom-com, in terms of both demographic patterns and media discourse, that I wanted to conduct an audience study of the genre: I am interested in the ways assumptions about women and the rom-com shape actual audience responses. The aim of my research is not to debate the potentially conservative nature of the films as texts, which has been excellently demonstrated by some of the scholarship cited above. Instead, echoing the popular demand for more complex rom-com heroines (Rabin, 2007), this book asks: why can’t rom-com viewers be complex too?

Book outline This book seeks to analyse the critical and audience reception of the rom-com genre. In Chapter 1, I thus begin by examining the genre’s critical  reception specifically via film reviews. In this chapter, I investigate the language of film reviews in Britain, and especially France and Germany, to identify patterns that may shed light on dismissive attitudes towards the implied rom-com audience. In Germany, I examine this in the light of a specific exhibition practice, that of the ‘Ladies’ Night’ screenings organized by the largest cinema chains since the 2000s. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 turn to the audience, and discuss key findings from my interviews. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on questions of gender: in Chapter 2, I first analyse the particular pleasures of romcom viewing, as discussed and displayed by the participants. Chapter 3 investigates the reaction of a small, but particularly enthusiastic, subgroup of participants: young feminists. I examine how the pleasures evoked by the romantic comedy are experienced alongside a collective feminist critique of the films. Chapter 4 then discusses issues of national identity, and examines participants’ relationship to American

Introduction

27

cinema via the romantic comedy. I note here that groups’ discussions of Hollywood were much more homogenous than originally anticipated. In interviews across the three countries under investigation, Americanness was seen as inscribed in both the aesthetics and narrative of the film. The structure of the book is not intended to be hierarchical, meaning that I do not hold audiences’ responses to the genre to be inferior to that of film journalists or academics. In fact, some of the audience members I interviewed also happened to be film scholars. What this book hopefully demonstrates, however, is that a relative mistrust of the genre permeates both academic and journalistic discussions on the subject. Of particular interest to me is how audiences, particularly women viewers, situate themselves within this discourse.

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1

‘Health warning: High-sugar content’: The rom-com and the critics Corpus selection In this chapter I undertake a comparative analysis of the French, German and British reviews of twenty-six American films falling into the genre’s contemporary cycle, i.e. released from the late 1980s and ending in 2013. The films were generally chosen on the basis of their success at the worldwide box office at the time the fieldwork began; most fell within the top-25 biggest-grossing rom-coms worldwide. Interestingly, the relatively low release of big-budget rom-coms by Hollywood since the 2010s means relatively little has changed since 2013 (with the exception of Crazy Rich Asians (Chu, 2018), which broke the top 20 worldwide) – the corpus is listed in Table 2. Since my research project focused on the European reception of Hollywood romantic comedy, the twenty-six films were selected on the basis of their success at the worldwide box office, except for the last three films in Table 2. In the case of When Harry Met Sally (1989), I could not access records of the film’s worldwide box-office gross. However, the film did earn over 92 million dollars at the American box office, and my archival research indicates that it was a significant critical and commercial success in Germany and France. Moreover, the film has now attained cult status and its scriptwriter, Nora Ephron, has been credited with creating the contemporary romantic comedy cycle (O’Hehir, 2012). The corpus was completed with Sweet Home Alabama (Tennant, 2002) and Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001). Since I had selected Sweet Home Alabama as the central film for my audience research (more on this below), it was necessary for me to examine

30

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and compare its critical reception; it thus became the 25th film on the list. As I began my research into the critical reception of Sweet Home Alabama, I discovered repeated comparisons to Reese Witherspoon’s Legally Blonde, which had been released the previous year. For context, then, Legally Blonde became the 26th film in my corpus. Table 2  Corpus: Top 26 rom-coms at the worldwide box office (1989–2012) Title (Director and Year)

Worldwide Box-Office Gross (in millions)

Domestic % Overseas %

Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)

$609.8

23.6%

76.4%

Pretty Woman (Marshall, 1990)

$463.4

38.5%

61.5%

Sex and the City (King, 2008)

$418.7

36.5%

63.5%

What Women Want (Meyers, 2000)

$374.1

48.9%

51.1%

There’s Something About Mary (Farrelly and Farrelly, 1998)

$369.9

47.7%

52.3%

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Zwick, 2002)

$368.7

65.5%

34.5%

Hitch (Tennant, 2005)

$371.5

48.3%

51.7%

The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel, 2006)

$326.6

38.2%

61.8%

The Proposal (Fletcher, 2009)

$317.3

51.7%

48.3%

As Good as It Gets (Brooks, 1997)

$314.2

47.3%

52.7%

Runaway Bride (Marshall, 1999)

$309.5

49.2%

50.8%

My Best Friend’s Wedding (Hogan, 1997)

$299.3

42.5%

57.5%

Shakespeare in Love (Madden, 1999)

$289.3

34.7%

65.3%

Sex and the City 2 (King, 2010)

$290.4

33.8%

67.2%

The Rom-com and the Critics

31

Bridesmaids (Feig, 2011)

$288.4

58.6%

41.4%

Something’s Gotta Give (Meyers, 2003)

$265.3

47.0%

53.0%

You’ve Got Mail (Ephron, 1998)

$250.8

46.2%

53.8%

Silver Linings Playbook (Russell, 2012)

$236.4

55.9%

44.1%

Sleepless in Seattle (Ephron, 1993)

$227.9

55.6%

44.4%

Knocked Up (Apatow, 2007)

$219.9

67.6%

32.4%

What Happens in Vegas (Vaughan, 2008)

$219.4

36.6%

63.4%

It’s Complicated (Meyers, 2009)

$219.1

51.5%

48.5%

Valentine’s Day (Marshall, 2010)

$216.5

51.0%

49.0%

Sweet Home Alabama (Tennant, 2002)

$180.6

70.4%

29.6%

Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001)

$141.7

68.1%

31.9%

When Harry Met Sally (Reiner, 1989)

$92.8 (domestic only)

100%

No data available

Data from The Numbers (The Numbers, n.d.) and Box Office Mojo (Box Office Mojo, n.d.).

After deciding that an audiovisual stimulus was useful for my interviews, the next step was to find an appropriate film. The choice of Sweet Home Alabama is discussed in much greater detail elsewhere (Guilluy, 2018: 140), but briefly and firstly, from a comparative audience studies perspective, the film’s varied box office both within Europe and between Europe and the United States made it an interesting case study: as detailed in Table 2, it has the highest percentage of domestic box-office gross (70% of its total earnings were in the United States) of all the films in the corpus. Additionally, Sweet Home Alabama is fairly ‘representative’ (Angyal, 2014: 70–2) of the contemporary romcom cycle, which, as Tamar Jeffers MacDonald notes, is ‘the dominant

32

‘Guilty Pleasures’

current form of the genre. It has defied the roughly decade-long supremacy which each of the other types of romantic comedy enjoyed, having been the major form for nearly 20 years’ (Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 85). With a release date of 2002, Sweet Home Alabama falls in the middle of this decades-long cycle. Moreover, from both an aesthetic and a narrative perspective, the film fits neatly within the genre, with some noteworthy deviations from the norm making it an interesting jumping point for discussion. From a stylistic point of view, the film adheres to the genre’s key stylistic tropes, including a reliance on one and two-shots, as well as the use of high-key lighting and a bright colour palette (Bordwell and Thompson, 2002: 194–5; Harrod, 2015: 184). It also relies heavily on the ‘iconography’ of romance defined by Tamar Jeffers MacDonald, including props such as candles or flowers (2007: 11) (see Figures 1 and 2). Perhaps surprisingly, the film’s narrative structure adheres less closely to genre tropes than its aesthetics. Whilst the film certainly centres on a love story with a happy ending (Mernit, 2001: 11), it eschews the familiar ‘boy meets girl’ (Jeffers McDonald, 2007; Mernit, 2001: 111–12) structure of contemporary rom-com, which led to interesting reactions from my participants. In fact, by focussing on a couple getting back

Figure 1  Interior of Jake’s Southern house in Sweet Home Alabama (2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures.

The Rom-com and the Critics

33

Figure 2 Melanie’s New York apartment (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures.

together, the film is narratively closer to the ‘comedies of remarriage’ cluster identified by Stanley Cavell (1981). Having explained the rationale for the corpus of films, a quick note should be added on the press sources selected for this review. These fell within three relevant categories: daily or broadsheet press, film-specific and cultural press, and (considering the genre’s majoritarily feminine audience) the feminine press or women’s magazines. In total, I reviewed approximately 300 articles across about fifteen sources in each country: Table 3  Corpus of press sources

Newspapers

Britain

France

Germany

The Daily Mail

Le Monde

Frankfurter Rundschau

The Sun

Libération

Berliner Morgenpost

The Evening Standard

Le Figaro

Stuttgarter Zeitung

The Daily Telegraph

Le Journal du Dimanche

Tagesspeigel

The Times

Marianne

Berliner Zeitung

‘Guilty Pleasures’

34

The Guardian

France-Soir

Süddeutsche Zeitung Die Welt Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung Die Zeit

Film/TV magazines

Time Out

Les Cahiers du Cinéma

Prisma

Empire

Positif

epd Film

Total Film

Télérama

Film-Dienst

Radio Times

Les Inrockuptibles

Sight and Sound

Première

Elle

Elle

Brigitte1

Glamour

Glamour

Glamour

Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan

Studio Women’s magazines

As with the films, press sources were loosely selected on the basis of readership figures, in order to analyse sources that my participants were most likely to have read. Additionally, and to obtain a balanced coverage, broadsheet and daily newspapers were selected from across the political spectrum, ranging from the Guardian to the Daily Mail in the UK for example. I was also originally interested in finding out whether papers’ political leanings would influence the nature of the reviews, but I could not find significant differences in coverage. Similarly, film-specific publications ranged from traditional cinephile magazines such as Sight and Sound in the UK, Les Cahiers du Cinéma or Positif in France or epd Film in Germany, to publications dedicated to more mainstream film releases such as Empire in Britain, Studio and Première in France, and the German TV guide Prisma. All were easily accessible through each country’s dedicated film libraries: the British Brigitte is Germany’s most popular women’s magazine. Its format is very similar to Elle, a publication which I found very difficult to get hold of in Germany, and which I therefore replaced with Brigitte.

1

The Rom-com and the Critics

35

Film Institute Library, the Bibliothèque du Film (BiFi) in Paris and the Deutsche Kinemathek Library in Berlin. Additionally, both the BiFi and the Kinemathek hold press cutting collections archived by film name, and including broadsheets and daily newspapers (which also include a few sources from other newspapers). In the UK, I made use of the online news archive Nexis. The archival research process was a little lengthier for my third category of publication: women’s magazines. Since I was looking into a ‘women’s genre’, I was curious to examine the extent of the coverage devoted to rom-coms in women’s magazines such as Glamour, Elle or Cosmopolitan, all of which have national editions in each country under examination. However, although all of these publications have long included a filmreview section, these are not archived by any of the film libraries I visited.2 The reviews were thus sourced individually through the British Library, the French National Library and the Berlin city library. In the rest of this chapter, I outline two trends I observed across the reviews. The first is the repeated use of food imagery across the reviews in English, German and especially French, which reflects the rom-com’s status as both a popular and a feminine genre. Secondly, I examine the particular case of Germany with regard to translations of the term ‘rom-com’, and the semantic ambiguities surrounding the concept of film genre.

Analysis Food imagery Analysis of the reviews followed a deductive and inductive process. Since my project is situated at the intersection of genre and gender studies, I originally approached the reviews looking at the ways in which the English terms ‘romantic comedies’ and ‘chick flick’ were translated This would make an interesting object for further enquiry. Tamar Jeffers McDonald has made a similar argument for the fruitfulness of using fan magazines as historical sources (2016).

2

36

‘Guilty Pleasures’

into French and German. There are no equivalent expressions for ‘chick flick’ in French or German. In the latter there is simply no equivalent for ‘chick flick’, except for the broad terms Frauenfilm (women’s film) or the rather untranslatable Schnulze (fluff, insignificant film). Meanwhile whilst the literal translation film de nana (chick’s movie) exists in France, it hasn’t entered the mainstream critical vocabulary in the way that ‘chick flick’ has. However, in my search for translations of these genre labels in the French reviews, I was struck by the culinary imagery permeating them. Of the 300 reviews I collected in France, I found 116 articles – over a third – which contained at least one direct reference to food in association with the films, their making or consumption. Later, as I collected the German and British reviews, I directly sought out such references to food and, although these were less frequent than in France, they were still noticeably present. This phenomenon was also remarked on by Deborah Jermyn and Katrina Glitre with regard to reviews of Nancy Meyers films, specifically (Glitre, 2011: 26; Jermyn, 2017: xv). The first section of this chapter therefore focuses mostly on extracts from the French sources, though citations from British and German sources also occur, which suggests that this phenomenon has been widespread across all three countries for over two decades. The significant presence of food imagery in reviews of rom-coms reflects and contributes to romantic comedy’s poor artistic reputation, and is exemplified by the repeated use of metaphors associating filmmaking with food production. Importantly, the reviews’ choice of verbs implies the making of a small or unimportant meal, with regular romantic comedy directors likened to cooks rather than chefs. Recurrent verbs in French include tambouiller (preparing the grub or nosh) or concocter (cooking up/concocting).3 Both bring up images of a haphazard, improvised creation process; the latter also conjures connotations of witchcraft (‘concocting’ a magic potion),4 placing the

All translation from French and German reviews are my own. I am indebted to the feedback I received from colleagues at King’s College London in developing this point, particularly Manuela Lazic.

3 4

The Rom-com and the Critics

37

genre outside rational thought, something I will return to later in this chapter. For example, for both its reviews of Something’s Gotta Give (Meyers, 2003) and Valentine’s Day (Marshall, 2010), Le Figaro refers to Nancy Meyers and Gary Marshall’s filmmaking practice as ‘concocting’ (C.G., 2010; Frois, 2004). Meanwhile, Marshall’s direction is also described in the Libération review of Pretty Woman as ‘cook[ing]-up his silly little scenario’ (Co., 1990). In the UK meanwhile, the same word (‘concoction’) occurs in Derek Malcolm’s review of Sleepless in Seattle in the Guardian: [Nora Ephron] is not one to overdo the sentiment: rather than milk it, here she pours it discreetly into our cups with the aid of a sharpish script and performances that try hard not to seem manufactured. … this is a concoction all right, but, on the whole, a convincing one. (1993)

Expanding the metaphor and further emphasizing rom-com directors’ lack of artistic talent are repeated references to cinematic ‘recipes’ (recettes). This, of course, illustrates the most common criticism again the romantic comedy as a genre, namely that it is repetitive and unoriginal. Critics may however – reluctantly – admit to the efficiency of such recipes: ‘The best broths are made in the oldest pots,’ concedes the Journal du Dimanche’s review of You’ve Got Mail (Théate, 1999), whilst the Première review of the Will Smith vehicle Hitch notes that the film ‘has shopped through the last 20 years of cinema to concoct this tasty dish. One may know the recipe well, but when it’s well done, it still tastes good’ (Carratier, 2005). This recipe metaphor is also used in L’Evènement du Jeudi to refer (again) to Nora Ephron: ‘the lady certainly knows the recipe for “pink comedy” savoury cake’ (E.G., 1999). The articles also evoke dull, everyday tasks (such as going food shopping) and compare the films to ordinary, unoriginal confections, thus emphasizing the genre’s status as low-brow, artless entertainment. Significantly, both reviewers are however (grudgingly) positive about the films. And indeed, whilst culinary metaphors are often used for scathing one-liners (and foregrounded by editorial decisions), they

38

‘Guilty Pleasures’

are also present in more positive reviews. This supports Celestino Deleyto’s notion that rom-coms have come to be defined by their lack of quality – even a good rom-com cannot stray far from the ‘recipe’ (2009: 3). Through these repeated metaphors, regular romantic comedy directors are therefore likened to cooks rather than chefs. This taps into historical divisions of labour whereby, whilst women are responsible for most of the food production in the private sphere, celebrated chefs – who operate in the public sphere – have until recently tended to be men (Bourdieu, 2002: 49). By likening romantic comedy filmmaking to simple, everyday cooking practices, the genre is coded as feminine. This is not to say that cinematic ‘recipes’ are applied exclusively to romantic comedies. Indeed, this term can be found fairly regularly in French press criticism of genre cinema. This is perhaps best illustrated by the horror genre, which is also often accused of lacking originality. For example, I found similar culinary metaphors used in film magazines’ coverage of James Wan’s work, such as the Insidious (2011, 2013) series or The Conjuring (2013). ‘James Wan sets the table again,’ states Les Fiches du Cinéma of Insidious 2 (Mi.G., 2013), whilst another publication complains that the director ‘wraps up the film with his usual efficiency, but his little grub feels reheated’ (Bonnard, 2013). Significantly, however, most critical reviews of Wan’s films nevertheless recognize the director’s cinephile appreciation for the horror genre: ‘the filmmaker exploits the genre’s tried and tested recipes, cheekily underlining their cliché nature,’ writes Le Nouvel Observateur (Leherpeur, n.d.). His colleague Olivier Bonnard, meanwhile, regrets Insidious 2 and The Conjuring’s over-reliance on what he calls the ‘horror heritage’ or ‘horror compilation’, though as he admits ‘the compilation is efficient, as it happens’ (Bonnard, n.d.). Similarly, Laurent Pécha in L’Ecran Large praises Insidious’ narrative for being ‘classical and respectful of its elders’ (Pécha, 2013). If the notion of efficiency also surfaces in romantic comedy criticism (Le Figaro calls Gary Marshall ‘a consummate pro of the genre’ (Delcroix, 2010b)), rom-com filmmakers’ references to previous works are more often described as plagiarism or theft than cinephilia. Critics also often

The Rom-com and the Critics

39

make a point of differentiating between the genre’s contemporary and older cycles. Nora Ephron’s noticeably self-referential films have been the subject of particular vitriol in French cinephile magazines, for example. Thus, Positif labels You’ve Got Mail ‘a pale and useless copy’ of Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940), concluding that the film is ‘not a remake’ but ‘an imposture’ (Valens, 1999). Similarly, Les Cahiers du Cinéma accuses Ephron of ‘mistreating’ Leo McCarey’s An Affair to Remember (1957) in Sleepless in Seattle (Higuinen, 1999). So whilst the director-as-cook metaphor is a staple of film criticism, French criticism seems more suspicious of rom-com filmmakers: what in other genres might be considered a homage to the classics is treated as lowly copying of previous masterpieces. Moreover, whilst the culinary imagery in criticism of other genres stops at the filmmaking-as-cooking comparison, it extends significantly in the case of the rom-com. After associating filmmaking with food production, the next step for critics is to compare the films themselves directly to foodstuffs. In her work on theatre audiences, Kirsty Sedgman draws on the work of Lakoff & Johnson to argue that the association between food and culture generally is so prevalent that it has become a ‘metaphor we live by’. The repeated use of such metaphors demonstrates that ‘cultural experiences are often subject to sensory division’, and serves to perpetrate a division between low and high culture (Sedgman, 2016: 18). This also situates the rom-com genre as low-brow entertainment by tapping into the mind– body dualism of Western philosophy and its traditional hierarchy of the senses: the films are pleasures to be tasted rather than seen. For example, the adjective most often used to describe a romantic comedy in a positive light is ‘delicious’ (délicieux): France-Soir calls My Best Friend’s Wedding ‘a delight to be savoured as soon as possible’ (Anon, 1997), and Le Journal Du Dimanche concludes its review of Hitch with a one-word summary: ‘ … delicious’ (Gomez, 2005). The adjective is also regularly used to qualify an actress’s (and, more rarely, an actor’s) performance or star-image: Reese Witherspoon is deemed ‘delicious’ in Sweet Home Alabama (Frois, 2002), and the same term is used to

40

‘Guilty Pleasures’

describe the performances of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (A.R., 2006) or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (Ph.R., 1990). Although the French term délicieux has a less direct culinary connotation than the English, it still implies a bodily, rather than an intellectual, pleasure. More straightforward variants are ‘tasty’ (savoureux) or ‘a delight’ (régal), which are used to qualify the first Sex and the City film in Télérama (Mury, 2008), As Good as It Gets in La Tribune Desfossés (Philippe Flamand, 1998) or Frances McDormand’s Zoe in Something’s Gotta Give in Studio Magazine (A.C., 2004). Meanwhile in the UK, Meg Ryan’s performance in Sleepless in Seattle is deemed ‘good enough to eat’ by Empire (Salisbury, 2006). The temporal implications behind the use of food imagery in romantic comedy criticism are also significant. Feeding oneself is by nature a temporary activity, and associating romantic comedy viewing with food consumption serves to present the films as fleeting pleasures. ‘Candy-floss’ is a particularly favoured word in this context: it appears for example in both the Stern review of Sleepless in Seattle (Kruttschnitt, 1993) – titled ‘Candy-floss for two’– and in Premiere’s review of Legally Blonde, which calls the film ‘a nice comedy, light, sweet and ephemeral like really pink candy-floss’ (Jauberty, 2001). The French edition of Elle delivers a similar and damning verdict on Sex and the City 2: ‘easily consumed, easily forgotten’ (Raja, 2010). The romantic comedies we watch, like the food we eat, seem then to disappear as soon as we’ve consumed them. The ephemeral motif is drawn out outside of the culinary metaphors with a number of references to bubbles, which are by nature exceedingly fleeting in existence. Pretty Woman, Mamma Mia! and Sweet Home Alabama, for example, are all compared to champagne: of the latter for example, epd-Film notes that director Andy Tennant ‘knowingly plays on the repertoire of romances that sparkle like champagne’ (Sternborg, 2012: 37). Another bubble reference is used by Télérama’s review of Legally Blonde, which describes the film as ‘a candy-pink entertainment, light as a soap bubble’ (Ferenczi, 2001). According to the reviews, then, rom-coms may bring instantaneous gratification, but they are

The Rom-com and the Critics

41

unlikely to leave their mark on the history of film. Feeding oneself or others is moreover a mundane, ordinary activity, further underlining assumptions about the genre’s lack of significance to film as an art form. Some reviews also explicitly differentiate romantic comedy from a more permanent form of art or high-culture: ‘What Happens in Vegas has no pretention other than an acknowledged consumption of sentiments and comical effects. One knows what will be on the menu, and how the product will be digested,’ writes Guillaume Loison in France-Soir (2008). Significantly, the use of expressions such as ‘ambition’ and ‘owning-up’ present the high-culture–low-culture divide as if it is being constructed at production level, a deliberate marketing strategy on the part of filmmakers. A similar phrase occurs in Première’s review of Sweet Home Alabama, which dismisses the film as ‘fluff (bluette) carved out of jelly, with no more ambition than a lipstick commercial’ (Carratier, 2002: 60). Such mixed metaphors are frequent, as reviews often supplement culinary imagery with make-up references, drawing on stereotypically feminine practices to connect the genre to women audiences. The repeated usage of the lexical field of food thus highlights implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumptions made about the gender of romantic comedy audiences. Over the past decades, food studies scholars have demonstrated the historical relationship between women and food, notably exploring food preparation as a highly gendered task (DeVault, 1991; McLean, 2012). Philosophers Deane Curtin and Lisa Heldke have further argued that food has been neglected by philosophical study precisely because its production has historically been associated with women and the working class (1992: xiii). Hence, linking rom-coms to food serves to associate them with women and further serves to devalue their artistic significance. This connection to women audiences is sometimes reinforced visually by multiple references to pink, a colour that has traditionally been coded as ‘feminine’ (and which is often exploited in romantic comedy film posters): Legally Blonde is thus described as ‘candy pink’ by both Première and Télérama in their reviews of the film (Ferenczi, 2001; Jauberty, 2001), whilst Le Figaro also describes the film as being à l’eau

42

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de rose (literally ‘rose-flavoured water’, though the French word refers to both the flower and the colour) (Anon, 2001a). Within the corpus itself, there also seem to be differences in the way men and women directors are treated. I have already noted the disdain expressed by certain cinephile publications towards Nora Ephron’s self-referential films. Moving away briefly from the reviews themselves, it is worth noting that unlike their male counterparts, food has played a key role in the auteur persona of both Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron, who alongside Gary Marshall make up the top three most successful rom-com directors in my selected corpus, with three directing and/or writing credits each. Food is a recurrent theme in Ephron’s work, from When Harry Met Sally’s infamous fake orgasm scene in a diner, to her last film, the ‘food movie’ Julie and Julia (2009) (Errigo, 2008a). Her non-screen writing is also permeated with food: the lead character of her first novel Heartburn (1983) is a cookbook writer, and her essay collections frequently include recipes and food diaries. The director’s ‘love affair with eating’ has since her death in 2012 become cemented to her star image (Aiken, 2012). ‘Ephron never forgot the food,’ read the headline of the New York Times food guide’s obituary (Moskin, 2012), whilst NPR dubbed her a ‘Feminist, Foodie, Filmmaker’ (Wolitzer, 2013). If Nora Ephron’s work seemingly calls for an association between filmmaking and cooking by thematizing food, Nancy Meyers has been more indirectly associated with food preparation via an obsession with interior design and particularly kitchen spaces in her work. As Deborah Jermyn has noted, this feeds into patronizing dismissals of Meyers’ work as superficial, favouring style over substance (2017: xv) – ironic considering romantic comedies are consistently accused of being aesthetically lacking. This was particularly visible in the press coverage for Meyers’ The Intern (Meyers, 2015), which caused numerous publications and websites to present compilations of the director’s best kitchen spaces: ‘never mind the plot – get a load of that kitchen countertop,’ announced the Telegraph’s best-of list (Ryan, 2015), whilst another publication called the director ‘the queen of interior porn’

The Rom-com and the Critics

43

(Lubitz, 2015). At the time of the film’s release one could even take a quiz on the feminist website Jezebel with the enticing title ‘What kind of Nancy Meyers kitchen are you?’ (Finger, 2015). In fact, the term ‘Nancy Meyers kitchen’ has now become a stock phrase associated with spotless – and very expensive – interior design. Or, to quote popculture website Vulture’s definition: ‘Nancy Meyers kitchen: alphabetised spice rack, Viking stove, handmade-ceramic-bowl collection, Downton Abbey datebook by the phone’ (Swerdloff, 2014). Whilst food imagery is significant across reviews of all romantic-comedy productions, there also seems, then, to be a particularly strong link being made between the genre’s two most successful women directors and food. To return to the films themselves, what singles out rom-com reviews from those of other genres is the strong presence of sugar as a semantic field. This further emphasizes the assumed gender of the genre’s audiences. Indeed, in their respective works on the development of the sugar trade and the history of chocolate box design, food historians Sidney W. Mintz and Diane Barthel highlight how women have historically been associated with sugar and confectionery. Both cite early-twentieth-century German sociologist Werner Sombart’s assertion that it was women’s taste in sweet additives for chocolate, coffee and tea which led to sugar’s widespread use throughout Europe and its increased trade in the colonial period (Barthel, 1989: 431; Mintz, 1986: 139). Although both scholars emphasize the unreliability of Sombart’s assertion, they stress the historical association between women and sugar, which is in turn drawn on in metaphors from romcom reviews. References to sugar take multiple forms, starting with the use of adjectives such as ‘sugary’ or ‘saccharine’. For example, the Berliner Morgenpost describes Sweet Home Alabama as a ‘saccharine fantasy story’ (Köhler, 2002). Films are also likened to ‘cake’, ‘candy-floss’ (both previously cited) as well as ‘Turkish delights’ (Sex and the City 2), ‘cream pie’ (When Harry Met Sally) or ‘candy’, as in der Tagesspiegel, which calls Sweet Home Alabama ‘a sweet-as-candy, somewhat-cliché romantic comedy’ (Delcroix, 2010a; Wais, 1989; Wieder, 2002). Other adjectives

44

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include ‘honey-flavoured’ or ‘syrupy’, as in in the Sun’s description of What Happens in Vegas, as a ‘sweet yet slight confection [that] totters awkwardly towards its syrupy, feelgood conclusion’ (Anon, 2008a). Some reviews pile on the culinary metaphors, such as the Marianne description of Mamma Mia!: A big sugary confection. A Haribo strawberry on amphetamines, a high-vitamin marshmallow, a pink meringue with the pin removed … how to describe Mamma Mia! if not with baking metaphors? (Heymann, 2008)

As Deborah Jermyn, who also remarks of the frequent use of words such as ‘saccharine’ or ‘treacle’ with regard to Nancy Meyers’ films, notes, ‘food metaphors … suggest that there is no nourishing artistic sustenance to be had here, conjuring up an image of women audiences lacking restraint and willpower gorging themselves on sugary goodies they should know aren’t good for them’ (2017: xv). This infantilization of women audiences is supported by the lexical field of sugar, specifically. Feminist cultural studies scholars such as Joanne Hollows and Charlotte Brunsdon have analysed the association between cooking and feminine sexuality in popular discourse, for example in the construction of food writer and presenter Nigella Lawson’s ‘domestic goddess’ starimage (Brunsdon, 2005; Hollows, 2003). In the case of romantic comedy criticism, however, the culinary vocabulary used does not exploit the sexualization of food preparation and consumption. Rather, repeated references to sweets and confectionary work to infantilize women romantic comedy audiences. This is compounded by the references to pink and, in the case of Legally Blonde, by multiple references to ‘Barbie dolls’: ‘Barbie goes to Harvard,’ runs the headline of the Evening Standard’s review of the film (Walker, 2001), whilst Die Zeit’s simply reads ‘Barbie studies’ (Galle, 2001). Such references to sweetness are also prevalent in relation to (blonde) female stardom, for example in descriptions of actresses Reese Witherspoon or Meg Ryan. The latter, for example, is described as ‘sweet-as-sugar and enchanting’ in the Die Welt review of Sleepless in Seattle (Anon, 1993). This is consistent

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with Peter W. Evans’s analysis of Meg Ryan’s star image: ‘to look at Meg Ryan is to contemplate a world free of demons and terror,’ he noted, highlighting how Ryan’s image is constructed to emphasize childishness and naturalness, contributing to 1980s and 1990s rom-coms’ upholding of heteronormative romance as reassuring and comforting amidst the social changes of the period (Evans, 1998: 190). Significantly, the more woman-centred a film is, the more this semantic field of sugar occurs. Whilst this lexical field abounds in reviews for films such as Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001), Sex and the City 1 and 2 (King, 2008, 2010) and Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008), as demonstrated above, reviews for gross-out or ‘homme-coms’ (Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 107) such as There’s Something About Mary (Farrelly and Farrelly, 1998) or Knocked Up (Apatow, 2007) contain barely any. Ironically, a Metro review for The Proposal (Fletcher, 2009) combined fat and sugar to bemoan the very rise of the homme-com: ‘What with the rise of the “bromance” (e.g. The Hangover) we girls have been so starved of rom-com junk food that I was hungry to love this one, regardless of its zero nutritional brain count and invariably high sugar content,’ complained the reporter (Li. Z., 2009). The use of these metaphors, moreover, implicitly singles out young women viewers as the audience for such films. In France, this recalls the figure of the ‘starry-eyed girl’ (midinette) explored by Genevieve Sellier and Emilie Charpentier, who have emphasized the marginalization of women audiences in film magazines’ letters section from the 1920s to the 1940s. Sellier notes that in the communist magazine L’Ecran Français in particular, women spectators’ demands for personal information on and ‘gushing’ about male stars were ridiculed by the male journalists in charge of the letters section (2010). Emilie Charpentier has also analysed the developing use of the term midinette to describe avid young feminine moviegoers in this period. Originally used to describe shopgirls and seamstresses, the word gained a negative connotation precisely with the rise in cinemagoing amongst the working class and became a pejorative term for ‘silly young girls’ (Charpentier, 2003: 151–2). Both Charpentier and Sellier highlight the French press’s construction of a

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gendered gap in spectatorship, by opposing ‘good spectatorship’ (male cinephilia) to ‘bad spectatorship’ (feminine fandom) through the figure of the midinette (Sellier, 2010: 220). The term has become somewhat old-fashioned in contemporary French, and I consequently found few direct references to it in my corpus. An exception can be found in a review for Pretty Woman by the left-leaning newspaper Libération. The journalist describes his reluctant appreciation of the film in the following terms: ‘who would have bet that one would get caught-up in something so silly? And still, it works. Worse, one falls for it like a midinette’ (Co., 1990). Without using the term specifically, however, other articles do also reference the young age of the films’ alleged target audiences: a review of Pretty Woman thus concludes that it is ‘fine to take the kids to’ (Gehler, 1990), whilst Premiere’s assessment of The Devil Wears Prada finishes with ‘we’ll let you guess the target audience for the film, a veritable girly orgy’ (Carratier, 2010). Télérama’s review of Legally Blonde, meanwhile, ties food, make-up and girlishness all neatly together: ‘this candy-pink entertainer is light as a soap-bubble, and will first of all seduce little girls who dream of manicures and nail polish’ (Ferenczi, 2001). In the case of Sweet Home Alabama, this infantilizing can also be observed at the level of exhibition. The French poster for the film was thus adorned with a lipstick stain surrounding the phrase ‘no boys allowed’ (interdit aux garçons) on the top-left cover – this in spite of the fact that Reese Witherspoon was 26 at the time of filming. Alongside marking the romantic comedy as a teenage genre, the repeated presence of the semantic field of sugar in rom-com reviews not only emphasizes the genre’s lack of quality, but also suggests a harmful impact on the viewer by substituting the body for the mind. As cultural signifiers, sugar and fat hold a ‘dual status’ and ‘moral ambivalence’, whereby ‘the pleasurable nature of chocolate and confectionary can become associated with self-indulgence and guilt’ (Beardsworth and Keil, 1996: 250). This moral ambivalence is central to many of the romcom reviews I examined, starting with the Les Inrockuptibles review of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which chastised the film for being ‘as heavy

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and indigestible as a gyros’ (Ostria, 2003). Similarly, the term ‘sickening’ is used repeatedly in French reviews: ‘Sweet Home Alabama runs like sickening honey,’ closes the review of the film in Positif (Baumann, 2003: 42), whilst Le Canard Enchaîné calls Valentine’s Day ‘a sickening, syrupy candy’ (D.F., 2010). Both Le Figaro and Der Tagesspiegel also use a culinary metaphor to highlight the dangers of oversentimentality: Valentine’s Day is ‘stickily-sweet’ according to the German publication (Tilmann, 2010: 24), whilst Le Figaro concludes that Sex and the City 2 is ‘Not bad, but slightly too filling!’ (Delcroix, 2010a). France-Soir meanwhile complains that Gary Marshall’s Valentine’s Day ‘ends up sticking to the teeth’ (Vogel, 2010). Kate Muir at the Times takes the metaphor to the next level, warning that the film is ‘so sugary you’ll need to shoot up with insulin in your cinema seat, just to make it through to the end’ (2010). And indeed, the latter seemed to overwhelm critic Mark Kermode, who concluded in his review on the BBC Radio 5 Live Film programme: ‘it’s like getting a greeting card full of vomit. … here’s your Valentine’s card, it’s a bag of sick’ (Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo, 2010). Through its displacement from mind to body, this imagery taps into long-standing assumptions about women as impressionable and uncontrollable consumers. Fears about women’s consumption of popular culture can be traced back centuries. In her work on the ‘chick flick’ television series Gilmore Girls (Warner Bros, 2000–7), Joyce Goggin presents a cultural history of the concept of addiction, which she sees as thematized both in the show and in fans’ discussion of their consumption. She traces the origins of the term ‘consumer’ in English to the expansion of Western colonization and the global trade of goods such as coffee, tea and – significantly – sugar. Like Mintz and Barthel, she notes that the exploitation of colonies for such goods was justified by emphasizing women’s insatiable appetites: Although women were cast as nurturing domestic consumers who stimulated and supported foreign trade, they were also derided for their supposed compulsive need for luxury goods such as fashion that required vast quantities of expensive silks and superfluous collections

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‘Guilty Pleasures’ of objects such as china. Such associations, moreover, would form the basis of a long, ingrained tradition that continues to write women off as compulsive shoppers. (Goggin, 2010: 270)

An explicit displacement of the body for the mind to allude to rom-com’s nefarious influence can be found in the Le Figaro review of Hitch: ‘Hitch makes you overdose on sugar in three sequences. With happiness, one is forced to swallow stupidity. Nothing’s perfect’ (Baudin, 2005). Die Welt, meanwhile, describes Shakespeare in Love as ‘Shakespeare light, a teen version of the Bard that is as low in calories as it is in ideas’ (Hans-Georg Rodek, 1999). These repeated emphases on the bodily consumption of rom-com bring with it – again – feminine connotations. Per Carole Counihan, in the mind– body paradigm of Western philosophy, ‘women are identified with nature and the sensual body that must be controlled’ (my emphasis) (1989: 365). Both Counihan and Caroline Walker Bynum have documented how restrictions on food consumption have historically been a central concern for (Western) women, from the Middle Ages to today. Records of extreme fasting practices amongst nuns and women mystics have existed since the medieval period, with the aim of getting closer to the divine and the higher intellectual spheres by controlling bodily urges (Bynum, 1987). In a review of Walker Bynum’s work, Counihan traces the contemporary dieting culture of Western society back to these practices, emphasizing the inherent tension between women’s responsibilities as food providers for their families, and a socially or self-imposed bodily control through food deprivation (1989: 371). The culinary imagery outlined above and the displacement from body to mind, particularly the references to sugar and its negative effects, echo this traditional fasting. This time it is women’s cinematic consumption, just like their bodies, which is being controlled. As Annie Fursland once put it, women ‘are the consumed, not the consumers’ (1987: 25).

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Significantly, anxieties about rom-com consumption are nationalized as well as gendered. The constant metaphors used can also be linked to assumptions about American cultural imperialism and its presence in and through romantic comedy. The nationality of the films is indeed constantly foregrounded in reviews: a fact which, as we will see in Chapter 4, echoes audience reactions to the films. This is done through repeated references to the films’ urban American settings (Los Angeles, New York, etc.), as well as the use of food imagery. Thus, the films are, for example, compared to ‘Hollywood chewing-gum’ (A popular French brand) or – the term is used in English – ‘junk food’ (Dufreigne, 2001; Dutour, 2008), whilst the title of a review for Shakespeare in Love simply reads: ‘Shakespeare, McDonalds flavour’ (Gouslan, 1999). Meanwhile, When Harry Met Sally is described in Studio Magazine as ‘the games of love and chance made over by Coca-Cola’ (Rebichon, 1989). Meanwhile, the romantic comedy genre as a whole is described by one French publication as ‘a genre with a Starbucks atmosphere’ (Hansen-Love, 2007). Andrei S. Markovits has argued that anti-Americanism has become a kind of European lingua franca, which ‘merges antipathy towards what America does with what America is’ (2007: 21). Indeed, though anti-Americanism is particularly significant in French reviews, it is also present in German and UK reviews. The culinary imagery here marks the films as ‘foreign’, low-culture vehicles of American imperialism. This connection is made explicitly in the Evening Standard review of There’s Something About Mary: ‘Americans take their culture in readymade form from the movies, the way they take their popcorn from the concessionary stand’ (Walker, 1998). Once again, the body acts as a stand-in for the mind, which needs to be protected from a corrupting ideology. Importantly, the reviewers effectively distance themselves not just from the films but from American audiences too, who, it is suggested, are much less sophisticated cultural consumers than Europeans. If the media discourse around rom-com emphasizes with such strength its harmful impact on audiences, how then do positive reviews

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or promotional material justify the consumption of these products? By calling upon the ever-so-useful notion of the ‘guilty pleasure’, as with this example of a profile of Ashton Kutcher in the French edition of Elle: Built like a campus, cool and fresh like Hollywood chewing-gum, cornflakes-bred, Iowa-born and clean as an Abercrombie model, Ashton Kutcher is the archetypal cute guy 100% made in the USA. … Go see What Happens in Vegas, an entertaining flick that needs to be consumed with a ton of chips and an extra-large coke. Let’s be honest, Ashton’s filmography is more junk-food than Les Cahiers du Cinéma: it’s not very good, but we love it! (Dutour, 2008: 168)

The culinary metaphors again outline the actor’s (and, by association, the film’s) foreignness, specifically his Americanness (note the constant use of English words, italicized). Moreover, the concept of ‘guilty pleasure’ serves as tool of Bourdieusian distinction. In their work on audiences of ‘bad’ television, Charles McCoy and Roscoe Scarborough note what they call the ‘normative contradiction’ at the heart of the guilty pleasure concept: admitting to a guilty pleasure allows audiences both to draw firm boundaries between good and bad pop culture and to transgress them. At the same time, the ability to enjoy rom-com whilst recognizing its lack of artistic merit is a mark of ‘superior’ viewership, to distinguish oneself as a cinematic consumer (McCoy and Scarborough, 2014: 42). In the Elle review, this distinction is overlaid with national signifiers: European cinephile film consumption – with Les Cahiers du Cinéma as a metonymy for art cinema and high culture – is opposed to junk food, which represents crass, imperialistic, consumerist Hollywood cinema. By contrast, European viewers are positioned as both cognisant of and capable of resistance to American culture – I will return to this distinction in Chapter 4. Through the use of food metaphors therefore, cinematic consumption is also re-inscribed within national (or European) boundaries. This discourse analysis of the culinary imagery in romantic comedy reviews in Britain, France and Germany exemplifies neatly one of this

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book’s central themes: it illustrates well how the feminine gendering of romantic comedy extends beyond marketing strategies to widespread journalistic and popular discourses. Moreover, it perpetuates notions of women’s appreciation for low culture as necessitating containment, all the while building on defensive attitudes to American cultural imperialism through globalized cinema. In her discussion of Nancy Meyers’s critically slated work, Katharina Glitre has noted that the use of culinary metaphors ‘are part of a much longer history of taste formation, in which hierarchies of quality are constructed along the lines of gender and class’ (2011: 26). Similarly, in the reviews discussed in this chapter, the use of food imagery in a variety of forms (‘filmmaking-as-cooking’ metaphors, or the dominant semantic field of sugar) actively genders romantic comedy as a (young) woman’s genre. In doing so, such a use of language taps into and contributes to long-standing attitudes towards film as an art form; constructing and presenting cinephilia, as opposed to rom-com consumption, as a masculine and European (or, rather, ‘un-American’) practice. The above section has focused mostly on the reviews published in French publications. As we will now see, other specificities can be observed in the German case.

Genre and gender in German film reviews This monograph examines the reception of Hollywood cinema in Europe. As such, I have not included in my examination the reception of European romantic comedies produced by the UK, France and Germany. Each country has indeed evolved its own romantic comedy production in the twenty-first century, and these have also begun to attract scholarly interest. In the UK, most of the scholarly discussion has focused on the representation of Britishness and the relationship between England and America as represented in the films of writer/ director Richard Curtis (Bamber, 2020; Honness Roe, 2009). Meanwhile as I will detail below, the representation of gender is central to the – relatively small – literature on German rom-coms (Ascheid, 2013). In the case of France in particular, the reception of Hollywood vs. French

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productions has already been examined by Mary Harrod, who has noted the ambivalence of France’s critical reception for home-grown productions, which are torn between anti-Americanism and a disdain for French rom-coms as ‘pale imitations’ (2015: 189–96). My own work focusses on the reception of Hollywood cinema in Europe. In this following section, however, because German and American productions are associated through exhibition, my discussion will briefly discuss German rom-com productions for comparative purposes. In the previous section, I demonstrated that the lack of a direct French equivalent for the term ‘chick flick’ is compensated by the repeated use of culinary metaphors in review material, which serve to feminize the genre and its audience. Though food imagery is also present – albeit less frequently – in German rom-com reviews, this section outlines a phenomenon unique to the German sources I examined: the lack of a unique translation for the term ‘romantic comedy’ in German, which is instead translated using a multiplicity of terms. I will examine how these translation issues tap into particularly negative attitudes towards popular culture and popular cinema in Germany. Whilst culinary references do appear in German reviews, moreover, they are nowhere near as significant as in their French equivalents. On the one hand, we might draw on national stereotypes to suggest that a strong connection between France and food is relatively unsurprising. Whilst this may be partly true, another possible factor might be that in Germany, the rom-com’s targeting of women audiences also takes place at the point of exhibition and consumption. This is achieved mainly through the phenomenon of ‘Ladies’ Nights’ screenings organized by all major German multiplex chains throughout the country, which will be examined at the end of this chapter.

Genre in translation One of the most striking features of the romantic comedy reviews I analysed in Germany is the multiplicity of synonyms used to refer to the genre. Indeed, throughout the reviews I collected, at least twentyfive different terms can be found to refer to the genre. This is without

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taking into account sub-categorizations based on the age of the target audiences, with terms like Teenager-Komödie (teen comedy) or Campus-Märchen (campus fairy tale), for example, being used to refer to films like Legally Blonde (Anon, 2001b: 51; Pflaum, 2001). Broadly speaking, the different terms used to translate the genre can be divided into the following categories: 1. A first category we might call direct translations, including multiple translations of the phrase ‘romantic comedy’: romantische Komödie, Romantikkomödie, Liebeskomödie (love comedy), romantic comedy (used in English), Beziehungskomödie (relationship comedy); or words that focus specifically on the films’ romance narrative: Boy-meets-Girl Geschichte (boy meets girl story), Love-Story, Liebesgeschichte (love story), Filmromanze or comedy of remarriage (in English again). 2. A content-specific category in which genre is formed around a theme or plot point, from the fairly general Hochzeitsfilmgenre (wedding-film genre), to the very specific: Heiratskaterkomödie (drunken-wedding comedy), Fortpflanzungkomödie (reproduction comedy) or Zähmungkomödie (taming comedy). 3. An audience-specific category: Frauenkomödie (women’s comedy), women’s film (in English), Teenie-komödie or teenkomödie (teen comedy) or Familiefilme (family film). 4. An effect category, which characterizes the films based on their purported impact: Gute-Laune-Filme (good mood films), Feelgoodfilme (feel-good films), Rührstück (sob story, melodrama). 5. A context-specific category, in which film becomes characterized by its industry/nation of production, with a particular focus on the genre’s Americanness: Amerikanische Komödie, HollywoodRomanze, US-Komödie, Mainstream-Komödie. Through these translations, then, romantic comedy is defined according to its audience, plot and effect, though significantly, aesthetic considerations are again absent from this classification. The first of the categories outlined above is constituted by a variety

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of translations of the English term ‘romantic comedy’: some direct translations such as romantische Komödie or Romantikkomödie, some simply using the English term ‘romantic comedy’. Attempting to make sense of this plurality, my first hypothesis was that specific translations might perhaps bear particular weight or meaning. Would certain words have a more negative connotation than others, as is the case with the difference between the often negatively-connoted ‘rom-com’ (a connotation this book does not adhere to) and the more neutral ‘romantic comedy’? However, the material does not seem to support this hypothesis, since the various terms (Romantische Komödie, Romantikkomödie, Liebeskomödie, romantic comedy, etc.) are used with both negative and positive connotations. For instance, Christiane Peitz’s review of Bridesmaids in Der Tagesspiegel praises the film for ‘taking pleasure in dismantling the American way of life and the romantic comedy’ (italics denote the use of English in the original) (2011). Whilst we might conclude that the use of the Englishlanguage term serves to reinforce the implication that the genre itself is cliché and restrictive, this is also the case for more direct German translations. Thus the Frankfurter Rundschau review of Bridesmaids also praises the film for its genre-breaking approach, this time using the German term romantische Komödie, to refer to the genre as stifling creativity. Of producer Judd Apatow and director Paul Feig, the reviewer notes that they are ‘testing the barriers of good taste in the romantic comedy (romantische Komödie) genre, proving that women can also be insecure, vulgar and unlucky, and so fit the “male” comedy formula very well’ (Kohler, 2011). Genre descriptions are not always used with a negative connotation, however. Particularly when attached to a filmmaker, they can also be used to praise a director’s grasp of a genre (a practice not dissimilar from the Cahiers du Cinéma’s previously cited discussion of authorship, in fact). Thus reviews of Nancy Meyers’ 2009 film It’s Complicated praise the director for her work in the genre: the Deutscher Depeschendienst writes that ‘the experienced US director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want) is a guarantee for well-crafted, solidly staged romantic comedies

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(Romantikkomödien)’ (Anon, 2010a). Meanwhile, Der Spiegel writes that ‘romantic comedies (romantische Komödien) are the speciality of director Nancy Meyers’, before describing the film’s romantic entanglements as ‘passably original, but charming and funnily-staged’ (Anon, 2010c). This contrasts with the dismissive treatment of Meyers and Nora Ephron by French critics, as noted above. Hence these multiple translations for ‘romantic comedy’ seem to be used interchangeably in German, without particularly positive or negative connotations. Nevertheless, the repeated use of the English word ‘romantic comedy’ is striking. As I first began to analyse these categories of translations, I wondered whether this served to highlight the Americanness of the films, and thus sought to look into the phrases used to describe German romantic comedies. However, my search proved inconclusive, as most German rom-coms seemed to be simply referred to as ‘comedies’ (Komödie) by trade and other news sources. In this context, it is interesting to note that German romantic comedy stars – whose films I sought out as a point of comparison – tend to be male, as emblematized by actor-director-producers Til Schweiger and Matthias Schweighöfer, who together have been responsible for the biggest domestic rom-com hits of the past decade. One might wonder whether this has something to do with their films sidestepping the ‘rom-com’ label. Antje Ascheid has noted that in Germany ‘genre cinema is often associated with Hollywood’, and further argues that German romantic comedies are usually referred to simply as ‘comedies’ for economic reasons: ‘given that audiences vastly favour German-made comedies over other German films, it comes as no surprise that the majority of films with romantic content also contain comedic content’ (2013: 245). This divide between Hollywood rom-coms and German Komödie is also reflected in the limited scholarship on romantic comedies in Germany. The very few authors who do write on romantic comedy focus  exclusively on Anglophone productions such as Legally Blonde (2001) or Notting Hill (1999). Moreover, these scholars use English terms to refer to the genre: Anne Kaufmann discusses ‘romantic comedy’ (in English), and Sarah-Mai Dang calls the films ‘chick flicks’

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(Dang, 2016; Kaufmann, 2007). Ascheid is among the very few to discuss German romantic comedy productions, which importantly she calls Beziehungskomödien (relationship comedies) throughout her article. This is significant within the context of her argument, which hinges on the idea that romantic comedy, like all film, reacts to specific sets of social changes. Ascheid argues that the German rom-com, like all international romantic comedy productions, is a reaction to anxieties about the rise of ‘singledom’ and the collapse of the traditional family unit in the twentyfirst century (2013). This is supported by Mary Harrod’s study of the rise of the contemporary rom-com in France, which she also reads as a French response to ‘an identity crisis unprecedented in human history, one … provoked by the movement away from clearly-delineated gender roles’ (2015: 1). In the German context, notes Ascheid, there are added fears about the demographic and economic repercussions of these shifts (including an ageing population and pension crisis). Thus, she is not so much concerned about the ‘romantic’ aspect of the romantic comedy but is rather more interested in its representation of gender and social relationships (Ascheid, 2013: 246). The strong link between genre – and particularly the romantic comedy genre – and Hollywood is also emphasized in the German reviews by the frequent use of ‘American’ or ‘US’ as a genre qualifier in itself. For instance, both the Berliner-Zeitung and Neues Deutschland refer to the genre of Hollywood-Romanze in their reviews of Knocked Up and Sleepless in Seattle, the latter adding: ‘something so carefree and heart-warming, so Christmassy and rosy can only be dared in Hollywood’ (Dicks, 1993). Similarly, the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s review of The Proposal explains: ‘Love as a formality. That is the secret formula of the American comedy’ (Göttler, 2009). In addition to the food imagery used by French critics, German reviews make repeated use of mechanical metaphors: references to formulas and machinery are frequent, again emphasizing the idea of Hollywood as a site for mass blockbuster-production over singular works of art. Another term which is treated as synonymous with ‘American’ is ‘mainstream’. For instance, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung review of Bridesmaids highlights

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the film’s originality thus: ‘in the logic of mainstream comedy … an actress like Kirsten Wiig would be relegated to sidekick roles and clever cameos’ (Rebhandl, 2011). Whilst ‘mainstream’ refers here specifically to the formal aspects of comedy, it is also the rom-com’s repetitiveness that is seen to have made it ‘mainstream’. At the same time, this is linked to Hollywood’s economic domination of the international film market. As diverse as the terms above are, they at the very least fall into the broadest definition of genre, that of a category, or type (Ryall, 1970: 23). But what of terms such as ‘hangover-wedding-comedy’ or ‘reproduction comedy’? The first is used in the Stuttgarter Zeitung’s review of the Cameron Diaz–Ashton Kutcher vehicle What Happens in Vegas, which complains that ‘this hungover-wedding-comedy-doesn’t emit any sparks, it merely stews’ (Kingenmaier, 2008). Meanwhile, another publication refers to Knocked Up as ‘Judd Apatow’s romantic procreation comedy’ (Löblin, 2007). Both terms are singularly precise, which puts into question the notion of genre itself. It is difficult to think of more than a handful of films which could fit the ‘hangover-weddingcomedy’ genre: perhaps Laws of Attraction (Howitt, 2004), in which Julianne Moore and Pierce Brosnan play two sparring lawyers who find themselves married after a drunken night, might also fit the bill. And whilst the ‘waking up married’ trope is familiar in television sitcoms, it cannot be said to constitute a genre in itself. This is particularly true if we follow the definition of genre I am drawing on in this book, which sees it as hinging on a triangular relationship between industry, film text and audience (Altman, 1999: 14–15). The ‘reproduction comedy’ genre is perhaps a little more populated than the ‘hangover-wedding-comedy’, with several romantic comedies produced in recent years around the subject of maternity and pregnancy (Jenkins, 2015). Examples include the Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Back-up Plan (Poul, 2010) or the ensemble-comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Jones, 2012) adapted from the self-help book of the same name. At a push, one might consider Jenny Slate’s Obvious Child (Robespierre, 2014), where a couple fall in love whilst having an abortion, as the antithesis of the genre. Leo Braudy has famously defined genre in the following

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terms: ‘genre films essentially ask the audience, “Do you still want to believe this?” Popularity is the audience answering, “Yes” ’ (1977: 179). Using this definition of genre, however, surely neither the ‘hangoverwedding-comedy’ nor the ‘procreation comedy’ can constitute a ‘genre’. To follow Braudy, would a commercial industry be interested in asking, ‘Do you want to believe this?’ when only a handful – proportionally – of audience members are able to respond? How, then, can we explain the multiplicity of terms in Germany to refer to one of Hollywood’s longest-running genres? The first and perhaps most obvious explanation is the flexibility of the German language compared to French or English. Any word can be added on to the word ‘comedy’ to create a new category in German, from multiple declensions of ‘romantic comedy’ to the Shakespearean ‘taming comedy’ (Zähmungskomödie), used to refer to Anne Fletcher’s The Proposal (Anon, 2009b). More significantly, perhaps, the nonexistence of a unified translation of romantic comedy to refer to the genre highlights how particularly prevalent negative attitudes towards popular culture are in Germany. Though a certain high versus low culture divide is certainly present in all three countries under study, as well as in the United States (Ascheid, 2013: 244), it is telling that out of all the press material reviewed for this project, such a multiplicity of terms was significant only in the German-language reviews. As Raphaëlle Moine has noted, the naming of a genre is significant to its coming into existence: ‘A cinematic genre only appears when it is named and designated as such, since its existence is tied to an awareness of it that is agreed upon and shared by a community’, she stresses (Moine, 2008: 142). Hence, the lack of a recognized, unified term to refer to the romantic comedy in Germany underscores the genre’s continued lack of legitimacy. By contrast the term ‘screwball comedy’ is used repeatedly – in English – in German reviews, where it is used as a benchmark against which contemporary rom-coms are often found wanting. And whilst it might not be so surprising to find such a reference in a film magazine intended for a cinephile audience (such as epd-Film or FilmDienst), the term is in fact also commonly used in broadsheet and daily

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newspapers. Silver Linings Playbook, for instance, is praised several times using this very term, for instance by Lisa Goldmann of Die Welt, who writes that the film reminds her of ‘the best screwball comedies’ (2013). The term is also used positively to describe Something’s Gotta Give: ‘Nancy Meyers’s direction is in the style of screwball comedies of the 1930s,’ applauds the Frankfurter Rundschau (Sannwald, 2004). Conversely, the comparison can sometimes also be used negatively by journalists to indicate a sub-par film: ‘patterns from classic screwball comedies are simply used as obstacles to test the hesitant fairy tale prince, a role which Reynolds performs by banking yet again on his Labrador charm,’ deplores Carmen Böker in the Berliner Zeitung review of The Proposal  (n.d.). Contrary to the romantic comedy’s contemporary cycle, the screwball comedy has become a legitimized and critically acclaimed genre. Hence whilst the common use of the term ‘screwball’ highlights its achieved critical recognition, the lack of a unified German term for the contemporary rom-com cycle signifies its continued lack of artistic legitimacy. The multiplicity of categories used to describe the genre also points towards the difficulty of defining the contemporary rom-com cycle. As noted in the Introduction, the issue with defining the rom-com is that whilst it can be defined as simply as ‘a love story with a happy ending’ (Deleyto, 2009: 14), its lack of distinctive ‘syntactic’ elements in particular makes it difficult to pin down (Altman, 1999: 219–20). Indeed, the different categories of translations I have outlined above all focus on a different definition of genre: genre defined by its target audience (women’s comedy, teen-film, etc.), its intended effect (sobstory, feel-good film), its production context (mainstream-comedy, US comedy) or its subject matter (boy-meets-girl story, love story, etc.). Thus, this multiplicity of terms used in German reviews taps into and highlights both the romantic comedy’s continued bad reputation and its difficult definition as a genre. Raphaëlle Moine notes that ‘genre can … have several birth certificates, registering different dates from one audience to another, or from one country to another, and eventually existing in certain contexts

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of reception, and not in others’ (2008: 143). Indeed, in the context of this research, the results from the German reviews contrast with the French case. As Mary Harrod has noted, the term ‘romantic comedy’ (comédie romantique) was not used in France until the mid-2000s. Prior to this point, and in a similar manner to the German reviews discussed above, a variety of different terms were used to describe films of the genre, including ‘sentimental comedy’ (comédie sentimentale) or ‘comedy of manners’ (comédie des mœurs). Harrod notes that adoption of the term comédie romantique into popular parlance coincides with the proliferation of home-grown French romantic comedies (2015: 190). In Germany, however, the increased production of homegrown romantic comedies has so far not led to the term gaining such widespread use. This is all the more surprising considering the singular way in which rom-coms are often exhibited in Germany: the ‘Ladies’ Nights’ phenomenon.

Ladies’ Nights and gendered exhibition A regular feature of German cinematic exploitation since the mid2000s, ‘Ladies’ Nights’ are monthly (or bimonthly) preview screenings of selected upcoming films targeting a specifically female audience. Each  of the three major cinema chains holds its own event series: Cinemaxx with Ladies’ Night, Cinestar with CineLady and Cineplex with Ladies First. Significantly, the title of all three includes the English word ‘lady’ rather than the German Frau (woman). Though official statistics are scarce, such events seem to have been running since the mid-2000s: the earliest mention I could find was in a listing for a screening of Melinda and Melinda (Allen, 2004) in Frankfurt in March 2005 (Anon, 2005). This seems to have been part of a strategy by German cinemas to try and curb falling numbers of cinemagoers in the early to mid-2000s (Bonstein, 2005), with the trend extending to Switzerland by 2006, with a first documented screening of The Devil Wears Prada (Anon, 2006). Moreover, the use of English in the event branding is consistent with post-feminist ‘chick culture’

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defined by Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young (2007). In fact, another significant use of the word ‘lady’ occurred in a Cosmopolitan feature promoting the second Sex and the City film – which played a significant role in the rise of ‘chick culture’ – titled ‘Danke Ladys’ (thank you, ladies) (Jassner, 2010: 24). Advertising material for Ladies’ Nights includes all the trappings of traditionally gendered advertisements: pink – down to the rosé Prosecco served in some theatres – glitter and ‘girls-only’ taglines, similar to the one adorning the French poster for Sweet Home Alabama. These include slogans such as Cinemaxx’s ‘the cinema evening for women only’, Cineplex’s ‘girls’ night! Men keep out’ or finally Cinestar’s ‘this is your evening, ladys!’ (sic). The ticket price includes a glass of Prosecco and, since the late 2000s, a copy of a women’s magazine, the title of which differs between chains depending on partnerships: Gala with Cinemaxx, Jolie with Cineplex and Maxi with CineStar (Anon, 2010b). Incidentally, during my own attendance at several such events at various Berlin cinemas in the summer of 2014, I found that several cinemas also gave out additional beauty-related products such as spa vouchers or make-up items, including a L’Oréal ‘Glam Shine’ lip-gloss (in pink). Though products varied from cinema to cinema, this fits with the image of relatively affluent, young independent women presented by the genre. Hilary Radner has labelled ‘neo-feminist’ this young generation of women who view feminism’s legacy as a given, but for whom feminine emancipation is signified through consumerism. In her study of American chick flicks, she observed similar marketing strategies being used by distribution companies for certain ‘female event films’: for Working Girl in 1988, 20th Century Fox targeted women secretaries as the key audience for the film, organizing a competition for tickets to the premiere (Radner, 2011: 153). More recently, Radner noted, both Legally Blonde (2001) and Sex and the City: The Film (2008) also used commercial tie-ins with women’s magazines, make-up and clothing brands such as Cosmopolitan, Clinique or Vivienne Westwood as publicity for the upcoming films (2011: 80). Similarly, Ladies’ Night evenings are marketed around ideas of exclusivity, with one of the

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taglines for Cineplex’s Ladies First evening calling it ‘the exclusive preview’ (der exclusive Preview). This refers both to the exclusivity of the films, which are almost always previews, and that of the evening’s ‘women-only’ audience (though it should be said that men are not banned from the screenings, but are often in the minority). The image of the target audience is hence that of relative youth but sophistication, the cosmopolitan ‘lady’ (rather than ‘girl’) who enjoys a night out with her girlfriends, as evidenced by some of the promotional material, which showed groups of women friends laughing and smiling. Whilst there are synergies between cinemas and women’s magazines in the promotion of Ladies’ Nights events, romantic comedies are, however, not necessarily celebrated in women’s magazines. In fact, the three magazines working in partnership with Ladies’ Nights evenings are not particularly known for their focus on film. Rather, their core focus is fashion, beauty and gossip: Gala in particular is a gossip magazine which does not contain a substantial film review section. Meanwhile, I was surprised to find that the women’s magazines I examined (Cosmopolitan, Glamour and Brigitte) paid relatively little attention to and were quite critical towards romantic comedy films. Particularly in Brigitte, which has a more significant film review section, the romantic comedies that were focused on or received high praise tended to be critically acclaimed, such as My Best Friend’s Wedding (Hogan, 1997) (Bossmann, 1997: 147) or Silver Linings Playbook (Russell, 2012) (Hentschel, 2013: 68). Women’s magazines were also just as critical of the rom-com formula as broadsheets or film magazines. German Glamour’s review of The Proposal (2009), for instance, fits in four words: ‘unoriginal, but somewhat nice’ (Anon. 2009a: 116). Also significant is how little was made of the romantic comedy genre’s showcasing of women characters and women’s issues, with the possible exception of Sex and the City, which Cosmopolitan, for instance, praised as having changed an entire generation of women’s attitude to sex (Jassner, 2010: 24). In fact, one of the only feature articles dedicated to the rom-com I found in my archival search was a two-page critique in Brigitte of

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the ‘wedding film genre’ (Hochzeitsfilm), which was panned for its misleading, rose-tinted depiction of wedding ceremonies (Schröder, 2008: 102–3). By contrast, the only serious engagement I could find with the gender politics of the genre was in the cinephile publication epd-Film (the German equivalent to Sight and Sound), subtitled ‘a plea for the chick flick’ (in English) (Schweizerhof, 2008: 26–331). So whilst women’s magazines as a significant part of ‘chick culture’ are used as incentive for Ladies’ Nights, on the contrary the romantic comedy’s low status as an art form carries over into women’s magazines’ films reviews, which are remarkably similar to reviews in the general and film-specific press. Returning to the Ladies’ Night screenings and evaluating their relationship to romantic comedies, I attempted to investigate what kinds of films were regularly screened at such events. Whilst an official record of all films screened at such events doesn’t exist, a rough estimate suggests that of the 115 films screened at these events between January 2011 and March 2020, 43 can be classified as romantic comedies (data from twotickets.de, Anon, n.d.). In other words, rom-coms make up nearly 40% of the films distributed through Ladies’ Nights, making them the most common genre for such screenings, followed by comedy and drama. Twenty-four of the rom-coms listed are from the United States, though German rom-coms are more and more frequent (15 in total), and the most frequently recurring figure is the German actor and director Matthias Schweighöfer. To conclude, through German exhibition and marketing practice, therefore, the romantic comedy is inscribed as the ultimate ‘woman’s film (Frauenfilm) as it dominates Ladies’ Nights screenings. Moreover, the target audience depicted in the advertising for these cinematic events mirrors the women characters depicted in the vast majority of contemporary Hollywood rom-coms: affluent, consumerist and cosmopolitan. Whilst in France the romantic comedy genre is ‘gendered’ through the use of culinary language in film reviews, in Germany as well as in neighbouring countries Switzerland and Austria (where Ladies’ Nights are also a recurrent phenomenon), the audience’s

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gendering happens at the point of exhibition and consumption through the phenomenon of Ladies’ Nights events. As noted, however, the multiple translations of ‘romantic comedy’ in German do not include aesthetic concerns. In fact, stylistic considerations were largely absent in the reviews I analysed across Britain, France and Germany. One of the few to mention style or aesthetic is the previously cited review of When Harry Met Sally from Studio CineLive, which describes the genre’s stereotypical ‘late-nightjazz-bar’ soundtrack (Rebichon, 1989). Even less attention is granted to the genre’s visual features. Cinematography in particular is rarely discussed, with the exception of ‘auteur’ David O. Russell, whose use of long takes and tracking shots in Silver Linings Playbook is repeatedly praised (Sexton, 2012; Sotinel, 2013). By contrast, most of the – rare – references to cinematography are highly critical. Hence whilst the Daily Telegraph pans Valentine’s Day’s ‘ubiquitously ugly cinematography’ (Robey, 2010: 28), Empire notes that Mamma Mia! ‘betray[s] a maddening want of cinematic savvy. In Streep and Brosnan’s big moment his head is cut off. What the hell? Any kid with a camera could have found another angle or stood Meryl on a crate’ (Errigo, 2008b). These distinctions draw on the traditional hierarchy of the five senses in Western philosophy, which Carolyn Korsmeyer traces back to Greek Antiquity. On the one hand, sight and hearing have traditionally been elevated above taste, touch and smell as cognitive or intellectual senses which help us comprehend the natural world. Additionally, Korsmeyer notes that for philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, perceived distance from the body affects the place of specific senses in the hierarchy. Whilst vision is experienced ‘at a distance, not in one’s eyeball’, taste by contrast ‘requires the most intimate congress with the object of perception, which must enter the mouth’ (Korsmeyer, 1999: 3). Significantly the repeated use of culinary metaphors as well as the lack of attention paid to its style makes rom-com a genre that can be enjoyed through taste but not sight: it is a low genre for the ‘“lower” senses’ (Korsmeyer, 1999: 3). Ironically moreover, David Bordwell’s analysis of contemporary Hollywood rom-com’s aesthetic conventions,

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one of the few detailed scholarly analyses on the subject, describes them using – what else? – a culinary metaphor: ‘a vanilla-flavoured version of intensified continuity’ (Bordwell, 2006: 146). Women have traditionally been associated with the body rather than the mind, and this also reinforces the connections between the rom-com and women audiences. As we shall see, the body and its pleasures will also be of key importance in the next chapter, where I turn to my interviews with the rom-com audience.

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‘The pudding works splendidly’: Genre, emotions and pleasure This chapter is concerned with pleasure. More specifically, my focus is on the sociality of emotions, as I interrogate participants’ displayed emotional reactions to Sweet Home Alabama and their discussion of the pleasures evoked by romantic comedy. This is one of three chapters which draw on the original interviews I conducted with viewers in Britain, France and Germany: this discussion is based on a selection of the interviews in which participants’ reactions best illustrated or illuminated the trends observed throughout the interviews as a whole. In this chapter, I follow the rom-com’s ‘meet-lose-get’ narrative structure (Mernit, 2001: 10–11) to map out the genre’s emotional stages, and to argue for the wide range of emotions evoked by romantic comedy. Based on participants’ reflections on the pleasures of the genre, I suggest that these emotions also seem to fluctuate around issues of control and release, and are repeatedly described as being felt within the body. Moreover, I argue throughout the chapter that the interview context not only foregrounds participants’ engagement with the film, but also displays their awareness of the way they think the film should be watched.

Film and emotion Film scholars have been interested in film’s emotional impact since the expansion of the discipline in the 1970s, via a range of frameworks including cognitive theory, psychoanalysis and phenomenology. If these approaches are all concerned with the relationship between

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spectator and film, they are also separated by several notable differences, including where they locate the reception of film (phenomenology’s ‘paradigm of embodiment’ locates reception within the body whilst cognitivism or psychoanalysis generally focus on the mind), as well as the level of agency which is granted to the spectator (Stadler, 2013: 2–3). However, what they have in common is a relative universalism, which psychoanalysis in particular has been criticized for by audience and reception scholars (Kuhn, 1999: 149; 2002: 4; Morley, 1986: 19), whereby whilst spectators are recognized to be affected by context or culture, the mechanisms of each model are presumed to be universally applicable. As David Bordwell, a major proponent of a cognitivist approach, notes: On the one hand there is particularity – not merely the particularity of national cultures, but the particularity of regions, religions, castes, classes, philosophies, ages, and so forth, all the way down to individuals. On the other hand, there is the common genetic heritage of the human brain, the common principles of childhood development (beyond genetics). (Bordwell, 2009)

The universalism of these models makes them unsuited to this book’s audience studies approach, which aims to contextualize individual responses with regard to class, gender and culture, and to examine participants’ engagement with both the film text and each other. Indeed, another commonality between the three models is that they theorize the spectator–film relationship as an individual encounter. But what about an interaction between a spectator and multiple texts, as in the case of a highly self-reflexive or inter-textual genre such as the contemporary rom-com? Or, most significant here, what about the relationship between one film text and several audience members at once? For these reasons and as befits my methodology, this project’s exploration of audiences’ emotional engagement with Sweet Home Alabama follows a more sociological approach. Specifically, this

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chapter falls in line with the sociology of emotions, with its emphasis on the way emotions are ‘socially patterned’ and ‘serve to reproduce the society in which individuals are embedded’ (Lively, 2016). Similarly, my concern is less with understanding the mechanics of the film–audience relationship, but rather with replacing this encounter in its sociocultural context. As I will argue below, participants’ reactions to Sweet Home Alabama engage with culturally-constituted notions of how rom-coms are supposed to be consumed (emotionally, uncritically) and by whom (naïve, overemotional women). Before I move on to engage with the interview material proper, however, I want to briefly define the terms ‘emotion’, ‘affect’ and ‘feeling’, and explain why the notion of emotion is better suited to my own methodology.

Emotion, affect or feeling? Film studies has grown increasingly interested in the analysis of film’s emotional impact on spectators, as demonstrated by the above terms, and their definition has been the subject of much debate amongst scholars, some of whom disagree on the very question of whether they should be differentiated or not (Lively, 2016). Broadly, however, this book follows the work of Eric Shouse and others, who argue for the necessity of distinguishing between affect, emotions and feelings. Shouse, who bases his distinction on Brian Massumi’s definition of affect, explains that the difference lies in the fact that ‘feelings are personal and biographical, emotions are social, and affects are prepersonal’ (2005). Affect is ‘produced through encounters … an autonomic experiential state of the body’ (Colling, 2017: 18) which ‘cannot be fully realised in language’; ‘a non-conscious experience of intensity’ (Shouse, 2005). Meanwhile, ‘a feeling is a sensation that has been checked against previous experiences and labelled’, whereas ‘an emotion is the projection/display of a feeling. … We broadcast emotion to the world’ (Shouse, 2005). For instance: my heart tugs more-or-less strongly as the rom-com hero and heroine finally find their way to each other; I recognize this physical affect as a sign of joy, and the affect

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becomes feeling; I then express that feeling using socially-appropriate (for emotions are indeed socio-culturally specific) signals such as laughter, tears of joy or a simple smile: it is now an emotion. This is, of course, a crude illustration, as Samantha Colling warns against making a clear chronological delineation between affect, feeling and emotion (2017: 18), which Sara Ahmed argues are interconnected (2004: 6). A further distinctive feature of affect as theorized by Shouse is that unlike emotions or feelings ‘affects can be transferred between bodies’ (both human and non-human) (2005). This perhaps explains the usefulness and popularity of affect amongst film theorists interested in how spectators are affected by film (see for example Flaxman, 2016; Marks and Polan, 2000; Plantinga and Smith, 1999; Shaviro, 1993; Sobchack, 1992). Whilst certainly a key question, this is not quite the focus of my own work: rather, my interest lies in the way participants ‘broadcast’ (to use Shouse’s term) their reactions to the rom-com genre, and how this relates to broader issues of gender and culturally-defined taste. I am also more concerned with the way social interactions between participants contribute to or affect the pleasure of film-viewing, and the way participants talk about emotions rather than in the way these affects are transmitted between the participants and the film. Thus, as noted in the Introduction, my approach to the interview data in this chapter is partly discursive. As Kirsty Sedgman notes: ‘the words people choose, as well as how and how easily they come to these words, are absolutely worthy of study’ (2016: 11). It is this emphasis on sociality that renders the concept of emotion particularly useful in the context of my research and chosen methodology: my analysis is based on those emotions which are made accessible to me by the participants during the interviews. This can be either visible (for example through tears, or hiding one’s face in embarrassment) or audible (laughter, groans or participants’ verbalization of those emotions). Like Sedgman, this means that some of the extracts below will vary significantly in length (2016: 10): some sections will focus on long exchanges to demonstrate how participants build on and engage with each other; others will focus on the briefest speech patterns, such as pauses or hesitations. Hence, my

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findings are based precisely on participants’ public expression of what they are experiencing, i.e. following Shouse and Colling’s distinction, their emotions. I am not able to conjecture what they are experiencing internally. Since social interaction and group dynamics are key to my discussion of the genre, the appeal of ‘emotions’ as a critical category is further heightened. In the next section, I map out participants’ expression of and discussion of the emotions experienced in relation to different stages in the rom-com’s ‘meet-lose-get’ formula, all of which interact to create the genre’s emotional appeal.

Participants’ responses Whilst a full synopsis of the film is available in Appendix 3, it might be useful to briefly outline the film’s main plot lines before beginning a detailed analysis of participants’ responses. Melanie (Reese Witherspoon), an up-and-coming fashion designer, is set to marry New York politician Andrew (Patrick Dempsey). The film charts her return to her native Alabama as she attempts to convince her childhood sweetheart Jake (Josh Lucas), whom she married as a teenager, to sign divorce papers. As Melanie reunites with friends and family in the South, she falls back in love with Jake who, it emerges, has made a success of himself selling glassware. At the end of the film, Melanie leaves Andrew and reunites with Jake. The film ends with the couple moving to New York to continue their respective careers, where they also start a family.

Meet: Excitement The first emotion elicited by romantic comedy is perhaps the one which participants expressed with the most difficulty. If per screenwriter Billy Mernit the driving question behind romantic comedy is, ‘will these two individuals become a couple?’ (2001: 13) or, to use Brian Henderson’s much blunter phrase ‘Why are [they] not fucking?’ (1978: 19), then

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excitement and attraction seems to be one of the particular emotional pleasures evoked in the consumption of romantic comedy. In the case of Sweet Home Alabama in fact, two of my participants, 59-year-old Ava (Group 20, France) and 71-year-old Felicia (Group 21, France), stressed that this was the film’s only positive point, which made both of their (male) partners laugh. ‘Even if it was predictable I didn’t get that bored,’ noted Felicia early in our interview, ‘firstly because the leads are pretty cute.’ Indeed, most of the groups of women I interviewed responded affirmatively (and enthusiastically) when I asked them about the importance of having ‘beautiful’ male rom-com leads: ‘they have to be beautiful,’ stressed 50-year-old Irene in Group 13 (Northern France). Irene’s friend Denise was also vocal in her appreciation for actor Josh Lucas, and she asked me to give her the name of the actor, as did Lily (Group 34, Kent), a British baker in her early 30s, who joked that she would ‘perv on him later’. On the other hand, Patrick Dempsey’s Andrew was frequently and unfavourably compared to the actor’s turn as Doctor ‘McDreamy’ on Grey’s Anatomy (ABC Network, 2005–ongoing): ‘the brown-haired one is hot, but here he’s ugly,’ noted Parisian Tess (Group 20). In fact, participants’ desire to see Melanie end up with Jake rather than Andrew seemed partly motivated by physical preference, although they were very aware of how constructed – and cliché – that preference was: ‘we’re programmed to like him,’ stressed Celia in Group 30 (Manchester). Participants frequently discussed the opposition between the two male leads:

Interview Extract 1: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Melissa: From the very beginning he [Jake] arrives a bit dirty, it’s like: oh it’s sexy but cute and [a bit dirty…         [ Felicity: (...) A bit dim but then he’s actually not that stupid... Betty: And he works... yeah!

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Melissa: And like, while Patrick [Dempsey almost is a bit too...                [Betty: A bit of rough stereotypes. Melissa:... proper like = Betty: Feminised! = Melissa: too. [Felicity: Yeah, feminised. [Melissa: Yeah no but it’s true like... [Betty: Turtleneck! And ( ) good hair! Melissa:... proper, and well-shaved while the other is not very well-shaved, he’s a bit dirty, he’s got the dog, he opens his shirt, you can see his abs and... I mean [stutters] also like the empathy is on him.

This opposition between two ‘stereotypes’ was noted by numerous groups as typical of romantic comedy and, one might add, the romance genre in general. Indeed, my participants’ descriptions of Jake and Andrew are strikingly similar to readers and viewers’ reactions to Rhett Butler (‘the rogue’) and Ashley Wilkes (‘the wimp’) in Helen Taylor’s study of Gone with the Wind. Ashley is ‘bland, dully dutiful, namby-pamby,’ according to one of Taylor’s respondents (2014: 109, 112); meanwhile, my participants describe Andrew as ‘human beige’ (Noel, Group 29, London). Several groups also noted the film’s ‘feminization’ of Andrew, though, unlike Taylor’s readers’ criticism of Ashley, my participants’ critique is meta-textual: they don’t see Andrew’s ‘femininity’ as a problem, but rather criticize the film for presenting it as a problem. Meanwhile, Melissa’s emphasis above on Jake’s open shirt echoes what Taylor notes to be Gone with the Wind’s most famous image: the half-undressed Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett O’ Hara in his arms (Taylor, 2014: 125). Additionally, participants’ preference for Jake was motivated not just by the actor’s physique, but by the tempestuous nature of his relationship with Melanie. This echoes the work Kyle Stevens, who highlights ‘the centrality of banter to the genre, whereby we know which love is true because of how speakers talk to one another’ (2020: 42). Indeed, for a number of participants, a significant part of the romantic comedy’s appeal came from watching the lead couple fight. Group 34 (Kent), made up of five British women in their early 30s who all identified as feminists, discusses this at length:

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Interview Extract 2: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Valerie: Especially the first bit with her husband, her real husband. I like that kind of friction, and fighting and stuff. That’s what I like about rom-coms is [starts to laugh] the fighting! [all laugh loudly] Harriet: Where they don’t get on. And that’s when it’s funny isn’t it, the funny part of rom-coms. Lily: You know they’re gonna get together in the end. = = Harriet: Yeah! Of course you do, because that’s [because they love each other.                        [Jill: And it’s the chemistry and the… Harriet: Yeah! It’s the [pauses] that’s what I like. Jill: It’s what real marriage is about, isn’t it?

Though Valerie begins her analysis tentatively (she begins to laugh as she admits to enjoying fighting), her comment is taken up and reinforced by the entire group, with all participants expressing their agreement through either speech or laughter. Harriet’s contributions particularly correspond to what Jenny Kitzinger calls ‘assertions of group consensus’ (Kitzinger, 1994: 109). She begins two of her statements with a marker of agreement (‘yeah’), and both she and Jill use rhetorical questions (‘isn’t it’) to establish collective agreement. For these participants, and indeed many other people I interviewed, love is also associated with bickering: ‘I guess the passion is the fact that they’re fighting?’ suggested Arabella, an arts administrator from Manchester (Group 30). Importantly, moreover, this extract from Group 34 establishes two key criteria for relating to rom-coms, which will be discussed later in the chapter. On the one hand, it associates the pleasure of rom-com with control and the familiarity of genre. This is taken up by a number of participants in other groups: when I interviewed Sophia (Interview 32, London), an administrator in her 30s, she told me that she had already seen the film a couple of times prior to our screening. When

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I enquired what she had thought of it the first time, she noted: ‘I did really enjoy just the whole “love triangle” and I knew they were gonna get together, and I hoped they were gonna get together, and he was very handsome.’ She is not the only one to read this trope as proof of an upcoming happily-ever-after (otherwise known as HEA) for the couple. Like Sophia, student Lola (Group 28, London) also emphasized this: ‘I think also when she first went home and saw her husband, [and] (they were) arguing and so … antagonistic to each other, then you just know that they’re gonna end up together. If it starts like that.’ Interestingly then, though fighting is associated with passion and ‘obstacles’ (to quote Sophia a little later in our interview), the presence of fighting as a genre trope also becomes a form of reassurance of the inevitable HEA. In fact, this certainty manifests audibly across all three extracts, as Lily, Sophia and Lola all use the exact same sentence with the same intonation: ‘you know they’re gonna get together,’ they all stress. But whilst fighting is associated with the fantasy of romance via the HEA, participants’ comments suggest that its pleasure is also rooted in its relation to real life. Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes distinguish between these two modes of relating to film, which they define as ‘critical’ versus ‘referential’ – I will return to this distinction a little later (1993: 100). As Jill’s comment at the end of Group 34’s exchange makes plain, part of the appeal of watching the central couple fight is because it is relatable: ‘that’s what a real marriage is about.’ Hence, fighting both assures the predictability of the HEA at the same time as it undermines its untenable constancy. To quote Sophia again, ‘There’s nothing more boring than … having them just like each other and then (get) together then that’s it. No-one cares about that!’ (Interview 32, London). This emphasis on the pleasure of passion, conflict and ‘near misses’ (Valerie, Group 34, Kent) also runs through the letters of Gone with the Wind fans collected by Helen Taylor.1 However, whilst ‘every woman in the cinema sighed when catching first sight of Clark Gable at the foot of the stairs’ according to one letter-writer (Taylor, 2014: 126), the physical As Taylor notes, however, the book’s gender politics, particularly Scarlett and Rhett’s difficult relationship, has been the subject of controversy (Taylor, 2014: 129–30).

1

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pleasure evoked by the handsome male was more usually marked by silence in my interviews. Indeed, several groups (Groups 11, 12 in France, or 24 in the UK) who talked throughout the screening fell silent during the scene where Melanie and Jake kiss. This silence is doubly motivated: on the one hand, it suggests that the sensual pleasure offered up by the scene was indeed fairly successful, as groups that had until then been poking fun at the scene stopped their discussion to enjoy the moment. At the same time, it also signals the strength of the socially-constructed private nature of erotic pleasure, particularly for women. Indeed, and certainly in part due to the public nature of the research process, such a pleasure was rarely discussed explicitly by participants. Moreover, as several participants noted (Group 11, 19, France) Sweet Home Alabama contains very little sexually explicit content; it received a BBFC classification of 12 in the UK, and released without age restrictions in both France and Germany. Even so, participants displayed clear embarrassment when any form of erotic pleasure was discussed. This is evident in the below extract from my interview with Group 34 (Kent), which followed on from my asking the group about their favourite rom-coms. This led them to a lengthy discussion about why romantic comedies are enjoyable:

Interview Extract 3: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Jill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [pauses] And also there’s [stuttering], that whole empathy thing so you’re watching people being in love [she pauses] makes you feel... lovey... dovey. [other participants hum in agreement] I mean my husband will always, like [imitating him: deeper voice, and excitedly]: ‘Yeah! [claps and rubs hands] Let’s watch a rom-com [Annie laughs] I know I’m gonna get laid after this!’ [all burst into laughter] So [she laughing]... you know there’s a definite... Harriet: Not after this. [laughing] Jill: No, not after this one. Lily: Not after this. [Laughter, which has continued, dies down]

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Jill: But, you know, there’s a definite release of hormones isn’t there that goes on, that is probably... [she pauses] And I haven’t watched one for a while probably [she starts to laugh, all join in] I need to get back on that horse. [all laugh loudly] But erm... Lily [jokingly]: Jill, you know this is [all burst out laughing as she points to the microphone] being recorded ( )? Jill [laughing]: Yeah! Alice [joking]: It’s all anonymous! [all laugh loudly for a while]

The participants’ embarrassment at discussing sexual attraction or excitement is clearly underlined by Jill’s numerous pauses and stutters (which I have retained) as well as the group’s general laughter. Jill also emphasizes the physical or embodied implication of this emotion during the screening by making a reference to ‘hormones’. The other group which discusses this excitement directly also emphasizes this sense of embodiment. Group 17 (Paris) was made up of two women in their 20s, Sophie and Martha. They had known each other since school and stressed that ‘chick flicks’ (the word they use) have been central to their friendship; they discussed in some detail spending hours, even days, binge-watching rom-coms together as teenagers. During the discussion, Martha compared the feelings evoked by Sweet Home Alabama to the romance classic The Notebook (Cassevetes, 2004):

Interview Extract 4: Group 17, Central Paris. Two long-term friends in their mid-20s. English version. Martha: Yeah I haven’t seen it [The Notebook] since I saw it in the cinemas, and at the time I really didn’t [she pauses] I didn’t like it... I – the only thing I can say is that it didn’t make my heart tingle, erm [laughing] like in a way that [stuttering] – it’s – and you can quote me on that. I return to this statement later on in the interview: Alice: So, I want to talk about the tingling heart and the repeat viewing. So, what – [pause] do you have an example of a tingling-heart moment?

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Martha: I feel really embarrassed… =Alice: Did you get one in this film? Or… Martha: Yeah, I mean, it’s so embarrassing, because I feel like [she pauses] I actually only ever say this ironically that it makes my heart tingle, but it really does. And I feel kind of [she pauses] yeah, a little bit [pauses again] embarrassed that it’s not ironic [another pause], that I actually really like it. [pause] Part of my like, detachment is like conflicting [she pauses] my actual love of it [pause]. Erm, I think when they were [pause] in the cemetery, they’re like, kissing and you’re like [mimicking a high-pitched voice]: ‘Oooooh! Do you want to like, work it out’… [her voice returns to normal]. Erm, but yeah, normally there’s like, a least one moment in a rom-com where I’m like: [she gasps]. There’s almost like, butterflies in your stomach, kinda like when you like someone and you just get that feeling, I think that’s what I get when I watch [something] where’s there’s good chemistry between the characters and [she pauses] enough conflict that it might not work out, so it is like really fragile and valuable… In a way that in like a real relationship [pauses] you probably wouldn’t want that conflict, you would just – just like each other and that [laughing] would be fine. [all laugh]

Martha discusses her emotional response as embodied, as an experience of the pleasures of rom-com through the body (butterflies in the stomach, heart fluttering). This resonates with the culinary metaphors of Chapter 1, which also point to the stomach as the place where rom-coms are physically consumed, though here the pleasure is erotic rather than gustative. Like the participants in Group 34, Martha is visibly – or, rather, audibly – embarrassed to be discussing the subject. However, her embarrassment does not manifest itself through laughter but rather in the choppiness of her utterances, as she pauses and hesitates repeatedly. These responses also underline the public nature of embarrassment, and point to some of the limitations of the focus-group method.2 As Whilst the publicness of the focus-group setting likely rendered discussion of erotic pleasure difficult, a more anonymous method, such as a questionnaire, would yield more detailed results. Similarly, the collectiveness of film-viewing as an activity (compared to book-reading), for example, explains perhaps why romance novels have traditionally been more sexually explicit than romantic comedies. For more on this, see Maya Rodale’s survey-based research on romance-novel readership (2015: 109–19).

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Robert Solomon has noted, shame and embarrassment are the emotions most characterized by self-awareness: ‘in shame, we are agonizingly the centre of our own attention. We feel all eyes – or at least some important eyes – are riveted on us, and we cannot escape’ (2007: 90). He adds that this sense of shame or embarrassment can stem from ourselves, the people around us and, importantly, the situation in which we find ourselves (Solomon, 2007: 3). Significantly in both extracts quoted above, attention is drawn by the participants to the interview process. Lily teases Jill by pointing directly at the recorder, and Martha gives me ‘permission’ to quote her – or, rather, reiterates the permission she has given in her ethical approval form. In both cases, the participants’ sense of embarrassment stems from the breaking down of the socially enshrined boundary between the private (sexuality, physical attraction) and the public (the interview setting), and both groups address this divide explicitly by breaking the ‘fourth wall’ of the interview setting. Whilst Jill’s comment suggests a transfer of emotions from within to outside the diegesis, Martha’s connection between the two is less direct: on the one hand, she associates the bodily pleasure that comes from watching rom-coms with the real-life physical experience of being in love. At the same time however, she makes a clear point of distinguishing between the source of that pleasure in real life and in film: whilst tension is preferable on screen, it is best avoided in real life, a subject to which Martha and Sophie will return several times in the interview. Both Martha and Jill also use humour and over-exaggerated gender performances to address the embodiment of the genre’s emotional impact. Both hint at the constructedness of the stereotype of swooning feminine audiences, which Martha performs using a high-pitched exclamation. Jill meanwhile performs as her husband with a deep voice and large gestures, presenting this typical view of rom-com audiences as constructed from a male perspective. Moreover, Martha’s use of the word ‘ironically’ addresses and taps into a stereotype usually associated with the rom-com audience: she acknowledges that this physical response to rom-com is supposedly widespread, but attempts to distance herself from it. As this chapter and the next will highlight, this awareness and distinction is typical of most of the participants I interviewed.

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Loss: Sadness In their reactions to the second stage of the rom-com narrative, the ‘loss’, participants also clearly signify an awareness of how romantic comedy should be consumed. This resonates with the findings of Chapter 1, where I noted that one of the translation categories for the term ‘romantic comedy’ into German emphasized its effect on the audience. Written into the rom-com’s genre contract, therefore, is an emphasis on overly-emotional consumption. The key emotion associated with the ‘loss’ stage is sadness, which can manifest itself physically in the form of tears. Importantly, participants seem to view tears and a general over-sentimentality as the default rom-com viewing mode. This can also often be seen reflected in rom-coms’ depictions of their own viewers: there is Rita Wilson bursting into tears whilst discussing the plot of An Affair to Remember (McCarey, 1957) in one of Sleepless in Seattle’s most iconic scenes (Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 1–2); then Scarlett Johansson as Barbara, shiny-eyed and grinning goofily as she watches Anne Hathaway and Channing Tatum fall in love in Don Jon (Gordon-Levitt, 2013) (see Figure 3); finally, there is a teenaged Mindy Lahiri/Kaling choking up as she quotes along with Tom Hanks’s Joe Fox in the pilot episode of The Mindy Project (2012–17). These images of weepy women – shot in medium to close-up, their emotions filling up the frame – have come to dominate the cultural imagination when it comes to rom-com audiences, and over-sensitivity has become the default mode through which the genre is, allegedly, consumed.

Figure 3  Scarlett Johansson in Don Jon (Gordon-Levitt, 2013). Courtesy of Relativity Media.

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Whilst Sweet Home Alabama is less self-referential than most contemporary rom-com productions, and certainly than the films quoted above, the film does mobilize the stereotype of women’s oversensitivity to romance, particularly during one scene where Andrew renews his proposal to Melanie in the kitchen of her parents’ house. As Andrew makes his declaration, the first reaction comes not from Melanie but instead from her mother, Pearl, who exclaims loudly: ‘Good Lord, that is the sweetest thing!’ Significantly, instead of using a shotreverse shot construction with close-ups to create intimacy around the couple (Bordwell, 2006: 161–5), the film cuts between a medium shot of Andrew and a two-shot of Melanie with her mother standing beside her (see Figures 4 and 5).

Figure 4 Andrew’s renewed proposal (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures.

Figure 5 Pearl and Melanie’s reaction (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures.

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Pearl’s reaction in the scene was consistently mocked by my interview participants. Several groups (for example Group 13 and Group 20, France) laughed at the line, and in Group 4 (Berlin) Florian and Pia explicitly commented on it:

Interview Extract 5: Group 4, Berlin. Partners Florian and Pia, 20s. Pearl: Good Lord, that is the sweetest thing!

[both Florian and Pia laugh] Florian: [Ironically] Like in a film! He says that.

This emphasis on the cinematic quality of the sequence taps into widespread stereotypes about women and fairy tale fantasies. Interview participants also frequently mobilized and mocked such stereotypes about rom-com audiences. This was particularly notable in the case of Sweet Home Alabama’s graveyard scene, where Melanie and Jake briefly reunite whilst visiting her childhood dog’s grave. Group 1 (Berlin), for example, which was made up of four German teachers, commented as follows on the scene:

Interview Extract 1: Group 1, Berlin. Friends Christa, Johanna, Juliane and Lauren, mid-30s to mid-50s. Juliane: [somewhat ironically, with tears in her eyes?]: I have to cry. Christa: You have to cry? [laughter from the group] Lauren: [ironically] Ooooh sweet, oh yeaaah. [changes tone, now seriously] It’ll be recorded straight away!

A similar reaction occurs in Group 16, made up of four participants: Georgina, her younger sister Eleanor, and Georgina’s friends John and Peter.

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Interview Extract 2: Group 16, Paris. Sisters Eleanor and Georgina, with friends John and Peter, early 20s. Shot: ‘Coon Dog Cemetery’ sign. Melanie walks up to dog’s grave. She starts apologising and crying.

John [imitating Melanie]: I didn’t come and see you! [laughs] Eleanor [laughing/faking tears]: Ooooooooh! John [to Georgina]: Georgina you won’t ever watch this film again [he pauses] what with the dead dogs. Eleanor: Puppies! [in English]

In both cases, participants make it clear that they feel the appropriate reaction to the scene is supposed to be sadness. They read the scene’s narrative cues (the dead dog, Melanie’s tearful confession) as an attempt to elicit an emotional reaction from the audience, and make fun of the film (and in the case of Juliane in Group 1, herself) for it. Eleanor’s reaction in particular is to ape this ‘appropriate’ mode of consumption by bursting into fake – and loud – tears, and ‘gushing’ over puppies. Several other groups made fun of the film in such a way (for instance the pilot Groups 11 & 12). Moreover, as with Martha’s performance of the reaction rom-com seeks to evoke in its audience, such fake tears or gasps are again often performed at a high-pitched tone, emphasizing the assumed gendered nature of such a reaction. Robyn Warhol has demonstrated that a tearful consumption of media is a stereotypically ‘feminine’ practice, though she herself prefers the use of the term ‘effeminate’, as it undermines the strict gender binary between masculine and feminine (Warhol, 2003: 2). Though I agree with her that not only women experience ‘effeminate feelings’, it is because these feelings are mostly attributed to women that I will retain the word ‘feminine’. Indeed, as the next chapter will demonstrate, a ‘phantom’ woman viewer constantly shapes participants’ reactions to the film. Warhol’s work does fit broadly into a sociology of emotions

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approach, as she argues that these effeminate responses are in part ‘socially programmed’. However, her work has an affective slant, as she focuses on the way feelings and intensities are felt in the body (though she herself uses the term ‘feelings’); Linda Williams draws similar conclusions in her work on what she calls ‘bodily genres’ such as the melodrama (or ‘woman’s weepie’). She notes that the physicality of such genres (she also cites horror and pornography as examples) has led to their devaluation (Williams, 1991). As Jane Stadler notes, Williams has argued that ‘negative judgements about genres associated with an excess of sensation derive from a gendered hierarchy of value based on the mind/body split of Cartesian dualism – the idea that human ontology is grounded in cognition’ (Stadler, 2013: 2). ‘Films,’ writes Sarah Colling, ‘do not just cause … affects, feelings and emotions in some kind of hermetically sealed experience – pleasures cause evaluations and anticipations’ (2017: 19). In my interviews we can observe a form of cyclical devaluation, as participants arrive at the screening with preconceived notions of how rom-coms should be consumed, that is to say tearfully and over-emotionally. Throughout the viewing process, they thus display not only their own emotional reactions, but also an awareness of and engagement with how they should be expected to react. Thus, much in the same way that Celestino Deleyto (2009: 3) has observed that romantic comedies have become defined by a lack of cinematic quality – so any ‘good’ rom-com can no longer belong to the genre, because all rom-coms are bad – ‘bad’ genres are defined as bad because they are ‘bodily’. Conversely, films conceived of as being bad are assumed to require a ‘bodily’ consumption. Even if participants do not feel this surge of emotion, then, they demonstrate an awareness that this is the reaction that is traditionally considered appropriate when viewing the film, and indeed for the genre as a whole. Overwhelmingly however, participants consider the act of crying to be an embarrassing one and make fun of themselves and each other for it (see Group 1’s reaction to the cemetery scene above). This is noted by Florian in the extract below, who also directly addresses the gendered nature of the act:

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Interview Extract 3: Group 4, Berlin. Partners Florian and Pia, 20s. Florian: Yes, so sometimes I also notice that – So I’m not the super-typical ‘man’, or I am a typical man but no one says that he [the typical man] can also cry because [stutters] I can also easily cry when I watch films. [Alice chuckles] I could also cry at a film like that – I didn’t do it now, but that’s probably because [to Alice] you’re here. [Alice laughs] Sometimes I also feel like watching a real film that grips me, in the sense that it just brings me to tears, because it touches me, I just – for example the theme of father-son relationships is always a story that directly gets me and with such films I actually very often have to cry: [he hesitates] when I – when one knows that the film can do that, that a romantic love film can do that, [brief hesitation] it’s a nice romantic story and can bring me to tears, then I don’t have anything against it, when I sometimes haven’t cried for a long time, maybe that’s also normal – actually want to, you know?

Florian’s embarrassment is evident in the confusion of his expression: he hesitates often, and goes off on tangents. He indicates a number of reasons why crying ‘at the movies’ is an embarrassing act: on the one hand, it is a practice normally associated with women viewers rather than ‘super-typical’ men – this echoes Warhol’s notion of the ‘effeminate’, which is generally deemed insulting to men (Warhol, 2003: 9). This awareness of the prescriptive nature of gender performance is compounded by my (female) presence in the room, which reinforces the self-awareness of embarrassment. It is also perhaps heightened by the fact that I am interviewing the couple alone, which makes my intrusion in their private and romantic space even more palpable. Indeed, whilst I did interview several married couples in Germany, most of them were part of a bigger group in which I could be included more easily, and which did not discuss the issue of embarrassment to the same extent as Florian and Pia did. I have followed Solomon’s distinction between embarrassment and shame here. As he defines it, embarrassment is an ‘innocent’ emotion, which ‘embodies a disclaimer, a waiver of responsibility’, whereas

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shame has moral implications, and ‘one feels shame, by contrast, by way of accepting fault’ (Solomon, 2007: 95). Florian’s comment is precisely a disclaimer in Solomon’s sense, as he finds that a justification for the strength of his emotional response is the resonance between the film text and his (implied) lived experience (father–son relationships ‘get’ to him). Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes have called this resonance the ‘referential’ mode of film viewing. The term derives from their work on the soap opera Dallas, where they distinguish between referential and critical attitudes to media. Drawing on Roman Jakobson, Katz and Liebes classify participants’ reaction to the TV programme as either referential or critical. They distinguish between the two terms thus: The referential (Jakobson 1972) connects the program and real life. Viewers relate to characters as real people and in turn relate these real people to their real lives. The critical (Jakobson’s metalinguistic) frames discussions of the program as a fictional construct with aesthetic rules. (Liebes and Katz, 1993: 100) (my emphasis)

On the one hand, these two categories seem to follow the traditional lines of the ‘emotion/reason’ dichotomy of Western thought. Indeed, this aligns with the gender binary discussed in Chapter 1, and, as Helen Wood has noted, it is women who have historically been associated with a referential viewing mode (Wood, 2005: 132). This dichotomy is emphasized by Katz and Liebes’ relatively hierarchical treatment of them: they tend to regard viewers who use the referential mode as somewhat naïve, whereas ‘critical’ readers are represented as more media-literate. One might therefore assume that participants involved in ‘referential’ readings are more likely to become emotional, and this is indeed the stereotype of rom-com film audiences outlined above. Indeed, numerous groups put forth this argument when comparing their responses to Sweet Home Alabama with The Notebook (2004), a film which came up regularly in interviews with young women in their 20s as an example of a particularly successful romance. For several participants, for example Sophie below, the film’s affective power was deeply rooted in the referential:

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Interview Extract 4: Group 17, Paris. Friends Martha and Sophie, mid-20s. Martha: See, I haven’t seen it since it saw in the cinemas. And when I saw it in the cinema I didn’t like it very much? It- it didn’t upset me, it didn’t make me cry, whereas I actually cry at anything [which is really funny[Sophie: But then again I relate to it, because my nana had Alzheimer’s, so I relate to it.

This is echoed by the other groups who praised The Notebook such as Group 11 (Pilot, Paris), Group 22 (Paris) or Group 30 (Manchester). In the latter, friends Arabella and Celia emphasize the film’s emotional impact and the lasting memory it had on them. Celia described being in ‘floods of tears! For a good like … half an hour after it had finished’. Arabella concurs, describing her first viewing of the film: ‘I was hooked, and I was inconsolable.’ When I ask her to further detail why she finds the romantic relationship in The Notebook so affecting, she moves to the referential mode: ‘I just think, sometimes the stuff they [NB. the lead couple] have together: [quotes from the film with an exaggerated tone] ‘you’re a bird, I’m a bird!’ [returns to her normal voice] when you’re in a couple you do have these ridiculous things! It’s believable because it’s so romantic.’ In Group 22, moreover, the participants compare Sweet Home Alabama to two films: The Notebook, which they describe as ‘way more touching’ (Tess) and the French romantic comedy drama Jeux d’enfants (Love Me If You Dare) (Samuell, 2003). For 29-year-old Anna, for example, the film’s emotional appeal is strong precisely because it is referential: like Sweet Home Alabama, it begins with the two leads as childhood friends. But according to Anna, whilst the latter is ‘farfetched’, the children in Jeux d’Enfants ‘could have been us as kids’. She added that the film ‘speaks to me more clearly. Firstly because of my own love story, I know I’ve had a very passionate love story before and it really … I could really identify’. For Anna, then, a critical mode of

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consumption ruins the emotional connection to the film; by contrast, she finds Sweet Home Alabama too unbelievable, too fictional. For her, as with Sophie and Arabella, it is the referential which leads to tears. However, other participants also indicate that both a referential and a critical relationship to Sweet Home Alabama can cause participants to shed tears. This is discussed by Florian and Pia:

Interview Extract 5: Group 4, Berlin. Partners Florian and Pia, 20s. Pia: Even so, I always have to cry. Florian: Oh. Pia: Hm. Even when it’s totally predictable. Florian: [hums in agreement] Pia: But it’s surely this cultural… Florian: No, it’s very, very clearly dramaturgical [Pia bursts out laughing], I mean that makes simply [laughs, then pauses] film and we’ll making talk about it again later but so when you spend the best part of 90 minutes with these people, and you connect [in English] with these people through the story for 60 minutes almost, and your arrive at the climax [he pauses] where it also comes to a decision, and then comes a [in English] happy-end, then it’s clear somehow, that it’s [he pauses] that it’s film [they both laugh] so that’s how it works, it’s actually really (in English) easy. Pia: But that’s really = [interjecting] =Florian: If we had watched the last half hour, then [stutters] then you wouldn’t have cried, because you wouldn’t have had absolutely any connection with these people, but, that’s why a film has to run for 90 minutes basically, so that you =Pia: Yes, but that’s = Florian: are primed = Pia: [tentatively] …I was already crying within the first ten minutes. [Florian laughs] even as it’s totally silly. Florian: Yeah, yeah totally. Classic. We come back to this point later towards the end of our discussion: Pia: Yeah, I find it really a bit, [she pauses] so, admirable, or somehow crass, that one knows that one is currently being manipulated [she laughs], but one can’t protect oneself from it [Pia and Florian laugh]. So I know full well: they want you to cry now, or that you- I [she hesitates] even then I still can’t turn it off =Florian: Yes. = Alice: Yes, okay.

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Most of Florian and Pia’s comments are resolutely critical here – in fact, their opposition between ‘cultural’ and ‘dramaturgical’ very much parallels Katz and Liebes’ own categories. In the previous citation from Group 30 (Manchester), both Laura and Arabella described The Notebook’s appeal as a surprise. In Pia and Florian’s case, however, tears come not in spite of, but precisely because of, their familiarity with the narrative. Such an emotional response to media has been theorized by Robyn Warhol, who argues that women’s emotional enjoyment of what she calls the ‘marriage-plot’ (i.e. rom-com’s ‘happy ever after’) is ‘culturally instilled’: ‘[the marriage-plot’s] resolution brings about irresistible feelings which I would attribute to our accumulated cultural and individual experience of countless stories following the same line,’ she writes (Warhol, 2003: 60). My participants also describe their relationship with the film as a power struggle. For example, whilst Pia is aware of the manipulation exerted by the film, she declares herself to be powerless against it. Solomon calls this the ‘hydraulic model’ of emotion, and traces its history through the work of Freud, and as far back as the four humours theory of Ancient Greece. He critiques the model for negating human agency, as it assumes that emotions simply ‘happen to us’, as if they were a liquid slowly filling us up and – eventually and unavoidably – overflowing (Solomon, 2007: 142). Crucially, my participants display a keen awareness of that powerlessness. Indeed, what unites all of my tearful participants – Pia and Florian (Group 5, Berlin), Juliane (Group 1, Berlin), or Arabella and Celia (Group 30, Manchester) – is their emphasis on the impossibility of controlling this physical manifestation of emotions, regardless of whether their tears were caused by a referential or a critical reading of the film. Stages one and two of the rom-com narrative thus inscribe it in Linda Williams’ ‘bodily genre’ category. Participants’ discussions of their responses emphasize these stages as demanding a physical, and thereby gendered, consumption. The above quotes from both Tess (Group 22, Paris) and Martha (Group 17, Paris) stress the opposition between the closeness of their physical connection to the film (‘being touched’)

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and a more respectable/masculine ‘detachment’ (Martha) from the film. Since Liebes and Katz’ work on soap opera audiences had been so influential to determining my research protocol, I was very keen to apply their referential/critical framework to my participants’ reactions to romantic comedy. However, this model did not turn out to be as useful as I hoped: as noted in this section, both a referential and critical mode of viewing could – and did – draw my participants to tears. Katz and Liebes’ model had also appealed to me because it seemed to speak to rom-com audiences’ (alleged) inability to differentiate between onscreen and real life. Participants’ complicated enjoyment of the lead couple’s fighting and their reaction to the ultimate phase of the romcom narrative, which I will now discuss, further complicates this model.

Get: Happiness? Mernit labels the final act of the traditional rom-com structure the ‘get’, which is better known as the ‘happy ending’ or ‘happily-everafter’. These phrases make quite explicit the main emotion which the rom-com ending allegedly seeks to elicit, namely happiness. But how does this actually work? As mentioned above, most of the work on the film–spectator relationship in film studies assumes a one-on-one relationship between a spectator and a film. However, in the case of the rom-com, how do we as audience members engage with a couple, particularly within a culture and a genre which sacralizes heterosexual monogamy? Do we follow Katz and Liebes’ ‘referential’ category, which assumes that we stand in one of the characters’ shoes, and that there is a parallel between their happy ending and our own real-life experience? Jill’s previously quoted statement that a rom-com can make a couple feel ‘lovey-dovey’ would suggest that this is a possibility. Another (referential) suggestion is offered in Robyn Warhol’s work, as she compares the pleasure of the HEA to attending a friend’s wedding (2003: 59–60). Or is it rather the case, as David Bordwell states, that seeing characters reach their goals automatically brings pleasure to the audience through a sense of narrative fulfilment (cited in MacDowell,

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2013: 20)? The interview extracts below suggest that all of these models can partially apply. However, what none of them quite speak to is the pleasure that derives from a sense of familiarity with the genre. As the extract below, from the interview with Group 34 (Kent) attests, this is clearly a significant part of the pleasure of romantic comedy viewing. As I have previously mentioned, this group was particularly concerned with the question of why they watched and enjoyed rom-coms, and they discussed this at length and without much prompting:

Interview Extract 6: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Jill: And perhaps there’s that sense of you’re outside of it and looking in and you kind of have this [she pauses] feeling of ‘well I know what should happen’ [group hums in agreement] because you know I know what you need to be doing here, come on guys! [general hums of agreement] [She starts to laugh] So there’s a real sense of superiority! [all laugh] As the viewer. Valerie: Actually, I wonder if maybe that’s the attraction of them, is that, when the – so when it’s your own life you don’t get that kind of outsider [perspective. [Jill: yeah the helicopter view that you could... Valerie: Yeah! But when it’s other people, sort of this fictional other [she pauses] and you can say [excited voice]: ‘I know what I’d do in that situation! Come on you should be doing this.’ = Jill: Yeah... = then it helps you feel connected because you’ve got that sort of [she pauses] I don’t know whether it’s a sort of a power thing or whether it’s you feel that you have [she pauses] it’s validating you own knowledge of your judgement because you’re – you know the right thing to do... and... Jill: Yeah... Valerie: And that’s quite a compelling experience. Jill: Yeah. Valerie: Cos you do, you sit there on the edge of your seat going saying [fakes shouting]: ‘Come on do this!’ [laughter and several hums of agreement from the group] Jill: Yeah. [Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Valerie: In a good rom-com.

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Jill: But equally you don’t have control, because you can’t control what = Valerie: Yeah. = they do do. But then you do kind of have control because when you buy into the rom-com thing you know they’re gonna end up doing what you want them to do. = Lily?: Yeah. [Jill: So = [Valerie: So I think it’s quite – it’s quite self-fulfilling. That you get a positive feeling because you, you want them to kiss at the end. But they might have a few [pause] narrow misses but you know they’ll kiss at the end. [General hums of agreement] So when they do you’re like: ‘Yes! I was right!’

The pleasure discussed in this extract is clearly critical: it stems from a familiarity with the genre and a recognition of its tropes (the pleasure of ‘formula knowledge’ and its class implications are discussed by Skeggs and Wood, 2011: 947). Whereas some participants expressed frustration at being manipulated emotionally to the point of tears, in the case of the happily-ever-after this unavoidability played a part in Group 34 (Kent)’s viewing pleasure. Moreover, the relationship set up between the characters and the audience is strictly hierarchical, as the words used by Jill and Valerie to describe their viewing-position include ‘power’, ‘judgement’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘helicopter view’: they present themselves as literally towering above the characters in the film. Finally, Jill’s notion of ‘buying into’ the rom-com echoes Altman’s definition of genre as a contract (1999: 16). It seems therefore that for both Jill and Valerie, a fundamental part of the rom-com pleasure stems from a sense of certainty about what is going to happen, namely the ubiquitous happy ending. This satisfaction is also echoed by Rose in Group 31 (London) who, when asked by another group member why she enjoys watching rom-coms, responds: ‘cos you know what you’re getting from them. … you already know exactly what you’re getting from the end of a movie, and it’s something that’s kind of happy.’ James MacDowell argues that a ‘sense of promised continuation’ is key to the Hollywood (and rom-com’s) happy ending, as it suggests

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that the happiness stemming from the couple’s union will remain undisturbed far into the future (‘until death do them part’) (2013: 35). On the other hand, Robyn Warhol also highlights an inevitable tension in the HEA, as she argues that this perfect blissful state is untenable in the long term (2003: 60). These tensions are also embedded in the stylistic conventions of the contemporary rom-com in general, and in Sweet Home Alabama’s own HEA sequence in particular. Using the secondary corpus of films outlined in Chapter 1, we can detect two distinct stylistic motifs in the contemporary Hollywood rom-com’s representation of the happy ending via the final shot. Both of these forms embody in different ways the tensions at the heart of the HEA’s untenable promise. The first and most frequently-recurring motif involves a movement of the camera craning or panning up and away from the protagonists often caught in an embrace, and finishing in a wide-angle shot (usually of a cityscape). Of the twenty-five films in my corpus, twelve films (just under half) finish on this camera movement, while a further six also include a crane up and away during the couple’s final embrace, though they do not end on this shot. This stylistic device amounts to a visual translation of the ‘promise of continuation’ as the characters move forwards into the future, and away from the audience. Significantly, by playing on the kinetic excitement generated by the travelling shot (John Edmond, cited in Jermyn, 2020: 142) this device presents the HEA as a destination rather than a fixed (and untenable) end-point, thus providing a way to sidestep the tension highlighted by Warhol. Whilst the ‘crane up and away’ motif is present across a variety of Hollywood genres, its quasi-ubiquity in the rom-com genre has often been parodied, from Marvel’s recent superhero rom-com Deadpool (Miller, 2016) to the Farrelly Brothers’ There’s Something About Mary. The latter film ends with the reunion of Ted (Ben Stiller) and Mary (Cameron Diaz), captured in a medium arc shot. The camera then cuts to a long shot of the couple kissing passionately as Greek-chorus-style singers serenade them in the background. The long shot turns out to be the reflector sight from a rifle, which shoots and kills one of the

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musicians. Meanwhile Mary and Ted, completely oblivious, continue to kiss. The strong recurring presence of the ‘crane up and away’ shot in the rom-com is, however, often part of a cyclical and self-reflexive structure, which links back to the genre’s roots in the fairy tale. Indeed, in many contemporary rom-coms this camera movement often functions as a mirror to the opening of the film, which usually begins with a wideangle shot followed by zooming in or cutting closer to the characters. Pretty Woman features a famous example of this trope, as it is framed by two sequences of a passer-by on the streets of LA shouting, ‘Welcome to Hollywood, the land of dreams’. Dreams and fairy tales are central to Pretty Woman, which is a direct reworking of the Cinderella myth (Madison, 1995: 227); this mirror structure reinforces this connection, as it creates a self-reflexive framing effect, similar to a fairy tale’s ‘One Upon a Time’/‘happily-ever-after’ construction. This bracketing, argues MacDowell, serves to emphasize the feeling of an ending for the viewer (2013: 65–6). A number of other films in my corpus make use of this structure: in fact, the fairy tale connection is made explicitly in Sex and the City 2 (2010), which opens with an aerial shot of New York City whilst Cary Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) narrates in voiceover: ‘once upon a long time ago, there was an island … ’ Hence, whilst the crane up and away in isolation offers a visual translation of the undisturbed continuation of the HEA, its recurrent use as part of a framing device simultaneously undermines it by highlighting its own artificiality. Whereas this recurring camera movement extends the HEA across space, James MacDowell also notes that the genre’s second-mostused concluding trope, the ending montage, extends it across another dimension: time (2013: 115–17). Though less often used than the ‘crane up and away’, the closing montage has also become a rom-com staple in the last twenty-five years, and various versions of it can be found in several films in my corpus, including Runaway Bride, Legally Blonde, The Proposal, Knocked Up and indeed Sweet Home Alabama. The montage not only offers a visual shorthand for the temporal continuity of the

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HEA, as we see protagonists growing old (and usually having children) together, but it can also expand the HEA to other characters. Thus, Runaway Bride’s montage includes not only a shot of the central couple literally riding off into the sunset, but of several other protagonists being paired off. The ending montage is, however, often permeated by a sense of artificiality through direct address. This is most obvious in films such as There’s Something About Mary or Valentine’s Day which include ‘outtakes’ or ‘blooper reels’ in the montage, thus fully breaking the illusion of the narrative. An alternative strategy is to soften the alienating effect of this direct address through narrative integration (Feuer, 1993: 35–9), as seen in The Proposal, where the montage takes the form of interviews between the protagonists and US immigration officers. Similarly in Sweet Home Alabama direct address is narratively integrated by turning the montage into a photo-album, aligning the film audience with the photographer and/or photograph-viewer (see Figure 6). Sweet Home Alabama’s closing montage is at first a fairly traditional representation of the ‘promise of continuation’. It presents snapshots of the couple’s subsequent and continually happy trajectory: moving to New York, Jake opening a business, and the couple having a child. The

Figure 6  Sweet Home Alabama’s final shot (2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures.

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simplicity of this shorthand seemed to amuse some of my participants, including Tina, a graphic designer and film curator for a feminist collective (Interview 27, London). She laughed out loud as the montage revealed Melanie and Jake’s future child, exclaiming: ‘I knew they were gonna show … “look at the future! A baby and dog!”’ In Germany, this was also met by criticism from Tim and Lina, who watched the film along with Lina’s older sister Olga:

Interview Extract 12: Group 5, Berlin. Partners Tim and Lina, 20s, and Lina’s older sister Olga, 50s. Olga: And now they’ve got kids. Lina: Oh, no. Tim: [in English] true story.

At the same time, the sense of continuity is again brought to a sudden stop by the very last shot of the film, which freezes the frame on the smiling family. Hence, the two most frequently used visual conventions of the romantic comedy are at odds with the eternal happiness suggested by the happy ending. Whilst the ‘crane up and away’ often works within a fairy tale-like framing device which draws attention to its own artificiality, the freeze frame of Sweet Home Alabama’s HEA montage supports Warhol’s argument about the trope’s inherent impossibility: it is possible for Melanie and Jake to remain continually and blissfully happy only if they are frozen in time and space. This sense of unease with the HEA’s promise is further reinforced by films which depart from these conventions, this first of which is Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally. Tamar Jeffers McDonald has highlighted the significance of the film’s final scene, in which the two characters sit on a couch, discussing their relationship in direct address. As fake interviews with ‘real’ long-time couples occur at regular intervals in the film, the return to this setup at the end creates

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a structural symmetry which reinforces the gratification of the HEA (Jeffers McDonald, 2015: 9). At the same time, the sequence also hints at the instability of the HEA. The film makes use of the ‘crane up and away shot’ to frame the couple’s reunion in the penultimate scene. However, the shot is crucially interrupted by a sound-bridge leading to the final scene, where both characters directly address the camera. The film ends by abruptly cutting them off mid-conversation as they begin to quarrel about their wedding cake, returning to one of the film’s recurring jokes where Harry pokes fun at Sally’s pickiness with food. The final shot thus foreshadows a disagreement, presenting the HEA not as an end-point but as the beginning of a bumpy journey. Similarly, My Best Friend’s Wedding’s ‘unhappily-ever-after’, which is often praised as a relatively radical departure from rom-com’s ideological conservatism (Siede, 2018a), remains fairly classical in terms of style, but with a significant twist (Evans and Deleyto, 1998: 9). The film does end with a couple, albeit not a romantic one, as heroine Jules (Julia Roberts) and her best friend (Rupert Everett) swing goofily on the dance floor. The framing of this shot highlights the instability which Sweet Home Alabama’s freeze-frame tries to prevent, and the duo dance around the frame, pushing at its edges, as if the camera can’t quite contain them. Participants reacted in three different ways to the ending of Sweet Home Alabama. Some did not react either visibly or audibly to the closing montage which they watched in silence, and hence did not provide a public display of emotions for me to analyse. Secondly, some viewers either did not watch the credits at all or did not pay attention to them: as the montage music plays they can be heard on the recording discussing food, the need to smoke a cigarette or the difficulty of getting the last tube home (e.g. Groups 17 and 22, Paris). The final category, analysed below, is made up of participants who did watch the montage until the end and commented on it. Only three groups, Group 20, 22 and 33, whose participants fit the more traditional definition of the ‘cinephile’ – as Charlotte Brunson and others have argued, this mode of film viewing is also bound up in issues of gender and power (Brunsdon,

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1986: 105; Morley, 1986: 143–6) – watched the post-montage credits until the very end. Several groups who did watch and comment on the ending made statements echoing Warhol’s comments about the fleeting nature of the HEA, by openly questioning the practicalities of Melanie and Jake’s future happiness. Group 2 (Berlin), for example, brought together four young German women in their 20s. They seemed particularly concerned with the protagonists’ (and particularly Melanie’s) ability to ‘have it all’, and to balance out a relationship with a career:

Interview Extract 7: Group 2, Berlin. Colleagues and friends Annalise, Eva, Hannah and Paula, early 20s to early 30s. The song ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ plays during the credits; the photo-montage is running.

Melanie, Jake and their new baby appear on screen.

Hannah: But does she return to New York to work? Eva: How so? Paula: But he does have his store in the South? Eva: But it’s practical because = Paula: Aha = Hannah: What? But his store is in the South? = Paula: …and he has to stay there, because he has to = Eva: … for some business opportunities, he must have to go to New York. Paula: Oh ok, that’s why. Annalise: But how can she stay and live in a backwater town like that? = Paula: Not at all = Annalise:... where she can’t find inspiration for her clothes, erm… [her attention is drawn by the image on screen] – oh, kids! Paula: Maybe she’s not allowed to go back because she beat up the Mayor! [laughs]

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Interestingly, this discussion takes places against an almost complete disregard for the montage, which Paula only acknowledges in order to note that Melanie and Jake have had a child. Indeed, whilst the inclusion in some of the photographs of a yellow cab as well as the close-up on the sign of Jake’s new shop front reading ‘New York – Alabama’ suggests that both characters have in fact moved to the Big Apple, the group seems to assume that the couple will stay in Alabama, and deplores the effect this will have on Melanie’s career. Another group which only partially engages with the montage is Group 31 (London). Nate brings up Melanie’s incapacity to ‘have it all’ in the post-screening discussion, where he also assumes that she is forced to abandon her career for Jake. This leads to Rachel telling him off for not paying attention. By contrast, the group seemed particularly invested in the future of Melanie’s jilted fiancé Andrew (played by Patrick Dempsey):

Interview Extract 8: Group 31, London. Friends Henry, Martin, Nate, Noel, Rachel and Olympia, mid-20s to early 30s. The song ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ plays during the credits; the photo-montage is running.

A photo pops up of a newspaper announcing Andrew’s wedding to Erin Vanderbilt

Martin: I wanna see – Olympia [to Noel, with exaggerated enthusiasm]: Yeah! Rose [makes shushing noise]: (Everyone) that part is important! Martin: I wanna see [he stutters] a scene with Patrick Dempsey happy and… (inaudible) [the others chuckle] [Martin: Yaaaaaay! [Henry: Awwww. Yay! Rose: He married a Vanderbilt? Nate: (He) deserved that!

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Group 31 expresses a sense of deep satisfaction with the certainty of the HEA. Martin’s choice of word (‘I want’) is significant, almost trying to command the film into submission, and the group erupts into collective cheers when his wish is satisfied – a verbal expression of the ‘pleasure of hermeneutic speculation’ identified by Charlotte Brunsdon (1997: 21). At the same time, he expresses a clear awareness of the artifice of the trope: note that he refers to Patrick Dempsey the actor, rather than use the character’s name. Several other groups demanded to know more detail about the character’s future, though they were not as sympathetic to Andrew as Group 31 seemed to be. Group 2 (Berlin), for instance, doesn’t address the shot of Andrew getting married, and proposes alternative suggestions instead:

Interview Extract 9: Group 2, Berlin. Colleagues and friends Annalise, Eva, Hannah and Paula, early 20s to early 30s. Annalise: But what’s the deal with her = Paula: Friend? = Annalise: Ex-boyfriend? [Hannah: Maybe he’s with someone great. [Paula: Maybe they’re friends? Eva: Yeah.

This group also seem bewildered by his behaviour when Melanie abandons him at the altar:

Interview Extract 10: Group 2, Berlin. Colleagues and friends Annalise, Eva, Hannah and Paula, early 20s to early 30s. Eva: Well, he was so – he was too sweet or = Paula [as Dempsey?]: ‘I’ll be off then!’ Eva: OK [she laughs]. That’s because before he was always the asshole who dumped everyone. This time he was the one getting ditched. That’s why.

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Andrew’s casual reaction to being abandoned was also the subject of much discussion during the post-screening interviews across most groups. His reaction is deemed unrealistic on a referential level, and this is emphasized by numerous participants imitating him or even performing as the character. Paula, for instance, cites him briefly in the extract above, but Group 34 (Kent) engages in lengthier play-acting, paraphrasing and even extending Andrew’s speech to Melanie:

Interview Extract 11: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. The photo-montage begins. Jill: So we never find out about him and why he’s – relaxed about the whole affair? The other one? Annie: He’s just a nice guy! Lily: Yeah. [several chuckles] Lily: It couldn’t be any other way, could it, otherwise it couldn’t work. Harriet: It couldn’t tie up so nicely if he was really unhappy. Lily: (they’ve run out) of ideas... … Harriet: He just goes for it! He’s really happy with that [inaudible, they all laugh and talk at the same time] Jill: He goes [as Andrew] ‘Oh so that what it feels like to be rejected [Annie laughs] I’ve never been rejected, [this is an amazing life-lesson for me.’  [Annie keeps laughing] Lily: Yeah that line was (really) weird, wasn’t it? Harriet [as Andrew]: ‘... yeah I’m gonna head off now, and ponder that.’ Lily: What did he say (inaudible)? Jill/harriet at the same time: ‘So that’s what it feels like’ Harriet: Like [As Andrew] ‘Oh I’ve broken so many hearts in my life!’

Andrew’s behaviour doesn’t just stand out on a referential level, however; it is striking on a critical level, too. Indeed, most groups seemed pleasantly surprised that Andrew is not revealed to be fundamentally

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flawed, subverting what might be called the romantic comedy’s George Wickham syndrome. Perhaps most famously employed in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Austen, 1982, originally published 1813), this trope consists in the heroine first falling in love with a man who turns out to be untrustworthy.3 Group 34 (Kent) actually stands out here, as on the contrary they see his character development as an (easy) way to fit into the rigid structure of the HEA. We’ve seen in Martin’s reaction the gratification that comes with the certainty of the HEA. The strength of this convention could also go some way to explaining the reaction of participants who chose to ignore the montage sequence altogether. Granted, some of them may simply have been keen to finish the film (and the interview) as quickly as possible, but it seems that most just didn’t see a narrative necessity in the montage, as if the promise contained in the final kiss was strong enough on its own. In fact, I myself also enacted this certainty in my interview with Noel, as the montage sequence was abruptly cut off by Netflix:

Interview Extract 12: Interview 29, London. Noel, mid-20s. Alice: Unless you want to watch the credits? Noel: I’m good for now. Alice: There’s like a little closing montage. But all your need to know is they have a very blonde child. Noel: [laughs.] A very blonde child? Alice: A very blonde child. She’s very blonde. Noel: Alright.

My repetition of the same phrase twice reproduces and emphasizes the certainty of the HEA. At the same time, the emphasis on blondness could also be said to highlight the trope’s ideological conservatism; as Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau have argued, blondeness has This also seemed to confuse Sweet Home Alabama’s test audiences, which led to quite significant re-edits of the film, according to one of the screenwriters (Eboch, 2008).

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been historically associated with white privilege (Dyer, 2004: 39–42; Vincendeau, 2016). I will return to the ideological ambivalence of the HEA in Chapter 3, and to the issue of blondness and ideology in Chapter 4. The pleasure of the happy ending, then, seems to stem from a complex balancing act involving control, recognition and familiarity. On some level, the pleasure is one that stems from power and safety, and, indeed, participants often used such a vocabulary to explain the appeal of the genre. When I asked interviewees how and why they watched rom-coms, many described seeking out escapism as a comforting mode of film-viewing: for Bridget (Interview 10, Berlin), it’s when she’s stressed. Both Valerie in Group 34 (Kent) and Tina in Interview 27 (London) like to watch rom-coms when they are ill (‘wearing pyjamas’, notes Valerie), whilst Valerie’s friend Annie prefers them as a hangover cure: ‘have a bath, a glass of wine, and a shitty rom-com.’ When Georgina in Group 16 (Paris) offers the other participants in her group a herbal infusion, her friend Paul jokingly accepts ‘because we’re watching a romantic comedy’. Lillian (Interview 14, Lyon) likes watching rom-coms in the evening when she’s tired, ‘in [her] duvet, on the couch’. Both Tess in Group 22 (Paris) and Arabella in Group 30 (Manchester) name Sunday afternoons as their preferred rom-com times, and Arabella explains that she tends to ‘gravitate towards the safe ones, like Sex and the City’. This echoes Janice Radway’s analysis of romance reading which, whilst generally critical, acknowledges that the act of reading romance does give her participants a space in which to take care of themselves (1991: 170). This is strongly evoked in the statements quoted above. Additionally, whilst John Tulloch suggests that viewers’ power over the film remains limited (2000: 59) John Fiske has noted the importance of the pleasure of control in escapist reading or viewing of romance: ‘This ability to move into and out of the text, simultaneously to affirm and deny its textuality, is pleasurable because it is a movement under the control of the viewer. She is not the dupe of the text, but is in charge of her own reading relations’ (2010: 96). This certainly echoes the reactions of my participants, which emphasize the comfort of escapism as

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a deliberate and empowering viewing strategy. Kyle Stevens further debunks the association between predictability and conservatism, and views ‘romantic comedy’s predictability as a shunning of the masculinist history of unveiling, and its critical derision as a kind of gatekeeping’ (2020: 45). On the contrary, he suggests the rom-com’s predictability empowers its majoritarily female and queer audience: ‘Suspense-driven narratives dominate their audience. They ask us to submit and wait. While we cannot alter the course of a predictable movie narrative, by placing us in a position of knowledge, it feels as though power is shared. It says “we’re in this together”’ (Stevens, 2020: 46). As I will discuss in more detail in the next chapter, community certainly seems to play an important part in the viewing process for some viewers. And certainly, the rom-com’s familiarity seemed to take on a particular significance for feminist participants. That said, numerous participants seemed to appreciate the familiarity that comes from anticipating plot developments, and this did not apply only to the HEA. It also manifested itself as viewers engaged in what I call the ‘guessing game’ (Brunsdon’s ‘hermeneutic speculation’), where they try to anticipate the plot of the film. One group who seemed to find this particularly pleasurable is Group 31, for whom the guessing game took on a particularly competitive quality, with participants (mock) fighting to be the one who guessed it right, as with the ‘reveal’ of Jake’s successful new business venture:

Interview Extract 13: Group 31, London. Friends Henry, Martin, Nate, Noel, Rachel and Olympia, mid-20s to early 30s. Nate: Oh, he is a glass blower? Oh my god. Oh my god, called it! [several chuckles] [Nate: [enunciating] Called it so hard! [Neil: Martin – Martin called it! Nate: No, he copied (what I said), I said it the second before him. [they laugh]

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Will Brooker has noted a similar element of playfulness and competition in his work with Star Wars fans. As with the ‘guessing game’ outlined above, Brooker’s participants ‘reward[ed]’ skilful ‘quoting along’ with laughter and applause. But there is, he writes, ‘a delicate balance between displaying skills of imitation and textual knowledge, and showing off ’ (Brooker, 2002: 59). This is noticeable in the above interview too, as Nate is rebuffed for bragging about having ‘called it’. Nevertheless, the guessing game offers a particular form of social pleasure (rather than an emotion) as the group bond over a mastery of the genre and its tropes. This practice is evidently not limited to romantic comedy. In her work on soap opera audiences, for instance, Dorothy Hobson notes that ‘a large part of the enjoyment which is derived from watching soap opera is talking about them with other people’ (Hobson, 1989: 165). Similarly, watch any episode of Channel 4’s reality-TV show Gogglebox (2013– current), in which participants are filmed reacting to television, and you can see participants engaging in this across a wide variety of film and television genres. However, it seems that it is precisely the predictability of the rom-com that makes it a particularly sociably-pleasurable genre. This is discussed quite explicitly by Nate and his fellow-interviewees:

Interview Extract 14: Group 31, London. Friends Henry, Martin, Nate, Noel, Rachel and Olympia, mid-20s to early 30s. Nate: Do you know early on in the film when we were all catching a lot of jokes I was enjoying the fact that it did not involve full attention = Neil: Yeah = and we could easily follow the plot by basically all just cracking (naff jokes) and not really listen to the lines. … Henry: It was a nice social experience.

Additionally, whilst on a meta-diegetic level the familiarity of the rom-com’s narrative offers both emotional and social pleasure, on an extra-diegetic level (Katz and Liebes’ ‘referential’ reading), there

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is a pleasure that comes with romantic comedy speaking to (rather than reflecting) real-life romantic experiences. This is emphasized by childhood friends Arabella and Celia (Group 30, Manchester). I interviewed the pair on Arabella’s bed, where they usually watch romcoms with another friend whose ‘usual place’ I ended up taking, as the friends always watch the films sitting in the same order:

Interview Extract 15: Group 30, Manchester. Friends Arabella and Celia, mid-20s. Arabella: And then we’ll probably just [she pauses] rather than actually chat about the story... I think we generally chat about... ‘Oh d’you remember that time when that sort of thing happened?’ Celia: Yeah. Arabella: It’s like, the relations. Alice: Okay. Celia: What we can relate to.

The difference between speaking to rather than identifying with is significant, because numerous participants stressed the perceived gap between the films and their own life, and refer to the films as ‘fantasy’ or ‘escapism’. But this balancing act is difficult: if it comes too close to reality, the film is not fulfilling; if it is too far away – when the signifiers of romance are recognized but not understood – it becomes ‘cheesy’. Meanwhile, for particular groups of viewers – which the next chapter turns to – this tension can be a particularly disconcerting, or even disagreeable, experience. This chapter has explored the range of emotions and forms of pleasure offered up by the romantic comedy genre, which I’ve divided according to the three stages in the genre’s narrative pattern. My use of the term ‘emotions’ is motivated by the public nature of the focus group setting. However, in the case  of both excitement and sadness, my participants discuss the rom-com’s

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impact as affect: it is intense, embodied and – especially with regards to tears – difficult to control. Interestingly, control is also key to the joy experienced in the final stage of the genre, the happy ending. Additionally, participants’ reactions make it clear that they know how rom-coms should be consumed, and by whom. The next chapter looks in greater depth at those typical, and less typical, rom-com audiences.

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‘Candy-pink cage?’: Gender, feminism and the phantom viewer There are many ways in which I’m doing feminism wrong. … Pink is my favourite colour. I enjoy fashion magazines and pretty things. I watch The Bachelor and romantic comedies, and I have absurd fantasies about fairy tales coming true. (Gay, 2015) Don’t go accusing me of thinkin’. I haven’t done anything of the sort. (Pearl, Sweet Home Alabama) Romantic comedy and feminism (both in and out of academia) have had a complicated – even conflictual – relationship. As previously outlined, a significant proportion of the academic research on romcom has focussed on its often-problematic representation of gender and sexuality. Such research, along with the above citation from Roxane Gay’s popular TED Talk ‘Bad Feminist’, suggests that being a feminist and enjoying rom-coms are mutually exclusive. Certainly, as this section will demonstrate, the feminist participants interviewed as part of this research were conflicted about their enjoyment of the genre. In this chapter, however, I want to challenge the assumption that a rom-com can only be enjoyed emotionally and, as is so often implied, thoughtlessly. On the contrary, I will outline the ways in which the act of judgement and critique in itself becomes a source of pleasure for groups of feminist viewers. In Chapter 2, I examined responses from a large number of my interview groups. In the first section of this chapter, I focus on a smaller number of interviews: those I undertook with feminist participants, for whom the pleasure of watching romcom is experienced as a problem or, to quote Robyn Warhol, a ‘cringe’

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(2003: 60). I suggest that the pleasure of collective film-viewing plays a particular role for these groups of feminist viewers, and that this social pleasure permeates viewers’ emotional and critical engagement with the film. The second section of this chapter is dedicated to the figure of the ‘phantom viewer’ and examines responses from a larger number of groups. I expand on a feature of the interviews already hinted at in Chapter 2, namely that participants engage not only with the film itself, but also with the way they think the film should be watched. One way this is evident is through the groups’ references to what I call the romcom’s ‘phantom viewer’.

Feminist participants’ responses To clarify: I did not attribute the label ‘feminist’ to participants myself. Although numerous interviews contained discussions of what we might call ‘feminist issues’, this section focuses solely on interviews with participants who self-identified as feminists from the outset of our discussion. For reasons of familiarity with the field these are mostly groups in Britain (Interviews 23, 24, 25, 27 and 34) where I could recruit participants through formal or informal groups I already belonged to: a strategy often referred to as ‘network recruitment’ (Hennink et al., 2011: 102). Often, this resulted from the fact that calls for contributors were circulated through feminist events or online groups such as The Bechdel Test Film Festival, the King’s College London Intersectional Feminist Society, the London SE15 Women in Film group – or, in Berlin, a university gender studies research group. Chapter 2 explored the emotions evoked by each stage of the traditional romance narrative, as presented in Sweet Home Alabama. Here, I focus more specifically on particular scenes associated with the genre, exploring participants’ responses to the film’s versions of the proposal, the kiss and the happy ending (again). As I will demonstrate, these feminist participants express an evident, if complicated, pleasure whilst watching the film.

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The proposal Both ‘the proposal’ and the ‘happily-ever-after’ can be considered key tropes of the romantic comedy genre, though the traditional rom-com narrative tends to combine them (Glitre, 2006: 178). Furthermore, wedding narratives tend to associate legal unions with bodily ones through kissing (Warhol, 2003: 63). From this perspective, Sweet Home Alabama plays around structural tropes. Instead, it separates the two scenes and uses them as a framing device, as the film begins with a proposal and ends with a (renewed) wedding to a different groom. Unusually then, the film’s proposal scene takes place about ten minutes into the film. Feminist participants’ responses to the sequence, which takes place inside the flagship Tiffany’s jewellery shop in New York, were generally negative. Two issues, consumerism and consent, seemed to cause concern for participants and, in both cases, feminist objections to the scene negated its potential romantic impact. In particular, participants laughed at and mocked the surprise effect of the scene, which depicts Melanie being led down a dark corridor by her fiancé’s bodyguard, only to suddenly find herself being proposed to inside the iconic jewellery store. This mocking response is evident in the example below from my interview with Leo and Lisa (Group 24, London). Lisa, a university librarian, was the contact person for this group, and volunteered both Leo and herself to take part in the research after having seen an advertisement on a London-based feminist website.

Interview Extract 1: Group 24, London. Friends Leo and Lisa, mid-20s. Lights flick on, revealing the inside of Tiffany’s jewellery store, with cutaways to close-ups of rings sparkling under display cases, and of a pile of blue Tiffany’s boxes.

Leo: He (bought) her a jewellery shop! [Lisa laughs]

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Andrew: You know I never ask a question I don’t already know the answer to, so I’m going to ask you again. Will you marry me?

Leo [scoffs]: Pressure! Lisa [hums in approval]: Pressure. Leo [laughing]: Yeah! People watching...

Melanie [throwing her arm around Andrew]: Yes, yes!

Lisa: [mockingly]: That happens all the time, doesn’t it? Leo [laughing]: Yeah, oh yeah!

Following in the car, Melanie and Andrew are kissing in the car. Close-up of Melanie’s ring.

Lisa: (...) Awww. Leo: So she has to pick her own ring?

Reactions were similar in Group 23 (London), which was made up of PhD student Betty, her friend Felicity and Felicity’s colleague Melissa. I met Betty at a feminist conference in Central London, and she enthusiastically volunteered to participate when I described my PhD topic. The group, who met at Felicity’s house, chatted quite extensively through the screening, including the proposal sequence:

Interview Extract 2: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Lights flick on, revealing the inside of Tiffany’s jewellery store.

Close-up

on

stacks

Tiffany’s jewellery boxes.

of

Betty: (I would) never respect a man who would make me go to a modern jewellery store and pick my own... Felicity: (inaudible) =Betty: (inaudible) That is (major) conflict diamond. (pause) He’s from a dynasty! Just get a rock from your granny! Felicity: That’s (really) what you’re quibbling over? Betty: Yes! Unethical and new jewellery! Betty: Product placement! I wouldn’t even if you paid me!

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Both groups read the location of the scene (‘he bought her a jewellery shop!’), which references the rom-com classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Edwards, 1961), as a trope of romance.1 But this is seen as a cliché, and its intended romantic impact is experienced as a failure. Moreover, its consumerism seems to negate the romantic effect of Andrew’s gesture. Using Katz and Liebes’ categories of the referential and the critical, we can see that the participants’ critique works across both: Betty’s calling out of the film’s ‘product placement’ is the most overtly critical as well as negative reading the film, signifying an awareness of global Hollywood’s corporate synergies (Tiffany’s did sponsor the after-party for the film’s world premiere). This critique of consumerism was shared across all groups, feminist and non-feminist, the vast majority of whom either laughed during the scene or discussed it in very critical terms in the postscreening discussion. As I’ll discuss in Chapter 4, this is strongly linked to an anti-American sentiment prevalent across all three countries. However, Group 23 and 24’s critique of the scene is mostly referential, as participants negatively compare the diegetic representation of love with their knowledge and experience of real-life romance. For instance, Betty states that she personally would never say yes, whilst Lisa ironically points how this kind of proposal never happens. Both Leo’s joke that ‘he bought her a jewellery shop!’ and Betty’s cry ‘Just get a rock from your granny!’ are based on the assumption that the film is trying (but spectacularly failing) to emulate real life: thus ‘real’ and ‘film’ romance are clearly distinguished. Betty’s exclamation in particular can be coded as referential, as it seems to be addressed directly at Andrew. At the same time the comments imply a common moral judgement about romance, as all participants appear disgusted by the ‘consumerist rituals of romance’ (Illouz, 1997: 308) depicted in the film. In our post-screening discussion, Tina, a graphic-designer with two children, made a comment about the scene that pushes this anticonsumerist criticism to develop a more openly feminist commentary:

For a discussion of the significance of Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the genre as a whole, see the work of Sam Wasson (2010). Meanwhile, Tamar Jeffers McDonald reads You’ve Got Mail’s borrowing of affect from previous films in a similar way (2007: 94).

1

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Interview Extract 3: Interview 26, London. Tina, 50s. Tina:It’s just that you’re sold, over years of film, that it is just the ultimate, to be given the best, and that defines... It’s like that thing of having, you know, a man should spend a month’s salary on an engagement ring and it’s all about... and it really isn’t! Do you know what I mean? I’m not saying not to sell that idea, but we never counteract that it doesn’t have to be that. ... I would hate for my son to feel like that’s what he has to do. And I would hate for my daughter to feel like that’s what somebody... you know. But I don’t think we as parents would, you know, promote that anyway ’cos we’re not that kind of people anyway. I just think, oh here we go again, selling that rubbish of an idea. Do you know what I mean? For me, I just think: the Tiffany’s, the perfect ring, and etc. I’m not against jewellery, I’m not against all of that. And also that, the big showiness of it all.

Tina’s use of a financial lexicon (‘sold’, ‘spend’, ‘salary’, ‘promote’) has a double meaning here: on the one hand, it underlines her disgust at the film’s overemphasis on consumerism. On the other, the repetition of ‘sold’ echoes defensive attitudes towards an ‘ideology of mass culture’ (Ang, 1985: 92). Tina expresses worry about the influence of such onscreen representations of romance on audiences, particularly her own children. Her comment is referential in the sense that she compares the scene to real life (‘it really isn’t [like that]’), but she is also very aware of the film as a commercial construct (‘we are sold such rubbish’), worrying that her children’s expectations about real life might become distorted if too much of such media is consumed, or if it is consumed uncritically. Importantly, such an approach to the media, which we might call a ‘feminist’ viewing mode, blurs the boundary between Katz and Liebes’ two coding categories. These feminists’ critiques are based precisely on an articulation between the critical and the referential, as they are grounded in an awareness of how media both constructs and reflects

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social reality. Feminism has been concerned with popular culture and its consumption for decades, as is evidenced, to cite but a few example, by the extensive scholarship on soap opera viewers or romance-novel readers which inspired this project’s approach (see for example Ang, 1985; Brunsdon, 2000; Hobson, 1982; Modleski, 2010; Radway, 1991). And without over-emphasizing the generational conflict inherent in the notion of clear-cut feminist ‘waves’ (Rivers, 2017: 133) several scholars have emphasized the feminist movement’s particular concern with popular culture since the 1990s – the so-called third and fourth waves (Mahoney, 2016: 1008; Munro, 2013). My interest in Katz and Liebes’ categories of audience response was motivated by rom-com audiences so frequently being criticized for engaging with the genre exclusively through the referential mode: they are seen as the ultimate ‘cine-illiterate’ audience, incapable of envisaging the films as constructs, a stereotype which my participants clearly do not fit into. Feminist participants’ responses, moreover, clearly transcend this opposition. In the light of the public discussion about romantic comedy promoting ‘stalking’ as romantic (see the Introduction), it is also significant that participants’ most explicitly feminist comments relate to the very public nature of Andrew’s proposal. In all three cases outlined, the participants see this as an issue worth addressing, as they read the scene as restricting the female protagonist’s agency: Leo and Lisa laugh at Andrew putting ‘pressure’ on Melanie, whilst Tina worries about ‘the big showiness of it all’. Betty’s comment, meanwhile, is more direct:

Interview Extract 4: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Betty: Elation of choice? Anyone? Felicity: Sorry, is he saying he’d asked her before? Betty: No, he said: ‘I know what your answer’s gonna be’ =Felicity: Oh.

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Figure 7  Andrew’s first proposal (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures.

Though the word is not used explicitly, the key issue here is that of consent, as participants feel Melanie is not really given the choice to refuse Andrew’s proposal (see Figure 7). This is perhaps unsurprising, as consent has recently been at the centre of much feminist activism and media coverage (Halley, 2015). These reactions to the proposal sequence exemplify traditional assumptions about feminist attitudes towards popular culture: they support the idea that being attuned to or focusing on gender depictions in the media can ruin one’s enjoyment of a piece of entertainment. This is the ‘feminist killjoy’ figure which has been theorized and reclaimed by Sara Ahmed (2010a, 2010b). In all three interviews above (Groups 23 and 24, Interview 27, London) the proposal sequence perfectly illustrates this killing of joy, as participants’ objections about the scene’s over-the-top consumerism and undermining of women’s agency make them unable to appreciate the romance of the scene. However, the same participants were more divided when it came to another rom-com narrative staple, the HEA, which suggests that feminist critique and emotional pleasure can also work together.

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The happily-ever-after I have already discussed the emotional satisfaction that comes with the HEA in Chapter 2, but this section will focus specifically on feminist groups’ perception of the sequence as ideologically loaded. In the case of Sweet Home Alabama’s proposal scene, participants’ negative judgement was based on the film’s stereotypical location and character traits, which are both seen as anti-feminist. The dangers of the HEA, however, are structural. Indeed, there has been some discussion amongst feminist critics whether the form of the happily-ever-after is inherently anti-feminist. For instance, in her work on Dallas, Ien Ang writes that: In soap operas, it is by definition impossible for the characters to remain happy … as a consequence, women in soap operas can never be simply happy with the position they occupy. On the contrary, it is often these positions themselves that give rise to many problems and conflicts. This holds pre-eminently for the traditional positions which are ascribed to women in contemporary society … In other words, it would appear that some points made in feminist analysis of women’s oppression are recognised in an intuitive way in soap operas: the contradictions which patriarchy generates are expressed time and time again. (Ang, 1985: 122–3)

Per Ang, the soap opera’s feminist potential comes from the openendedness required by its episodic format. A similar argument has been made in favour of the recent spate of more progressive TV romanticcomedies such as Insecure (Rae and Wilmore, 2016–current), The Mindy Project, Jane the Virgin or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, whose use of the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ TV trope has allowed for the development of more realistic love stories and well-rounded women characters (Siede, 2019; Wittmer, 2018). By contrast, the film rom-com’s HEA would seem to be particularly anti-feminist for two reasons. Firstly, as James MacDowell has highlighted, Hollywood’s happy-ending is generally limited to

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heterosexual white couples. In my interviews, this lack of ethnic diversity is picked up by feminist participants as one of the rom-com’s worst features. Sara (Interview 25, London), for instance, noted in our discussion that Sweet Home Alabama is ‘not intersectional feminism at all. To top it all off, it’s as white as it gets’. This is generally true of the types of characters to whom Hollywood traditionally grants the HEA. Useful here is George Gerbner’s concept of ‘symbolic annihilation’ regarding the misrepresentation of minority groups in mainstream media. As developed by Gaye Tuchman, symbolic annihilation works across three categories: First is omission, i.e. simply not being represented at all; second is demonization: being represented but only in a negative light; finally, trivialization: being represented in a clichéd manner, and usually marginalized within the narrative (1978: 8). As Sara, herself a woman of colour, and other participants note, whereas romantic comedy is one of the rare genres in Hollywood where women are not symbolically annihilated, women of colour or queer women are still vastly marginalized by the genre, which privileges the perspectives of white, heterosexual characters. As the participants’ tables in Appendix 3 demonstrate, most of the people I interviewed as part of the research were also white and middle-class (a real limitation of the research protocol), and thus might feel somewhat represented by the ‘traditional’ romantic comedy heroine. Betty acknowledges this at the end of our interview, as I ask how the group feels about watching rom-coms as feminists:

Interview Extract 5: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Betty: I really pray that I haven’t internalised all this shit, because actually I find myself leaning certain ways in my thinking, not necessarily in my actions, but every so often I think something and I think: ‘Oh my God! I’ve been (cumulatively) squirreling all that stuff away.’ [she pauses] And somehow... factoring it in even though my education and my privilege as a [she pauses] white, well-educated, middle-class girl means that I can have all these options.

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For intersectional feminists, then, the HEA poses particular issues relating to diversity (or lack thereof) and privilege. Secondly on a formal level, and to return to Ang’s previously-cited comment, the HEA can be seen as anti-feminist precisely because it is ubiquitous. Many interview participants indeed saw the HEA as a, if not the, defining feature of the romantic comedy genre. In the rom-com as in romance novels, it has been argued, the heroine is thus trapped in a narrative that will inevitably lead her to enter a relationship with a man (Horne, 2015). By contrast, James MacDowell suggests that the HEA can have affirmative, even progressive, value when offered to non-conventional couples (2013: 181–7). In Sweet Home Alabama, such an opportunity occurs fleetingly in the film’s final scene, in which not only the film’s central couple, Melanie and Jake, are reunited, but another couple is formed. In traditional rom-com fashion, the film ties up all loose ends by extending the HEA beyond the two main protagonists to a number of other couples. Melanie and Jake’s wedding is thus the site of a meet-cute for the film’s only two gay characters: Melanie’s New York mentor Frederick, and her childhood friend Bobby Ray from Alabama. During the credit sequence the montage also shows the two characters embracing whilst posting for a group photograph, suggesting that this is the beginning of the couple’s own love story. In fact, Bobby Ray is the very last character seen on screen outside of the central heterosexual couple. Whilst this suggests a less heterocentric configuration of the HEA, the reactions of self-identified feminist groups to the scene were ambivalent. On the one hand Group 23, who particularly favoured Bobby Ray’s character (‘he’s nothing but nice!’ said Felicity early on during the screening), greeted this development with laughter and appreciation:

Interview Extract 6: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, late 20s. Bobby Ray and Frederick look at each other.

[they all laugh] Betty: Oh look (inaudible) It’s (a) Notting Hill reference! [all laugh]

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Closing credits: close-up of the newspaper announcing Andrew’s engagement to Erin Vanderbilt.

[Melissa and Betty laugh] Melissa: What? Felicity: Oh! So the guy married a Vanderbilt, who’s a big, it’s like a big [stutters] like, old American family, isn’t it?

Close-up of Jake’s new glass shop

Betty: I can’t see the poster at the top. Felicity: Oh, it’s his glass – he’s got a shop in New York. Betty: Yes! Melissa [ironically]: Yeah, because they both made it to New York. Felicity: Oh! But it’s cute!

Melanie, Jake and their baby walking through New York.

Betty [laughing]: ‘You (have) baby! In a bar!’ Melissa: Aww. Felicity: Loooads of blonde hair! Betty: The hair! that’s patent (inaudible) hair. [Betty sings along]

This group generally read Sweet Home Alabama’s ending positively: the scene elicited much laughter from them, along with non-verbal expressions of emotion (‘awing’). That said, a collective system of checks and balances was clearly in place: although Melissa had some reservations about the film’s realism, Felicity countered them with ‘but it’s cute!’ which suggests that the critique could only be taken so far. This is an externalization of the judgement versus emotional engagement tension, which manifested itself individually and internally as well as between participants. Tellingly, Melissa’s next contribution (‘Aww’) displays a more ‘traditional’ emotional consumption of the scene. This group also engaged with and embraced the HEA – including Bobby Ray’s coupledom – as a rom-com trope. Betty read the scene as a reference to Richard Curtis’ Notting Hill (Michell, 1999), in which

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comedic supporting character Bernie (Hugh Bonneville) also falls in love-at-first-sight in the third act during the lead couple’s reunion. In this instance therefore the viewing pleasure came partly from the familiarity of the trope (because it is a trope), and the participants engaged with it playfully (as with the ‘guessing game’ outlined in Chapter 2). They sang and danced along with the closing song, and in Betty’s case re-quoted one of the film’s most-iconic lines (‘you have a baby … in a bar’). For Group 24, however, the same feeling of familiarity was read as restrictive for both Melanie and Bobby Ray’s characters:

Interview Extract 7: Group 24, London. Friends Leo and Lisa, mid-20s. Bobby Ray crosses the screen, preparing the wedding cake.

Leo: I bet – are these two guys going to get together? Lisa: [laughing] I know Leo: Yeah! [they laugh] ( ) Lisa: Inevitable. Leo: They have to, yeah. [they laugh]

Bobby Ray and Frederick look at each other.

Leo: Yeah! Here we go, yeah of course. Lisa: Hmmm. [they laugh]

The artificiality and inevitability of both Melanie and Bobby Ray’s ultimate coupledom were reinforced in these responses by the participants’ repeated use of terms implying obligation, such as ‘inevitable’, ‘have to’, ‘of course’. For Leo and Lisa, the predictability of the HEA is also read as a form of symbolic annihilation by trivialization (Tuchman, 1978: 8): Bobby Ray and Frederick must end up in a relationship because rom-com convention requires it. As the film’s

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only two gay protagonists, they will ‘inevitably’ find their happy ending with each other, in spite of them having had no previous interaction, or much character development. Frederick in particular was viewed by many participants as being doubly symbolically annihilated for being both gay and African-American:

Interview Extract 8: Interview 29, London. Noel, mid-20s. Frederick (to Melanie): Good luck! Noel: Every fashionista needs a sassy gay friend. Alice: [laughing]: Obviously! Noel: Sassy black gay friend! [makes sound of box ticking] Alice: All the = = Noel: You’ve hit two right there! [Alice laughs]

For viewers like Leo, Lisa and Noel, then, the neat narrative closure offered by the gay couple’s HEA was to be read less as a decentring of the romantic comedy’s heteronormativity than as continued symbolic annihilation. The film was thus read as paying lip service to liberation politics rather than demonstrating real progress. This illustrates an opposition between happiness and liberation which has been theorized by Sarah Ahmed in The Promise of Happiness (2010b). In the face of such criticism, one might therefore question to what extent the participants enjoyed the film at all. However, in spite of their ideological condemnation, the tone employed by Leo and Lisa (and indeed Noel and myself) suggests humour rather than anger, and indeed, both laughed throughout the film’s final sequence. This is, in fact, not restricted to Group 24 (London), but extends to most feminist groups’ reactions to the film. Noel, for example, joked halfway through the screening: ‘I’m finding it really hard to dislike this movie.’ Only in one individual interview without a screening (Group 25, Sara, London) did a participant refer to being ‘angry’, though she mentioned having

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seen the film several times. At the same time, the exaggeration of her accompanying gestures was also intended as comical: she made a point of speaking into the recorder to say that she was ‘giving Alice a very angry face’, which made us both laugh. In her work on TV comedy audiences, Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore has argued that humour is used by participants to negotiate the power dynamics of the focus-group setting (2012). As noted in Chapter 2, my participants did make fun of both each other and the research protocol, though a rather different power dynamic was in play: humour was used by participants as a tool to deconstruct the film, and its target was the media content rather than other participants. Cinematic consumption took on a participatory, almost sport-like, quality. In Group 23 (London), for example, Betty’s consumption of the film was particularly playful. In fact, she referred to games at the beginning of the screening, when she told the other participants: ‘we now have to play the game: how dated is the fashion?’ More significantly, as she watched the film Betty played a sort of bingo as she literally ‘called out’ moments of sexism or genre tropes. Due to its fairly recent emergence, there is currently relatively little academic research on online ‘calling out’ (a significant exception is Rivers, 2017). By contrast, activist writing on the pros and cons of the practice abound (see for example Cross, 2015; Dzodan, 2011; Tran, 2013). Roughly, it can be described as a form of public challenge or criticism of someone’s stance on an issue usually related to discrimination (such as sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or ableism), and its intersections. Betty playfully ‘called out’ moments of sexism throughout the film, often using nominal sentences, for example, her ‘Elation of choice? Anyone?’ quoted above during the proposal scene. The use of these nominal sentences is striking because they are understood as self-explanatory; Betty was treating the sexism of the film as a fact which could be pointed out without explanation. By contrast, particularly at the beginning of the screening, her friend Felicity was a little more tentative in her calling out of the film. For instance, she noted during Frederick’s first on-screen appearance that ‘this does, like,

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fall into quite a few stereotypes as the gay best friend, like, of non-white backgrounds’. Her sentence had to explain the process by which she found the character problematic, because he reinforced a stereotype (Gerbner and Tuchman’s symbolic annihilation by trivialization). Betty, by contrast, skipped the explanation and merely named the stereotypes: ‘oh we’ve got the evil mother archetype!’ she stated as Andrew’s mother (Candice Bergen) was introduced, or exclaimed, ‘Oooh! A Southern gay best friend!’ upon Bobby Ray’s introduction. She also spoke in the plural (‘we’ve got’), giving her statement a further sense of authority. Significantly, she did this more and more frequently as the film went on, perhaps because the feminist nature of the group was by now well established. She knew that the other participants shared her feminist beliefs, and thus didn’t require an explanation. In her discussion of fourth-wave feminism, Ealasaid Munro defines the practice of calling out as one of the feminist movement’s defining features, due in part to the changing nature of its activism, which is increasingly being practised online: What is certain is that the Internet has created a ‘call-out’ culture, in which sexism or misogyny can be ‘called out’ and challenged. This culture is indicative of the continuing influence of the third wave, with its focus on micropolitics and challenging sexism and misogyny insofar as they appear in everyday rhetoric, advertising, film, television and literature, the media, and so on. (Munro, 2013)

In my focus groups, this ‘calling out’, or public demand for accountability, of the film was a source of social cohesion for the groups, and it contributed to fostering a sense of community based on a set of shared social values. Indeed, participants constantly reinforced and supported each other’s criticism, through laughter or utterances such as ‘yeah’, ‘of course’, ‘I know’: there are, for instance, five such utterances (excluding laughter) in the previously cited exchange between Leo and Lisa, which serve as markers of group consensus (Kitzinger, 1994: 109). These are reproduced below in italics:

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Bobby Ray crosses the screen, preparing the wedding cake.

Bobby Ray and Frederick look at each other.

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Leo: I bet – are these two guys going to get together? Lisa: [laughing] I know. Leo: Yeah! [they laugh] ( ) Lisa: Inevitable. Leo: They have to, yeah. [they laugh] Leo: Yeah! Here we go, yeah of course. Lisa: Hmmm. [they laugh]

Without these markers of support, participants’ pleasure in watching the film could be questioned. Here, though, it is clear that both Leo and Lisa enjoyed this moment as they reinforced each other’s critique and laughed at the film together. A similar dynamic is visible in Group 34’s post-screening discussion of the proposal sequence:

Interview Extract 9: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Valerie: For me it was really patronising. So [Annie hums in agreement] it was like, this sense of ‘little woman! you can’ – it was like a kid in a sweet shop, you could have = Lily: Yeah = ‘little woman [Harriet hums in agreement] you could have any one of these things that you liked.’ [Lily: Yeah. [Valerie: And I don’t know whether that was a metaphor for the film that where she was supposed to choose or whether it was this idea of: [wouldn’t we all love to have... [Annie: And that’s what we’re meant to aspire to! All: Yeah. [Valerie: This change to: platters. [Lily: But it was just (...) [like the roses! I just – [Jill: Yeah... I hate that. Harriet [disgusted]: Oooh! that was the worst!

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Significant here is the creation of a group consensus through shared opinions and visible in specific utterances. Valerie begins by framing her assessment as an individual opinion (‘for me’), but this was quickly and audibly supported by nearly all of the other participants in the group. Her second sentence, however, was interrupted and built on by other participants, through what conversation analysist Anita Pomerantz calls ‘agreement through second assessments’ (1984: 64–5). Valerie’s critique singling out the ‘platters’ [of Tiffany’s rings] is expanded on by Lily, whose mention of ‘roses’ refers to a previous scene in the film, in which Melanie arrives home to find that Andrew has littered her apartment with flowers. This scene was cited by Holmes and Johnson’s study as a particularly unrealistic and potential harmful depiction of romance (2009: 360), but it is clear that Group 34’s participants did not fall for its charm. Jill then contributes a negative assessment of that scene (‘I hate that’), and Harriet closed the exchange with what Pomerantz calls ‘second assessment by upgrade’ (‘that was the worst’), further intensifying the level of dislike for the scene (1984: 65). The resulting group dynamic was one of consensus and unity, through the performance of a collective feminist identity. This brings us back to the figure of the ‘feminist killjoy’. As Sara Ahmed writes, feminism is a source of pain because it excludes its adherents from the mainstream, but it also has the potential for pleasure. That pleasure can come from personal liberation as well as – and this is particular relevant here – bonding with other ‘nonconforming’ beings: Those who are unseated by the tables of happiness can find each other … We can talk about being wilful subjects, feminist killjoys, angry black women; we can claim those figures back; we can talk about those conversations we have had at dinner tables or in seminars or meetings. We can laugh in recognition of the familiarity of inhabiting that space, even if we do not inhabit the same space (and we do not). There can be joy in killing joy. (Ahmed, 2010a) (my emphasis)

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To expand on Ahmed’s home metaphor, in my groups the livingroom thus served as a (possibly temporary) alternative to the table of happiness, and the act of critique created a social form of pleasure. Ahmed’s discussion of the joy of liberation is also echoed in Ien Ang’s commentary on the pleasure of critique. Citing Foucault, she argues that the very act of poking fun at something is a form of power reversal: ‘commentary is a type of discourse that has the aim of dominating the object: by supplying commentary to something, one affirms a superior relation to that object’ (Ang, 1985: 97). The powerful transgressive potential of laughter has been well documented (Bakhtin, 1984; Fergus, 2002: 104; Willett et al., 2012). In the context of the interviews furthermore the act of commentary, which participants in Group 23, 24, 29 and 34 engage in repeatedly, is transgressive in itself as it disrupts the silence traditionally associated with a cinephile mode of film-viewing. The act of feminist critique can therefore become a source of pleasure for feminist viewers of rom-com. In their work on ‘snark’ fandom, scholars such as Francesca Haig, Bethan Jones and Sara Harman have observed similar processes amongst cultural consumers of the Twilight Saga or the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. To quote Haig, ‘the criticisms aren’t incidental to the pleasure taken in the texts; they appear, in large part, to constitute the pleasure’ (in Harman and Jones, 2013: 956). The pleasure here, however, lies mostly in the nature of the criticism (i.e. the act of engaging in feminist critique) rather than in the object of that critique. However, the rom-com’s focus on feminine subjectivity offers a fruitful platform or springboard for this discussion. Moreover, audiences’ interaction with the film is not one of pure opposition: feminist criticism can work against (as in the case of the proposal scene) but also through or indeed alongside emotional engagement with the film (as with the happily-ever-after example). This rejoins Jacqueline Bobo’s case study on black women viewers of Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple, where she notes that ‘although the film is a patriarchal text, its black viewers found ways to empower themselves through their negotiated reception of it’ (1995: 5).

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Escapism The participants’ engagement with Sweet Home Alabama is clearly pleasurable. At the same time, however, this interaction between critique and pleasure can be felt as a tension for feminist audiences, who feel they have to find strategies to justify their consumption of rom-coms. This is particularly striking when observing participants’ responses to the question, ‘why and in which context do you consume rom-coms?’ Overwhelmingly, respondents mobilized the concept of escapism in their responses: ‘everyone wants to de-stress a little bit, you know, watch something mindless’, noted Sara (Interview 25, London), adding that Sweet Home Alabama is ‘not an awful movie, it’s just very brainless. There are some days where you just want to leave your brain at home, or let it rest’. Tina (Interview 27, London) made a very similar statement: ‘it’s not taxing. I don’t have to think. I just watch; it just washes over me. There’s nothing, I’ll watch it, I’ll turn it off and I’ll go to bed. It’s not something I would think about.’ This justification was used again and again in interviews and questionnaires with audiences, and expressions like ‘switching off ’ one’s brain, ‘relaxing’ or ‘not thinking’ occurred in practically every interview I conducted across the three countries. For feminist viewers, however, there was a dual – and conflicting – meaning behind these phrases. On the one hand, they served as a defence against Sweet Home Alabama’s conservatism: if one’s brain was ‘turned off ’, then it could not be permeated by the film’s sexist ideology. In Tina’s own words, it ‘washed over’ her without leaving a trace. Moreover, such expressions also implicitly worked as a performance of class to ‘distinguish’ the viewer (Bourdieu, 1979: vii– viii). As Sara’s phrase ‘there are some days’ suggests, one can allow oneself to relax precisely because one’s regular job is intellectually demanding. This rejoins with Helen Wood and Bev Skeggs’s work on class and the consumption of reality TV, who observed that middle-class interviewees were much more likely to justify or defend their viewing habits than working-class participants (2008: 9–10,

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2011: 949). On the other hand, such a justification also underlines a – potentially dangerous – passivity faced with the dominant ideology inscribed in mainstream media. It is therefore particularly interesting when used by feminist viewers who, perhaps more than others, are attuned to the importance of critiquing popular culture and dominant ideology, and who are used to being accused of reading “too much” into things. Indeed, whilst groups of feminist participants constantly supported each other’s ideological reading of the film, when Rose – the only woman in Group 31 – used the phrase ‘lad culture’ to critique the film, she was mocked by the other participants:

Interview Extract 10: Group 31, South London. Henry, Martin, Nate, Neil and Rose, mid-20s to early 30s. Rose: That’s just like lad culture though like, in the South if you’ve ever been. [chuckles from the group] Henry [laughing]: Lad culture... FHM. Rose: No! But if you’ve ever been to like, South – Nate: What? Miss your own wedding! Rose! [the men laugh] Rose: He didn’t miss his wedding! [He was drunk! [Nate: Back out. Back out.

Robyn Warhol considers a feminist engagement with culture to be a form of awareness on a ‘meta-fictional’ level (2003: 70). Such awareness is emphasized by the previously cited comment from Betty in our postscreening discussion, who worried: ‘I hope I haven’t internalised any of that shit!’ This suggests that the tension at the heart of escapist cinematic consumption can be painful or worrisome for feminist viewers. The notion of guilty pleasure took on specific connotations during Group 23 (London)’s discussion, with Betty, Felicity and Melissa all expressing concern about letting their guard down, and unknowingly perpetuating the sexist status quo through their enjoyment of such films.

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In her reading of the ‘marriage plot’ as exemplified by Pretty Woman, Robyn Warhol defines feminists’ response to rom-coms as ‘the cringe’. In her view, the enjoyment of the narrative’s conclusion is incompatible with the ideological ‘meta-awareness’ that comes with feminism. Her affective reading emphasizes this incompatibility, which is translated physically: ‘one cannot be both surprised and disgusted at once,’ writes Warhol, ‘because brows cannot be simultaneously raised (the pleasurable surprise that comes from Pretty Woman’s self-awareness) and furrowed (disgust)’ (2003: 70). Warhol’s focus is on individual responses, as demonstrated by her choice of language: she calls the consumption of media ‘reading’, a solitary activity. If the individual feminist response to the marriage plot is characterized by an unresolved tension – a ‘cringe’ – the discussions in the groups of self-identified feminists I interviewed suggest that the communal experience of film-viewing and the collective act of ideological judgement can offer a relief from that cringe. Such a viewing context presents groups of feminist viewers with an opportunity to experience both pleasures simultaneously. Contra Warhol, then, not only is it possible to simultaneously hold feminist beliefs and enjoy romantic comedy but, for groups of feminists, being able to negotiate the tension between firmly held beliefs and challenging textual moments offers an additional layer of social pleasure. This seems to be further supported in my interview data by the fact that feminists whom I interviewed alone tended to stress either their ideological critique or escapist viewing more than feminists interviewed in groups. Indeed, the most hostile reaction to the film came from Karolina (Interview 6), a researcher in gender violence, whom I interviewed by herself. Meanwhile Lillian, a 25-year-old civil servant whom I also interviewed alone (Interview 14, Lyon), struggled to name or indeed summarize most of the romantic comedies she had watched: they just ‘washed over’ her. Without a community of like-minded peers to help negotiate their pleasure, the ‘cringe’ remains unresolved. In her early work on the teenage romance magazine Jackie, Angela McRobbie highlighted the restricted worldview of the romance photo stories the magazine contained: ‘the photo story is the realm, par

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excellence, of the individual’ (2000: 80). Whilst the romantic comedy genre, much like the photo story, is focused on ‘the restricted world of the emotion’ (McRobbie, 2000: 80), the group consumption that is characteristic of the rom-com offers the opportunity to open up this restricted worldview. In my interviews, this process of opening up was further facilitated by declaring myself a feminist from the outset of the discussion. My attempt was to create a sort of feminist ‘safe space’ for the interview: though the definition of the term has been much debated, I mean here a space delineated by ‘presumably shared attitudes regarding the openness of a space to certain identities and ideologies’ (Clark-Parsons, 2018: 2130). My sharing of the participants’ brand of feminism facilitated the discussion, and meant they felt free to use irony because they knew that I would ‘get’ the jokes. To ensure the safety of their spaces, online feminist communities are usually organized to include a moderation procedure, in which designated participants are given the power to confront (and in some cases expel) members whose contribution is deemed harmful. Incidentally, I did notice one instance of group moderation occurring during my interview with Group 23, in which Felicity chastises Betty for a comment she makes about inappropriate child-rearing practices, to which Betty immediately apologizes: ‘Yes, I probably was out of line.’ To sum up: the pleasure participants take in calling out the film is underlined by their use of humour, and perhaps this is facilitated in part by the romantic comedy’s light-hearted tone. This is suggested, for instance, by Sara, who described the romantic comedy as a ‘safe’ and ‘non-threatening’ place to confront certain issues. In our interview, she also talked at length about the need to ‘pick one’s battles’, and the exhaustion that comes with feminism activism. Romantic comedy may not necessarily constitute a feminist space, but it can offer a less threatening (perhaps even enjoyable) place in which to recuperate as well as continue to position oneself as a feminist. This exemplifies Helen Wood’s suggestion that audiences perform their identities via a dialectical relationship with media texts (Wood, 2005: 132). As I hope to have demonstrated, therefore, there is arguably pleasure to be had

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in being a feminist killjoy. Nevertheless, as Betty’s comment about ‘internalizing shit’ suggests, such a position also coincides with deeply held anxieties about the long-term effects of rom-coms on both oneself and, as I will now outline, another specific category of viewers.

The phantom viewer A particular figure seems to ‘haunt’ my interviews. This (or, rather, she) is the rom-com’s phantom viewer, an ‘other’ from whom participants consistently distance themselves, notably by mobilizing the concept of escapism. This echoes the research of Ellen Seiter and Hans Borchers on television audiences. In her analysis of findings from their study of soap opera viewers in 1990s Oregon, Seiter remarked that ‘people often compared their own television viewing to that of the imagined mass audience, one that is more interested, more duped, more entertained, more gullible than they are’, highlighting that this projection is often heavily classed and gendered (Seiter, 1990: 130–1). Similarly, David Morley has noted that ‘“television zombies” are always other people’ (2013: 16). Phantom or zombie, who is – according to my participants – this alleged dupe who takes the rom-com so seriously? Based on interview responses, two profiles emerge: the most common is the teenage girl and the second one is the older working-class woman, for whom the character of Pearl in Sweet Home Alabama is a stand-in. I will now analyse each figure in turn, with the aim of assessing their underlying features and commonalities, underlining their ‘implica[tion] in the class/gender system’ (Seiter, 1990: 131).

Teenage girls Associations between Sweet Home Alabama and Disney films were frequent in the interviews I conducted. Animated Disney feature-films in particular and fairy tales in general play a significant part in what is often called ‘girl culture’ (Mitchell and Reid-Walsh, 2008). Anxieties

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about the cultural impact of Disney films and fairy tales on girlhood are not new, with Simone de Beauvoir writing in the 1950s that the Cinderella archetype ‘encourages the young girl to expect fortune and happiness from some Prince Charming rather than to attempt by herself their difficult and uncertain conquest’ (cited in Colling, 2017: 29). This concern has become a mainstay of popular feminist criticism, evidenced in the discourse around the phenomenal success of Disney’s Frozen (Buck & Lee), whose release in 2013 coincides with the emergence of the feminist ‘fourth wave’ (Rivers, 2017: 22): whilst the film itself has received praised for its (more) progressive representation of gender and sexuality (Lynskey, 2014), the notion of Disney romance narratives’ pervasive messaging remains intact (Crouch and Hyatt, 2014; Dray, 2020; Lipsitz, 2016; Orenstein, 2011). These criticisms of both Disney and fairy tales are – of course – strikingly similar to the accusations made against romantic comedy outlined in the Introduction. Moreover, such criticism also fits into discourses about girlhood, which Catherine Driscoll defines as being characterized by ‘malleability’ and ‘immaturity’ (2002: 2). In her analysis of The Little Mermaid (Clements and Musker, 1989) for example, Chloe Angyal notes that ‘the lessons we learn as children are powerful ones – they inform the way we view the world for years to come, and because we learn them at such as young age … we often never think to question them’ (2010). For Driscoll, girls are defined in popular discourse in terms of potential, as individuals-to-be. My participants’ discussion of girlhood echoes this definition. For Anna (Group 22, Paris) for example, Sweet Home Alabama is ‘a fantasy for little girls … who haven’t had a real experience of love yet’. Moreover, (feminine) adolescence is also framed as a site of particular danger. Participants often described the film’s plot and characters using vocabulary directly related to ‘girl culture’: several references were made to ‘princesses’ (Group 4, Berlin) ‘fairy tales’ (Group 1, Group 8, Berlin) and sometimes direct references to the Disney corporation (Group 20, Paris). This was particularly significant in my interview with Bianca, a theatre studies professor in Lyon. Over the course of the interview,

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twenty-one references to the semantic field of fairy tales were used. She brought up the parallel early on during the screening:

Interview Extract 11: Interview 19, Lyon. Bianca, mid-30s. Andrew and Melanie meet with Kate, Andrew’s mother Tense music as Kate takes Melanie’s hand.

Bianca: This type of really cliché romantic comedies it’s … fascinating as a new version of the fairy tale. Alice : Mmm. Bianca: And so every time I ask myself: ‘But what’s changed really?’, I mean in terms of what is presented to us as a respectable model, it’s … well the woman is still a little bit more independent. Alice: Yeah. Bianca: But still here it’s still his family which is rich and powerful, her family which isn’t, and the opposite wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t be a screenplay. It’s the way in which the class dynamics are both incredibly present, but also totally negated in terms of their violence and their weight too …

Bianca is the mother of two young children, and in the postscreening discussion we talked at length about the issue of the negative messages conveyed by the rom-com to children, by drawing a parallel with fairy tales. When I asked her whether she would show romantic comedies to her own children, she responded that they were too young. She also criticized her own parents for letting her watch Disney films as a child: ‘because it was Disney, they let us watch whatever. I mean: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty. That’s just terrible.’ Bianca was not the only participant to draw parallels between the romantic comedy and younger audiences. My first interview in

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Germany with women in their 50s, all of whom were teachers, also included multiple references to childhood. In response to my question about what they thought of Sweet Home Alabama’s women characters, one of the participants, Johanna, responded that she didn’t find the central character ‘feminine’: ‘For me feminine isn’t what [Melanie] is. I don’t find her feminine: she is girlish and a bit of a spoiled girl … That is for me somehow, schoolgirl … high-school girl, with less lifeexperience. I don’t find her feminine.’ The group seemed to generally concur with this assessment, and Melanie was later described as a ‘little blonde’, ‘Barbie’ and ‘Pippi Longstocking’. References to dolls also occurred during the screening, as Lauren exclaimed: ‘I find her really silly, with her doll face, don’t you think?’ The group, like Anna in Group 22 (Paris), also read Melanie’s girlishness as an extension or reflection of the film’s target audience. There was an emphasis too on gender as performance (Butler, 2006), which was framed in national terms: the ‘over-performance’ of gender was associated with Hollywood and Americanness, whilst Europe was associated with a more essentialized version of gender (a distinction between ‘real women’ and ‘dolls’ to which I return in Chapter 4). Teachers (Group 1, Berlin) and parents (Bianca, Interview 19; Lyon, Interview 27, London) were not the only ones to worry about the potential effects of romantic comedy. This was also a source of concern for the groups of young feminists I interviewed. Rather than fear for younger generations, however, these younger feminists’ anxieties were often projected inwards. They framed the rom-com’s harmful influence as something one must ‘grow out of ’, a significant step in their journey towards feminism. This echoes Catherine Driscoll’s work on feminist representations of girlhood as a forward-looking transition period. She writes: As a future-directed politics, as a politics of transformation, girls and the widest range of representations of, discourses on, and sites of becoming a woman are crucial to feminism. Yet feminist discussions of girls rarely engage with feminine adolescence without constructing

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girls as opposed to, or otherwise defining, the mature, independent woman as feminist subject. (Driscoll, 2002: 9)

By this definition, girlhood is a site of feminist potential. At the same time, girlhood’s ‘immaturity’ also marks it as a danger zone, which participants associate with a lack of education. This is reflected in a comment from Melissa in Group 23 (London). The charity-worker was by far the least outspoken in this group: she made 500 utterances in the interview, just under half of the number made by Betty and Felicity (both over 950). This could partially be explained by the fact that she was the only non-native-English speaker in the group, as a couple of Gallicisms in the extract below will attest. Moreover, unlike Felicity and Betty, she had never seen Sweet Home Alabama before, and so was quieter during the screening, even shushing the other participants at certain points. However, she was particularly involved when I asked participants whether they found it difficult to consume popular media as feminists. This seemed to be a point of particular importance to her, and I have quoted her full response (including stutters and pauses) below:

Interview Extract 12: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Melissa: I think I could say – the [with emphasis] more I become feminist? = Felicity: Yeah = Melissa: because I think it’s also all of a process because there – you also [claps hands] document yourself, [stutters] you read things... And you become aware [stutters] of certain things as well so I think [Felicity hums in agreement] My – the way I look or the way I watch rom-coms has [paused, unsure] changed a bit? Which doesn’t make me not appreciate certain [she pauses] like, certain rom-coms I still very enjoy and it’s like: ‘Hahaha yeah it’s fun.’ [Felicity hums in agreement] But it’s just like afterwards I would be like: ‘Mmmh, that [pauses] annoys me a little bit or [inhales] I do not [stutters, then pauses] connect [she pauses] with it at all or’... Some(times) I would for instance watch with my younger cousins or

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sisters and we would then discuss, or if they’re not aware then I would try to make them aware a bit [Felicity hums in agreement] : ‘You know... maybe you shouldn’t feel [pause] this’ or, because I think the pressure is [pauses] big and we tend – especially the younger generation with the all Kim Kardashian generation [Betty sighs in frustration] I think, they tend to really look what they see on TV and what they see on the Internet as a model or as an example to like: ‘You become successful [pauses] when [pauses] you end up like Kim Kardashian so you start you career as – with a sex tape and showing your ass on TV and being dumb.’ [Felicity hums in agreement] … I mean, and it’s crazy that today – at the beginning you’re like: ‘Haha fun! They’re so dumb and sexy and dumb’ and... But then you hear some girls who’re like: ‘Oh they’ve understood it because now [pauses] they’re successful, they collaborate with [longer pause] high designers’ and... This I find [laughs] problematic and when [pause] rom-coms vehiculate [Gallicism from véhiculer, (to convey’)] [laugh] this kind of [Felicity hums in agreement] ideas, I tend to be like: [hisses and groans].

There are several notable discursive features here. The first is the strength of Melissa’s conviction, which is marked both orally (she stresses a number of key words) and in her gestures (not all are recorded, but she can be heard clapping her hands and moving several times in the recording). Melissa’s comments also echo the conflict between rom-com enjoyment and ideological critique discussed earlier in the chapter. Significantly, she emphasized this with non-verbal utterances such as inhaling sharply, hissing and groaning: audible signs which match perfectly the ‘cringe’ described by Warhol (2003: 67). At the same time, the extract above is also marked by a sense of group cohesion. Both Betty and Felicity (the latter in particular) can be heard making supportive ‘assertions of group consensus’ (Kitzinger, 1994: 109) throughout Melissa’s utterance. Again, this suggests to me that a form of relief from the cringe can be found through group bonding. For these feminist participants, the phantom audience is a particular concern because it is a category they themselves have previously

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belonged to, inscribing them within a sisterhood for which they are responsible (Melissa’s example of young gullible women are family members). What is also significant about Melissa’s lengthy comment is that it presents feminism as an ongoing process, and, more specifically, as a form of education: she associates it with ‘reading’. It is education that can eradicate the phantom audience. However, romantic comedy is also discussed as both a benchmark for and a site of feminist education. Whilst disliking rom-coms that you previously enjoyed can be ‘proof ’ of having become a ‘feminist killjoy’, rom-com can also be used to educate feminists-to-be. A similar idea was espoused by Sara (Interview 25), as she discussed her attempts to raise feminist issues whilst watching chick flicks with her close women friends:

Interview Extract 13: Interview 25, London. Sara, late 20s. Sara: So Sweet Home Alabama: not the best movie in the world, but, you know I can just have it on. And I think sometimes I’ve used these movies to even have a discussion with my girlfriends. And go: ‘Oh, what do you think about that?’ And you know it sparks a conversation about: ‘Oh that’s really unrealistic, isn’t it?’ Well you can’t take that many days out to go on a holiday? [we both laugh] Like, from work for example. Like she does in the movie. Or: ‘You can’t have ridiculously perfect hair after going to the beach? [we chuckle] Or being flown in a little plane like that. Or after being in the rain like that.’ [smiling] And it’s quite nice, it’s refreshing that we talk about stuff like that. So I kinda find rom-coms quite helpful in propelling discussions. = Alice: Yeah. = In a very non-threatening, safe way, where no-one’s gonna feel attacked, because I’m not attacking people.

For Sara and Melissa, then, the rom-com could function as a ‘safe’, ‘non-threatening’ place to begin a feminist education, an education which focused on observing the gap between the films’ glamour and the realities of everyday life for women. John Fiske has made a similar argument regarding the reading of clichés by consumers of romance (2010: 96), and the awakening contrast between fiction and real life.

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Interestingly, we can see this ‘education’ process actually taking place in the interview with Martha and Sophie (Group 17, Paris). Whilst they have been friends for years, Martha is currently undertaking a PhD in gender representation in popular cinema, and, unlike Sophie, strongly identifies as a feminist. They came to a slight disagreement in their reading of one of Sweet Home Alabama’s key emotional sequences, in which Melanie has a heart-to-heart with her ex-boyfriend Jake. In the extract below are Martha and Sophie discussing Melanie’s sudden move to New York after having miscarried as a teenager:

Interview Extract 14: Group 17, Paris. Childhood friends Martha and Sophie, mid-20s. Melanie: I’ve been pretty selfish lately… Martha: But she’s not been that selfish! She’s just gone and like [long pause] got the job she wanted. Sophie: Selfish in the sense that she left everybody behind... Martha: Yeah obviously. Like... Sophie: So... Martha: It – like [pause] she could have stayed in touch, but I don’t think it’s selfish to go to another country and do your thing. Sophie: Maybe the way she did it. It’s not selfish if you talk about it, if you [stutters] you know, if everybody agrees with you and stuff. It’s selfish in the sense that if you judge others the way she did... Of course I mean she has the [stress] right to... [silence] Sophie: [whispers] (With him) she’s better. Martha: [chuckling] Well that’s what the film makes – makes you think but – I don’t think that’s true. Sophie: Mmhm. The scene goes on. Melanie and Jake discuss the loss of their unborn child. Jake: You’ve done real well for yourself. I’m proud of you Mel. Sophie: See that’s what’s selfish though. If you’re married you’re – no matter what – you discuss, you talk, your [Martha hums] relationship. But (inaudible).

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Martha: Yeah but – it was clearly a gunshot wedding because she was pregnant! =Sophie: True. Yeah. [Martha chuckles] Gunshot wedding, he was drunk, he was... Martha: Yeah. Sophie: Mmm. Martha: ‘Just saying that [pause, slowly] the film has [stutters] got an agenda, which is that she needs to move back [pause] and be a better person. And that’s not very nice, because – Sophie: I know. – Martha: It’s just punishing her for having a career. [soft chuckle]

In his discussion of focus-group dynamics, Michael Billig cites Violett’s notion of ‘hedged disagreements’ to describe focus groups’ tendency to look for agreements. Hedged disagreements are linguistic phrases used by participants in order to disagree with someone else whilst still preserving the overall homogeneity of the group (Billig, 1995: 210). Martha and Sophie here use multiple markers of such hedged disagreements. I have noted these in italics above: they include ‘she could have, but’ ‘Yeah, but’ ‘just saying … ’ ‘Maybe … ’ Whilst there is a significant difference between their interpretations of the film, it is clearly important for both of them to preserve group unity. Nevertheless, they return to this disagreement right at the beginning of the discussion, in answer to my first question about ‘what the film is about’:

Interview Extract 15: Group 17. Paris. Childhood friends Martha and Sophie, mid-20s. Martha: I’ve been doing a lot of reading on like rom-coms and stuff, and it’s quite clear that it’s like a downshifting narrative, retreatist fantasy. Sophie: A what? Martha: It’s almost like the film is punishing her [for having had this success. [Sophie: Mmm. That’s what you were saying.

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Though the disagreement continued for a while, social cohesion was eventually preserved, as the two friends eventually reached a form of agreement, mostly with Sophie coming around to Martha’s reading. In a sense, the film here provided a successful platform for the feminist ‘education’ which Sara (Interview 25, London) spoke of above. However, there was a double form of education at play in Sophie and Martha’s interaction. On the one hand there is a question of vocabulary (Martha needed to explain the academic term ‘retreatist fantasy’ which seems to refer to the work of Diane Negra (2008, 2009) in particular), but also a new ‘feminist’ way of reading the film – what Warhol calls ‘meta-diegetic’ awareness (Warhol, 2003: 68–9). Thus, a feminist education also became an education into a particular form of (or approach to) media literacy. Sophie’s reading is based on the internal logic of the film (intradiegetic, in Warhol’s terms), and is also referential, as she uses the third-person pronoun ‘you’ to discuss the film: ‘when “you’re” married, you talk’. Martha meanwhile based her argument on a critical or meta-diegetic level of film-viewing (‘that’s what the film makes you think’). Like Melissa, Martha emphasized the act of reading (‘I’ve been reading a lot on post-feminism lately’), again conveying an image of feminism as a form of education. Echoing Catherine Driscoll’s comments cited above, uneducated young girls thus emerged as a key, but particularly vulnerable, target audience for rom-com. Whilst this feature is observed across a variety of groups, it takes on a special meaning for feminist groups, as girlhood is presented as a necessary, but transient, pre-feminist state. Conversely, this can imply that the enjoyment of romantic comedies involves a regression to adolescence. The same has been argued of other genres with a majoritarily feminine audience: in his discussion of Titanic (Cameron, 1997) Hermann Kappelhoff argues that a similar regressive consumption is called for by the repetitive structure of the melodrama (Kappelhoff, 1999). Being a killjoy is tiring work, and the rom-com offers a space where participants can temporarily – and safely – give up the fight.

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Older women According to my participants’ discussion, young girls’ lack of education made them prime targets for the rom-com’s pervasive ideology. Also at risk, in their view, was another sub-group of the genre’s phantom audience: older, working-class, women. Whilst only two groups (20 and 21, France) referred specifically to this particular audience category, their discussion illustrated explicitly the social distinction other groups engaged in implicitly. The rom-com’s alleged audience was not just designated as feminine, but it was also clearly marked as working class. Importantly, the two groups who discussed ‘older women’ as prime rom-com consumers were made up of participants who were themselves older than most of my interviewees. They also stood out somewhat as atypical romantic comedy viewers: in both cases the participants were highly educated couples, and all fit the traditional definition of the cinephile. They went, or used to go, to the cinema regularly, and, in Felicia and Francis’ case (Group 21, Paris), had the most extensive and well-cared-for film collection of any group I interviewed. However, both groups emphasized that they did not regularly consume romantic comedies, and in fact both Joseph and Francis did not seem to recognize the category: Joseph asked me to define the term, and Francis explained that he didn’t even know the genre existed before taking part in my project. He compared it unfavourably to the Western which, he stated, could ‘reveal something profound about American identity’ in the hands of the right auteurs (he cited Ford, Hawks, Huston). Films like Sweet Home Alabama, however, were ‘made to be lighter’, he argued. Despite both groups’ lack of knowledge of the romantic comedy genre, they nevertheless seemed familiar with the film’s narrative, which they described as ‘predictable’. In the post-screening discussion, I asked Ava and Joseph (Group 20, Normandy) where that familiarity came from. Ava drew connections to a wide range of media, from boulevard theatre to soap operas. What the rom-com reminded her most of, however, were the romantic photo stories she used to read at her grandmother’s:

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Interview Extract 16: Group 20, Normandy. Partners Ava, late 50s and Joseph, early 60s. Ava: It’s such a classical narrative pattern that … And I did also read all my grandmother’s serial novels [laughs]. I have a Harlequin (Mills & Boon) culture… Alice: Yeah. Ava: I have a … photo-story culture, because I really couldn’t get into Harlequin, but photo stories [I really have a big culture there. [Joseph: Yeah photo stories, my grandmother had them. Yeah. Ava: Because my grandmother had them, Nous Deux [the most famous French photo-story magazine of the time], I read some … for entire evenings, Nous Deux, when I lived with my grandmother, and photo stories… Joseph: Yeah I had that too, the photo stories at my grandmother’s, I remember flicking through a couple, and it was always exactly the same.

Ava’s story strongly echoed Felicia’s experience: Interview Extract 17: Group 21, Paris. Partners Francis and Felicia, early 70s. Felicia: When I was a child I had … let’s say a nanny, I mean, she was a woman who lived across from us in our suburb, who cleaned our house, ran our household, who had already brought up my sister because both my parents worked, anyway. And she was a kind of extraordinary populaire (workingclass) grandmother for me because really, she hadn’t gone to school – a really working-class, really poor environment. So she had never gone to school and all that, she had learned to read I don’t know how, and she read Nous Deux … Do you see what Nous Deux is? Alice: It’s the… Francis: The photo stories. Felicia: It was photo stories, it was a magazine of photo stories. There was Nous Deux, Intimité (Intimacy) which were published every week = = Francis: Absolutely in the same style as romantic comedies. Felicia: Exactly, with romance stories … [ironically] which were absolutely enlightening. [back to normal tone] I loved to run to her house behind my mother’s back when I was a teenager and I read these with delight. And to

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give you an idea of her level … not culture – cultural in the most bourgeois sense of the word, it was completely zero, and I was there the first time she went to the cinema, and she was over 70 years old. We were late so we waited for – we stayed for the interval, the newsreels and stuff, the documentary and the film again. And when the reel came back to the point where we came in =Francis: You should explain what it is = Felicia: It was the moment where the heroine comes down a big staircase and falls into the arms of Curd Jürgens who played erm =Francis: Michel Strogoff = Michel Strogoff. Alice: Yeah. Felicia: Erm, she pretends to twist her ankle so she can fall in his arms, and at that moment everyone hears my nana Julie shouting out loud in this big cinema screen [laughing a little]: ‘Oh poor girl, there she goes falling again’ [laughter]. There you go. And so Nana with the photo stories, erm because she only went to the cinema once, and it was that one time, with the photo stories she had, she would say – or on TV, there was TV, the soaps and stuff like that, from the music and the way people looked at each other, she would say: ‘for me, they love each other.’

Whilst neither group was familiar with romantic comedy specifically, both resituated it within the larger trans-media category of the romance, which includes the roman-photo (photo story), romance novels and soap operas. In particular, both Ava and Felicia made a direct reference to the photo story magazine Nous Deux. Literally translated as ‘The Two of Us’, Nous Deux was once France’s most popular weekly photo-novel magazine. First published in 1947 it was by the 1950s the most widely read women’s magazine in France, and it reached a peak in the 1960s, selling 1.7 million copies a week. Its popularity has since significantly declined, though by 2012 it was still selling over 300,000 copies a week (Minuit et al., 2012; Pommier, 2014). As Sylvette Giet, the leading French scholar on the genre, notes, one of the reasons the French roman-photo is dismissed is because it is an object of predominantly working-class (feminine) leisure (1997: 21–2). Giet’s work has focussed on the photo story’s appeal for young women, though Nous Deux is today very much seen as an old-fashioned magazine (Mondadori Publicité, n.d.). What is particularly striking in this extract is that Felicia makes explicit the

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class connotations underlining many viewers’ discussions of rom-com consumption: her nana is the embodiment of the phantom audience (or ‘zombie’ to quote Morley) others have hinted at. Felicia also compared romantic comedies to another much-derided form of mass culture: the soap opera. As a genre specifically associated with women audiences, the soap opera has interested many feminist cultural studies scholars in the 1980s and 1990s, including Ien Ang, Charlotte Brunsdon, Dorothy Hobson and Ellen Seiter (see Brunsdon, 2000). Moreover, the medium of television itself has historically been associated with women and the working class (Brunsdon, 2008: 128; Hilmes, 2005: 113). In our interview, Felicia developed the association with soap opera by comparing her viewing of Sweet Home Alabama with her daughters’ consumption of Santa Barbara (NBC Network, 1984–93) as teenagers: ‘To shoot that one was really easy, because the characters spent the entire time on the phone.’ Felicia’s description is strikingly similar to some of the findings in Ellen Seiter and her team’s research on soap opera audiences: in her account of a particularly difficult interview with two male participants, Seiter recalls their criticisms of some soaps ‘taki[ing] place in one room for the whole episode—where they stand there and talk each other to death’ (Seiter, 1990: 65). This also aligns with Francis, who compares Sweet Home Alabama to a made-for-TV film, both of which he noted have no ‘artistic pretensions’. This resonates with regular criticism by other participants of the rom-com as ‘uncinematic’: here, a distinction is made between television and its emphasis on talk versus cinema as a visual medium. Indeed, this was supported by numerous other groups who noted that rom-coms were more suited to home-viewing (Groups 5 and 8, Berlin; Group 13, Northern France; Group 18, Southern France; Group 28, London; Group 30, Manchester) than expensive cinema outings (Groups 1, 2 and 4, Berlin), which were reserved for films with impressive visuals (Group 34, Kent), for example, actions films (Group 19, Lyon; Group 22, France) or films with special effects (Group 7, Berlin). The parallel with the photo story referenced by Felicia, Ava and Joseph is interesting, as Benoït Peeters emphasized how the photo story was similarly criticized for its lack of medium specificity:  the

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genre was never seen as photographic or literary enough, but rather a mere ‘adaptation’ of the cinematic medium (Baetens and Gonzalez, 1996: 15–23). By implication, the lack of medium specificity of the romance narrative as a reason for dismissal has class connotations, as it assumes that no cultural capital or media-specific literacy is needed for its consumption. Therefore, what brings together both the ‘young girls’ and the ‘grandmothers’ described above is participants’ association of a particular kind of rom-com audience with a lack of education, and a (working-) class identity. This is stated particularly explicitly in Felicia’s description of her barely literate grandmother-figure. Sylvette Giet has also emphasized the working-class nature of photo stories: ‘like all modern mass-produced entertainment’, she writes, ‘photo-story magazines are not produced by, but for a culturally-dominated audience’ (1997: 77). Felicia’s emphasis on a lack of education also adds a further nuance to the discussion of escapism outlined earlier on. In the light of the above comments, the imagined, stereotypical rom-com audience – as conceived by a number of my participants – therefore emerges as an unskilled group. Romantic comedy is the genre that requires no effort (‘I don’t need to think’), no medium-specific literacy, nor indeed any cultural capital to consume. In this sense, romantic comedy is defined as the ultimate popular genre, i.e. one aimed at a mass audience. Thus, promoting escapism as a viewing strategy allows my participants to distinguish themselves from the phantom audience. This strategy of ‘distinction’ is best summarized in Sweet Home Alabama by Pearl – ironically, the character who stands in for the phantom audience: ‘don’t go accusing me of thinkin’,’ she tells Melanie. Like Pearl, most of my participants seemed reluctant to be found engaging seriously with rom-coms.

Fashion and expert viewership In spite of – or perhaps as a reaction to – these stereotypes, some of my participants on the contrary seem to use knowledge about romantic comedy as a form of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1979: 10). In such

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groups, knowledge of the genre is both celebrated and displayed, during both the screening itself and the follow-up discussion. In Group 23 (London), Betty in particular seemed to find pleasure in picking up references to other films within the chick-flick canon: she made connections, for example, between Sweet Home Alabama, Green Fried Tomatoes (Avnet, 1991) and Notting Hill (as previously cited). During their post-screening discussion, Group 23 also drew on a nearencyclopaedic knowledge of the genre. They referenced an impressive number of films, naming over seventy titles during the three-hour interview. The discussion also included detailed discussion of plot, cast and even costume details, which all participants were very familiar with. This attests to the social pleasure that comes from genre consumption as a community of viewers brought together by a shared cinematic culture. Another example can be found during the post-screening discussion with Group 34 (Kent), where Valerie discusses her love for Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995):

Interview Extract 18: Group 34, Kent: Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Valerie: Clueless I love because there are so many lines in there that I still find myself [pauses] [just overjoyed about it. [Lily: Do you still say ‘As if!’? Valerie: I mean my friend actually spent her Friday night breaking in a pair of purple clogs recently. [Annie starts laughing] Valerie: [continues, laughing] and texted me to tell me! [Lily laughs loudly] And I was like: [fakes an overly emotional voice]: ‘oh my goodness you’re living the dream!’ [all laugh]

Here, a sense of community is also (re)established in this extract via a demonstration of shared knowledge, but this time rather than feminist values, it is a shared cinematic culture which acts as currency. Valerie’s

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anecdote relies on other participants (and myself) sharing her detailed memory of specific lines of dialogue from Heckerling’s teen classic: her first comment is a reference to a family-dinner sequence where heroine Cher, in response to her father questioning her about her day at school, claims cheerfully, ‘I broke in my purple blogs!’ Other participants are quick to establish a consensus by laughing and, in Lily’s case, sharing other lines from the film. Such a form of genre consumption also becomes a demonstration of cultural capital, allowing participants to distinguish themselves from the stereotype of the passive rom-com consumer and the ‘phantom audience’ discussed above. Beyond spotting and exchanging references, however, several groups also displayed a form of reverence towards certain films not usually associated with art cinema: Again, this is well demonstrated in the prescreening discussion of Group 23 (London). As Felicity and Melissa explained to Betty their dislike for the recent rom-com The Ugly Truth (2009), and particularly the film’s ‘vibrating underwear sequence’, the latter exclaimed disgustedly that ‘you don’t fuck with When Harry Met Sally!’ before adding that Nora Ephron must be spinning in her grave (for a detailed comparison of the two scenes see Jeffers McDonald, 2015: 59–60). Similarly in Group 17 (Paris), my enquiry as to whether Sophie had seen the Hilary Duff vehicle A Cinderella Story (Rosman, 2004) was met with a deadpan ‘Yes, of course’, which prompted Martha to teasingly ask me: ‘who are you talking to?’ Meanwhile, as I complimented student Noel (Interview 29) on his ability to predict various plot points during our viewing of Sweet Home Alabama, he replied by jokingly boasting: ‘I know my 1990s teen comedies.’ And whilst most of these comments are hedged through the use of humour (Billig, 1989: 210; Kalviknes Bore, 2012), displaying an extensive knowledge of and reverence for the genre also served as a bonding tool between participants, as well as way to bring me, the researcher, into the group. As Leila Wimmer notes, traditional definitions of cinephilia have tended to ‘marginalize women, whether as producers or consumers’ (2014: 62). Within this context, the groups’ deliberately cinephile consumption of romance and pop culture can to some extent be read

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as a feminist act, as it seeks to re-appropriate a practice which has usually been associated with male spectators and with male genres (the Western, the film noir, etc.). In her work, Wimmer has, however, sought to redress such a gendered definition of cinephilia. She suggests that 1930s women’s magazines’ engagement with cinema through fashion should also be defined as a form of popular cinephilia. These, she adds, are ‘part of an everyday gendered social experience of the cinema’ which ‘address specifically female spectatorial interests’ (Wimmer, 2014: 73). Significantly, fashion too plays a key role in what we might call the participants’ ‘expert’ engagement with Sweet Home Alabama in particular, and romantic comedy in general. Film fashion is a growing and significant field, which has been comprehensively reviewed elsewhere (see for example Jeffers McDonald, 2010: 15–40; Street, 2001). Of particular relevance here is a tension articulated within much of the scholarship between the narrative and spectacular role of film costume. Jane Gaines has, on the one hand, famously argued that costume is narratively integrated in most of Hollywood cinema, where it is ‘reined in to serve [the] narrative’ (in Street, 2001: 5). Meanwhile, Stella Bruzzi and others have also highlighted the ‘independence’ of film fashion, whereby ‘clothing exists as a discourse not wholly dependent on the structures of narrative and character for signification’ (Bruzzi, 1997: 14, 17). Both tendencies have been demonstrated within rom-com scholarship: thus in their study of fashion in Sex and the City (Star, 1998–2004), Pamela Church Gibson and Stella Bruzzi argue that fashion serves a dual purpose in the television series. Firstly, it serves to support the narrative and typify the characters: thus the middle-class and aspiring housewife Charlotte wears classic lines and colours, whilst the more liberated Samantha wears flashier, deliberately retro clothing. Simultaneous, however, fashion in the series also becomes a ‘fifth character’, offering spectacular pleasure which interrupts the flow of the narrative (Akass and McCabe, 2003: 117). For Paula Marantz Cohen, this is a distinctive feature of the rom-com genre, whose ‘visual pleasure’ she believes is primarily sartorial (2010: 85). Meanwhile, in her examination of The Devil Wears

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Prada, Tamar Jeffers MacDonald brings together extra- and intratextual analysis to highlight the key role played by costume in the adaptation process. She argues that the film contains a separate ‘costume plot’ which runs alongside ‘the main story’ in order to undermine the original novel’s anti-fashion message (McDonald, 2010: 195). Hilary Radner’s definition of what she calls the ‘fashion film’ is also partly extra-textual, with a focus on the increasing synergy between the film, fashion and print media industries in the twenty-first century. Whilst links between Hollywood and the fashion industry have existed since the 1920s (Doherty, 2010: 25) through the use of product placements and collaborations between film costume designers and heads of fashion houses (most famously, perhaps, Edith Head and Hubert de Givenchy’s work with Audrey Hepburn), Radner argues that a fashion film takes the logic of product placement one step further. The film’s function as a shop window is not secondary to the story … The twenty-first-century fashion film self-consciously plays upon the attraction that fashion and style, as an element in the larger media industries, may hold for its potential audience as part of the film’s conception and promotion. (Radner, 2011: 125)

On the surface, Sweet Home Alabama includes some of the components of the fashion film: heroine Melanie is an up-andcoming designer, and the film thematizes the fashion-media conglomerate, with references to New York Fashion Week (during which the film’s opening act is set), brands such as Stella McCartney, and fashion magazines like Women Wears Daily or W. Moreover, the film was also heavily promoted in the fashion press and through its connection with fashion. Witherspoon was featured on the cover of InStyle magazine – whose creation Radner singles out as central to the increasingly close relationship between fashion, film and celebrity in the 1990s (2011: 139) – ahead of the film’s release in the autumn of 2002 (InStyle, 2019). The film’s partnership with luxury jewellers Tiffany’s also received significant coverage: its flagship Manhattan

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store was used as a shooting location for Andrew’s proposal to Melanie, allegedly the first time filming had been authorized inside the store since Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Archerd, 2001; Rieck, 2002), and the brand also sponsored the after-party for the film’s world premiere in New York (Friedman, 2002). This connection to fashion was picked up on by a number of the groups I interviewed, though their reactions complicate Sweet Home Alabama’s status as a fashion film. The participants in Group 2 (North Berlin), for example, engaged in a running commentary of the lead character’s costumes, critiquing a number of her outfits, including the off-the-shoulder top Melanie wears to the local dive bar, the smock dress she pairs with cowboy boots to the town’s catfish festival or the jean skirt the character wears to the glass-blowing factory for the film’s ‘Pemberley moment’ (Ellington, 2001; Miller Zohn, 2013) – when Jake’s fortune is finally revealed to Melanie. They were not the only group to express a dislike of Melanie’s fashion choices, with PhD student Laura (Pilot Group 1, Paris) joking that ‘for a fashion designer, she has no sense of fashion’. When I asked Group 2 (North Berlin) about their fashion analysis in the post-screening discussion, two of the participants, Eva and Paula, noted that this mode of viewing was oriented by the film: ‘you pay more attention to it [clothing] because she’s a designer’. This resonates with Radner’s analysis that the fashion film encourages a specific ‘viewer sensibility’ (2011: 138). Other groups took the critique further, highlighting the film’s superficial connection to fashion, demonstrating an awareness of the economics of global cinema distribution and production. In France, some groups were puzzled by the translation of the film’s title to the anglicised Fashion Victime (fashion victim). Participants in Group 16 (Paris) agreed that this was ‘weird’, leading twenty-something John to ironically ask: ‘did they think they would get more audience if people thought the film was about fashion?’ In the UK, Neil (Group 31, South London) also noted that the film ‘didn’t make much of her [Melanie] as a fashion designer. That was dropped about 10 mins in.’ His fellowparticipants responded by demonstrating knowledge of the genre

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and critiquing its promotion of escapism and commercialism, with accountant Henry suggesting that this was due to rom-com tropes: ‘all these films have that pattern of the female lead in fashion or music or, magazines or, something I suppose meant to be quite glamorous’, and 28-year-old Martin musing that ‘maybe it’s to appeal to all those people that don’t have anything going on.’ As noted above, the relationship between the film and fashion industries is much older than the fashion film, and its gendered dynamics have drawn the attention of feminism scholars for several decades. Mary Ann Doane has thus highlighted Hollywood’s encouragement of a ‘consumer glance’ within films, which she argues is specifically targeted at women: ‘the female audience member was considered by advertisers the ultimate consumer from the beginning of the twentieth century and that films were considered an excellent method of reaching and influencing her’ (in Jeffers McDonald, 2010: 32). Participants seemed keenly aware of this encoding (Hall, 2002), and whilst Group 31 (South London)’s participants situate themselves clearly outside this dynamic (distinguishing themselves from ‘all those people’ mentioned by Martin), the viewers in Group 2 (North Berlin) are more ambivalent. During the interview, I probed them on the particular attention they seemed to display to the film’s fashion, prompting student Adele to note that film fashion could inspire her real-life tastes: ‘I do actually pay attention [to fashion] in each film or scene, because then I get ideas when I think: wow, that looks really cool, something in this style.’ After being interrupted by the other participants, who ask whether she was inspired by the fashion in Sweet Home Alabama and poke fun at some of the film’s costumes, Adele does distinguish herself from the stereotype of the compulsive feminine consumer, stating, ‘I don’t have to go shopping after every film’, prompting laughter from the rest of the group, and for her friend Paula to assert that ‘that would be bad’. The exchange ends with the group highlighting their awareness of the synergy between the contemporary film and fashion industry, with fellow-participant Hannah stressing the ‘correlation’ between film and fashion, by commenting that ‘films

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will just come out in the cinema and then a few days later the exact same style is on sale’ (Group 2, North Berlin). Hilary Radner points to the Sex and the City series and films as well as The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel, 2006) – all costumed by celebrity designer Patricia Field – as key texts within this increased synergy. Sex and the City in particular ‘provided the groundwork that made the twenty-first-century fashion film possible by cultivating a viewer sensibility receptive to and interested in films that featured designer clothing’, she argues, notably via the significant promotion of the show and films in fashion media (Radner, 2011: 138). Significantly, several groups directly contrasted Sweet Home Alabama and Sex and the City, notably around the varying significance of fashion and consumption between the two texts. In Group 16 (Paris), for example, sisters Eleanor and Georgina noted that Sex and the City was ‘more about money’, and ‘all about the shoes, the prince charming to get married to, very orientated towards clothing’. This critique of rom-com’s consumerism (which was discussed earlier in this chapter) also ties consumption together with romance through the juxtaposition between Prince Charming and fashion items – this is contra Claire Jenkins’s reading of the first Sex and the City film, where she argues that ‘high-end consumption is aligned with the breakdown of marriage’ (Jenkins, 2013: 169). We will return to this association in Chapter 4. Whilst Eleanor’s comparison between Sex and the City and Sweet Home Alabama favours the later, other groups reversed the argument, making a case for the aesthetic and emotional significance of the series and films’ opulence. Betty (Group 23, Brixton), for example, decried Sweet Home Alabama’s ‘blandness’, which she argued was typical of 1990s and 2000s rom-coms. By contrast, she described Sex and the City as ‘a visual feast’, adding that Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie ‘for all her faults as, you know, a feminist and an archetype and a character, was always maintaining an aesthetic agenda, and then when it came to the films it was ludicrous’. Group 2 (North Berlin), meanwhile, name Sex and the City as an example of a successful rom-com with regard to its emotional impact:

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Interview Extract 19: Group 2, Wedding, North Berlin: friends & colleagues Adele, Paula, Hannah and Eva (twenties). Eva: Yeah, I also find it cool when your emotions are appealed to, in both directions [Paula hums in approval] so when I laugh and in the next few seconds I have to cry, because it’s just all so terrible = Hannah: Yeah in Sex & The City: the Film! That had it all. [group laughs] Paula: we’re naming very superficial things! [more laughter] Eva [in an ironic tone]: Clothes! Paula [laughing]: Yeah, with the clothes (inaudible) Hannah: Yeah the clothes were awesome, and it had it all = Paula: highheels! = laughter, tears, when she gets abandoned by Big for the thousandth time. And you, you recognise the heartache.

This group also associates fashion and its excessive pleasures with genre, but its appeal is quite different: excess here is associated with emotional catharsis rather than the visual pleasure (‘visual feast’) highlighted by Betty. In all cases, nevertheless, audiences demonstrate a solid recognition of key texts and trends in the contemporary romcom. Moreover, their comparisons between Sex and the City and Sweet Home Alabama suggest that the latter does not quite fit the category as defined by Hilary Radner. A textual analysis of the film supports participants’ readings: despite its fashion-milieu setting, the film contains none of the ‘kinaesthetic’ pleasures of costume described by Samantha Colling in her analysis of teen romances such as A Cinderella Story or The House Bunny (Wolf, 2008) with their emphasis on ‘tactile surfaces’ and fabric, texture and sheen (2017: 33). Moreover, unlike many contemporary wedding rom-coms, Melanie’s wedding dress is completely inconsequential to Sweet Home Alabama’s plot or mise-en-scène. As Claire Jenkins has demonstrated, the wedding ‘spectacle’ is central to films such as the first Sex and the City or Bride Wars (Winick, 2009), which is played

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out by the ‘fetishization’ of the wedding dress displayed via a lavish montage or long take full shots (2013: 168). In this respect, Sweet Home Alabama’s wedding scene – in which the dress is shown only fleetingly, fragmented by close-ups and medium shots – has much more in common with the ‘near disinterest’ in the wedding dress demonstrated in the closing sequence of 27 Dresses (Fletcher, 2008), another film in Jenkins’ corpus (2013: 166). However, whereas 27 Dresses’ handeddown wedding dress plays a central symbolic and narrative role within the film, in Sweet Home Alabama the dress worn by Melanie to her aborted wedding to Andrew is barely mentioned, its origins unknown. This was commented by a few of my interviewees: in Group 31 (South London), the participants seemed unsure of the creator of the dress: ‘I don’t think … was the dress her design? I don’t know’, noted Neil, whereas Betty (Group 23, South London) dismissed it as a ‘sub-Vera Wang frock, I mean really’ during the sequence where Melanie, having left Andrew at the altar, runs towards Jake in her now-soaked and dirty dress. The scene takes place on the same beach where the film opened, with Melanie eschewing the glamour of New York to return to her ‘real’ self and reunite with her ‘true’ love (as noted by Betty’s friend Felicity: ‘it goes back to their childhood, so it’s sweet’). This functions as a reverse Cinderella narrative (Colling, 2017: 23–33; Jeffers McDonald, 2010: 26–31): whereas Iona and Peter Opie have argued that ‘the enchantment on Cinderella is not when she is at the ball, glittering and adored, but when she is in the kitchen, sooty and over-worked’ (in Jeffers McDonald, 2010: 98), the revelation of Melanie’s ‘real self ’ is associated with the soiling of the white wedding dress, which is preceded by a literal unveiling, with Melanie ripping off her wedding veil before running away to find Jake. Many participants pinpointed identity as a key theme of the film: it was outlined, for example, by Lorelei and Sabine in Group 8 (Berlin), Anna in Group 22 (Paris) and Arabella and Celia in Group 30 (Manchester), with the film associating fashion with New York City, consumerism and Melanie’s loss of her ‘true’ identity. In contrast to her New York acquaintances, however, Melanie’s Southern

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friends are distinctly unknowledgeable about clothing. Melanie’s first interaction with one of her childhood friends presents the film’s narrative conflict through clothing as a form of cultural and economic capital, as Lurlynn misreads Melanie’s own design for a supermarket brand, and is incapable of ‘speaking’ fashion. Stella Bruzzi has distinguished between the ‘real’ and ‘iconic’ function of film costume. Whereas ‘the majority of film costumes are “real” in that they are given meaning only in terms of how they pertain to and are informed by character and narrative’, by contrast ‘iconic clothes serve a proclamatory function in film, they collide with the sequences in which they are placed’ (Bruzzi, 1997: 17). Although Sweet Home Alabama was marketed and sold as a fashion film, the film’s use of costume is resolutely ‘real’ rather than ‘iconic’: unlike, say, the spectacular nature of fashion in Sex and the City noted above by Betty, the significance of fashion was mostly discussed by participants in terms of its narrative integration. Indeed many of the participants, men as well as women, engaged with the film’s narrative through fashion. In Group 23, for example, Betty and Melissa discussed the role of fashion in expressing the character’s development: ‘I think it does matter,’ stressed Melissa, ‘I think it’s part of her whole character as well … how they try to project her.’ The group noted how Melanie’s rekindled love for Alabama is expressed through her clothing:

Interview Extract 20: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Felicity: By the end she’s also in complete denim [laughing] which I just love. [Betty chuckles] [Felicity [laughing: She’s wearing double [denim. [Betty: oh my God! [Melissa: Yeah exactly. Melissa [laughing]: Yeah it’s true!

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Felicity [laughing]: She wasn’t wearing any denim to begin with and then it’s double denim at the end! [all laugh and exclaim] [Betty: (...) With the dude with the denim and the shearling collar, like, is there any fabric more country than shearling?! [Melissa: [laughing] That’s true, exactly! [pauses] It’s true, I did notice the double denim as well.

The group discussed this at length in the interview, when I asked them about the significance of fashion to the rom-com specifically. Once again, rejoining Radner’s analysis (2011: 138), participants singled out Sex and the City as a key genre text:

Interview Extract 21: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Felicity: I mean in all films, obviously (clothes) will be chosen quite carefully, but I think in rom-coms like it is, it almost becomes a bit cartoonesque. In some = Melissa: Yeah = in some respect. that it... Yeah, it just kind of [laughing] shows their journey if you like, it’s quite funny. [Melissa & Betty begin talking at once] Betty: No,no go for it. Melissa: No because this was, also the time of the big boom of Sex and the City, and, = Felicity: Yeah. = all the series like, then certain rom-coms focussed on clothing and… [Felicity hums in agreement] and style almost as much as the love story and the = Melissa: Yeah = and then it went ever further with Divorce, Prada and [Felicity hums in agreement] all of the new things. All of the new romcoms were – like, now I think a lot of the budget as well is dedicated to what women and men are wearing. Because even in this the difference between Patrick Dempsey and the other is obvious in terms of how they dress [Felicity hums in agreement] how, one is slightly more feminine or more like, proper, and the other one is more rough, like with the big (...) jeans and yeah... like big shirt and things. Betty: I think that’s a really good point. I hadn’t made the connection with Sex and the City.

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In this extract, the group develops a consensus around the use of fashion within the contemporary rom-com, and its significance in terms of character development (‘show[ing] their journey’). Melissa also returns to a point developed in Chapter 2, namely the film’s opposition between two forms of masculinity, which she argues is constructed in large part through costume. As Felicity’s joking comment and laughter indicate, this opens up a space for a playful mode of engagement with the film text, which a number of groups engaged with. As with the ‘guessing game’, being able to read plot or character representation through clothing provided a particular form of entertainment, and individual participants’ correct interpretations received collective praise. Specific fashion items and fabrics were read as emblematic of American national identity and Southern identity, such as double-denim ensembles, cowboy boots, and therefore marked clearly as foreign. Very often, the costumes were also read as historical artefacts, with participants poking fun at the film’s old-fashioned outfits:

Interview Extract 21: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Melanie walks through the streets of New York at the beginning of the film. Felicity: I think it’s the hair which gives away the period. Betty: Good point. [What do we think about early 2000? [Melissa: Or it’s the jacket. Felicity: Or the jacket… Yeah. Betty: Or the choker. Felicity: [laughs] Yeah all of these are good signs.

Stella Bruzzi notes that from the 1950s to 1980s, film fashion was seen as a reflection of the times: ‘Over these years a film tended towards being a general reflector of outside fashions and trends’ (1997: 7).

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This still seems to be significant to participants’ engagement, with one participant (Adele, Group 2, North Berlin) making a markedly similar point: ‘films also try to convey the Zeigeist a little.’ For some participants (as with Group 23 above) this was certainly a source of comedy, but for others this also serves as a point of identification. Sarah Street has argued that ‘film costumes not only relate to the characters who wear them but also to the audience who watch them’, notably via what she calls ‘codes of verisimilitude’: ‘these will either accord with a notion of generic verisimilitude which presents costumes as part of a genre’s iconography … or with a notion of social verisimilitude which audiences equate with their own lived experience – costumes that convince as being “realistic”’ (2001: 7). This is illustrated by a comment from sociologist Karolina. Though she was generally scathing in her appraisal of the film, she expressed her appreciation for the recognition the film created: ‘that was also nice because that was the times when I was very young so – like, younger. I recognised the style and the hairstyles, so that was kind of like a nostalgic element as well’ (Interview 6, Berlin). Indeed, participants indicated their familiarity with a number of fashion items, which prompted them to share personal anecdotes. This is the case in Group 34 (Kent), for example:

Interview Extract 22: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Valerie: The off-the-shoulder top! Annie [laughs]: Oh yeah! Valerie: I had one of those in my first year of uni and thought I was so hot. Annie: Yeah. [laughs] Harriet: The jersey one? Yeah, I had a yellow one (of those). Valerie: Ah! Mine was teal.

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Whilst Group 34 found pleasure in recognizing tops, both Sabine and Lorelei (Group 8, Berlin) and Martha and Sophie (Group 17, Paris) singled out Melanie’s sunglasses: ‘I think I had sunglasses like that!’ exclaimed Martha. ‘They were cool at the time,’ responded Sophie. This also extended to other stereotypically feminine consumer products, as noted in Group 30’s discussion at the beginning of the film:

Interview Extract 23: Group 30, Manchester. Friends Arabella and Celia, mid-20s. Arabella: D’you remember when this film came out, everyone started doing their hair like this. Celia: Yeah... Arabella: Everyone wanted layers and feathering... Celia: Mmmmh. Arabella: And everyone used to get their GHDs and go [imitates hair straightening] [chuckles] Celia: it does look good on her. Arabella: Yeah. Celia: Even though it’s a bit dated now.

Such references to specific items served to reinforce the bonds of each viewer community (Arabella’s reference to the hair tool brand GHD, for example, relies on shared knowledge with Celia and myself), as well as established a humorous, if somewhat ambivalent, tone. Indeed, very often my participants discussed their old fashion choices with derision:

Interview Extract 24: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Harriet: D’you know what the best, erm, [chuckles] actress in rom-coms is: Jennifer Aniston. I always [relate with her. [Annie: Really?

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Harriet: With any rom-com I’ve ever seen her in. [Annie chuckles] Harriet: Cos she’s great! She’s just so funny, and she’s just... I really relate to her. There’s a really good film with her [in erm,... [Jill: [laughing] We should call you ‘Jen’. Harriet: [laughing] Yeah, just call me Jen! [laughter] Jill: I’ll start calling you Jen. Annie [laughing]: you should get one of her haircuts. Harriet [laughing]: Yeah! [big laughter from the group] Jill: I used to have the... 1990s lift of whatever it was (inaudible) Harriet: Oh yeah that (cringy) haircut. [laughter continues] Annie [laughing]: The ‘Rachel’!

There is a certain ambivalence to these comments. By mocking the over-popularity of certain fashion trends (‘everyone wanted layers and feathering,’ notes Arabella), comments feed into stereotypes about women as compulsive and easily influenced consumers (Diffrient and Lavery, 2010: 270). This is quite different from Jackie Stacey or Rachel Moseley’s emphasis on the agency demonstrated by audiences in their reproduction of movie-star fashions (Moseley, 2002; Stacey, 1994). At the same time, such a referential reading of fashion – which occurred particularly frequently amongst women participants – also contributes to the creation of a community around stereotypically feminine concerns. In their account of the importance of fashion in Sex and the City, Bruzzi and Church Gibson describe its appeal as a form of spectacle: ‘costume or fashion are “spectacular” if they interrupt or destabilise character and the unfolding action, offering an alternative and potentially contrapuntal discursive strategy – a vertical interjection into a horizontal and linear narrative’ (Akass and McCabe, 2003: 123). By that definition, then, a referential reading of fashion is also spectacular, in that it interrupts the flow of the narration. Therefore,

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one might argue that reading fashion can also become an alternative and disruptive form of film consumption. Whilst a number of the participants quoted above demonstrate a notable expertise in their command and knowledge of the romcom genre and its use of fashion, I have avoided referring to them a ‘cinephiles’. This is, of course, not to suggest that rom-coms are ‘uncinematic’, but because those very participants simultaneously expressed some embarrassment at the extent of their rom-com knowledge, in a way that seems antithetical to the pride associated with cinephilia. In fact, one might in this case call them ‘reluctant’ rather than ‘defiant’ cinephiles. Karen (Group 28, London), for instance, joked that she enjoyed playing ‘spot the cliché’. Moreover, discussions of obscure films or declarations of appreciation towards others were often prefaced with forms of disclaimers (close to the ‘hedged’ utterances described by Billig): ‘this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel,’ said Betty (Group 23, London) sheepishly as she discussed her liking of teen rom-coms such as It’s a Boy Girl Thing (Hurran, 2006) or The Abduction Club (Schwartz, 2002). On some level, this ambivalence again seemed to be reflected at the diegetic level of the films. As discussed in the Introduction, the romantic comedy seems to have integrated the constant criticism it faces via increasing self-parody and reflexivity. In doing so, it both invites a ‘cinephile’ close-viewing strategy (asking its audience to spot the references, for example) at the same time as it rejects critical examination by promoting its own escapism. Moreover, recent rom-coms such as Friends with Benefits (Gluck, 2011), How to Be Single (Ditter, 2016) or Isn’t It Romantic? (Strauss-Schulson, 2019) have moved beyond self-reference to self-critique, as they contain protagonists who openly blame the genre for promoting unrealistic expectations of love, whilst at the same time systematically rewarding the viewers with the coming together of the couple in the final reel (Evans and Deleyto, 1998: 15–36). Thus appears a ‘resonance’ (Moseley, 2002: 79) between text and audience. The last two chapters have hopefully demonstrated the complexity of the pleasures involved in rom-com consumption, which

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can be emotional, critical and/or social, and often a combination of all three. Moreover, I have argued that participants react not only to the film itself, but also to an extra-textual baggage that comes with genre: a knowledge of rom-com, then, doesn’t just entail a knowledge of the films as texts, but also an awareness of how they should be viewed. Consumption is then also a form of performance, as participants position themselves to engage with and against stereotypes about romcom audiences. The phantom audience of working-class teenage girls or elderly women permeates participants’ responses, and they take up several strategies to differentiate themselves from these figures. The strategy described in Chapter 2 was parody, as participants performed an exaggerated version of the emotional engagement associated with the phantom audience. In this chapter, I outlined a second strategy whereby participants claimed escapism as the primary mode of consumption for the genre. Finally, for a smaller number of viewers – to which, as an ‘aca-fan’ of the genre I also belong – there is the option of promoting a (reluctant) expertise in the genre. However, this does not completely transcend the hierarchy between ‘good viewer’ (critical, cinephile, distinguished) and ‘bad viewer’ (referential, emotional). Though I have aimed to demonstrate in this chapter that my participants fluctuated between different types of pleasurable engagement, and that emotion and critique are not necessarily mutually exclusive, I hope I have not inadvertently reinforced the hierarchy between both concepts. I do not mean to suggest that there is anything wrong with a ‘purely’ emotional engagement with romantic comedy – what I do question is the extent to which this alleged form of consumption actually exists. Indeed, I have called the so-called typical rom-com consumer projected through participants’ performances a ‘phantom’ because I never, in any of the interviews I conducted, actually met her. Another popular assumption which this chapter has attempted to debunk is the notion that enjoying romantic comedy and being a feminist are mutually incompatible positions. As I hope to have demonstrated, whilst feminist audiences do experience anxiety and

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the sense of a ‘cringe’ in consuming rom-coms, this does not entirely negate their film-viewing pleasure. Rather, I argue that the social pleasure experienced in ‘calling out’ a film within a group can affect a relief from that tension. Based on participants’ reactions, it also seems that (despite multiple assertions in the press to the contrary) rom-coms do not prevent audiences from becoming feminists, though the process of becoming a feminist changes the way rom-coms are experienced. Finally, participants also seemed to be aware of the rom-com’s existence as part of a broader romance-orientated fiction genre – with roots going back to Jane Austen and beyond (Shoard, 2012), and whose contemporary forms include (among others) photo stories, romance novels, soap operas and Disney princess stories. Certainly, this seems to be part of the frame of reference on which some of the participants drew to understand the film. These genres are also all routinely criticized for being ‘mass-produced’, ‘commercial’ and ‘repetitive’ (Giet, 1997: 21–2). Indeed whilst Giet’s comments refer specifically to the photo story, they could in fact be easily applied to all the romance forms cited above. My instinct – which seems to be supported by the qualitative audience research also undertaken in those genres – is that similar dynamics are probably found amongst women consumers of other romance genres. Indeed, Giet has noted that even a solitary activity such as reading photo stories can take on a social element. She highlights the way Nous Deux is shared between readers, as it is passed between (women) friends or family members: many of the readers she interviewed were introduced to the magazine by their mothers, for instance. For this reason, some estimate that Nous Deux’s readership is much higher than the number of copies actually sold (Giet, 1997: 106; Minuit et al. 2012: 214). Helen Taylor has also noted a comparable phenomenon in her study of the readership for Gone With the Wind (2014: 24). Similarly there are very active communities dedicated to romance novels, both off- and online, for instance, the Romance Writers of America (whose recent controversy attests that many romance readers and writers are keenly

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attuned to questions relating to intersectional feminism (Vivanco, 2019)) or the popular American website Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. These communities seem to offer the ‘cringing’ reader the communal relief which the solitary reading experience denies. The next chapter, however, will leave the broader romance genre to focus solely on the romantic comedy in cinema, and analyse its perceived inseparability from Hollywood and Americanness.

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‘Chomping on a burger with a glass of coke’: The Americanness of romantic comedy ‘It’s like stuffing your face with a hot dog or a hamburger … always getting the pleasure of chomping down on your hamburger with your glass of Coke whilst watching the same film.’ So goes Joseph’s fairly scathing description of the pleasures of rom-com viewing. This French architect in his mid-60s was one of the most virulent critics of Sweet Home Alabama I interviewed in the course of my research (Group 20, Normandy). But though he holds a particularly negative view of the film, both the content and form of his comment should seem familiar at this point, as he uses culinary imagery to critique the film’s predictability. The cultural specificity of Joseph’s lexicon, including the terms ‘hamburger’, ‘hot dog’, ‘Coke’ – all fast-food items closely associated with America’s ‘global cultural brand’ (Crothers, 2009: 133) – echoes some of the reviews discussed in Chapter 1. It also brings me to the core focus of this chapter, which investigates respondents’ awareness and critique of the Americanness of Sweet Home Alabama in particular, and the rom-com genre in general. In a way, therefore, this chapter is also concerned with distance. In the previous chapters I discussed the relationship between the participants and the film as one that oscillates between closeness and distance: the respondents emphasized the consumption of the rom-com as escapist fantasy, and used strategies to distance themselves from the genre’s perceived ‘phantom audience’. At the same time, they emphasized the bodily feelings evoked by the rom-com (tears, excitement, etc.). In this chapter I return to a spatial relationship and another duality between closeness and distance. This time, however, the relationship is geographical and cultural rather than emotional.

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Specifically, this chapter investigates how European participants defined the Americanness of American romantic comedy. André Bazin has famously described the Western as the ‘American film par excellence’ (2005: 140), but in this chapter it is the romantic comedy which is defined as a quintessentially American genre. Participants’ definitions of Americanness related to three areas, which I will examine in turn. Firstly, I’ll describe participants’ sensitivity to Americanness as a mode or style, visible (or audible) in repeated patterns with regard to settings, sounds and stars. Secondly, my interviewees associated Americanness with a recurring narrative pattern – the romance narrative – and I suggest that there is a strong correlation between the romance narrative and the American Dream. Finally, I discuss participants’ depiction of Americanness as ideology, and participants’ performance of a European identity that is defined as both sensitive to and yet opposed to Americanness. Whilst other chapters have focussed on smaller interview samples, this discussion draws material from nearly every interview I conducted. This is because there were significant similarities between British, French as well as German participants’ discussion of Americanness and Sweet Home Alabama. Across the fieldwork as a whole, I was indeed surprised at the homogeneity of participants’ readings of the film, particularly with regard to its perceived Americanness. By contrast, as I discuss at the end of the chapter, participants’ opinion and awareness of European rom-com production were more uneven.

Americanness as style Talking about aesthetics This book does not undertake a completely uniform comparison between France, Britain and Germany. For reasons of access and language difficulties in the German case, I mostly used the focus groups to conduct a comparison between the French and the British case, which

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I enriched using the German responses. The interviews from Germany, however, take on more significance in this chapter. Whereas I did not achieve the same level of detail regarding questions of genre and gender in my German interviews as with the French and British groups, one topic on which I was able to communicate fully with all interview groups was Hollywood and America. And whereas I experienced difficulties defining and discussing the notion of ‘romantic comedy’ in Germany, one concept we were all clear on was Americanness. In fact, though my German participants and I did not share a language as fully as with the French and British groups (German participants very kindly put up with my numerous grammatical errors, and some groups were interviewed partly in English), what we all had in common was the fact that we were not Americans. This rejoins the experience of Hans Borchers and Ellen Seiter in their fieldwork with soap-opera viewers in Oregon, who noticed that approaching interviews as a ‘foreign’ researcher can facilitate discussion by undermining the hierarchy of the research–interviewee relationship (Seiter et al., 2013: 226). This chapter will therefore draw on and make connections between material collected across the thirtyfour interviews I conducted, because of the striking similarities across all groups with regard to Hollywood and Americanness. Indeed, though participants’ responses were not, of course, completely monolithic, some key patterns did emerge across all three countries. Indeed, all groups seemed to broadly agree with Noel’s (Interview 29, London) description of Sweet Home Alabama as ‘so American!’ The one telling exception was childcare assistant Sophie (Group 17, Paris), the only half-American (and half-French) participant in my study, whose family comes from the American southern states. For Sophie, Sweet Home Alabama was only partially American: ‘it’s the South, and it’s home’, she noted, as opposed to what she calls Hollywood’s ‘highschool comedies’, which were ‘kinda foreign’ (i.e. more stereotypically American) to her. Like the scholarly and press critics I reviewed in the introduction and Chapter 1, participants spent relatively little time discussing the aesthetics of Sweet Home Alabama. This tendency may have been

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exacerbated by my presence as a film scholar and ‘rom-com expert’ – to quote Betty (Group 23, London) – which may have made participants reluctant to use specialist film terminology. A few participants (all women) even ‘hedged’ their discussion of aesthetics. Lillian (Interview 14, Lyon), for example, was puzzled when I asked her if she could identify a rom-com style, joking: ‘I’m not a very good cinematographic analyst.’ By contrast, the two groups who did make use of film terminology were the older cinephile couples (Group 20 and 21, France), who were more confident in their film analysis. Joseph (Group 20, Normandy) thus talked about the film’s repetitive ‘framing’. One exception was the montage sequence: a number of participants use the exact term in our discussion, and identify sub-categories of the motif such as the ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ montage (Betty in Group 23 and Rose in Group 31, South London), the ‘wedding montage’ (Felicity in Group 23, London) or ‘New York montage’ (Arabella in Group 30, Manchester). The last two demonstrate the close association between the montage sequence and the rom-com genre, as they intersect with other geographical or thematic tropes of the genre such as weddings (Jenkins, 2013) or New York City (Jermyn, 2009). A couple of participants demonstrated that the pleasure of recognition (discussed in Chapter 2 in narrative terms) can also be associated with audiovisual motifs: Bianca (Interview 19, Lyon) noted that Sweet Home Alabama did not meet her expectations of a rom-com ‘except the montage’, whilst the wedding montage sequence prompted Arabella (Group 30, Manchester) to exclaim cheerfully: ‘oh, we love a good montage.’ Another factor for the relatively-thin discussion of visuals might be the difficulty of talking about the norm. The aesthetics of romantic comedy very much fall in line with the Classical Hollywood style defined by David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson and Janet Staiger in their classic study of the Hollywood studio system (1988). What is more, romantic comedy hasn’t really manifested the ‘intensified continuity’ of contemporary Hollywood cinema described by Bordwell (2002). Whilst he demonstrated that the editing rhythm of 2000s action films or thrillers is significantly faster than in earlier films of the same genre,

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I would argue that the same cannot be necessarily said for rom-coms. Indeed, by contrast, contemporary rom-coms give the impression of a slower editing speed than screwball comedy’s much-celebrated rapidfire pacing, for instance. Hence, to talk about the rom-com’s aesthetic is to talk about a film grammar which has been set for decades, and which participants (the eldest of whom was born in the mid-1940s) will have always experienced. This makes it particularly difficult to analyse Sweet Home Alabama in terms of style, as it doesn’t necessarily stand out to them.1 Another notable discussion of aesthetics did occur, one which points to the ‘feminist’ potential of romantic comedy in providing a rare source of visual pleasure for women. The one issue which participants discussed in terms of style is the way the film presents and shows off the male body, specifically actor Josh Lucas’. A much commented-upon sequence was the film’s ‘reveal’ scene, where Melanie discovers that Jake has secretly become a successful business-owner. The scene includes a lingering over-the-shoulder shot (see Figure 8) of Jake staring longingly at Melanie (journalist and screenwriter Alanna Bennett identifies this shot as a key trope of the genre, 2018), which received a number of appreciative and mocking comments from participants. The below reaction from Pilot Group 2 is fairly representative:

Interview Extract 1: Group 12 (Pilot), Paris. Friends Laurie, Larissa, Marianne, Ophelia, Serena and Theresa, 20s. Theresa: His eyes are retouched, right? Laurie: Yeah. Marianne: They’re retouched? [Laurie: It’s not possible… [Theresa: It’s not possible [she pauses] They’re fluorescent!

This might seem familiar to film teachers – in my experience, seminars on popular cinema tend to focus on narrative or theme, whilst students relish discussing films which break aesthetic conventions (for example the French New Wave’s jump cuts).

1

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Figure 8  Jake’s revelation (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002). Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures.

Participants returned to this feature in the post-interview discussion, where several interviewees – who otherwise did not discuss aesthetic matters very much – also displayed an awareness of the way the actor’s eyes were showcased by framing. In Northern France, Group 13’s collective appreciation for the actor’s physique prompted Irene to enthuse about ‘that close-up with his blue eyes!’ in the discussion, causing laughter from the rest of the group. In Germany, Olga’s (Group 5) discussion of the sequence relocated the film and its actors in genre tradition by comparing Jake to another famous blue-eyed hero: ‘the camera is only focussed on him, on the country guy, with his big blue eyes, a little bit of a Hugh Grant look … There were a lot of close-ups, yeah.’ In addition to these frequent conversations about the actor’s ‘impossible’ blue eyes, groups also noted the film’s showcasing of the actor’s naked chest. In Group 16 Eleanor, to whom I had explained Laura Mulvey’s work on scopophilia – which I was teaching my firstyear students at the time – at dinner before the screening immediately connected the shot with the concept: ‘You see’, she told her sister Georgina, ‘you’ve got the still shots of the guy, see?’ (Group 16, Paris).

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They returned to this in the post-screening discussion, noting the difference between the way the film depicts its male and female leads:

Interview Extract 2: Group 16, Paris. Sisters Eleanor and Georgina, with friends John and Peter, early 20s. Eleanor: He’s got nice abs. I mean. Georgina: Yeah they do show them very well.

In Melanie’s case, however, Eleanor noted that ‘it’s true that there aren’t shots on her body or her … as opposed to the guy where there’s a shot – where he’s topless, whereas she’s not wearing makeup, she’s not wearing heels, she’s not made up to be ...’ (Group 16, Paris). The same shot also stood out to the self-identifying feminists in Group 23, and led them to a discussion about the changing representation of gender in popular culture:

Interview Extract 3: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Melissa: He’s still showing us his abs. Felicity: Yeah! [she pauses] I love… = Betty: ( ) Felicity: Actually, more and more I’m noticing like, we went to see Thor recently, and I love Chris Hemsworth who is an amazing-looking man. But there was a completely pointless scene [Betty snorts] where he’s topless. I mean there really, like = Betty: he washes his arms for about 40 seconds! [Melissa laughs] Felicity: None. It adds nothing to the film! [Melissa laughs]. But brilliant. Betty: I don’t think it added nothing! It added great appreciation from female fans who are used to seeing like, you know = Felicity: who just go: ‘WHOOOO!’ Betty:... heroines in bikinis in the Arctic.

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These reactions support the suggestion that participants’ relative silence with regard to aesthetics is linked to familiarity. Whilst most of Sweet Home Alabama’s stylistic choices did not seem ‘commentworthy’ to participants, they were quick to notice and comment on images which were out of the ordinary for what they perceived to be a typical American film. In this case, this is the fact that the film flips on its head the traditional balance of visual power identified by Laura Mulvey within Classical Hollywood cinema (1975) by putting the male body on display. For feminist participants in particular, this added a further layer of pleasure: ‘look at us happily objectifying!’ joked Betty later (Group 23, London). Montages and blue eyes aside, however, aesthetic considerations were not central to any of the groups’ discussion of the film. This was compounded by the fact that the overwhelming majority of participants described the romantic comedy genre as ‘uncinematic’ in a very literal sense, meaning that they did not consume it in the cinema. As noted previously, prohibitive costs were often cited as a reason for this, with the added argument that romantic comedies were not ‘visual’ enough to merit a cinema outing. At the same time, most groups emphatically stated that both the film’s rom-com-ness and Americanness were visually (and audibly) perceptible. Joseph (Group 20, Normandy), for example, argued that an American film could be spotted ‘in two minutes’ or even ‘within a few seconds’, joking that he was ‘up for the experiment’ as part of my research. So whilst the term ‘film aesthetics’ may not quite fit this discussion, as participants did not engage in close analysis and made (little) use of film terminology, there was a more diffuse sense that Americanness is something that can be – that is – sensually perceived, both visibly and audibly. Like the emotions described in Chapter 2, the response to Americanness seems experienced in the body. Or to put it another way viewership, as displayed by the participants, involves a sensibility to American cinema as represented by Sweet Home Alabama. Erica Carter has traced the lineage of sensibility from John Locke and Immanuel Kant to Susan Sontag, defining it at once ‘a way of knowing and

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understanding the world through perception’, ‘a route to … aesthetic judgement’ and ‘a badge of identity for specific social groups’ (2010). Taken as such, participants’ discussions help us identify a particular form of European sensitivity to Americanness as presented in romantic comedy: a geographical re-cognition based on sensorial perception (what the film looks and sounds like). Broadly then, this section is concerned with the way my interviewees perceive Americanness to be inscribed in Sweet Home Alabama’s style. When asked what makes Sweet Home Alabama an American film, most groups offered a response along similar lines (italics denote recurring themes):

Interview Extract 4: Group 16, Paris. Sisters Georgina and Eleanor, with friends Peter and John, mid-20s. Alice: If I hadn’t told you beforehand it was an American film… Eleanor: Oh yeah (she pauses) Just the actors even, but then… Peter: Yeah, already the actors… Georgina: The actors, that North/South context. Peter: The really badly-done dubbing. … Georgina: And then the house, the cars, everything, I mean.

Interview Extract 5: Group 28, London. Karen, Lola, Owen and Nora, late teens to late 20s. Alice: Does this feel very American? As a film? [all at once, laughing]: Yeah. Nora: [laughing] very American. Lola: Can’t get more American! [all laugh] Owen: New York and... Alabama. Karen: Yeah. Owen: It’s just... Nora: Very Hollywood.

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Owen: ... So American. Owen: And they stereotype both places, to death. … Lola: Yeah just the accents even. Owen: Yeah. Lola: So strong... [pauses, stutters] for me it’s – sorry – the characterization: like the mayor … of New York city, you know, just so... [pause] horrid and like (…) Owen: And the sheriff! Karen [laughing]: Yeah! Lola: And the sheriff... Karen: Yeah and even in like the conventions (they use), the music at the beginning and... [chuckles] Lola: Yeah.... the music [chuckles] Karen [laughing]: And them constantly playing Sweet Home Alabama. Like... [laughter]

Group 16 (Paris) and 28 (London)’s reactions are fairly representative of the responses I received from most participants. Firstly, in all interviews, participants generally agreed that Sweet Home Alabama was ‘very American’. This seemed so obvious to them that my question on the subject often prompted awkward pauses or laughter (as with Group 28). Note the similarly of the two interventions above, as participants build on each other’s contributions, establishing consensus through laughter, repetitions (‘and the sheriff ’ in Group 28, ‘the actors’ in Group 16) or markers of agreement. Participants’ use of nominal sentences one after the other in Group 16 further amplifies the point, as the film’s Americanness is presented in list-format, as a series of tropes to be ticked off (and which many participants also accused the film of doing). The content of both extracts is also strikingly similar: setting aside Group 28’s discussion of characterization and stereotyping (I will return to this), we can see how both groups highlight three factors which characterize the film’s Americanness, and I have noted these in italics above. These include sets and setting (‘New York and Alabama’, ‘the houses, the cars’), sounds (‘really bad dubbing’, ‘the accents’, ‘the music’) and stardom (‘the actors’). I will now examine each in turn.

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Sets and settings On the one hand, what marks the film as clearly ‘foreign’ is its setting. For a few groups, indeed, the obvious response to the question ‘what makes the film American?’ was pointing to where the action of the film takes place. This was, for example, Owen’s first response in the long extract from Group 28 (London) quoted above. Other participants also responded along the same lines, with both Karolina (Group 6, Germany) and Celia (Group 30, Manchester) being a little puzzled by my question: ‘the fact that it’s set in America?’ asked Karolina, or ‘you mean … aside from the fact that it’s set in America?’ wondered Celia. Some participants also spoke of the film in touristic terms: ‘I really want to go to America now!’ exclaimed Celia’s childhood friend Arabella as the credit music began to play, before she and Celia started comparing the cost of visiting New York and the south of the United States. This was echoed by Bianca (Group 19, France), who explained that she enjoyed the ‘geographical contrast, almost, the landscapes’ in the film. Even participants who were very critical of the film such as Karolina in Germany or Felicia (Group 21) in France – who both found the film objectionable on both political and artistic grounds – pointed to the film’s depiction of landscape as one of its few positive aspects. If the film’s landscapes and setting marked it as clearly ‘foreign’, they also involved familiarity, in that audiences have to be able to recognize them as foreign. This sense of being both outside and inside at the same time was articulated by administrator Sophia:

Interview Extract 6: Interview 32, London. Sophia, 40s. Sophia: I think we’re so.... brought up with American films, it’s almost like, feels like it is – this is gonna sound silly but – quite normal? Like you’re used to... What they talk about, the locations, you’ve sometimes been there or you’ve seen them a lot, or you’re very familiar with the surroundings or – some of the things they say that are very different to us.

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Landscapes in principle can be easily attributed to geographical locations, though sometimes erroneously, noted Franco-American Sophie (Group 17, Paris), as she highlighted that the film is set in Alabama but shot in Georgia, a distinction no other group made. Significantly, Sophie was also one of the rare interview participants to own a copy of the film – and to have watched the DVD commentary on it – which she drew on in her analysis of the film. In fact, many French groups in particular noted that the whole film was ‘American’, with little further geographical distinction. Additionally, participants drew attention to a more diffuse form of cultural identity present through the film’s production design: ‘That kind of wedding makes me think of America as well,’ said Sophia (Interview 32, London) during the screening as Melanie walks down the aisle ‘that outdoors – just set up like that’. To borrow from Tamar Jeffers McDonald via Colin McArthur (Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 11), we might call this the ‘iconography of American romance’, which includes, but isn’t limited to, ‘house style’ (Groups 1, 7, 9 in Germany; 16 and 22 in France), ‘open kitchens’ (Kati and Lise, Germany Group 3), ‘yellow taxis’ or ‘bars and pool halls’ (Bridget, Germany Group 10), and ‘lots of shops’ (Jill, Kent, Group 34). Several of these elements were recognized as having a particular weight, or influence. This was the case for several clothing items, such as ‘cowboy boots’ (Group 34, Kent), ‘double denim’ (Group 23, London) and, unsurprisingly, the American flag. It was not just the presence of the flag that was read as American however, but the sheer frequency of its presence. Thus, Kati laughed at all ‘the flags that are shown’ as a particularly American trait (Group 3, Berlin), and Paul pushed the critique further: ‘what you see all the time (are) these flags in the backgrounds’, which his friend Lena diagnosed as a symbol of ‘national pride’ (Group 7, Berlin). Flags are one of the most visible components of what Michael Billig calls ‘banal nationalism’: the small, repetitive ways in which a nation constructs itself on an everyday basis. ‘The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion,’ he stresses, ‘it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building’ (Billig, 1995: 13). Or, to put it in Paul’s (Group

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7, Berlin) words, their omnipresence ‘in the background.’ In Sweet Home Alabama, then, flags make visible to European eyes the constant construction and reinforcement of American national identity. They also feed into a running theme of Americanness as excess, which can be experienced through the film’s visual conventions. Several participants, for example, laughed at and called out the use of slow motion in the couple’s final embrace, such as Group 34, below:

Interview Extract 7: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. [Jill [laughing]: Slo-mo! It’s amazing! [Harriet [high pitched]: Slo-mo! In the rain! [Annie laughs] Valerie [exaggerated]: Oh! the rain! Oh! beautiful! Yes!

To European eyes, then, Americanness is experienced as a visual assault, which often causes collective laughter.

Accents and music The film’s Americanness did not just jump out at the eyes of the viewers; it was also audible. Eight out of thirty groups mentioned the choice of music as one of the film’s characteristically ‘American’ features, with a few pointing to the country music genre as specifically American. In Germany, two groups moved to the referential mode during the film’s street-party sequence (where the film’s eponymous song is played) to compare its use of music with their own experiences of living in America. Couple Pia and Florian (Group 4, Berlin) recalled going to a similar party when they lived in the United States, though they noted that they didn’t hear the famous song so many times. Similarly, when Maja asked her friend Paul if he heard country music when he was in America, his answer was, ‘Endlessly. They all listen to country.’

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Significantly again, it’s not just the presence of country music – a genre strongly associated with the southern states and conservative politics – that marked the film as ‘American’, but also its repetitive and, some participants argued, excessive use. ‘It had to happen,’ laughed film student Noel (Group 29, London) when ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ is first played, whilst architect Joseph mimicked being bulldozed by the music, which he described in the film – and American cinema in general – as (physically) ‘saturating’ and ‘exhausting’ (Group 20, Normandy). If the musical choices are clearly ‘foreign’ to European audiences, the pleasure they provoke also seems to stem partially from recognition and familiarity. The film’s use of the Lynyrd Skynyrd song sometimes elicited laughter or groans, but many participants also engaged playfully and physically with it by singing and/or dancing along:

Interview Extract 8: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. [Felicity and Betty dance in their seats] Felicity [smiling]: I don’t care, I love this song! … Betty: It is good! it’s a complete classic! But still, there’s a side to me that goes ‘leave’ once the title of the film’s been said. Felicity: Really? Betty: Yeah! Like, clap and leave.

Here, the familiarity of the song was – again – a source of pleasure for participants; at the same time, the pleasure in the song was ‘hedged’ as the interviewees displayed a form of superiority to it. Groups in the UK were more likely to engage with the film’s score and sound, most likely because of the familiarity with the language. At least one participant in eight out of the twelve UK groups sang, hummed or tapped their feet along to the song. Because interviews were only audiorecorded, it was difficult for me to systematically observe participants’ dancing, though Louis, a screenwriter and film aficionado (Group 33,

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London), told me during the interview he’d been ‘resisting from picking [his] guitar up and joining!’ At the same time, the reactions to ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ as an emblem for the South and – for many groups – American culture in general demonstrated some of the limitations of transnational culture distribution, which Richard Maltby argues is typical of the consumption of American cinema outside of the United States (Maltby and Stokes, 2004: 2–3). In fact, only one group – indeed just one participant, Neil – discussed the song’s connection to American history and politics:

Interview Extract 9: Group 31, London. Friends Neil, Nate, Rose, Martin and Henry, mid-20s to early 30s. Neil: You know this song is a whole – it’s just a... it’s a like a beef between them and Neil Young? [pause] Cos Neil Young wrote a song called ‘Southern Man’? Where he’s talking about how people from Alabama just … like to crack whips. Henry: Is it the guy who’s in Roses though? Neil: Huh? Henry: [laughing] Is it a Guns N’Roses song? Neil: This? Nate: Yeah. Neil: No Lynyrd Skynyrd they’re called. They’re from Alabama. Henry: Okay. Rose: Yeah but isn’t – is this song (about) slavery? Neil: ‘A Southern Man don’t need him’ = Rose: No = No this song – this song is about [pause] Alabama being a fucking great place to live. Rose: No, this song is about slavery. Neil: No, ‘A Southern Man’ is about slavery.

Hence, whilst the use of this song complicates the film’s politics, as it contributes to a glorification of the former confederate states – something many groups criticized – very few viewers were aware

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of the specific relationship between this political tendency and this particular song. Even in his own group, Neil struggled to get his point across. British groups also displayed a particular sensitivity to the film’s sounds with regard to accents. This was a lot less frequent in the French and German groups because a large proportion of them (nearly all in the German cases, and just over half in France) watched the film dubbed into their own language. Moreover, neither of the dubbed versions attempted to adapt the difference between the New York and Alabama accents to their own national context. Instead, in both the French and the German versions, all actors speak with the same unaccented language. In Germany, this was criticized by Bridget (Interview 10), who noted that it is one of the reasons why she prefers to watch the films in their original language. In France, the anglophile groups (Groups 16 and 17, which both included participants who had lived in either Britain or America for extended periods of time) also seemed particularly sensitive to the accents. Again, their playful engagement with the film served both as a form of distinction (enabled by their high cultural capital) and as a demonstration of familiarity. Indeed, some participants also pre-empted the actor’s lines. In many of the groups participants also took pleasure in poking fun at the Southern characters’ accents through repetition and exaggeration. In each group, this tended to be the ‘role’ taken one by one person in particular, often someone who had already seen the film several times. This is the case for Betty in Group 23 (London), Sophie in Group 17 (Paris) and Annie in Group 34 (Kent). In Sophie’s case it was a way of asserting control and validating both her familiarity with the narrative and the pleasure that such familiarity brings. Quoting along for her was another way to engage playfully with the genre. For UK viewers, quoting along was also a form of distinction, as the accents and tones of voice used were often exaggerated and mocked:

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Interview Extract 10: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Jake and his friends are sitting on top of the town’s water tower, and all are suggesting where they should go to next. Eldon: Come on, let’s go to the Roadhouse. Annie [fake Southern accent, deep voice]: Roadhouse! [group laughs] Sheldon: Or should we drive up to Fairview and bowl a few frames? Annie [same voice]: Bowling! Valerie: I think my favourite part actually of this is Annie saying things. Annie [laughing]: Sorry! [the group laughs] That was like a Family Guy quote! Lily: Do you know you’re doing it? [they laugh] Annie: Yeah!

The playfulness of participants’ response to American accents is evident in this extract, as Annie’s imitation of the film becomes an accompanying performance to the actors’. The association to Family Guy (MacFarlane, 1999–current), a television show known for its crassness, suggests both a pleasure that comes from familiarity and a form of value judgement.

Stardom and gender politics If Americanness is perceived as inscribed within aesthetics, and can attract a formal value judgement, groups also expressed opinions regarding the political implications of style. This is central when it comes to discussions of stardom in the film, which was the last mostcited stylistic feature of the film’s Americanness (a third of the groups mentioned it). Especially striking are the negative value judgements entrenched in discussions of American style as excess, particularly

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with regard to stardom. This is hinted at in Anna’s answer to the question (Group 22, Paris, mid-20s) of what makes the film American: ‘the images, the colours … the sets,’ she explained. She continued by pointing to ‘the little perfect houses, the perfect haircuts, all blowdried’ as signs of Americanness, and then made a similar comment about set design: ‘even in the house, often in American stuff you have these big spaces, very neat, very clean.’ She used two Anglicisms in her comment, brushingée as ‘blow-dried’, and the word ‘clean’ is used in English too. Her speech was marked by repetitions (‘very’), which underlined both the repetitiveness of American style and its social conformism. This was also a central focus of my discussion with social worker Vanessa and her teenage daughter Chloe, who very regularly watched films (rom-coms included) together on television (Group 18, Montpellier). Whilst Chloe was generally much more critical of the film than her mother, both criticized at length the stereotypical physique of actors and especially actresses in Hollywood, which they felt Reese Witherspoon perfectly represented. Chloe compared the casting of French and American films, explaining that ‘in American cinema, all the actors look like models, whereas I don’t know, in other films they pick them more realistically, more … less physically perfect, which maybe gives it a bit more depth’. Vanessa concurred: ‘obviously that platinum blonde … I think I’ve seen her in TV shows, or comedies, or if it’s not her it’s the same type … that very cute physique, but also I think quite neutral at the American level.’ She concludes ironically that ‘she’s cute, she’s blonde, and nothing sticks out. Not one extra kilo. It’s perfect’ (Group 18, Southern France). Here Americanness, personified by Witherspoon, becomes synonymous with unattainable beauty standards and gender conformity. What is ‘neutral’ or supposedly effortless for Americans appears to European women as an overperformance of gender (Butler, 2006). For these participants, the labour that comes with losing an ‘extra kilo’ and achieving ‘platinum’ (or, to return to Anna’s above comment, ‘blow-dried’) hair is clearly visible. As Ginette Vincendeau writes:

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Blondness raises another paradox regarding femininity – it suggests something inherent to female sexuality (being a ‘blonde’ is an identity), and at the same time it is the mark of artificiality, the sign of glamour, a concept that in itself implies a high degree of construction … In other words, blondness is always a cultural construction, but one that is somehow meant to hint at the essence of femininity, in a way that other hair colours do not. (Vincendeau, 2016: 3)

Vincendeau also emphasizes the strong historical connection between blondness and Americanness, noting that ‘historically, Hollywood has defined the visual grammar of blondness in classical film’ (2016). This is echoed by comments from Chloe’s mother Vanessa at the end of our interview, when I asked them about their thoughts on the film’s female characters. Discussing Witherspoon, Vanessa explained: ‘the main actress, it’s as if she’s automatically performing. As if she wasn’t really engaged in a real life … for me she’s the caricature of the American woman’ (Group 18, Southern France). This distancing from American femininity as an oppressive construct obscures the presence of sexism or gender issues in French culture. It also creates a dichotomy between American femininity as a performance of excess and an essentialized European womanhood. These findings echo the historical work of Leila Wimmer and Jackie Stacey. In her analysis of UK women’s fandom in the 1940s and 1950s, Stacey noted that participants seemed to perceive a strong difference between ‘American glamour versus British respectability’ (Stacey, 1994: 204). More recently, Wimmer has noted that French fashion magazines of the 1930s constructed a dichotomy between the spectacular fashion of the United States and a more understated French ‘chic’ (Wimmer, 2014: 68). My participants’ responses suggest that this opposition is still very much present eighty years later. Many contributors emphasized the distance between the feminine ideal of American stardom and their real experience as British, French or German women: ‘the way women dress, even the expression on their faces, those kinds of smiles, even

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the hairstyle, no, that’s something that’s foreign to me,’ said retired researcher and self-identified feminist Felicia (Group 21, Paris). The same view is confirmed by the multiple descriptions of Melanie as a Barbie doll and ‘puppet’, as outlined in the previous chapter. Jackie Stacey has stated how her participants’ repeated comparisons between glamorous Hollywood stars and relatable British actresses suggested an experience of an American femininity (including dyedhair and pencilled brows) that can transgress gender norms: ‘Hollywood stars were also a contested terrain of competing cultural discourses of femininity’ (Stacey, 1994: 205). A similar opposition persisted in my groups: for several participants, Melanie’s (and Witherspoon’s) performance of femininity was seen as problematic or unrealistic because it was simultaneously too feminine and too girly. Gender scholar Karolina (Interview 6, Berlin), for instance, explained that she disliked Witherspoon’s star persona because ‘she’s always this “kind of cute girl”. Annoying cute girl.’ Group 34 (Kent) found this to be an issue in terms of American romantic comedy’s treatment of women as a whole. Jill and Valerie, in particular, were irritated by the proposal scene set in Tiffany’s:

Interview Extract 11: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Jill: I hate how girly she is! [Valerie hums in agreement] Annie: I quite like her! Valerie: Yeah but she’s – [you know – [Jill: In this she seems like... wet, basically. [puts on an exaggerated high-pitched voice, imitates Melanie]: ‘Heee! Did you [really mean it? Am I really worthy of you?’ [Lily: It’s just that – Valerie: Yeah! [Annie laughs] Jill [high pitched, as Melanie]: ‘Oh I’m such a little girl! You’re so amazing!’ [Annie laughs]

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Valerie [to Melanie]: Just pick one! It’s like: you’re not in a sweet shop! You’re … [stutters] [Jill hums in agreement] Harriet: This is how every American rom-com is though. Annie [laughing]: Yeah! Harriet: These girls are all: [high pitched squeal, nagging sound]

Here again, participants emphasized the constructedness of what was perceived as ‘American’ femininity by performing and parodying it. Interestingly, these views do not quite fit some of the scholarly analysis of Reese Witherspoon’s star image, which has emphasized its ambiguity with regard to gender stereotyping. Kathleen Rowe Karleen in particular has described Witherspoon as the ‘quintessential postfeminist star’, highlighting the actress’s current struggle to maintain the complicated, mould-breaking roles she took on at the beginning of her career (2011: 132). However, the complexities of Witherspoon’s star image do not seem to resonate with most of my interview participants, many of whom simply read her as a stereotype of American femininity. A few groups (mostly in the UK) displayed a little more awareness of the actress’s southern origins, which were significant in getting the film made. Only one participant, Bianca (Interview 19, Lyon), who declared herself a fan of Witherspoon’s, seemed to read the actress’s star image as nuanced. She emphasized her strong identification from an early age with the actress, whom she described as a ‘transitional object’. On the one hand, this sentiment of identification is partly biographical: they are ‘exactly’ the same age, and both had children very young. Echoing Rowe Karleen’s description of the actress as a post-feminist star, Bianca deplored Witherspoon’s increasingly conservative star-image: ‘she’s become a bit matronly, but I did like this, on the one hand this touching side of her, almost like a girl from the wild. But also the businesswoman side.’ At the same time, Bianca also anchored her description of Witherspoon’s ambivalence in her Americanness. Witherspoon had been in the news for drunk-driving charges shortly before the interview was conducted, and Bianca noted the actress’s follow-up critique of

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her own image as ‘America’s Sweetheart’. She also stressed the actress’s complicated Southern identity:

Interview Extract 12: Interview 19, Lyon. Bianca, mid-30s. Alice: I don’t know if you’ve seen this one [Sweet Home Alabama], but she’s a co-producer on this. Bianca: Yes. Alice: Because she’s from the south of the United States. Bianca: Yes absolutely, yes [she stutters]. I also liked that about her, the kind of … because she really plays up this ‘Southern Belle’ stuff. Alice: Yes. Bianca: And the … ‘proper values’, kind of traditional, but all the same not the really bad side of the deep South [laughs].

However, Bianca (along with Franco-American Sophie) was one of the few to emphasize Witherspoon’s southern identity. Again, this points to the limitation of the transnational circulation of cultural products noted by Richard Maltby; ‘in order to be integrated into the complexity of a host culture’ he notes, ‘a foreign artefact must lose at least some of its own domestic cultural complexity, so that it can be interpreted in a more simplified way’ (2004: 2). For most of my participants, indeed, the actress’s local identity is erased, and with her blonde hair and ‘perfect’ figure (Vanessa, Group 18, Montpellier) she becomes, to European eyes, a stereotypically conservative ‘American’ star. This is echoed by Nadia, in the first Pilot Group: ‘in French films they’re gonna be more authentic, so obviously we’re gonna identify with them more than … to American actors, where it’s rosy and beautiful, and it’s not really real’ (Paris). To finish this section, it is worth noting briefly that participants did not just single out Melanie and Witherspoon as problematic stereotypes. Many found the performance of masculinity (especially

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Jake’s) to be equally ‘American’, by which they meant conservative. Joseph’s description of Jake and Melanie’s argument at his mother’s bar is telling here:

Interview Extract 13: Group 20, Normandy. Partners Ava and Joseph, 60s. Joseph: And then there’s a scene … which is one of those clichés, when he grabs her and takes her out, you see it in I don’t know how many American films, including westerns, you know when the guy grabs her by the wrist, drags her, and throws her into the truck. It’s a completely stereotypical gesture = Ava: Yeah, a proprietary move, even = of an American guy who owns the woman, who grabs her like an object and throws her into the cab.

According to Joseph, misogyny is a feature not just of rom-com but is inscribed in the history of American film. For a cinephile of his generation, the Western is indeed, to quote Bazin again, the quintessential American genre (2005: 2). My European participants thus generally display (or perform) a sensitivity to Americanness as a style, which they argue is perceptible visually in the choice of sets and setting, and stardom, as well as audibly through music and (for British viewers) accents. At the same time, a shift occurs in participants’ discussion of these elements, whereby the film’s formal classicism becomes associated with an assumed social and political conservatism, particularly regarding gender and stardom. This perceived conservatism also contributes to the construction of a binary opposition between Americanness and Europeanness (or, rather, Britishness, Frenchness and Germanness individually), with the former presented as conservative and the latter as artistically and socially progressive. Sarah-Mai Dang, one of the very few German scholars writing on popular women’s cinema in Germany, has argued that Witherspoon’s star-image-defining text, Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001), opens up a dual reading. On the one hand, the film’s opening montage – which includes close-ups of Herbal Essence hair

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dye and hair-removal products – underlines the constructed nature of gender as described by Judith Butler. On the other, the film also props up and presents as aspirational the very same beauty standards it seems to debunk. According to Dang, the opening up of this dual spectatorial position is central to the contemporary chick flick as a whole (2016: 79–86). Additionally, this dual positioning could be applied to cultural as well as gender positions. For my participants, European viewership appears to require being both inside and outside of Americanness: to know it enough to recognize it (though sometimes with less nuance), but to be able to distance oneself from it. This is also key to participants’ discussion of the rom-com’s romance narrative.

Americanness as narrative The ultimate Hollywood genre? ‘It’s an American rom-com … I wouldn’t describe it more than that, it’s just an American rom-com,’ said Lillian (Interview 14, Lyon) when I asked her to describe the film. ‘What makes it so American?’ she continued when I enquired further, ‘because it’s so full of clichés. It’s the cliché of the rom-com with two love interests. She starts the film with one and ends up with the other.’ Lillian was not alone in defining Americanness as marked by both narrative repetition and the romance narrative, and variations on this answer occur again and again in my interviews. In particular, nearly every interview included some reference to the narrative’s familiarity, which was more or less negatively connoted. Chloe (Group 18, Montpellier) exemplified one end of the spectrum when she complained that ‘everything, everything, everything is predictable’ in Sweet Home Alabama, adding that ‘you can guess the end within the first five minutes’ – another frequent critique against the film. Some comments were a little less pejorative, particularly from groups with a stated appreciation for rom-com as a genre: ‘it hits all the notes,’ explained Betty (Group 23, London), whilst

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Leo called it ‘comfortingly formulaic’ (Group 24, London). At the same time, participants often attributed this predictability to the film’s Americanness, which was demonstrated by their use of compound adjectives such as ‘a typically-American love story’ (Johanna, Group 1, Berlin) or ‘a clichéd-Hollywood film’ (Bridget, Interview 10, Berlin). Conversely, the film’s Americanness could help participants predict the plot, as with Group 22 (Paris)’s discussion during the film’s narrative climax, when Melanie hesitates between walking down the rest of the aisle to Andrew and returning to Jake:

Interview Extract 14: Group 22, Paris. Friends Anna, Donna, Lauryn and Tess, 20s. Melanie hesitates, looks to Andrew. The camera cuts to a close-up of his mother Kate (Candice Bergen) waiting impatiently behind him. Donna: Her, she is happy. Anna: No she’s not really happy, it’s humiliating. Donna: Yeah but ultimately she’s gonna be happy that they’re not ( ) Lauryn: Of course! Anna: It is an American comedy…

As Anna’s comment makes plain, it is not just narrative repetitiveness that is considered American, but also the presence of particular plot points or narrative arcs, in this case the happy ending. Once again, Anna and her friends were not alone in referencing this: group after group noted the certainty of the happy ending as American, supporting James MacDowell’s assertion that ‘as in the popular imagination so in academic discussion – the most fundamental assumption about the “happy ending” is that it is a ubiquitous feature of Hollywood cinema’ (2013: 1). The connection is evidenced linguistically too, as numerous German and French groups used the expression in English: in Germany in particular, eight out of ten groups referred to the film’s ‘happy-end’ at least once.

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Additionally, in spite of Western-aficionado Francis’s assertion that ‘a taste for happy endings … includes almost all genres of American cinema’ (Group 21, Paris), most groups seemed to make a particular connection between Americanness, the happy ending and another romcom narrative trope: the ‘mandatory’ (to cite literature student Chloe (Group 18, Southern France)) love triangle. Indeed, for 20-something Celia the dynamics of Sweet Home Alabama’s love triangle are rooted in the country’s politics and geography: ‘I think it couldn’t be set anywhere else,’ she said hesitantly, ‘because he [Jake] needs, that character needs be to be the opposite of the other guy, doesn’t he?’ (Group 30, Manchester). Indeed, whilst many saw the film’s ‘town versus country theme’ (Sabine and Lorelei, Group 8, Berlin) as typical of the romantic comedy genre, a few British groups stressed the geographical specificity of the two models of masculinity presented in the film. Celia and her friend Arabella returned to this theme later in the interview: whilst Arabella explained that the film’s opposition between ‘head and heart’ (her words) spoke to her own experience as a young Mancunian girl moving to London and later returning home, she and Celia also emphasized both characters’ local specificity. The two seemed to find it difficult to explain exactly why they found the film American, but eventually responded thus:

Interview Extract 15: Group 30, Manchester. Friends Arabella and Celia, mid-20s. Celia: She’s a typical character. [pauses] And then you’ve got those typical... male characters. You’ve got the really rich business-y guy. Arabella: A jock, kind of. Celia: Yeah... and then you’ve got the like, country boy, whose... the one they always end up with. [long pause] (That’s like)... That wouldn’t really happen in British rom-coms, I don’t know if we have those two... Arabella: No I think we do. We’d have London, like private-school boys? Versus someone else? … Celia: Maybe kind of like Essex cockney kind of…

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Film student Noel, meanwhile, poked fun at the film’s representation of the South throughout the screening: ‘okay, Alabama is not that hick! Seriously,’ he laughed when Andrew described the nearby accommodation choices available to the guests for his and Melanie’s wedding, which include a ‘Travelodge, Days Inn, Motel 6, and the Golden Cherry Motel’. In our post-screening discussion, meanwhile, Noel also spoke of the film’s opposition between town and country as something which is both foreign and familiar to him:

Interview Extract 16: Interview 29, London. Noel, mid-20s. Noel: I can get that whole thing of like: you return home and you recognise all the charms of where you grew up despite the fact that at the time you were there you hated it and wanted nothing (more) than to go to the big city. Like, I’ve [chuckling] done that a few times. … But as I say: I grew up in Buckinghamshire where we still have fox-hunting. … Yeah. So it’s not like I grew up in hick central. Or whatever the British equivalent of that is.

Nevertheless, it seems most participants’ responses support Raymond Bellour’s famous description of Hollywood as a machine which consecrates (heterosexual) coupledom. ‘The good wedding,’ he writes using Hitchcock’s North by North West as an example, is Hollywood cinema’s ‘algebraic product, its ineluctable end’ (1975: 347). If American cinema, then, is characterized by the repeated happy union of couples, one might argue that the romantic comedy (rather than the Western) is the most American of all genres. This is stated explicitly by many of my interview respondents. I will detail below how German participants often did not recognize the genre as their own, but this is also the case for other national groups: ‘I think of romantic comedies as being more American,’ said graphic designer Tina (Interview 27, London). When I asked married couple Hermione and Louis if they felt that Sweet Home Alabama was American, they traced back the genre’s history in this way:

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Interview Extract 17: Group 33, London. Partners Hermione and Louis, 60s. Hermione: I think it’s always been an American (film) though, isn’t it? When you think of all the classic ones, you think of... you know you do think of [Audrey Hepburn... [Louis: Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn... Audrey Hepburn... Hermione: Spencer Tracy... and... Cary Grant... you know, you do – because as Louis said they used to be called ‘screwball comedies’, and that kind of, very snappy, very American writing. Isn’t it? So I think that, you know, historically you do tend to think of them as being... being American.

Viewers thus seemed to associate the happy ending and the romantic plot with America. Since both these narrative tropes are seen as inherent to the romantic comedy (MacDowell, 2013: 71), the genre as a result becomes emblematic of Hollywood cinema as a whole. However, I now wish to turn to the specificities of the romance narrative, and investigate how it aligns with the politics of the American Dream.

The American Dream In his history of the American Dream, Jim Cullen notes that despite its centrality to the construction of the United States as an imagined community (Anderson, 2006), the way the American Dream has been understood has in fact shifted significantly over the last four centuries. In its current iteration, meanwhile, it is ‘virtually taken for granted’, he suggests, that ‘in the United States anything is [allegedly] possible if you want it badly enough’ (Cullen, 2004: 17). Thus, the Dream has become strongly associated with class mobility, defined by Karen Sternheimer as ‘the deep-seated American belief that both hard work and luck can lead anyone to rise above their beginnings’ (Sternheimer, 2014: 10). As the rest of this chapter will demonstrate, however, a key component of the performance of European identity as displayed by my interviewees is a distrust in the universalist promise of the American Dream.

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Though the precise term didn’t necessarily come up every time, a third of viewers, most of them British and German, strongly identified Sweet Home Alabama’s narrative of class mobility with Americanness. ‘It’s like in that American way, it’s American-dreamesque? … Like going away and making something of themselves. Like she had nothing, and she made out of nothing, like hard work and all that crap,’ explains charity worker Felicity (Group 23, London). This emphasis on self-improvement has been emphasized by both Tamar Jeffers MacDonald and Hilary Radner in their work on makeover cinema and ‘girly’ films, respectively (Jeffers McDonald, 2010: 186; Radner, 2011: 143–5). This also resonates with Brenda Weber’s work on the makeover television phenomenon of the early 2000s which was ‘largely predicated on abstract values of U.S. citizenship in its valorizing of autonomy, class mobility, egalitarianism, and selfmaking’ (2009: 55). Importantly, Group 5 (Berlin) noted that the film’s version of the Dream and its association with romance was double-stranded, as both Jake and Melanie – who eventually reunite at the end of the film – undergo a similar transformation. Trainee baker Lina (interviewed with her boyfriend Tom and her older sister Olga) described Melanie’s status as a ‘rising star of the fashion world’ as ‘American, really American’. She also noted the parallel with Jake’s own success: ‘she’s built something for herself, like him with his glassblowing factory.’ The parallel is reinforced in the film, as the same expression occurs twice to describe both characters’ trajectory: ‘I’m a big enough person to commend her for making something of herself ’ is Mayor of New York Kate’s assessment of her future daughter-inlaw. When Melanie reunites with Jake and asks what took him so long, he responds with the same phrase: ‘I needed to make something of myself.’ For theatre scholar Bianca (Group 19, Lyon), the association of class and romance is central to the rom-com genre as a whole, which she summed up as ‘Pretty Woman, basically’. Later, upon being asked to define the genre, she answered:

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for me a romantic comedy kind of has these two fundamentals, with a love story and behind it all the same something a bit social … There’s a fairy tale storyline, it’s a narrative of social mobility … so then you have two types of comedies: the ones where that happens because of the women, or it happens through the union with the man.

Interestingly, participants did not all agree on which model applied to the film, as several groups who did not watch the credit sequence to the end (as described in Chapter 2) assumed that Melanie gives up her career to stay with Jake in Alabama. Lorelei and Sabine, for instance, described the film as a reverse American Dream (Group 8, Berlin). Relatedly, the fact that Sweet Home Alabama associates the transcendence of class boundaries with geographical boundaries (moving from Pigeon Creek, Alabama, to New York) was usually not commented upon. However, practically every group poked fun at the film’s cliché association of the South with poverty and New York with elitism and power, though there was disagreement as to which side the film ultimately sides with. Most groups criticized the film for supporting the ‘nice but poor’ Alabama without reflecting on the South’s difficult political history (e.g. Annie, Group 34, Kent). However, Betty in Group 23 (London) noted that the film ‘definitely assumed we would be outsiders [to the South]’. Where participants did tend to agree, however, is when they took issue with the film for presenting the HEA as a reward for social mobility. Hence when Melanie starts to get curious about the beautiful glass used at the street fair, Nate (Group 31, London) correctly guessed that this must be related to Jake, before noting: ‘What’s funny about that is that the subtext of that is: “Oh right you’re successful now! Okay! Divorce is off!”’ His girlfriend Rose, however, disagreed: ‘Yeah but she’s already successful on her own, and also she’s marrying someone who she met (somewhere else) and is much richer than he is.’ This was not a moral argument, however, as both Rose and Nate (as well as the other participants who rewarded his comment with laughter) agreed that Melanie’s love for Jake shouldn’t hinge on his financial success. Rather, their disagreement was based on whether the narrative actually

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presented this argument or undermined it. The same disagreement occurred in Group 17 (Paris) between Sophie and Martha. Whilst student Martha noted that ‘it’s interesting that their relationship is tied into that commercial success, because his success means that he’s now worthy of her’, her friend Sophie countered that ‘the whole point – the whole reason why he hid it was because he didn’t want her to like him because of his success’. This was also picked up by Bianca, who was annoyed that the film left both these interpretations open:

Interview Extract 18: Interview 19, Lyon. Bianca, mid-30s. We don’t know at what point she realises that he’s finally become a success. And that in the end is a bit like the abortion thing, I find that annoying that we don’t know. Because I think it doesn’t say the same things if she doesn’t know [she pauses] when she comes back to him, or whether she does. Because then in one case there’s an alternative dimension, of choosing an alternative lifestyle, whereas in the other it’s having the cake and eating it too.

Gender scholar Karolina also shared this view:

Interview Extract 19: Interview 6, Berlin. Karolina, mid-30s. Karolina: This guy, right? It appears that he had this – what was it, restaurant? Alice: Yeah glass... Karolina: Factory, glass shop, or whatever. [in an ironic tone] So great, wow. When’s it’s after that he’s not even a loser! Yeah. [Alice chuckles] Alice: Would it be better if he were a loser? Do you think? Like if she... had picked the guy who didn’t have a job, or... Karolina: Yeah that would be more interesting, yeah. Alice: Yeah. Karolina: But they had to make him... not a loser, because a positive hero in American... romantic comedy cannot be loser.

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Participants were clearly sensitive to the strong association between romantic and economic success – though they often rejected it on moral grounds. Moreover, the rom-com plot and the American Dream narrative can also be associated by their similar narrative structures, which also seemed to inform participants’ comments. The romance scholar and novelist Catherine Roach defines the romance narrative as: ‘the story of love, as a noun, [which] reduces down in its essence to a verb. In its most condensed form the story is a command, a verbal imperative: “Love!”’ (2016: 20). Roach breaks down the romance narrative, which she identifies as present in everything from romance novels, to pop music and – crucially – romantic comedies, into nine key components: ‘1) It’s hard to be alone, especially 2) in a man’s world, but 3) romance helps as a religion of love, even though it involves 4) hard work, and 5) risk because it leads to 6) healing, 7) great sex, and 8) happiness, and it 9) levels the playing field for women’ (my emphasis, 2016: 21). It is this individualized imperative to love, or rather this representation of the romantic HEA as the outcome of risk-taking and hard work, which parallels the self-determinism at the heart of the American dream. The argument can also be reversed. If the romance narrative is intrinsically self-deterministic, whereby happiness in love is based on individual hard work, the American Dream in current popular culture can also be described as a romance narrative. For example, in June 2014 the screenwriter, actress and ‘queen of rom-com’ (Rackham, 2016) Mindy Kaling was invited to speech at the Harvard School of Law Class Day ceremony. After a multitude of jokes and the obligatory Legally Blonde reference, the actress stated she would ‘get serious for a second’, before adding: I am an American of Indian origin whose parents were raised in India … They met in Africa, immigrated to America, and now I am the star and the creator of my own network television program. The continents travelled, the languages mastered, and the standardised tests prepared for and taken, over and over again, and the cultures navigated are amazing even to me. My family’s dream, about a future unfettered by

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limitations imposed by who you know, and dependent only on what you know, was only possible in America. Their romance with this country is more romantic than any romantic comedy that I could ever write. And it’s all because they believed, as I do, in the concept of the inherent fairness that is alive in America; and that here you could aspire and succeed, and my parents believed that their children could aspire and succeed to levels that could not have happened anywhere else in the world. (Harvard Law School, 2014)

A trans-generational narrative which posits America as the land of freedom and equality, Kaling’s speech is a rephrasing of the American Dream, or, rather, a retelling of the Dream as a romantic comedy. Indeed, it is possible to map the contours of her speech using Catherine Roach’s blueprint for the romance narrative. Kaling’s story hints at an initial situation characterized by unfairness and inequality (‘it’s a hard world’ – elements one and two of Roach’s model), which is transcended through ‘amazing’ hard work and risk (stages four and five) and nearreligious ‘belief ’ in America (‘romance as religion’, stage three), to achieve a state of true and fair equilibrium (‘level playing field’, stage nine). Hence, there is similar narrative structure between the American Dream and the contemporary rom-com, which presents romance as an overcoming-the-odds narrative. Several cultural scholars have noted the important role played by film in the propagation of the American Dream. Thus for Jim Cullen, in the 1920s the Hollywood film industry embodied the American Dream (2004: 130–4), and Emmett Winn has pointed to the Cinderella narrative as retold in films such as Working Girl (Nichols, 1988), Maid in Manhattan (Wang, 2002) or Pretty Woman as a gendered version of the American Dream (2007: 87–98). And, indeed, in the contemporary romantic comedy, love and fortune have tended to come together (Cobb and Negra, 2017: 760). Or, as Kyle Stevens puts it: ‘happiness in love and labor merge, symbiotically, each signifying the other’s existence’ (2020: 28). This was discussed in some detail by the participants in Group 31 (London), who engaged most directly with the notion of the American

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Dream (they used the term several times). They made this connection when I asked them whether there were differences between British and American romantic comedies. Rose opened the discussion by explaining that British rom-coms featured less successful characters than their American counterpart. Citing Notting Hill (1999), she noted the class difference between Julia Roberts’ rich actress and Hugh Grant’s lowly book-seller, adding:

Interview Extract 20: Group 31, London. Henry, Martin, Nate, Noel and Rose, mid-20s to early 30s. [Rose: and like, they all take the piss out of Hugh Grant’s character for being a complete dork. [Henry: Julia Roberts’ character. Henry: But she still fell for him though! Again it’s that = Martin: What about … = ‘You can do it!’ [Rose laughs loudly] [Henry: ‘You got it guys!’ [Rose [laughing]: ‘Keep going!’ Henry: ‘You can just be a normal book seller and fall in love [with a movie star! It happens!’ [Rose: ‘And live in a really expensive house in Notting Hill!’ Henry: It doesn’t – it never happens. [Rose laughs] Nate: I mean it does happen, just [statistically it’s unlikely. [Henry: It doesn’t happen!

For Rose and Henry, the romance narrative and the American Dream are connected because they follow the same (empty) trajectory, falsely promising a happy ending allegedly available to everyone. Importantly, their statements take the form of a series of quotations, which establish a firm distance from the message they believe the film conveys. Moreover, their parody of Notting Hill’s message takes the form of imperatives statements, which echo Roach’s definition of the

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romance narrative as a command to ‘Love!’ This connection between romantic union and economic success has long been central to the American Dream. As Karen Sternheimer notes, it became particularly developed in post–Second World War America, where the suburban nuclear family became the symbol of or microcosm for the American Dream, thereby entrenching economic stability in heteronormativity (2014: 133). In romantic comedy, similarly, romance is almost always associated with material comfort. Note how Group 31 associated the two: whilst Henry’s focus is on the romance narrative, albeit one rendered difficult by class – and national – differences (‘you can fall in love’), Rose’s completion of his sentence focused solely on material comfort (‘and live in a really nice house’). This was not the first time the group discussed the film’s upholding of the American Dream. Henry brought this up very early on in the discussion, when I asked them to describe the film (the first question on my list – see Appendix 2).

Interview Extract 21: Group 31, London. Henry, Martin, Nate, Neil and Rose, mid-20s to early-30s. Henry: Can I say … that this film again is a Classical Hollywood making … it gives hope to the everyman. [pause] [Rose chuckles] Nate: Oh! Neil: How does it give hope to the man? Alice: Yeah, what do you mean? Henry: No every person, sorry. Neil: Every person, yeah.

Henry’s comments demonstrate his scepticism towards the universalist self-determinism of the American Dream, which is falsely promised to every one of Sweet Home Alabama viewers.

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Group 31’s reading of Notting Hill was focussed on Hugh Grant’s William Thacker. This may be because the group was made up mostly of men, as most of the other groups discussed this as a feminine phenomenon. Indeed, a few participants on the contrary emphasized the film’s feminization of the Dream. Thus, when I asked married couple Pia and Florian (Group 4, Berlin) what made the film American in their eyes, they pointed to the proposal scene in Tiffany’s, criticizing its consumerism and lack of privacy. Florian added that the scene represented a ‘“girls” American Dream: Awesome husband, lots of money, great love’. This seems to tap into a historical trait of the romance genre more broadly. In their analysis of the work of romance novelist Elinor Glyn, Karen Randall and Alexis Weedon emphasize her fascination with America as the land of women’s independence: ‘America held not only the “dream” of opportunity and prosperity, but also the “dream” of autonomy in love – a new world, where early emancipation, popular acceptance of divorce and a woman’s ability to own and spend her own money are intoxicatingly freeing’ (Randall and Weedon, 2020: 20). For student Bridget (Interview 10, Berlin), however, it was not the film’s romantic relationships, but its central mother–daughter bond, which was ‘very American’. I interviewed Bridget, who herself has a young daughter, alone, and when I asked her to comment on the film’s women characters, she noted:

Interview Extract 22: Interview 10, Berlin. Bridget, 30s. Alice: What do you think of the relationship between Melanie and her mother? That’s also quite… Bridget: it’s very American, I think … I mean, in a small town like that, that the mothers are, that they want their kids, and particularly their daughters, to do well, and not lead the lives that they led, but lead the lives they would actually have liked to live.

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Though Bridget doesn’t mention the American Dream by name, her emphasis on trans-generational ambition pinpoints a central element in the Dream. Medical student Eleanor also made a similar point, describing the film as ‘a portrait of the United States’, which included ‘a trans-generational portrait, with the mum telling her daughter, “go to the pageant queens” [sic], “go and live things better than I did”’ (Group 16, Paris). This supports Cullen’s suggestion that ‘from the very beginning … a notion that one’s children might have a better life has been a core component of the American Dream’ (2004: 17). Historically, however, Hollywood cinema has tended to explore the resulting generational conflicts through father–son relationships. This has been explored in depths by Stella Bruzzi (2005) and Claire Jenkins (2015). As the former remarks, ‘the father-son narrative has proved one of its [Hollywood’s] enduring motifs’ (Bruzzi, 2005: 50). Sweet Home Alabama, as Bridget describes, feminizes parental ambition. Indeed, contra the Hollywood stereotype of disregarded mothers (Jenkins, 2015: 48–50) it is fathers who are virtually absent from the film, where both Andrew and Jake’s fathers are explicitly stated to have abandoned their families. Meanwhile, even though Melanie’s father caused great amusement amongst participants for encapsulating most Southern stereotypes at once – he’s racist, and takes part in weekend re-enactments of Civil War battles – he ‘literally has six lines in the film’, to quote Nate (Group 31, London). The participants did note that the film nevertheless remained overall sympathetic to the character – in line with Hollywood’s historic attitude towards paternity: ‘the father might be a clown, but he remains the embodiment of paternalistic values’ (James Naremore, quoted in Bruzzi, 2005: 40). By contrast, Sweet Home Alabama’s mother figures are all presented in one way or another as trying to influence their children’s lives and improve their families. In this sense, they are close to the ‘action mother’ archetype outlined by Claire Jenkins (2015): Kate has her sights set on the American presidency for Andrew; Jake’s mother Stella chastises her son for giving up on his relationship with Melanie; finally, the latter’s mother, Pearl, is adamant that she wants ‘better’ for her daughter. Interestingly, her character was

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a sticking point for audiences as multiple groups – Bridget included – stated that they didn’t understand the character’s sudden change of mind with regard to her daughter’s relationships. Karolina (Group 6, Berlin), in particular, was scathing: ‘One second she’s super happy that she’s marrying this rich guy? And five seconds later she’s still again happy that she’s marrying another guy. So I guess the only point is to marry someone. And then … the daughter will be happy anyway.’ Not all participants shared this reading of Melanie ‘marrying into’ the American Dream, however. For both Arabella (Group 30, Manchester) and Sabine (Group 8, Berlin), for example, feminine self-determinism and empowerment are a defining feature of the romantic comedy genre, which they both referred to as ‘chick flick’. For film student Sabine, this focus on individual success is central to the Americanness of the genre: ‘If one defines chick flicks in the sense that they provoke a specific film experience, which has precisely to do with this American dream and empowerment [N.B: both words are used in English], I would also say that they don’t exist in German cinema’, she said. Arabella went further, to suggest that the chick flick prioritizes women’s self-empowerment and rewards them through romance:

Interview Extract 23: Group 30, Manchester. Friends Arabella and Celia, mid-20s. Arabella: There’s always – the women are like generally trying to better themselves, or get to like an end point, and then the man falls back in line. Celia: Yeah... Arabella: So whatever their ambition was... the man can’t align with it, and then they somehow come to a mutual understanding. And then you’re like [high-pitched]: ‘Oooh! We can have it all!’

Key to both Arabella’s and Sabine’s comments is a reflexion on how the romantic comedy positions the woman viewer. Arabella’s citation brings forth one of the key debates within feminism. ‘Having it all’ is often

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seen as encapsulating the way third-wave feminism (often criticized as ‘choice feminism’ or ‘post-feminism’) has distinguished itself from second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s (Winch, 2012). Rosalind Gill has argued that post-feminism should be conceived as a ‘sensibility’ articulated (notably) in the media, and which ‘constructs a suture between feminist and anti-feminist ideas … effected entirely through a grammar of individualism’ (Gill, 2007: 142, 162). This corresponds with comments by several participants on the film’s individualistic representation of the American Dream, particularly within Melanie’s trajectory:

Interview Extract 24: Group 31, London. Friends Henry, Martin, Nate, Neil and Rose, mid-20s to early 30s. Nate: It’s definitely about the woman’s journey, isn’t it? Rose: Yeah. Neil: (Her things to do.) These men are just pieces of furniture. [pauses] In her life essentially. Henry: Natch. Neil: I mean – she needs them to fulfil herself emotionally, but they have no bearing on their destiny. Nate: Like she’s in charge of her destiny.

Importantly, participants did not read Melanie’s self-determinism as a feminist act. On the contrary, her individualism was often read negatively. In two Parisian cases, participants even had fairly heated discussions about whether the character was ‘selfish’ or not (Group 17, Paris), and whether she was cruel to her old friends or not (Group 16, Paris). Moreover, in London, Tina (Interview 27) contrasted Melanie’s isolation with the emphasis being placed on Jake’s friendship group. She reads this opposition as anti-feminist: ‘he had a whole group of people … whereas she didn’t’ she noted, adding ‘I find in these films, they never have anybody quite close. So it is male-centric in that sense.’ This

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was supported by Arabella (Group 30, Manchester), who took issue with another Reese Witherspoon rom-com, Legally Blonde. ‘When she’s in her sorority and it’s all about sisterhood together? But that’s not deemed an attractive thing? To be geared towards friendships?’ she complained, adding that the film isolates the heroine from her group of friends. She also questioned the way it rewarded social mobility with romance: ‘now she’s desirable because she has a qualification or she’s at Harvard.’ Interestingly, Lorelei (Group 8, Berlin, where participants did not watch the film to the end) read Sweet Home Alabama as a reverse American Dream, with Melanie rejecting success in favour of a return to ‘the community’. For both Lorelei and Arabella, then, both films present economic success as an individual choice, whilst at the same time rewarding it through coupledom. This notion of the romantic happily-ever-after as an individual choice is a central theme in the contemporary rom-com, perhaps best encapsulated in a line from Love and Other Disasters (Keshishian, 2006), as heroine Jacks (Brittany Murphy) prepares herself to make a grand gesture and chase her love interest across the world: ‘maybe true love is a decision,’ she tells her best friend Peter, ‘a decision to take a chance with somebody without worrying whether they’ll give anything back, or if they are going to hurt you, or if the really are the one’ (my emphasis). Moreover, this definition of love as ‘labourintensive’ reflects the encroachment of the neoliberal ‘ethos of efficient pragmatism’ into the private sphere of romance (Ruti, 2016: 74). Further examples of emotionally guarded protagonists deciding to take a romantic risk can be found in The Holiday (Meyers, 2006), Friends with Benefits (Gluck, 2011), Bridesmaids (Feig, 2011) or How to Be Single (Ditter, 2016). Laura Winn calls this the genre’s ‘Carpe Diem script’, which she notes also ‘obfuscates the very real situational constraints and relational uncertainties prevalent in many real dating contexts’ (2007: 248). As Deborah Jermyn also argues in the case of The Holiday, American Amanda’s (Cameron Diaz) ability to choose to pursue a cross-border relationship with British Graham (Jude Law) is enabled by her whiteness and class privilege (Jermyn, 2020: 144).

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Recent indie rom-coms, however, have pointed out the fallacy of this self-deterministic script. Eric Schaeffer’s Boy Meets Girl (2014), for example, follows the romantic entanglements of transgender waitress Ricky, who eventually falls in love with her best friend, Robby. The couple’s ultimate reunion is preceded by an argument, in which the jealous Robby accuses Ricky of shying away from emotions, and hurls abuse at her. Ricky runs away, and Robby stumbles on a videorecording of a teenage Ricky confessing suicidal thoughts. He chases after her and asks: ‘why didn’t you tell me all that stuff?’ ‘Because you were my only friend, and I couldn’t take the risk,’ she responds. The exchange in itself could belong to a number of the films quoted above (‘I was scared … I want my best friend back,’ says Justin Timberlake’s Dylan in Friends with Benefits), but the implications here are very different. The notion of ‘risk’ for Ricky is not just a broken heart, but implies completely isolation and potential physical harm. Meanwhile, Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani’s The Big Sick (Showalter, 2017) problematizes the individualism of the American Dream as enshrined in the contemporary romantic comedy. In a sequence during the film’s dramatic turn, hero and second-generation Asian-American Kumail rejects his parents’ attempt at matchmaking him with a Pakistani woman, asking: ‘Why did you bring me here if you wanted me to not have an American life? We come here but we pretend like we’re still back there? That’s so stupid!’ His father Azmat responds: ‘You think American Dream is just about doing whatever you want and not thinking about other people? You’re wrong!’ And whilst the film eventually unites Kumail with his white girlfriend Emily, the scene ends with Azmat’s line, giving him the final say in the encounter. Much of the scholarly and popular criticism around the rom-com has criticized the political void of the genre’s contemporary cycle, particularly with regard to the politics of race and class (see the review of literature in the Introduction, as well as Hans, 2018). This issue was also picked up by numerous groups I interviewed, particularly in feminist groups, as developed in Chapter 3. Johanna, for instance, criticized the film’s ‘token black characters’ (Group 1, Berlin); Eleanor

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castigated the film’s use of ‘a journalist with a Jewish name, “Stein”something’ to represent New York City (Group 16, Paris); Marie, finally, regretted the ‘typical’ sidelining of the gay best friend compared to the film’s central heterosexual relationship (Group 9, Berlin). Bianca (Interview 19, Lyon), meanwhile, noted that Sweet Home Alabama ‘negates difference’. She then added that ‘it would be less of a rom-com if one could feel the violence of class warfare’. Such comments echo Gill’s definition of the post-feminist individual which ‘has replaced almost entirely notions of the social or political, or any idea of the individual as subject to pressures, constraints or influence from outside themselves’ (2007: 162–4). For many participants, then, the Americanness of romantic comedy was strongly associated with the presence of what Catherine Roach calls the ‘romance narrative’. Not only is this romance narrative accompanied by narratives of class mobility, but it is often structured like the American Dream, presenting romantic happiness as the result of self-determinism and unimpeded by social or material realities. However, there is a strong awareness from my interview participants that the universalist promise of both the American Dream and the romance narrative’s HEA is a fairly meaningless one. Significantly, this was already the case in the mid-2010s, a few years before the 2016 presidential election. Looking back on the interview material, one wonders whether direct references to politics might have featured more heavily in these discussions were the fieldwork conducted today: the scene where a crowd cheers as Kate, the blonde pantsuitwearing Democrat politician is punched in the face certainly feels grimly prophetic. Interestingly at the time, very few participants made the connection between Kate and Hilary Clinton, and when Rose (Group 31, London) suggested the similarity, the notion was dismissed by the rest of the group. Nevertheless, what defines a European viewer, or at least the version of European viewership performed by my participants in the interviews, is a clear mistrust of the American Dream. To quote Jill (Group 34, Kent): ‘We’re just like fed these apple-pie versions of the American dream and … I

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don’t buy it! I’ve got kids, I’ve got a job, and I don’t … I don’t know, I can’t relate to this … namby-pamby … pathetic-ness, personally.’ The awareness of that emptiness, I argue, is evoked strongly in the performance of European viewership.

The construction of European viewership Richard Maltby has defined Hollywood as the intersection of art and commerce, which he argues cannot be analysed separately (2003: 6–7). This definition of Hollywood aligns with much of the scholarship on the relationship between Europe and American cinema which, broadly, has historically been described as one of uneven competition, and of Hollywood’s gradually increasing ‘domination of the world’s movie screens’ throughout the twentieth century (Segrave, 1997). In artistic terms, however, other scholars have described the connection between Hollywood and Europe as one of bilateral exchanges: thus, Ginette Vincendeau and Alastair Phillips have examined transnational stars’ migration to and from Hollywood; others have explored Hollywood’s practice of ‘remaking’ European films (Barnier and Moine, 2002; Mazdon, 2000; Phillips and Vincendeau, 2006). In Germany, Thomas Elsaesser has examined the strong connections between the New German Cinema and Hollywood, highlighting that the New German filmmakers in particular turned to American directors for replacement father figures and to American cinema in general for influence, whilst at the same time repeatedly highlighting the vacuity of American commercialism (Elsaesser, 1998: 142–6). There is a similarity between the ambivalent relationship of German directors to Hollywood as described by Elsaesser, and the modes of European viewership that I encountered among my participants. As we will now see, European viewership was constructed or performed by my participants as an ability to both understand and reject the ideology conveyed by the film, and thus to be both a (relative) insider and a deliberate outsider to Americanness. If, as this chapter has so

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far argued, Americanness in Sweet Home Alabama is recognized by audiences in stylistic and narrative terms, we can now add here a third category: Americanness as ideological preaching.

Americanness and moralism My opening question for (nearly) all post-screening discussion was to ask participants to simply describe the film. This was borrowed from Katz and Liebes’ research protocol in their study of Dallas audiences (and is a fairly frequent practice in film and television studies; see Tulloch, 2000: 162) as it allows, they argue, a pinpointing of the elements that participants themselves consider important or discussion-worthy (Liebes and Katz, 1993: 49). In my case, the question caused some awkwardness, and was sometimes followed by a fairly long silence and laughter, as participants struggled to understand the point of the question: was this a test to see if they had paid attention? Did I want a summary, or did I expect them to launch into a philosophical analysis? What I did find striking, however, was how quickly some groups moved on to discuss the film as American, a trait which was usually associated with a negative value judgement. In Group 22 (Paris), for instance, Anna described the film in her first intervention as: ‘absolutely in the American style, like the poor one, the rich one … you’ve basically got a moral at the end, and the chick doesn’t choose the money and the status, but rather love. That’s it really, it’s a love story with a wellknown ending as often with American films like that.’ Sections of her analysis will seem familiar at this stage, with an emphasis on American cinema as predictable and reliant on crude stereotyping. Central to Anna’s argument however – as denoted by the stress she places on the word ‘moral’ – is that the film has an explicit intention to influence its audience. For Anna, then, preaching is the defining tone of American cinema, and, according to some participants, American culture in general. For example, retired lecturer Francis told me that he was surprised at the film’s lack of religious connotations or references. When I then asked him whether he believed the film aimed for realism,

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however, his response mimicked the form of a sermon, as he produced an accumulation of moral statements:

Interview Extract 25: Group 22, Paris. Partners Francis and Felicia, 70s. I think it wants to be realist, and that it exemplifies moral principles. Because American culture is still a culture where morality is really strong, and that ‘money can’t buy happiness’, ‘good people are always rewarded’, ‘people are loyal’, ‘loyal people are good people’, that ‘traditional virtues rooted in the soil under a sometimes-rough appearance are still the foundation of American society’, that ‘the cream of New York high fashion is very beautiful and very seductive, but something bad is lurking underneath’.

Without necessarily using the term ‘moral’ or ‘preaching’, several other groups emphasized the film’s (and by extension American cinema’s) moral rigidity: ‘a positive hero in American romantic comedy cannot be a loser,’ stressed Karolina (Group 6, Berlin). Meanwhile, whilst Francis used repetitions to make his point, other participants used the imperative mode (or in German, modal verbs) to reproduce the film’s message. Thus Pia described the proposal scene’s message as an order (similar to Roach’s description of the romance narrative) ‘when you receive a proposal of marriage or get married, you become a princess and therefore you must behave like a princess’ (Group 4, Berlin). Hollywood cinema’s message may be uncompromising, but participants also found linguistic strategies to distance themselves from it. The most obvious one was the quotation mark, as exemplified by Francis above, which can be signalled physically (using ‘air quotes’) or aurally by a change of tone. More than this for Henry (Group 31, London), the American Dream was defined by its impossibility. Sweet Home Alabama ‘gives hope to the everyman’, he said, but when I asked him what he meant, he added: ‘I mean that in reality that’s never gonna happen. … And so it’s like – you know, that American Dream.’ Hence,

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the American Dream is not the achievement of upward mobility; it is the false promise of that mobility, which is mediated through film, media, political discourse, etc. By contrast, then, European viewers become defined by their refusal to believe in that promise. My findings here align with previous research undertaken on international audiences of Hollywood cinema, including by Jackie Stacey (1994), Melanie Selfe (2008, 2013) or Philippe Meers. In Maltby and Stokes’s Hollywood Abroad (2004), Phillippe Meers presents the results of interviews undertaken with teenagers in Belgium on the issue of national cinema. In particular, he notes how young people depicted American cinema and Belgian cinema in a series of binary oppositions in terms of style, subject matter, acting style, etc. However, he notes, the latter is not referred to as ‘American’ or ‘foreign’, but rather as the default mode of filmmaking (Meers, 2004). Similarly, the audiences I have interviewed clearly distinguished between American cinema and their own national productions.

Americanness as excess In Hollywood Abroad, Richard Maltby suggests that Hollywood films do not really possess a national identity but rather that their very ‘Americanness’ is in fact created by foreign audiences, and projected back onto the films as ‘other’ (2004: 4). This is also supported in my interviews through the discourse of American cinema as a cinema of excess, an excess which is relative to the subtlety or minimalism of European cinema. This excess operates both within and outside the diegesis; it is stylistic, narrative and also economic. As already mentioned, one of the film’s strongest critics with regard to its aesthetic was Joseph (Group 20, Normandy). He described his experience of watching Sweet Home Alabama thus: ‘you’re exhausted, I mean. It’s funny because they’re films where everything is saturated. That is: you’re saturated with sound, you’re saturated with image, saturated with shots, counter-shots, and this and that.’ Like other participants, Joseph emphasized his point by performing the very

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saturation he criticized; his speech is filled with repetitive patterns. This aesthetic saturation, however, has consequences, and as a result ‘you don’t have a single minute to project your own image’, noted Joseph. This point also takes us back again to the notion of romantic comedy and Americanness as physically consumed, seeping (uninvited) into the body. Peter (Group 16, Paris) also emphasizes the corporeality of that excess: ‘American films in general, and like most French made-forTV movies, are hyper-signifying, everything has to have a meaning, nothing is left to chance because the script has been pared down to be understood by American brains.’ Meanwhile, other participants emphasized the film’s narrative excess: for Johanna, Sweet Home Alabama is ‘typically American, everything exaggerated’ (Group 1, Berlin), whilst Olga noted that ‘everything is lightly exaggerated, … everything a tick too much’ (Group 5, Berlin). As previously noted, the discourse of excess also permeated discussions of stardom, as several groups described Melanie’s character as ‘overly feminine’ and ‘too girly’. Here again, America is constructed as what exceeds the boundaries of European sensibility. Finally, participants seemed to concur with Maltby’s previously quoted assertion that art and commerce cannot be separated in Hollywood cinema (2003: 6–7). This also seems to be the case within the diegesis. Hence whilst Anna and her friend Laura mocked the film’s supposed moral that ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ (Group 22, Paris), Olga (Group 5, Berlin) on the contrary argued that American cinema enshrined material stability: ‘it’s really important, that one doesn’t worry about money, or it’s important to have money. Lots of it.’ Moreover, numerous participants expressed disgust at the film’s excessive association between romance and money. In Northern France (Group 13), for instance, the participants described the wedding ceremony as ‘a bit too “show biz”’ and ‘jet set’. The issue came up repeatedly – as previously discussed – in relation to the proposal scene, which Vanessa (Group 18, Montpellier) called ‘bombastic and American’. In Kent, when I asked participants to describe their feelings towards the scene, they responded as follows:

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Interview Extract 26: Group 34, Kent. Friends Annie, Harriet, Jill, Lily and Valerie, early 30s. Jill: it’s just too... [much, isn’t it? [Harriet makes an exploding sound] [all agree loudly] Harriet: It’s so – it’s so [American, it’s so big and American isn’t it? [Jill: Yeah... Valerie: it’s not – it is consumerist, but it’s that sense – Jill: ‘Oh, look at all the shops! He has lots of shops there didn’t he?

Excess in Hollywood is thus related to both aesthetics and ideology, both of which are visible (‘big’), or at least noticeable, by European audiences.

A ‘European’ audience? I want to add to Philippe Meers’ argument (2004) and suggest that whilst participants did emphasize a dichotomy between Hollywood and European cinema, they also constructed a European sensibility to cinema as a particular form of media literacy. In other words they expressed an opposition between European and American ‘viewerships’. I use the terms ‘sensibility’ and ‘viewership’ (as opposed to ‘spectatorship’) because they suggest a fluidity, and the outcome of an education which participants also emphasized: ‘I know I was sold that dream of thinking “oh if only I lived in America and went to proms and all of that”,’ said Tina (Interview 27, London). This European sensibility also necessitates being both inside and outside of Hollywood cinema. Participants, who constantly referred to the film as ‘predictable’, were fluent practitioners of Hollywood’s film language, and familiar with its stylistic and narrative codes. When necessary, they were even able to ‘become’ American viewers, as suggested by Lorelei when she recounted going to see the first Sex and the City film with a group of women friends in Paris: ‘That was a collective girly [in English] rom-com moment,’ she explains, ‘but also, I would say, an American

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moment,’ added Sabine (Group 8, Berlin). Interestingly, this idea of being both familiar with and a stranger to Americanness occurred particularly in discussion with viewers who stated they were rom-com aficionados. Thus, when I asked Martha whether Sweet Home Alabama felt American to her, she struggled to answer, explaining:

Interview Extract 27: Group 17, Paris. Friends Martha and Sophie, mid-20s. I dunno because in a way most of the rom-coms I watch – because I haven’t watched that many French ones I guess, or that many non… Anglophone ones. There’s that kind of cultural... dominance and cultural imperialism in a way that makes it normative although it’s... like, New York is ‘home’ in most films, although I’ve never been there, and I’m sure that if I went it would be very different? I think cinematically, it doesn’t feel foreign to me? So yeah maybe Alabama seems like a... or in that case really Georgia, it’s like that seems like a removed from... what is normative. But New York is like: ‘Oh yeah! This is standard’.

The other group of rom-com fans I interviewed made a similar point, with Betty stating that she ‘definitely felt we were meant to be outsiders to the South but au fait with a lot of North American rom-com conventions’ (Group 23, London). Betty’s friend Felicity concurred, stating that the film:

Interview Extract 28: Group 23, London. Colleagues and friends Betty, Felicity and Melissa, mid-20s. Makes it open for European audiences because we’re very – more familiar I’d say with New York culture from other, like, romantic comedies and sitcoms and things. And it has a lot of – as she said it has a lot of the conventions of the ones which are all set in New York and we kind of, understand their ways, but the people from the South are kind of... the ones who are new and different and weird.

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Specific genre conventions, then, work to further blur the line between outsider and insider to American culture. Nevertheless, it is striking how homogeneous interviewee responses were with regard to the Americanness of Sweet Home Alabama. This is all the more significant when compared with their different perspectives on other European rom-com productions. In addition to its focus on the central issue of gender, my study initially posited that nationality would play a key role in the reception of Hollywood romantic comedy, as each country under observation has a distinct history of both cinema as an art form and the women’s movement. As I’ll detail below, I did find the national identity of my interviewees to be significant in relation to European romantic comedy productions. When it came to participants’ outlook on Hollywood, however, the differences were a lot less significant than I had anticipated. More broadly, national identity did not greatly impact on what participants read in Sweet Home Alabama, though it did, however, affect the intensity of their dislike for it. To put it another way: participants across the three countries displayed a strong awareness of how the film’s Americanness was inscribed in its style, narrative and mode; whether that was a problem for their enjoyment of it varied between countries. Hence – unsurprisingly, as French anti-Americanism has been well documented (see for example Meunier, 2005; Roger, 2006) – French groups were particularly critical of the film, whereas the British and German groups were more positive. This does, to some extent, reflect the film’s box-office results. Interestingly, this unanticipated homogeneity aligns with the findings of other comparative projects, such as Christina Scharff ’s interviews with young feminists in the UK and Germany. Whilst there were a few cultural differences between German and British participants’ description of the women’s movement, Scharff concluded that ‘feminists were described as unfeminine in both contexts’ (2016: 17). Factors such as gender or indeed age did seem, however, to affect participants’ responses: most of the groups I interviewed with members over the age of 50 were particularly critical of the film (Group 1, Berlin;

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Groups 20 and Group 21, Paris; Group 33, London). I am unable to determine whether class made a significant difference in viewer responses, as my participants were broadly middle-class. Meanwhile, whilst the majority were white, issues of race and representation seemed significant to both white and non-white participants: numerous groups made fun of, or critiqued Sweet Home Alabama, for its privileging of whiteness and its symbolic annihilation of AfricanAmerican characters (which was perceived as compounded by the film’s southern setting). Whilst participants’ responses to Sweet Home Alabama did not differ significantly between national groups, there was rather more disparity when it came to discussing other European rom-coms. There seemed to be a form of reciprocity between the French and the British, who – if they discussed them at all – tended to praise the other country’s productions more than their own. Of the ten interviews I conducted in the UK, four British groups discussed French rom-coms; all of them praised Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amelie) (Jeunet, 2001), in particular for playing with the boundaries of the genre. To quote Sophia, a self-professed lover of French cinema: ‘It’s a lovely film, very cute, very quirky’ (Group 32, London). ‘Quirky’ is also the word used by Rose (Group 31, London) to describe the film’s central character, though she underlined the film’s traditional character development and romance narrative, noting that Audrey Tautou’s Amélie does ‘find[s] herself but in a like, roundabout way? But she still ultimately does ends up with a guy’. For this reason, several participants queried whether the film belonged to the rom-com genre at all. Cinephile Louis (Group 33, London), for instance, called the film ‘very imaginative … a more interesting take on a classic rom-com’. This notion was pushed further by Rose’s boyfriend Nate. Illustrating Celestino Deleyto’s analysis of rom-com’s definition as inherently bad (Deleyto, 2009: 3), he countered that the Jean-Pierre Jeunet film was too good to be a rom-com. ‘When you said Amélie, I was like: No but that’s good! ’Cos it’s interesting, and there are other themes and there’s other stuff going on. And in my head I said ‘ergo: it’s not a fucking rom-com’

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(Group 31, London). Amélie was by far the most cited French romcom, though the Catherine Deneuve comedy Potiche (Trophy Wife) (Ozon, 2010) also received a name check. Otherwise, most groups couldn’t identify or remember having seen many French rom-coms, even when I prompted them with names of films which had recently received UK distribution, such as Populaire (Popular) (Roinsard, 2012) or L’Arnarcoeur (The Heartbreaker) (Chaumeil, 2010). This finding very much accords with Lucy Mazdon and Catherine Wheatley’s account of the British reception of French cinema, which notes that French cinema has been associated with arthouse fare since the 1920s. ‘The notion that French cinema connotes “quality” and cultural prestige has remained at the heart of British perceptions of the cross-Channel product,’ they write (Mazdon and Wheatley, 2013: 212). They have also noted the class and regional slant of Frenchcinema distribution in the UK, as most Gallic films tended to be distributed in expensive arthouse cinemas in the south of England and London in particular. Interestingly (or depressingly for Frenchcinema distributors) my participants fit exactly this category, as for geographical and monetary reasons eight out of ten interviews were conducted in London, where I resided for the duration of this research project. And yet, only a few groups seemed aware of (or at least discussed) France’s rom-com production. As Mazdon and Wheatley have also remarked, despite the success of French genre productions at the UK box office in the 2000s, French films are seldom associated with genre cinema. Interestingly for the case of romantic comedy, however, Mazdon and Wheatley’s own book concludes by arguing that French cinema does produce genre films, including ‘Hollywood style rom-com’ (2013: 220). And, as Mary Harrod notes, there is a continuing mistrust in France itself of genre cinema as American (2015: 191). The genre, then, remains strongly associated with Hollywood. Whilst not quite half of UK participants discussed French romantic comedies, 70% of French groups mentioned British rom-coms, in discussions dominated by Richard Curtis-Working Title productions

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– though there was some uncertainty amongst participants as to whether the films were British or American. However, all French participants reviewed the films positively in comparison with Sweet Home Alabama. Doctor Irene (Group 13, Northern France), for example, praised Notting Hill (1999) several times in the interview, to the point that other group members lightly made fun of her for it (‘it’s her reference’, joked her friend Denise). However it is Curtis’ first script, Four Weddings and a Funeral (Newell, 1994), which received the most praise and emerged in the French interviews as the British equivalent to Amélie. In an echo of Nate’s comment about the Jeunet film above, some groups also questioned whether the film belonged to the rom-com genre. For instance, Vanessa and her daughter Chloe (Group 18, Montpellier) both firmly stated that they considered the film ‘a comedy where you really laugh’, whereas Sweet Home Alabama was only ‘quite fun’. Other groups also praised Four Weddings’ realism: Bianca (Interview 19, Lyon) called the film ‘very sharp’, and noted the class difference between Hugh Grant’s character and his romantic rival. Group 21 (Paris) also emphasized the film’s depth: ‘You really see social issues,’ noted Felicia, as her husband Francis immediately approved that ‘it’s a lot richer, yes’. This emphasis on the realism of British cinema accords with research by Leila Wimmer on the historical reception of British cinema in France (2008). As a counterpoint to Mazdon and Wheatley, who conclude that French cinema has consistently been associated with ‘quality’ and ‘art’ in the UK, Wimmer’s research has demonstrated that British cinema’s reception in France has varied widely from the end of the Second World War to today. Whilst French film critics were generally positive about British cinema in the immediate aftermath of the war, François Truffaut’s scathing dismissal of British film in the 1950s had a lasting impact on French attitude to British cinema. This then changed significantly in the 1990s, with the inclusion of Ken Loach in French film critics’ auteur pantheon. Nowadays, Loach ‘has been constructed as almost synonymous with British cinema’, argues Wimmer (2008: 242). In particular, she notes that his documentary aesthetics play a key role in the contemporary association in French critical and popular

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discourse between British cinema and social realism (Wimmer, 2008: 197–244). In this context, it makes sense that my French participants focussed on the ‘realistic’ quality of Richard Curtis’ work, including by highlighting how (un)representative Curtis’ vision of Britain is, particularly with regard to class. Wimmer also examines how the reception of British cinema in France has tended to fluctuate relative to the reputation of American cinema. Truffaut’s dismissal of British cinema, for example, particularly with regard to Hitchcock’s early work, served to amplify his praise of Hollywood cinema (Wimmer, 2008: 144). In the case of my participants, the reverse was evident: both French and British groups used positive assessments of the other country’s romantic comedy production as a benchmark against which to criticize American films of the same genre. Whilst participants from both countries were generally positive with regard to the other country’s rom-com productions, they differed in their appraisal of their own countries’ output. With the exception of a few participants who firmly stated that they disliked French cinema (such as Bianca, Interview 19, Lyon), most French participants were positive in their appraisal of French romantic comedies. By contrast, the films of Richard Curtis, particularly his most recent work, received mixed criticism in the UK: ‘he kind of divides people,’ remarked Louis (Group 33, London). On the one hand, Four Weddings and a Funeral, for instance, was generally celebrated for its humour and emotional realism. The fact that the film included ‘tragedy’ (Group 23, London) and ‘gloomy[ness’] (Group 28, North West London) was seen as more realistic and relatable. Indeed, a few groups mentioned humour as a key difference between British and American rom-coms, which were associated with less-subtle ‘slapstick’ comedy (Group 28; Interview 29, London) – interestingly, this rejoins the analysis by Jay Bamber, who argues that Richard Curtis’ films themselves create an opposition between British high culture (associated with literature) and American pop culture (associated with images) (Bamber, 2020: 164). This notion of relatability or realism was also associated with performance and stardom. Discussing Hugh Grant’s romantic appeal, participants in

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Group 34 (Kent) compared the actor to one of their formal school friend: that’s a little bit like ‘oh we’ve all known a boy at school like that’. Like, I can think of a guy who I was at school with who had the Hugh Grant curtains … lovely guy, probably wouldn’t wanna do anything with him. Sort of, not cute but not unattractive and it’s, yeah, it’s relatable. It feels, kinda of comfortable, like known.

By contrast, Curtis’ latest films, for example his directorial debut Love Actually (2003), also received criticism for their lack of diversity and accuracy: ‘Richard Curtis may have written Love Actually, it may feature a whole raft of British actors, but I never feel like that achieves the penetration of the British psyche, that something like Notting Hill actually really does get!’ argued PhD student Betty (Interview 23, South London). Graphic designer Tina seemed to agree: ‘They’re so very middle class,’ she noted (Interview 27, South London), ‘what they sell to America, there is no … ethnicity in England, where England I think out of all the European countries, it’s so multicultural.’ Interestingly, in both cases the lack of realism was associated with Americanness: Betty’s comment questions the very Britishness of Love Actually (‘it may feature British actors, but … ’), whereas Tina suggested that the film’s distorted representation of London was due to its American target audience. Meanwhile, whilst the French also discussed issues of realism (or, rather, emphasized that Hollywood cinema was not realistic), their discussions tended to remain intra-diegetic. Again, this echoes Wimmer’s analysis of French film criticism, where British cinema has been seen as politically engaged but aesthetically poor (2008: 231–4). As we have seen, there is some degree of appreciation, or at least mutual recognition of the other country’s cinema, between French and British groups. Germany, by contrast, stands out in this regard. None of my British or French participants expressed an awareness of German romantic comedy, with two British individual interviewees, Sophia (Group 32, London) and Noel (Group 29, London), specifically noting that they hadn’t seen any. Noel’s follow-up comment, in which he notes

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that ‘most of my knowledge of German film is Uwe Boll, so …’, points to the major reason for this lack of awareness: distribution patterns. According to data from German Films, the national organization charged with the promotion of German films abroad, only one of the twenty-nine German (or majority co-production) films distributed in the UK in the two years I conducted my interviews was a romantic comedy. Meanwhile, distribution in France follows a similar pattern, if a little more significant in terms of the volume of releases. Even so, Christian Ditter’s Love, Rosie (2014) may not immediately have come to participants’ mind as an example of a German film. In spite of its German funding and director, the film was set in the UK, shot in Dublin, adapted from a novel by Irish author Cecilia Ahern and starred two Anglo-American actors (Lilly Collins and Sam Claflin). Hence, whilst a few of the participants may have seen the film, it is unlikely they considered it a German film, and indeed it was not mentioned in any of the interviews. Meanwhile, the rest of German film distribution abroad was dominated by art-house dramas, such as Christian Petzold’s Barbara (2012) or Phoenix (2014), and documentaries such as Citizenfour (Poitras, 2014) (Split Screen, 2016). This contrasts with the success of German films at the German box office, where comedies have in recent years always outperformed drama. Between 2013 and 2015, six films that can be loosely associated with the romantic comedy genre were amongst the best-performing German films, including three by German actor/director Matthias Schweighöfer: Vaterfreuden (The Joys of Fatherhood) (Schweighöfer, 2014), Frau Ella (Madam Ella) (Goller, 2013) and Schlussmacher (The Break Up Man) (Schweighöfer and Künstler, 2013). What is even more striking is the fact that German participants themselves had little to say about their own national rom-com productions. The German name most associated with the genre was Til Schweiger. The actor/director/producer, better known to nonGerman audiences for his roles in action films such as King Arthur (Fuqua, 2004) or Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009), is strongly associated with the romantic comedy genre in Germany, particularly

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since his record-breaking hit film Keinohrhasen (Rabbit Without Ears) (Schweiger, 2007). In fact, Schweiger’s name is so strongly associated with the genre that I used it in my questions as a form of synecdoche, usually not asking participants their opinion of German rom-coms, but simply what they thought about ‘Til Schweiger films’. Significantly, ‘German rom-com’ simply did not seem to be a category that audiences recognized. Many struggled to think of German rom-coms (hence my Schweiger prompt), and some stated that they didn’t really exist. PhD film student Sabine – who refers to the genre as ‘chick flicks’ rather than rom-coms – suggested that this may have to do with the fact that the German equivalent of rom-coms do not address a specifically feminine audience. Her comments echo the work of Antje Ascheid discussed in Chapter 1 (2013):

Interview Extract 29: Group 8, Berlin. Sabine and Lorelei, mid-20s to early 30s. Sabine: About whether there are German chick-flicks, it comes down to the fact that if you just talk about chick flicks as films that are seen by women – I don’t know which films here in Germany would come to me. Where I’d automatically say: it can clearly only be seen by women. Keinohrhasen, that’s become more of a family film … father, mother, children watch it, or more of a teenage film.

In the previous chapter, I argued that participants regularly evoked and sought to differentiate themselves from the genre’s ‘phantom audience’, the gullible working-class woman (either young or elderly) who bought into the romance narrative wholesale. The above comments suggest that the phantom audience is also nationalized. Whilst participants’ opinions of European rom-coms varied between the three countries in my study, their responses to Hollywood cinema as exemplified by Sweet Home Alabama were broadly similar. Firstly,

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Sweet Home Alabama was seen by all (barring the one half-American viewer) as ‘very American’. Secondly, Americanness was defined as a formal, narrative and pervasive conservatism. Finally, it is against this perceived conservative ideology that participants defined or performed European viewership. The fact that this European viewership was defined against a perceived American conservatism is significant for my broader argument about the rom-com audience. Although I did not specifically ask participants about their personal politics, nearly all of them espoused liberal or progressive views in the group discussions: they were on the whole pro-abortion, in favour of gender equality, anticonsumerist, etc. This offers a counter-example to the stereotyping of rom-com audiences, confirming that it is possible to watch rom-coms and be socially progressive. European viewership in the interviews was performed by the participants as a particular form of sensibility, which involves being both familiar with and distinguishing oneself from American cinema. I use the term ‘performance’ here, for two reasons. Firstly, it emphasizes the fluidity of viewership, which needs to be taken into account in interview-based research (Billig, 1989: 205): not only were no two interviews – or indeed participants – the same, but individual participants’ opinions on the film evolved over the course of the interviews (and, as some also noted, over the course of their lives). Using ‘performance’ also has a methodological relevance: interviews and focus groups necessarily involve a degree of performance, as participants react to a number of factors. This included my presence and that of friends, partners or colleagues in the room, of course, but more crucially it also encompasses a series of assumptions about the spectatorial position demanded by a genre of its audience. Reading that ‘performance’, then, can allow us to map out who the rom-com’s ‘phantom audience’ is according to the European viewers I interviewed, namely the gullible, emotional and, importantly, American woman. Hence, the projection of this imagined viewer is inflected by nationalism, as well as class and gender (Seiter, 1990: 131).

Conclusion: ‘Cinder-fuckin’-rella’

Hollywood, terrace of the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel: Vivian (Julia Roberts), a sex worker, discusses with her best friend Kit (Laura San Giacomo) the possibility of a happily-ever-after with her client Edward (Richard Gere) towards the end of Gary Marshall’s Pretty Woman (1990). From the continuity editing to the shot/reverse-shot construction, the scene is in some ways a perfect example of the contemporary rom-com’s use of Classical Hollywood style, a classicism which has contributed to the genre being regularly described as ‘uncinematic’ (see Chapters 1, 3 and 4). Continuity editing conventions are followed; the cuts are mostly matched to dialogue, with the notable exception of Kit’s ‘you love him’. Here, the camera stays on Roberts’ face as she smiles in response – that ‘megawatt’ smile which would become so central to her star image, and which was much commented on in the reviews of the film I collected in Chapter 1 (Lacomme, 1990; Williams, 1997). Additionally, the production design deftly summarizes its lead character’s development, as Vivian’s acquired ease with the lavish environment is reflected in the perfect colour match between her salmon-coloured jacket and the wall of flowers in the background behind her. This association between womanhood and nature (Jeffers McDonald, 2007: 25–7) is thematized in the film, where it is opposed to man-as-culture personified by corporate-raider Edward, thereby aligning Pretty Woman with the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s to which it pays homage: famously, the film cast Ralph Bellamy (The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937); His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)) as Edward’s business competitor Mr Morse. However, the visual representation of Vivian’s class mobility contrasts with the scene’s other protagonist, Kit, whose dark hair stands

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out on a backdrop of white deck chairs and luminous pool. Indeed, the character appears to undermine the scene’s classical framing. Whilst Roberts’ upright posture is perfectly framed in a medium close-up as she demands ‘I wanna know who it works out for!’ San Giacomo’s Kit resists. Her exaggerated hand gestures move in and out of the frame; she sits forward, and then back, bopping up and down in her chair (‘You want me to name someone? Oh God … the pressure of a name’), before raising her hands to deliver one of the film’s most iconic lines: ‘Cinder-fuckin’-rella,’ she responds triumphantly, before both women burst into loud laughter. This sequence’s self-awareness is exemplary of what scholars have identified as the contemporary romance’s ‘doublecoding’ (Umberto Eco, cited in Colling, 2017: 27), allowing Pretty Woman to ‘bridg[e] the contradiction faced by the spectator who is no longer able to believe in romance … yet at the same time wishes to do so’ (Lapsley and Westlake, 1992: 28). This book hasn’t approached romantic comedy through close textual analysis, though I would argue that this scene perfectly exemplifies the genre’s ambivalence and meta-fictionality. The rom-com’s self-reflexivity rarely involves direct address or attention-grabbing camera work. Indeed, it is less concerned with breaking the suspension of disbelief than with commenting on the mediation of romance and romantic narratives in and through contemporary popular culture. As Michele Schreiber puts it, ‘we might say that they [contemporary postfeminist films] are announcing themselves to be participants in an ongoing discourse of love as it is seen in the movies, rather than attempting to realistically represent genuine emotional attachment’ (2015: 148). And whilst Pretty Woman has often been accused of forcing viewers into aspiring to be Vivian – in particular, there are long-standing debates about the film’s representation of sex work (Beaumont-Thomas, 2015) – as I now hope to have demonstrated, my participants’ reactions were more closely aligned with Kit’s ambivalence. In this book I have approached the genre through the perspective of audience studies. In film studies, scholars working on reception have broadly aligned themselves with two opposing approaches. On the one

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hand, spectatorship theory posits that meaning is produced within the film text. Its practitioners, perhaps exemplified most famously by Laura Mulvey with her ground-breaking work on the male gaze in Classical Hollywood Cinema (1975), use close analysis to theorize the filmic engagement of a universal spectator. By contrast audience studies, within which this research is situated, emphasize the importance of contextualizing reception. Thus, I have sought to analyse how audience responses to the romantic comedy are shaped – amongst other things – by gender, class, cultural identity and modes of viewing. I have contextualized my project within the broader field of cultural studies, and a feminist approach shaped all stages of the research project, from data collection to analysis. Feminist researchers have long critiqued the way positivist approaches to social science and humanities research can serve to erase the experiences of marginalized groups. Instead, many have emphasized the importance of recognizing the social and cultural positionality of knowledge production. Sue Wilkinson has argued that this makes the focus group – in which meaning is collectively constructed – a method particularly well suited to feminist research (1999). As a number of scholars have further argued, a feminist approach to research must involve a degree of selfreflexivity on behalf of the researcher (McCorkel and Myers, 2003; Seiter, 1990; Walkerdine, 1986: 190–2). As both a feminist researcher and an aca-fan of romantic comedy, my presence in the room was a catalyst for a certain type of audience engagement, and my discussion of the results endeavours to take this into account. In Chapter 1, I analysed the reception of twenty-six romantic comedies released between 1989 and 2013 across forty-five different press sources from Britain, France and Germany. Initially, I approached the reviews looking for translations of the term ‘romantic comedy’ in France and Germany. I observed that in all three countries and particularly in France, the gender of rom-com audiences is coded through the use of culinary imagery. This includes frequent descriptions of the films as foodstuffs, as well as comparisons between filmmaking and cooking. This was particularly evident in relation to the more woman-centred

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romantic comedies in my corpus, as well as films directed by women (Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers in particular). The presence of the semantic field of sugar, I argued, further serves to infantilize the genre’s audiences. It also contributes to a conception of the rom-com as a harmful ‘guilty pleasure’, which is to be tasted rather than looked at. This analysis of film reviews served to contextualize my interviews. Although it is unlikely the majority of my respondents would have read scholarly work on the genre (though several participants were academics), all of them had at some point in their lives come into contact with a film review. But my analysis of the rom-com’s translation in German brought up another (unexpected) result: the difficulty of translating or naming the genre in Germany, which was demonstrated by the multiplicity of terms used to describe the films in my corpus. This builds on the work of Raphaëlle Moine, who argues that the process of naming genre is crucial to its formation (2008: 142). In Germany, the rom-com as chick flick doesn’t exist in the same way as it does in Britain. This is despite changes in exhibition practices with the rise of Ladies’ Nights screenings since the mid-2000s, which actively gender the audience for films described as rom-coms in other countries. It can also partially be explained by production patterns, as Germany’s homegrown romantic comedies have tended to privilege the perspective of male protagonists. Chapter 2 began my analysis of the thirty-four group and individual interviews I conducted with over ninety audience members. I concluded that the rom-com’s ‘genre contract’ (Altman, 1999: 16), as expressed by my participants, is that it first and foremost demands an emotional engagement from its viewer. In particular, participants’ discussion of the rom-com’s emotional appeal was framed in affective terms: they emphasized the intensity and irresistibility of the emotions called forth by a (good) rom-com. This emphasis places the rom-com firmly on the bodily side of the traditional ‘mind-body’ dichotomy, which fits into the broader critical discourse around the genre analysed in the previous chapter. Rom-com viewing also involves, I argue, a range of different – sometimes conflicting – emotions, including joy,

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sadness, excitement, satisfaction, guilt and frustration. In this chapter, I divided the genre into a ‘meet-lose-get’ narrative pattern (Mernit, 2001) and analysed the display of emotion that characterized each step. The ‘meeting’ stage brings with it excitement. The potentially sexual nature of this affect caused methodological issues, however, as this was often a source of embarrassment for participants: this begs the question of whether more anonymous research methods might shed further light on this particular form of pleasure (Waldron, 2004: 131). In group interviews in particular, this caused laughter as participants highlighted the artificiality of the focus-group context. The ‘loss’ stage of the rom-com brought me to discuss sadness and the stereotyping of rom-com audiences as overly emotional. Indeed, participants regularly over-performed the act of being moved to tears, particularly during the film’s most overtly romantic scenes, such as Melanie and Jake’s kiss in the graveyard and their eventual reunion on the beach. Hence, through such performances during the screening and in the subsequent discussions, participants defined, and often parodied, romantic comedy as a site of feminine affect. However, reactions to the film’s HEA montage demonstrated that the rom-com viewers I interviewed constantly fluctuated in their relationship to the film text as ‘real’ or ‘fantasy’, and in their sense of where its pleasures lie. On the one hand, rom-coms were discussed primarily in terms of escapism, as fantasies. On the other hand, Sweet Home Alabama was discussed as a failure because it was not sufficiently emotionally engaging, and because its characters were seen as not emotionally credible. In her analysis of films such as Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001) and Miss Congeniality (Petrie, 2000), Sara-Mai Dang has argued that the chick-flick genre offers women two distinct viewership positions: it makes plain the performativity of gender (for example through repeated makeover or dressing-up sequences), whilst simultaneously assigning women to stereotypical gender roles. She calls this the ‘cinematographic mode of “undoing gender”’ (Dang, 2016: 76). Moreover, in his work on clichés in popular romance genres, John Fiske has also noted that:

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Romance can be explained as the training of women for marriage … There is, of course, a heavy and relatively explicit irony here, that the price women have to pay to maintain their actual marriages is the extinction of those romantic feelings that the ideology of patriarchal marriage produced as essential elements of femininity in the first place. Clichés bear ideological norms, which is why they are such powerful constructors and circulators of common sense. But this does not explain all their cultural uses: they can also work to expose the gap between that ideology and everyday experience. (my emphasis, Fiske, 2010: 96)

The same ambivalence – between an escapist, but potentially normative viewing pleasure and a deliberate awareness of the fallacy of the world constructed by the film text – can also be found in my interview groups’ reactions to the ending of Sweet Home Alabama, where the familiarity of the happy ending was a source of both pleasing familiarity and/or frustration due to its predictability and lack of realism. This ambivalence ‘resonates’ (Moseley, 2002: 8) with the films themselves, as the stylistic devices used by contemporary rom-coms appear to both undermine and perpetuate the promise of the HEA. Chapter 3 turned to a particular sub-group of enthusiastic participants: young feminists. Here, I argued that despite numerous assertions to the contrary, enjoying romantic comedy is not incompatible with holding feminist opinions. Often, for this subset of viewers the opposition between the affective call of romantic comedy and their feminist views can be felt as a tension, which Robyn Warhol calls ‘the cringe’ (2003: 69–70). However, my impression was that in the group interviews I conducted, participants embraced a form of collective negotiation and discussion of these tensions and ambivalences, which could potentially offer a relief from this cringe. At the same time, as Sara Ahmed’s work has consistently demonstrated, feminist work is a painful and tiring process (2014, 2017). This might go some way towards explaining the interviewees’ constant emphasis on the rom-com as ‘escapism’, as a means of ‘switching off ’ or ‘not thinking’. On the other hand, rom-coms can also offer viewers a safe space in which to take a break from doing feminist work.

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Hence, I suggested that for groups of young feminists, the pleasure of critiquing the film goes hand in hand with, rather than in opposition to, a more obvious (and partially normative) emotional pleasure. This is facilitated by the rom-com’s consistent privileging of a feminine subjectivity and experience, albeit a white and heterosexual one: the rom-com can offer (feminist) audiences a tangible starting point for discussions of sexism. In this chapter, I also noted the way in which the group dynamics of collective viewership served to undermine traditional modes of cinephilia. Most participants talked throughout the film, an act of commentary that posed a challenge to the arthouse cinephile convention in which films must be consumed individually and in silence (Ang, 1985: 97; Brunsdon, 1986: 103). At the same time, groups also produced alternative forms of expert viewership associated with women’s films: the act of reading fashion in particular was significant to many groups’ discussions during the screenings. Overall, however, participants seldom discussed Sweet Home Alabama’s visual elements. If they did, this was often negatively, as part of a wider association of Americanness with excess. This was also framed within a broader dichotomy between American and European cinema (or, rather, British, French and German cinemas). This forms the crux of the discussion in Chapter 4. Sweet Home Alabama in particular and the rom-com genre in general were strongly associated by participants with the Hollywood film industry. Despite the existence of various other national versions of the genre, in most interviews the rom-com emerged as the quintessential American genre. Though participants repeatedly described rom-com as ‘uncinematic’ and ‘not visual’, they did demonstrate a sensitivity to Americanness as enshrined in the film’s iconography, music and star performance. Moreover, the strong association between the rom-com and America also stems, I argue, from the structural similarities between and frequent association of the romance narrative as described by Catherine Roach (2016: 20–1) and the American Dream. In their readings of Sweet Home Alabama, participants also aligned Americanness with conservatism. This reading usually

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fostered a strong group consensus, and was used by participants as a device to position themselves as politically and socially liberal. A note is in order here about the skew of the participant pool, the vast majority of whom, like me, broadly aligned themselves with progressive politics. Had I actively sought to recruit participants who held more conservative views, for instance, by publicizing my survey through right-wing-leaning websites and newspapers, participants’ discussions of the film’s gender politics might well have been very different. At the same time, the fact that many interviewees who did identify as progressive or feminist enthusiastically responded to my call for participants also works to undermine the dominant narrative of the rom-com as a conservative force. Reactions across all three countries were remarkably similar when discussing the Americanness of Sweet Home Alabama. As I note at the end of Chapter 4, this is all the more notable when compared to participants’ discussions of other national rom-com productions. Participants in all three countries made a point of distinguishing between Hollywood rom-coms and their own national production, and this echoes the findings of other audience-studies research, such as the work undertaken by Jackie Stacey (1994) and Phillippe Meers (2004). However, participants’ opinions about their own and other European national productions varied: in Britain and France, the distinction frequently followed Celestino Deleyto’s analysis of the rom-com as defined by poor cinematic quality (2009: 3); Germany is a relatively different case, as most of many participants simply did not recognize the existence of the genre in Germany. I have offered in this book, in sum, not a systematic description of rom-com audiences as unmovable categories of viewers with fixed identities, but rather an interpretation of fluctuating viewership positions observed in particular contexts at specific moments. Moreover, it is important to stress that focus groups involve not only participants’ collective performance and creation of meaning, but my own performance as a feminist aca-fan. Hence, the analyses put forth in this book speak to my own personal experience of consuming romantic

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comedy because, as Howard Becker put it, ‘fieldworkers cannot insulate themselves from their data’ (1996: 56). I was deeply involved in the production of meaning taking place during the interviews. What is more as a female, white, cis and middle-class researcher, I was a catalyst for a certain kind of audience engagement. For example, throughout my field work, I was struck by how much I enjoyed conducting interviews where I felt as if I belonged to a group of feminists who also shared my interest in and knowledge of the genre. This is not to say I fully became one of the participants; as indicated by the comments interviewees made throughout the screening and interviews, they were well aware of my presence in the room. Given its status as a qualitative piece of work, there are caveats as to the generalizability, but not the validity, of this book’s findings. This is to say that I do not claim to have covered every motive for romcom consumption, nor every possible British, French, German viewer’s opinion on Sweet Home Alabama. What I hope to have produced, however, is a detailed account of specific participants’ experience of watching the film and the genre in a particular context. I do not seek to systematically describe the number of people who watch and enjoy rom-coms in Britain, France and Germany, nor to give a thorough demographic breakdown of the genre’s contemporary audiences. I had originally intended to compare and triangulate conclusions reached in the interviews with data collected through an online survey, which collected 458 full responses between 2014 and 2016. For reasons of time and space this ended up being neither feasible nor desirable, as I moved towards a resolutely qualitative feminist research approach, which sought to emphasize the collective and immediate nature of the viewing pleasure involved for numerous participants.1 Rachel Moseley’s notion of ‘resonance’ between film texts and audiences attempts to bridge the gap between audience and spectatorship studies. Moseley argues that whilst audiences are active participants in the creation of meaning involved in the act of The material collected in the questionnaires remains an avenue for exploration.

1

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viewership (the audience studies position), certain types of reading are privileged by the film text (the spectatorship studies approach) (2002: 8). I have found this to be the case, for example, in participants’ ambivalent responses to the genre’s HEA. There is also, I believe, a resonance between participants’ responses and broader discourses circulating around the genre: hence, both the reviews I analysed and the participants I interviewed emphasized the genre’s bodily impact, from culinary metaphors to an emphasis on tears or being physically impacted (participants talk of being ‘disgusted’ and ‘exhausted’ by Sweet Home Alabama’s ‘excessive’ Americanness). Both the reviews and the interviews, I have argued, worked to gender the romantic comedy’s assumed target audience. What is more, in the interviews in particular, participants actively sought to distance themselves from what I call the genre’s phantom viewer: the naïve, overly emotional American woman. Throughout Chapters 2, 3 and 4, I noted that participants’ reactions and discussions of the film displayed an awareness not only of how romantic comedy should be consumed (physically and emotionally), but by whom. An overly emotional and physical consumption of media has traditionally been associated with women, and participants attempted to distance themselves from this ‘phantom audience’ through parody: many responded to some of the film’s narrative tropes (the kiss, the proposal) by bursting into fake tears or exclaiming in an exaggerated, high-pitched tone. Class distinction was also significant in participants’ creation of the phantom audiences. On the one hand feminist participants singled out young women as the most vulnerable ‘target audiences’ for the rom-com’s harmful message, though they could be protected through a feminist education. Two groups also associated the rom-com genre with the photo stories avidly consumed by their grandmothers’ generation: by resituating romantic comedy within a wider ‘romance genre’, they emphasized its lack of medium specificity and artistic merit. By reading against the grain of participants’ reaction, I thus arrive at a definition of the rom-com as a popular genre aimed at non-cinephile, gullible women audiences and yet consumed by very different demographic groups.

Conclusion

235

Significantly, none of the participants I interviewed resembled this alleged viewer: she remains, until further study, a phantom. This book originally set out to compare the reception of Hollywood romantic comedies across three different national cultures. Sweet Home Alabama’s varied box-office results in Britain, France and Germany had also led me to expect very different reactions between national groups. This was not evident in my interviews, particularly when it came to discussions of the film’s Americanness, where I found participants’ responses to be more similar than expected. Whilst there were differences of intensity, with French participants being particularly critical, the German more positive and the British somewhere in the middle, the contents of the discussions during and after the film were more similar than I anticipated. One interesting difference came up in participants’ reading of the film’s pregnancy plotline: whilst French and British audiences all assumed Melanie had suffered a miscarriage in her youth, several viewers in Germany seemed to believe she had had an abortion. This doesn’t seem to be due to a translation issue: the only line in the film which addresses the topic (‘looks like Mother Nature knew better, uh?’) is replicated nearly verbatim in the dubbed versions of the films, as well as in the subtitles. Perhaps the different national reception of this issue is due to the different status of abortion in Britain and France than in Germany, particularly the GDR, where it was available earlier and subject to less stringent regulation. I had expected such ‘translation issues’ to be frequent in participants’ responses to the film, but this was not the case. Overall, participants were unified in their commentaries on Sweet Home Alabama, which was described in all three countries as cliché, consumerist and conservative: in other words, ‘very American’. As Janet Smithson has noted, focus groups’ responses should be analysed as performances (2000: 105). Meanwhile, Bev Skeggs and Helen Wood have argued that in contemporary neoliberalism selfhood itself – and particularly, they argue, class identity – is also a performance (2012: 49–53). Valerie Walkerdine and, famously, Judith Butler have made a similar point with regard to gender (Butler, 2006;

236

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Walkerdine, 1989). This means that audience research and focus-group methodology can be used to analyse how participants use a film text to perform both collective and individual class, gender and national positions. Conversely in the case of the rom-com, we can read these performances as mirror images to pinpoint how a genre is defined through its implied audience. Dudley Andrew has argued that ‘genres construct the proper spectator for their own consumption. They build the desire and then represent the satisfaction of what they have triggered’ (Andrew, 1984: 87). Hence, we can look at the genre to project the audience, or, conversely, look at the audience to outline the genre. Here then, participants’ relationship with the film can be described as multiple forms of hedging (Billig, 1989: 211): recognizing and rejecting the Americanness they see enshrined in the film’s tone, aesthetics and romance narrative; simultaneously seeking comfort in the familiarity of genre tropes and mocking an overly emotional engagement with romance; revelling in being both feminist killjoys (Ahmed, 2010a) and Cinder-fuckin’-rellas.

Appendix 1: Semi-Structured Interview Questions King’s College London Research Ethical Committee number: REP-H/12/13-39 Question order may vary depending on participants’ answers.

Part 1: FILM SPECIFIC 1) Can you tell me about the film we have just viewed: What was it about? How would you describe it to a friend? 2) Did you enjoy the film? Why/why not? 3) Would you consider this film a romantic comedy? Why/why not? 4) How does this film compare to other films of the genre? Is it a ‘good film’? 5) What was your opinion of the heroine? Of the female characters in the film? 6) Was there a particular aspect of the film (scene, person, etc…) you particularly liked or disliked? Why?

PART 2: GENERAL DISCUSSION 7) How would you define the romantic comedy genre? The chick flick? Do you differentiate between the two? 8) Why all the fuss about weddings? Why are they so central to the genre? 9) What is a ‘good film’? Can romantic comedies/chick flicks be ‘good films’? 10) Do you see a difference between American and French/British/ German romantic comedies/chick flicks? Why? 11) Why do you watch romantic comedy films? Why do you watch them together/alone? 12) Any other comments?

+

Place

4

3

2

1

Group n°

Florian

Pia

Lise

Kati

Annalise

Eva

Hannah

Paula

Lauren

Johanna

Juliane

Christa

Name

26–29

21

23–30

35–51

Age range

Mixed

All women

All women

All women

Gender

denotes interviews not cited in the final manuscript.

Table 4  List of German participants

Married

Friends (interview held at my house)

Host Paula invited her colleague Eva, who brought along friends Hannah and Annalise

Host Christa invited colleagues Juliane and Lauren and friend Johanna

Relationship between participants

GERMANY

Student, media ­consultant

Retail assistants

Three are students, one a PR consultant

Teachers

Employment

BA

Apprenticeships

All have Alevels, two hold a BA

Teaching diplomas

Highest qualification

Network

Network

Paula and Eva are acquaintances

Christa is an old ­acquaintance

Recruitment

Appendix 2: Participant Tables

Berlin

Doctor, in-training baker, student and photographer

Doctor qualification, A-levels, Bachelor

Snowballing (through Christa, Group 1)

Woman –

Gender scholar

PhD

Network (Gender Studies blog)

23–29

Mixed

Family and friends

Preschool teachers, nurse, occupational therapist, unemployed

A-levels, Bsc, teaching diploma

Snowballing (through Christa, Group 1)

26–34

All women

Host Sabine invited her friend Lorelei

PhD students MA

Mixed

Occupational Hosts Marie and therapist, A-levels, BA, Pablo invited Marie’s engineer, MA younger sister Vreni student

Lina 5

Olga

25–50

Mixed

Tom

6

Karolina

33

Host Olga invited her younger sister Lina, and her boyfriend Tom

Lena Paula 7

Tim Fred Maja

8

Sabine Lorelei Marie

9

Pablo

19–35

Vreni 10

Bridget

30

Woman –

Student

A-levels

Network Snowballing (through Lena, Group 7) University Recruitment email

Table 5  List of French participants FRANCE Place

N°

Name

Age range

Gender

Relationship between participants

Employment

Highest qualification

Recruitment

Paris

Pilot 1

Laura

24–28

All women

Sisters Laura and Rosalie invited their friends Nadia and the host Anastasia

Two work in retail, one unemployed, one PhD student

BA, MA

Friends (Laura and Rosalie)

19–23

All women

Pilot group with close childhood friends, hosted by Serena

Students, designer

MA, BA

Close friends (all participants)

50–60s

All women

Host Irene, invited her friends and colleagues

Healthcare professionals, sales representative, education, office worker

BA, MA, medical degree

Network (Irene is a relative)

25

Woman

–

Civil servant

MA

Questionnaire

Anastasia Rosalie Nadia Paris

Pilot 2

Theresa Larissa Laurie Ophelia Marianne Serena

Dunkirk

13

Irene Gabrielle Emily Nadine Caroline Denise

Lyon

14

Lillian

Lyon+

15

Paris

16

Sabrina

20s

Woman

–

Student

MA

Questionnaire

Georgina

22–24

Mixed

Sisters Eleanor and Georgina, invited friends Peter and John

Students, teacher

BA, MA

Network (Eleanor is a friend)

25

All women

Martha invited her close friend Sophie (host)

PhD student, childcare assistant

MA, childcare diploma

Network (conference)

18–47

All women

Mother and daughter

Student, social worker

BA

Network (through relative)

Eleanor Peter John Paris

17

Martha Sophie

Montpellier 18

Vanessa Chloe

Lyon

19

Bianca

37

Woman

–

University lecturer

PhD

Network

Normandy

20

Joseph

59–63

Mixed

Partners

FE teacher, architect

MA

Snowballing (through Theresa, Pilot 2)

71

Mixed

Partners

Retired academics

MA

Network

29–30

All women

Long-term friends, hosted by Lauryn

Unemployed, telecom manager, bank clerk, counsellor

BA equivalent

Snowballing (through Laura, Pilot 1)

Ava Paris suburbs

21

Paris

22

Francis Felicia Lauryn Donna Tess Anna

Table 6  List of British participants BRITAIN Place

N°

Names

Age range

Gender

Relationship between participants

Employment

Highest qualification

Recruitment

London

23

Melissa

24–26

All women

Organiser Betty invited her friend Felicity, the host, who invited her colleague Melissa

PhD student, charity workers

MA

Network (feminist conference)

31–34

Mixed

Friends

Librarian, writer

MA

Questionnaire (feminist organization)

Sara

28

Woman

–

Assistant psychologist

MA

Network

London+ 26

Amelia

20s

Woman

–

Student

BA

Questionnaire (feminist society)

London

27

Tina

45

Woman

–

Graphic designer

BA

Questionnaire (feminist organization)

London

28

Karen

18–26

Mixed

Host Karen invited other students from her university hall, where the interview was held

Students

A-levels, BA, MA

Network (Karen is a PhD colleague)

Betty Felicity London

24

Lisa Leo

London

25

Lola Owen Nora

London

29

Manchester

30

London

31

Noel

24

Man

–

Film student

A-levels

Questionnaire (feminist organization)

Arabella

25–26

All women

Long-term friends

Arts administrator, law

BA

Network (colleague)

26–29

Mixed

Host Neil invited his friends and flatmates. All knew each other.

Filmmaker, driver, accountant, teacher, arts administrator

BA, MA, teaching diploma

Network (arts charity)

Celia Neil Martin Nate Henry Rose

London

32

Sophia

40

Woman

–

­Administrator BA

Network (arts charity)

London

33

Hermione

61–63

Mixed

Partners

Writer, arts administrator

Network (arts charity)

31–34

All women

Host Annie, a colleague, invited her friends Jill, Harriet, Lily and Valerie.

Agency direc- MA tor, bakery owner, PhD student, project manager

BA

Louis Kent

34

Annie Jill Harriet Lily Valerie

Network (Annie is a PhD colleague)

Appendix 3: Sweet Home Alabama Synopsis The film opens with a flashback of two children, Jake Perry and Melanie Smooter, running on a beach. They nearly get struck by lightning, which causes parts of the sand to turn to glass. Jake asks Melanie to marry him someday, and they kiss. Back in the present day, Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) wakes up from a dream. Now a famous fashion designer living in New York, she’s busy preparing for the latest Fashion Week. She returns to her flat after having worked all night, and finds it covered in flowers, with a message from her current boyfriend – politician Andrew (Patrick Dempsey) – wishing her luck for the fashion show, which turns out to be a success. Later that evening, Andrew surprises Melanie by asking her to marry him. She agrees, to the dismay of his mother and mayor of New York Kate (Candice Bergen), who announces the engagement to the tabloids. Melanie tells Andrew that she wants to announce the news to her parents alone. As she arrives in Pigeon Creek, Alabama, where she hasn’t set foot in seven years, she drives to what turns out to be Jake’s (Josh Lucas) house, as the two are still legally married. She asks him to sign divorce papers; they argue, and he calls the sheriff (their childhood friend Wayde) to arrest her. Melanie calls her parents from the station, and they take her home. Walking through town the next day, Melanie bumps into several other childhood friends, including Bobby Ray and bank teller Dorothea, who reminds Melanie that she and Jake still share a bank account. Melanie then proceeds to empty Jake’s account and redecorate his house, in a failed attempt to get him to sign the divorce papers. She follows him to the local bar, run by Jake’s mother Stella, where she gets drunk and reveals to the other patrons that Jake got her pregnant when they were

Appendix 3: Sweet Home Alabama Synopsis

245

teenagers, and outs their friend Bobby Ray. She passes out and is driven home by an angry Jake; when she wakes up the next morning, she finds the divorce papers with Jake’s signature by the side of her bed. Melanie goes to Bobby Ray’s house – called the Carmichael Plantation – to apologize, where she is surprised by the Now York mayor’s assistant (posing as a journalist) asking to interview her. Helped by Bobby Ray, Melanie shows him around the grand plantation, pretending it is her home. Melanie then visits the local fair to apologize and reconnect with her childhood friends, where she learned that Jake followed her to New York, but decided he needed to ‘make something of himself ’ before trying to pursue her again. Late in the evening, Melanie and Jake reunite in front of their former dog’s grave. She confesses that she felt relieved after miscarrying their child, and ran away to New York to start over. They kiss. Andrew arrives to Pigeon Creek and runs into Jake, who takes him to a Civil War Re-enactment in which Melanie’s father is taking part. Andrew finds out that Melanie was married to Jake, and that her real name is Smooter. Though initially angry he later returns to apologize, and renews her proposal to Melanie. A montage follows, in which the town of Pigeon Creek prepares for the wedding. Melanie’s friends, model Tabby and designer Frederick, arrive for the wedding. They stumble on an advertisement for a glass-blowing factory, which they visit and admire sculptures of sand struck by lightning. Jake arrives, and it turns out he owns the factory. Melanie and Andrew’s wedding takes place the next day. As a hesitant Melanie walks down the aisle, the ceremony is interrupted by her lawyer, who reveals that Melanie has forgotten to sign her own divorce papers, and is still legally married to Jake. She apologizes to Andrew, who graciously leaves, but a furious Kate insults Melanie and her mother, and Melanie punches her in front of the whole town. Melanie then runs to beach, where she professes her love to Jake, and they kiss. They celebrate at the local bar, where Bobby Ray and Frederick meet and fall in love at first sight.

246

Appendix 3: Sweet Home Alabama Synopsis

The film ends with a montage of photographs: A newspaper clipping announced Andrew’s wedding to Erin Vanderbilt. Melanie and Jake return to New York, where she goes back to work on her fashion line, and he sets up a shop for his glassware. The last photograph shows the couple, who now have a young daughter, smiling in front of Jake’s shop.

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Index 27 Dresses 10, 19, 155 A Cinderella Story 148, 154 aca-fan 6, 163, 227 affect theory 69, 70 American Dream 168, 194, 196, 198–201, 203–8, 211–12, 231 An Affair to Remember 39, 80 Anne Hathaway 80 anti-Americanism 49, 52, 216 As Good as It Gets 40 Ashton Kutcher 50, 57 banal nationalism 178 Barbara 222 blondeness 102, 184 Book Club 19, 20 Boy Meets Girl 207 Breakfast at Tiffany’s 113 Bride Wars 20, 154 Bridesmaids 20, 21, 54, 56, 206 Bridget Jones (film series) 14, 17, 20 Brittany Murphy 206 calling out 113, 123, 124, 131, 164 Candice Bergen 124 Channing Tatum 80 Cinephilia 34, 38, 39, 42, 46, 50, 53, 58, 97, 127, 142, 148, 149, 162, 163, 170, 189, 217, 231, 234 Citizenfour 222 cliché 1, 10, 38, 43, 54, 72, 113, 134, 138, 162, 189, 190, 191, 196, 230, 235 Clueless 147 cognitive theory 67–8 Coming Home for Christmas 21 consent 111, 115–16

consumerism 14, 50, 61, 63, 111, 113, 114, 116, 153, 155, 202, 214, 224, 235 Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 2, 117 critical vs. referential reading 75, 86–92, 100–1, 105, 113, 114, 141, 179 crying 83–5, 88 cultural capital 146, 148, 182 Dallas 3, 86, 117, 210 Deadpool 93 death of the rom-com 1, 12 direct address 95–6, 226 Disney 132–4, 164 distinction (Bourdieu) 14, 24, 25, 50, 142, 146, 182, 234 encoding 152 Ernst Lubitsch 39 escapism 26, 103, 106, 128, 132, 146, 152, 162, 163, 229, 230 fairy tale 17, 53, 82, 59, 94, 96, 132–4, 196 Family Guy 183 fandom 3, 5, 46, 127, 185, 187 feminism intersectionality 4, 118, 119, 165 post-feminism 17, 60, 141, 205 waves 115 feminist killjoy 116, 126, 132, 138, 236 Fifty Shades of Grey 127 film fashion 149–62, 185, 231 Four Weddings and a Funeral 219, 220 Frau Ella 222 Friends with Benefits 10, 162, 206, 207 Frozen 133

280 Gary Marshall 37–8, 47, 225 gaze, the 5, 18, 72, 171–4, 227 gender performance 79, 85, 135 Genre comedy of remarriage 12, 33 cycles 12, 14, 15, 17, 29, 31–2, 39, 59, 207 definition 2, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 25, 32, 53, 57–9, 64, 71, 91, 142, 217, 234 gross-out 21, 24, 45 homme-com 45 screwball comedy 12, 13, 15, 16, 58, 59, 171, 194, 225 subgenres Gilmore Girls 47 girl culture 44, 46, 61, 132, 133 Gone with the Wind 5, 73, 75, 164 Green Fried Tomatoes 147 Grey’s Anatomy 72 guessing game 104, 105, 121, 158 heteronormativity 16, 45, 121, 201 His Girl Friday 225 Hitch 37, 39, 48 How to Be Single 162 ideology 14, 49, 103, 114, 117, 128, 129, 168, 209, 214, 224, 230 Inglourious Basterds 222 Insidious 38 Isn’t It Romantic? 10, 162 It’s a Boy Girl Thing 162 It’s Complicated 21, 54 Jackie 130 James Wan 38 Jane Austen 1, 16, 102, 164 Jane the Virgin 2, 117 Jennifer Lopez 14, 57 Jeux d’enfants 87 Josh Lucas 3, 71, 72, 171, 244 Julia Roberts 24, 40, 97, 200, 225

Index Keinohrhasen 223 Ken Loach 219 King Arthur 222 Knocked Up 45, 56, 57, 94 L’Arnarcoeur 218 Last Christmas 19 Laura San Giacomo 225 Laws of Attraction 57 Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain 217 Legally Blonde 29, 30, 40, 41, 44, 45, 47, 53, 55, 61, 94, 189, 198, 206, 229 Leo McCarey 39 LOVE 10 Love Actually 7, 9, 10, 20, 221 Love and Other Disasters 206 Love, Rosie 222 Maid in Manhattan 199 Mamma Mia! 20, 40, 44, 45, 64 masculinity 17, 158, 188, 192 Matthias Schweighöfer 55, 63, 222 meet-cute 13 meet-lose-get structure 67, 71, 229 Meg Ryan 40, 44, 45 Melinda and Melinda 60 Meryl Streep 40 methodology analysis 5–6, 70, 74, 77, 90, 126, 137, 140, 169, 236 interviews 78, 123, 169, 170, 180, 210, 224, 229 protocol 2–6 recording 79, 137 recruitment 3–4, 110 sources 31, 34–5 midinette 45–6 mind-body dualism 41, 50, 85 Mindy Kaling 80, 198 montage 6, 13, 94–9, 101, 102, 119, 155, 170, 174, 189, 229, 245, 246 My Best Friend’s Wedding 39, 62 My Big Fat Greek Wedding 21, 46

Index Nancy Meyers 14, 21, 36, 37, 42, 43, 44, 51, 54, 55, 59, 228 Nigella Lawson 44 Nora Ephron 29, 37, 39, 42, 55, 148, 228 Notting Hill 8, 57, 119, 120, 147, 200, 202, 219, 221 Obvious Child 57 Out of Sight 16 Patrick Dempsey 3, 71, 99–100, 157, 244 phantom viewer 80, 83, 109, 110, 132, 167, 223, 234 phenomenology 67, 68 Phoenix 222 photo story 130–1, 142, 143–6, 164, 234 pleasure critique 110, 127, 163 emotional 72, 116, 163 erotic 4, 76–7 social 110, 163, 164 Populaire 218 Potiche 218 Pretty Woman 10, 13, 37, 40, 46, 94, 130, 195, 199, 225, 226 psychoanalysis 67, 68 Pursuits of Happiness 12, 15 Ralph Bellamy 225 Rear Window 16 Reese Witherspoon 3, 30, 39, 44, 46, 71, 150, 184, 185–9, 206, 244 Richard Gere 225 Romance narrative 53, 110, 133, 146, 168, 194, 198, 199, 200, 201, 208, 211, 217, 223, 231, 236 Romance novel 5, 78b, 119, 144, 164, 198, 202 Runaway Bride 24, 94

281

Santa Barbara 145 Scarlett Johansson 80 Schlussmacher 222 Sex and the City 3, 19, 20, 21, 24, 40, 43, 47, 61, 62, 94, 103, 149, 153, 154, 156, 157, 161, 214 Silver Linings Playbook 59, 62, 64 sitcom 2, 57, 215 Sleepless in Seattle 1b, 9, 37, 39, 40, 44, 56, 80 soap opera 5, 86, 90, 105, 115, 117, 132, 142, 144, 145, 164 social issues class 196, 219, 220, 206 gender 12, 16 politics 207 relationships 16, 56, 62 sociology of emotions 69–71, 83 Something’s Gotta Give 37, 40, 59 spectacle 149, 154, 161 spectatorship 46, 90, 214, 227, 233, 234 Star Wars 3, 105 stardom 5, 44, 176, 183, 184, 185, 189, 213, 220 streaming 1, 10, 102 symbolic annihilation 118, 121–4, 217 The Abduction Club 162 The Awful Truth 225 The Back-up Plan 57 The Big Sick 207 The Color Purple 127 The Conjuring 38 The Devil Wears Prada 21, 40, 46, 60, 149, 153 The Holiday 20, 25, 206 The House Bunny 154 The Little Mermaid 133 The Mindy Project 2, 80, 117 The Notebook 77, 86, 87, 89 The Proposal 45, 56, 58, 59, 62, 94, 95 The Shop Around the Corner 39

282 The Ugly Truth 10, 148 There’s Something About Mary 8, 24, 45, 49, 93, 95 Tiffany’s 111–14, 126, 150, 151, 186, 202 Til Schweiger 55, 222, 223 Tom Hanks 80 translation 18, 35–6, 52–5, 58, 64, 151, 227–8, 235 transnational 181, 188, 209 Twilight 127 uncinematic 145, 162, 174, 225, 231 Valentine’s Day 37, 47, 64, 95 Vaterfreuden 222 visual pleasure 149, 154, 171, 172

Index Western, the 14, 142, 149, 168, 189, 193 What Happens in Vegas 21, 41, 44, 50, 57 What to Expect When You’re Expecting 57 What Women Want 21, 54 When Harry Met Sally … 10, 12, 29, 42, 43, 49, 64, 96, 148 white privilege 103, 118, 206, 217 William Shakespeare 13, 16, 48, 58 women’s magazines 33–5, 61–3, 144, 149 Working Girl 17, 61, 199 You’ve Got Mail 9, 21, 37, 39, 113b

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