Conventional Values and the Male Gaze
B. Ethnic Conflicts between African-Americans and Whites
In addition to the issue of rebellious teenagers, we can see an undercurrent problem in the 1960s: racism. Afro-Americans have been constantly victims of racism in the United States. The Civil Right Movement in 1955 further showed that the racial discrimination was at issue.20 This movement provides a new subject for the romantic comedy to work on, namely, the interracial relationship, particularly between people
20 The flashpoint appeared on a bus where an African-American woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up seat in the colored section to a white passenger. It was a symbolic event which triggered the Civil Right Movement from 1955 to 1968. The social movement mainly aimed at outlawing racial discrimination along with other uprising issues.
of African descendent and the White. Such social contingency as Mortimer points out has become a new momentum of romantic comedy:
Romantic comedy lost its impetus from the 1940s until the
mid-1950s…American society had undergone a sustained period of revisionism in terms of gender relations, in the wake of the War, and at a time of conservative politics and xenophobia…. (15)
Hence, debatable social topics such as interracial relationship and marriage made it to the screen during the 1960s. In Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Joanna “Joey”
Drayton (Katharine Houghton) is a white American woman and she has a whirlwind romance with Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier), an idealistic African American physician. In the beginning, Joanna and John are going to get married and plan to announce their good news during dinnertime. At first glance, Joey and John look like a perfect couple. Both of them are highly educated and, most importantly, they are deeply in love with each other. However, the great obstacle they face up to is their different skin colors, which is profoundly different from what confronted the couples in the conventional romantic comedy or wedding comedy. The movie Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner depicts some ideal interracial romance between Afro-American
people and the White. However, it has downplayed or even distorted the social reality.In their essay “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?: A Clash of Interpretations Regarding Stanley Kramer's Film on the Subject of Interracial Marriage,” Glen Anthony Harris and Robert Brent Toplin point out that the settings of plots and characters are far from social reality, particularly John’s role as the Mr. Perfect and the overly simple
solution to the racial problem. They criticize that this film has a “phony feel from the beginning, because of the characterization of the black beau as Mr. Perfect in every way” (702). Moreover, Harris comments that the director has idealized the ending of
the film. These illusions avoid a serious integration of xenophobia and push the liberation of the Afro-American people beyond reach.
In the long run, the female self-transformation during this period did not progress to another level compared to the early period; the declining period of wedding
comedy provides various materials and themes which restore the potency such as the conflict between sexes, generational gaps and racial causes by the social and political issues.
III. The Resurgence Period from 1970 to 1990: Women’s Liberation
The swing 60s may be regarded as a dark period, since it involved the problems of social disorder, great liberation, and rebellion and so on. America in the 1970s was a society where social activities, open sexual relationship, and anti-war movement pervaded. Under the propagation of second-wave feminism, women were eager to express their dissatisfaction in a more radical, direct and conspicuous manner. As rebellious deeds were unable to grab the public attention, they turned to the venue of political parade and protest. Furthermore, the intimate relationship was challenged in public. In 1970, women’s liberation movement officially launched, and the law for women to have abortion rights was passed in 1973. It indicates that women gain autonomy over their bodies and the right to keep the baby or not.Women in wedding comedy are no longer portrayed as a family member prioritizing the welfare of her husband and children or responsible for solving any problems in her family. Potter remarks that as women become well-educated and perform well at work, they begin to “question their mother’s assertion that they should save their virginity for marriage” (123). In his article “Romantic Comedy Today:
Semi-tough or Impossible?,” Brian Henderson comments on the development of romantic comedy. He highlights the changes of social structures and the attitude
toward heterosexual relationship; people start to quest for sexual satisfaction prior to building a strong mental connection. He argues that romantic comedy tends to
suppress the question of actual sex act and once the sexual pleasure is highlighted, the romantic comedy would become impossible (21). McDonald further elaborates Henderson’s argument that without the postponement of hero and heroine having sex the verbal foreplay is no longer demanded. So as to say the ideologies and narratives in romantic comedy will be impacted directly (60).
The filming technique in the 1970s underwent a significant reformation under the wave of sexual liberation. Films during this period no longer avoided physical attachment between characters. Socio-cultural issues at the same time were less attended to and were replaced by individual self-absorption. Such shift leads to what Tom Wolfe calls “the Me decade” (162). Instead of maintaining a conventional image, women turn to pursue self-preservation. They are less family-devoted and what they do are often out of personal wishes. McDonald confirms such inclination: “[p]olitical fervor and social optimism seemed to belong to the 1960s; the 1970s enshrined cynical apathy.... Many of the romantic comedies of the later 1970s reflect this new spirit of self-absorption” (61). The spirit of self-absorption was regarded as the central thought of wedding comedy during the 1970s. As women start to concentrate on themselves, they may find out more solutions when it comes to the matter of love and marriage.