國 立 交 通 大 學
外 國 語 文 學 系 外 國 文 學 與 語 言 學 碩 士 班
碩 士 論 文
好萊塢婚禮電影的演變
：
真命天子與家庭價值之呈現與探討
Hollywood’s Wedding Comedy Now and Then:
Representing “the One” and Family Values
研 究 生：許 瀚 云
指 導 教 授：馮 品 佳 博士
好萊塢婚禮電影的演變
：
真命天子與家庭價值之呈現與探討
Hollywood’s Wedding Comedy Now and Then:
Representing “the One” and Family Values
研 究 生：許瀚云 Student: Hanyun Hsu
指導教授：馮品佳 博士 Advisor: Pin-Chia Feng
國立交通大學
外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班
碩士論文
A Thesis
Submitted to Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics
College of Humanities and Social Science
National Chao Tung University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts
in
Graduate Institute of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics
July 2013
I
中 華 民 國 一 ○ 二 年 七 月
好萊塢婚禮電影的演變
：
真命天子與家庭價值之呈現與探討
研 究 生：許瀚云 指導教授：馮品佳 博士 國立交通大學外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班 摘 要 本文主要探討以婚禮為主題的電影在二十世紀末到二十一世紀初產量暴增 的現象，針對此現象提出解釋，且進一步探討其中所代表的意義。此論文的貢獻 在於將婚禮喜劇定義為由浪漫喜劇延伸出來的一種新的類型電影。 第一章主要分為兩個部分，第一部分是定義『婚禮喜劇』(wedding comedy)。 第二部分是藉由情節、動機、最終目標與其意圖等四個方面來比較浪漫喜劇 (romantic comedy)與婚禮喜劇相同與相異之處。 第二章從歷史背景作為切入點，將婚禮喜劇從 1930 年到 2010 年分為四個時 期。探討各時期的社會氛圍與婚禮喜劇中女性腳色嘗試挑戰與顛覆當代社會觀點 的精神。各時期的女性腳色刻畫反映當代女性渴望提升自主性與多元選擇。 第三章主要呈現婚禮喜劇在二十一世紀初所反應與顛覆的社會價值，並探討 婚禮喜劇暴增與離婚率攀升之間的關係。將真命天子在浪漫喜劇中的設定去神秘 化且給予新的解釋，並反轉落跑新娘在浪漫喜劇中所帶有的負面意義。 最後，針對家庭價值的部分，婚禮喜劇對於傳統家庭價值在二十一世紀初的 概念做重新詮釋。 關鍵字：婚禮喜劇、浪漫喜劇、反偽裝、落跑新娘、結婚焦慮、真命天子、 去神秘化、家庭價值II
Hollywood’s Wedding Comedy Now and Then:
Representing “the One” and Family Values
Student: Hanyun Hsu Advisor: Pin-Chia Fung
Graduate Institute of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics
National Chao Tung University
Abstract
The wedding scene is one of the most significant plot elements in romantic comedy, or rom-com, especially the “key kiss” on the altar which serves as a paradigmatic indicator of a happy ending. The wedding scene used to be an iconic part at the end of romantic comedy. In the late 20th century and the early 21st century Hollywood, however, there are more and more romantic comedy focusing on the wedding preparation as the main plotline. I presume that a “different phrase” or even a new genre is derived from Hollywood romantic comedy in the contemporary period.
The first chapter is divided into two sections. The first section centers on the definition of wedding comedy. As for the second section, the differences between romantic comedy and wedding comedy are the main focuses. I compare these two genres in mainly four parts, the plot, the motivation, the ultimate goal, and the main purpose of both genres. The second chapter focuses on the reflections and reversions of wedding comedy. Additionally, the female’s self-transformation and self-liberation through wedding comedy has reached great progress in the order of time. In the final chapter, this thesis intends to point out what wedding comedy constantly reflects and reveres in the contemporary period. Moreover, the emerging number of wedding comedy and the high divorce rate share the similar curve in the charts. I intend to provide a possible answer to the representative of this tendency as well by using Chrys Ingraham’s “wedding-ideological complex.” Furthermore, I utilize Mary-Lou Galician’s “twelve myths” to demystify the concept of the pre-destined mate.
To conclude, wedding comedy reverses the conventional perspectives toward runaway bride and it re-interprets the conventional family values.
Keywords: wedding comedy, romantic comedy, anti-disguise, runaway bride, wedding-ideological complex, demystify “the One,” family values
III
Acknowledgements
To reach self-knowledge is never a lighthearted journey. I am sincerely grateful to have a chance to go through this adventure with a lot of mental supports and warm companions. Although it took me more than years to find out the possible answers to my assumptions, I have no regret to my insistence on completing this seemingly impossible mission with no ulterior inducement(s).
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my advisor Professor Pin-Chia Feng. Thank you for having faith in me. Prof. Feng provides not only crucial
suggestions on my writing but also provokes much discussion by asking a lot of questions. During the process of answering all the questions she raised, I find mine eventually. My gratitude also goes to my committee members, of both my thesis and oral defense, Professor Ying-Hsiung Chou and Professor Yi-Min Huang.
I would also like to thank my classmates at Graduate Institute of Foreign
Literatures and Linguistics of NCTU: Angeli Lin, Chen Yee Choong, Hsiao-Wen Su, Ya-Ru Yang, Yu-Jung Yen, and Wawa Yang. Their company definitely makes life at our lab a colorful one intellectually and mentally.
Special thanks also go to my dearest friends: Chen Yee Choong, Ya-Ru Yang and Yu-Jung Yen. Without their intellectual supports and constantly concerns I may never complete my thesis. Without having them around, I may not have the courage to run toward a better choice for my life decision.
Finally, I am deeply indebted to my parents, my sister and my brother for they never doubt my ability to finish my thesis. To me, this is not merely a thesis but a very personal self-transformation of my own and I am grateful to have some many people accompany with me.
IV
Table of Contents
I. Chapter One. The Definition of Wedding Comedy ... 1
1.1 Historical background ... 3
1.2 Two Categories of Wedding Comedy ... 13
II. Chapter Two. Transformation the Female Protagonists in Wedding Comedy ... 19
2.1 Films on Quest ... 21
2.2 The Epiphany in Wedding Comedy ... 22
2.3 I. The Early Period from 1930 to 1950: From Great Depression to WWII ... 24
2.4 II. The Declining Period from 1950 to 1970: Conventional Values and the Male Gaze ... 27
A. Rebellious Adolescent: The Graduate (1967) ... 30
B. Ethnic Conflicts between African-Americans and Whites ... 32
2.5 III. The Resurgence Period from 1970 to 1990: Women’s Liberation ... 34
A. The Third Option: Unmarried Women ... 35
B. The Reagan Period: Reversion to Family Values ... 38
C. New Romance ... 40
2.6 IV. The Contemporary Period from 1990 to 2010: Wedding Comedy in the late 20th Century Hollywood ... 44
III. Chapter Three. “The One” and Family Values in Wedding Comedy... 47
3.1 I. Explicating the Myth of “the One” ... 51
A. Wedding-Ideological Complex: My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) ... 51
B. Anti-disguise: A 40-year-old Cinderella ... 56
C. The Runaway Wedding Plot: the Fantasized One ... 63
3.2 II. Family Values in the early 21st Century Wedding Comedy ... 69
A. Diminishing Cohabitation: Leap Year (2010) ... 71
B. The Division of Labor: New Women verses Traditional Women ... 75
IV. Conclusion ... 86
Appendix A: ... 90
V. Work Cited ... 91
Chapter One
The Definition of Wedding Comedy
The wedding scene is one of the most significant plot elements in romantic comedy, or rom-com,1 especially the “key kiss” on the altar which serves as a paradigmatic indicator of a happy ending.2 The wedding scene used to be an iconic part at the end of romantic comedy. In the late 20th century and the early 21st century Hollywood, however, there are more and more romantic comedy focusing on the wedding preparation as the main plotline. The theme of wedding becomes a central and an important part of, not just a way to conclude, the film in romantic comedy. In
It Had to Be You (2000), for instance, the female lead falls in love with someone else
during the wedding preparation. In The Wedding Planner (2001), 27 Dresses (2008) and Something Borrowed (2011), the female protagonists do not come to realize their true love until the men they loved decided to marry other women. Despite the fact that wedding films are quite popular in Hollywood, only few critics, such as Claire
Mortimer and Chrys Ingraham, regard wedding films as an important subgenre in romantic comedy. Mortimer mentions that such films “foreground the narrative structure of the romcom, building on the contemporary popularity of the subgenre of the wedding movie” (39). In this thesis, Iargue wedding comedy as a derivative mode of romantic comedy. Moreover, the theme about weddings has been extensively underlined and the significance of such feature has been emphasized in Stephen Neale’s Genre and Hollywood: Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. He remarks that
1 According to the definition in Oxford English Dictionary, rom-com is an informal phrase which
represents romantic comedy in film or television.
2
In Bound to Bond: Gender, Genre, and the Hollywood Romantic Comedy, Mark D. Rubinfeld gives specific definitions of key kiss in romantic comedy and emphasizes the symbolic meaning of the certain kisses, “…there may be many kisses between a hero and a heroine…there is usually only one key kiss toward, or at the end of the love story that signifies an end to resistance…a pleasurable closure to the narrative. The key kiss is defined by conventions: by music, lighting, mood, and by the emotions it elicits…all conspire to ensure that the key kiss is seen as a sign of love—and all that love signifies: social regeneration through marriage, kids, old age, and death” (6).
“[g]enres do not consist solely of films. They consist also of specific systems of expectation and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with films themselves during the course of the viewing process” (27).
Wedding comedy on certain level also carries the expectation of the movie goers in the contemporary period. Additionally, the popularity of family-oriented sitcoms from the 1990s focusing more on heterosexual relationship receives great success.3 To a certain extent, it urges the film producers to pay attention to such popular materials in order to attract more TV viewers to enter the movie theaters. Moreover, the marketing strategy of Hollywood film industry centers on stimulating consumption. Because of marketing concern in most of the films coming out of Hollywood industry, the
portrayal of female protagonists and the ending of such films cannot be overly radical. Claire Mortimer treats Michael Patrick King’s Sex and the City (2008) as a
wedding movie, although the elements of wedding and comedy in the narrative seem to be overwhelmed by the stress on betrayal, fashion, and the importance of friendship, rather than the relationship of the couples. In line with these two critics, I, in this thesis, will analyze the significance of wedding comedy as a derivative genre of romantic comedy, and also delineate the prominent features and major themes in such films. The contribution of this research, therefore, is to treat wedding comedy as one of the representative forms of the 21st century Hollywood romantic comedy, and to outline a preliminary classification of this derivative genre. Meanwhile the emerging number of wedding comedy can also be considered as a reflection of certain social values of this new century. The thesis aims to provide a reasonable interpretation on
3
Sitcoms provide relaxing and entertaining TV programs with the function of temporary escapement for the viewers from their anxiety of everyday life. According to Marco Sievers’ Report on the BBC1
Sitcom “My Family,” the escapism is “closely related to the theme of entrapment contained in the
sitcom concept” (9). Sitcoms are also a “vicarious pleasure” for the TV watchers. That is to say most viewers encounter similar situations and worries as the protagonists do in sitcoms. Due to the fact that they cannot express their thoughts in consideration of negative consequence in real life, the
the social values corresponding with the emergence of this genre (See table. 1).
Table 1
Source: The database depends on the six representative movie companies, 20th Century Fox, Sony, DreamWorks, MGM, Paramount, Universal, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros.
Historical background
Each film genre has a specific theme in different periods. There is no exception to romantic comedy. In the 1930s, it was the time of screwball comedy; in the 1960s, sex comedy appeared; in the 1970s, nervous romantic comedy started to catch the attention of the audience. Then in the 1980s, radical romantic comedy and
neo-traditional romantic comedy followed hard at heel (Claire Mortimer 10-19). In my research, wedding comedy is the representative derivative mode of romantic comedy mainly from 1990 to 2010. Contemporary film directors in the period from 1990 to 2010 tend to employ various materials in the making of the movies in order to catch the attention of a wider audience and to further build a stronger and closer connection with them. As Claire Mortimer states in Romantic Comedy:
Specific phases have been identified in the evolution of the romantic comedy....These different ‘phases’ of the genre reflect the social, economic and institutional climate of the time....with diverse forms seeking to speak to a proliferation of audiences, yet common themes, narratives and tropes
can be discerned. (10)
In Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre, Tamar Jeffers McDonald also points out this feature which is intended to attract wider audience’s attention.4
According to IMDb (The Internet Movie Databases), the statistics of Hollywood wedding movies with the genre features of comedy and romance reach a high number from 1990 to 2010 as I name it “the Contemporary Period.” Judging from the
increasing count of movies exploiting wedding themes, I posit that one of the “different phases” of romantic comedy, or even a new derived mode has gradually come into shape. As Mortimer, McDonald, and Steve Neale previously mentioned, wedding comedy can also reflect certain climate of the time. As will be explored in the following chapters, the formation and the development of this emergent form may “reflect the social, economic and institutional climate of the time” (Mortimer 10) and the component of the “intrinsic hybridity of genre films” (McDonald 8) can be discovered in such movies. There are many factors behind the change and hybridization.
The lifting of motion picture Production Code is an important example. It is an influential transition to switch the audience’s attention from mental romance between the hero and the heroine in 1930s screwball comedy to a more physical-oriented relationship in sex comedy of the1960s. In the late 1950s, movie producers and directors became fed-up with the Production Code and began to ignore it.5 As a
4
Steve Neale and Rick Altman, for example, both importantly point to the intrinsic hybridity of genre films….Neale demonstrates that hybridity has a long history and Altman notes that film marketing has always attempted to maximize audience appeal by proliferating the number of genres to which a film can belong (8).
5
The Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, started in 1934 and was abandoned in 1968. According to Mortimer, “Will Hays…[t]here had also been a number of high-profile Hollywood scandals involving the exposure of sordid details of the lifestyle of celebrated actors and filmmakers. The code consisted of a list of rules as to what could and could not be shown in film, censoring representations of sex and adultery, stating that the sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld and forbidding unnecessary scenes of passion…….’elephant in the corner’…read more into the film than what is made explicit” (14).
consequence, films went to a different direction. The transformation of the socio-cultural scope in the 1950s fully subverted the concept of marriage and, particularly, the conventional “happily-ever-after” ending of the wedding comedy. Such transformation engendered an in-between state for both the audience and the society to rethink possibilities other than love and marriage. Sheer romantic
attraction6 was no longer the sole aspect the female characters pondered on due to the awakening of female self-consciousness. Under such influence, women had second thoughts while facing the question if they were still going after romance and
happiness. Even though the films in those days hardly had any wedding scenes, there were still several classical romantic comedies appeared during this period. Some of the films such as An Affair to Remember and How to Marry a Millionaire (1957) still possessed certain major traits of the wedding comedy. As a great contributor to feminism, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) depicts the image of females at that time through one of her most influential works, The Second Sex. It is her opinion that women can gain control over their future; however, such choice cannot be made without great courage, confidence, and effort as well as self-consciousness. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”7
is her famous statement, which separating “woman” as a biological entity from “femininity” as a social perspective. Her standpoint is perceived as one of the most important contribution to the 20th century feminist thoughts and such transformation of women’s awakening, in my point of view, can be detected in the wedding comedy.
Although the persona of the leading male and female characters in the 1950s shared a great similarity with of the early screwball comedy, within the romantic atmosphere, a certain sentimental sorrow got melted away from the romantic comedy.
6 The female characters in films are no longer easily seduced or manipulated by the fragile romantic
moment anymore.
We can observe such sadness in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953). The film can be seen as one of the classic romantic comedies during this period. The cinematic formulas are similar to that in It Happened One Night. For example, in order to gain exclusive news from the heroine, the hero intentionally befriends her in the first place and finally they fall in love with each other. Simultaneously, the settings of the male and female protagonists in both films are almost the same. They are from different classes; Ann (Audrey Hepburn) is a princess, and Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) is an expatriate American reporter. In the end of the film, Princess Ann appears at the press conference and says, “Rome, by all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory, as long as I live!” and then departs. Apart from love and marriage, career and duties have become another option for women to pursue in romantic comedy. A line from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “T is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all” (In Memoriam: 27, 1850) seems to capture Ann’s attitude toward this relationship precisely. For her, she has once fallen in love and is loved in return. This is what counts.
In Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (1957), Ariane Chavasse (Audrey
Hepburn) and Frank Flanagan (Gary Cooper) do not wed in front of the altar. Instead, in the end of the film, Frank grabs Ariane into a train and it carries them to an
uncertain future. Is the playboy Frank with a flawed history of numerous love affairs ready to settle down for Ariane? Their future unveils as Ariane’s father narrates their belated marriage, and gives the audience the happy ending they long wish for in a voice-over. The most notable detail in both films is that there is neither a wedding nor the plot of runaway bride in the end. Such “abnormality” can be attributed to the confidence and autonomy among female figures as Glitre remarks “...the characters are far more self-conscious of innuendo than the blithely innocent screwball comedy were” (35). Even though the atmosphere of wedding comedy in this period is not as
joyful as it is in screwball comedy, the happily-ever-after ending is still reserved in such films. As for the further comment, the movie producers add more dramatic plots to tantalize audience emotions; that is the strategy of Hollywood blockbuster.
The romantic comedy An Affair to Remember can be defined as a wedding comedy. Both Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) are already engaged with someone else when they first met on a transatlantic ocean liner en route from Europe to New York. Such a background is quite conventional in wedding comedy. Even though it is a short gathering, they cannot help but fall in love with each other and promise to meet again in six months if they could break up with their fiancé and fiancée respectively. However, things do not run smoothly as they expect: Terry is overwhelmed as she is severely injured in a car accident. She does not want Nickie to take care of her for the rest of his life; therefore, she hides the fact by not showing up in time. After that day, both of them live their own life until Christmas Eve, which is a turning point for their destiny.
The setting of Christmas Eve in An Affair to Remember is not something
coincidental. Based on Sheldon Hall’s definition, Steve Neale points out that holiday miracle is one of the features of “New Hollywood cinema” that appeared in 1967. He believes that such arrangement has to do with the nature of “blockbuster” and with the producer’s commercial strategy. The old and the new Hollywood cinema are generally different in three directions: the released time, the selecting of topics, and the target audience. Neal states that:
the latter are widely and rapidly released in the summer and at Christmas…. The specialness of the New Hollywood blockbuster is less apparently
exclusive. It is also less culturally prestigious….New Hollywood
blockbusters are principally addressed to the perceived tastes of children, young adults and families. (2)
As soon as Nickie gets hold of Terry’s address on the day before Christmas, he goes to visit her. Out of her love for Nickie, Terry intentionally ignores his interrogation and pretends to be aloof. Just when Nickie is discouraged by her coldness and is about to leave, he notices her indecisive attitude. He soon finds out the truth and is touched by Terry’s consideration. The film ends with Nickie holding Terry in his arms, presenting a happy ending the audience anticipates. It is the setting of holiday miracle that brings them back together.
Although the similarity between romantic comedy and wedding comedy can be easily observed, the role settings are apparently different. In wedding comedy, the hero or the heroine invariably has already engaged with someone else, which does not serve as an indication of a happily-hereafter life. Moreover, the plot of running away from the groom or bride may be a climax in romantic comedy, and “other frequently occurring tropes include the wedding derailed by one partner running away…” (McDonald 13). Yet in wedding comedy, these tropes bring significant meanings rather than simply a way to render dramatic tension or a climax. The thesis mainly discusses the significance in terms of the following three concepts: female
self-transformation, the pre-destined mate or “the One,” and the strength of family values. The chapter ensuing will provide a more detailed definition of wedding comedy.
The Definition of Wedding Comedy
A wedding scene in a romantic comedy does not make the movie per se a wedding comedy. It should also contain the three key components. McDonald lists three key components when it comes to defining a certain genre. They are visual characteristics, narrative patterns, and ideology. As he states, “[w]e identify film genres by the kind of images found in them and, in turn, these images then become
laden with a symbolism dependent on their genre: they become icons and their study within a genre dignified with the title of ‘iconography’” (11). The idea of
“iconography,” furthermore, comes from Colin McArthur in his study of gangster film and he emphasizes locations, props and costumes, which shape the picture of a genre film as the elements of “iconography” (23). In romantic comedy, it also possesses this kind of iconography; the color tones are mostly warm and vivid, and a key
appurtenance, a memorable object, can easily be found in the film which signifies an eternal love for the protagonists or reappeared as a key vehicle to bring them back together after serious fights or despite many obstacles. The basic problem of Hollywood romantic comedy, as David Shumway points out in Modern Love:
Romance, Intimacy and the Marriage Crisis that “[t]he love story is so familiar in our
culture that we rarely give it a second thought…. ‘Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back’ is exhibit A of standard plots in all fictional media” (157). If we consider wedding comedy to be a derivative genre of romantic comedy, it surely contains such standard plots and settings. The locations of wedding comedy mostly take place in urban areas. The narrative pattern is usually that a boy meets, loses, and regains a girl, and the “meet cute” brings life and energy to romantic comedy.
Wedding comedy shares this similar formula. This research intends not only to point out the process of forming such an “exhibit A,” but also to analyze the reasons behind these formulas. For instance: how does the boy get the girl? How does he lose her, and finally how does he win her heart back again?
The three key components noted by McDonald are visual characteristics, narrative patterns and ideology. The visual characteristics can be divided into two categories; the visual settings and the setting of the stock characters. The former one includes the “visual” elements that associate with locations, props, and costumes. As for the later one, we can capture the visual “characteristics” of the hero and the
heroine in a film (11). Unlike romantic comedy, wedding comedy starts with an easily observed message that the male or female protagonist is engaged in a relationship and is ready to take the next step. In The Proposal (2009), directed by Anne Fletcher and starring Sandra Bullock as Margaret Tate, Margaret, a pushy and mean executive editor in chief of a book publishing company, forces her assistant, Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds), to marry her after receiving the order to be deported to Canada because of the coming expiration of her visa. Were there not the expiration of her visa Margaret would not have asked Andrew to marry her. The Proposal can not be
categorized as a wedding comedy. Because neither does one of them has been engaged to other people before their first encounter nor does one of them infatuated with each other after knowing he/she is going to married someone else, its previous setting does not fit in the visual characteristic of this genre. The second key
component is narrative patterns. Classic plot elements appearing in romantic comedy such as the “meet-cute”8
or “key kiss” are not the main focuses in wedding comedy. Even if they are, these scenes are not crucial moments which influence the following storyline. In What Happens in Vegas (2008), the couple gets married because of the three-million-dollar jackpot. The tag line “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” indicates how absurd it is for the drunk, depressed and lonely man and woman, Joy Ellis McNally (Cameron Diaz) and Jack Fuller (Ashton Kutcher), to get married in the sin city. The depiction on the wedding ceremony or on the preparation barely lasted for no longer than five minutes. Furthermore, the self-transformation of the female lead is induced by the marriage life rather than the wedding preparation. Therefore,
What Happens in Vegas cannot be categorized as wedding comedy, either. As for
8 Claire Mortimer mentions clearly about the definition of meet-cute as such: “The meet-cute is one of
the defining moments of the rom-com, when the couple first encounters each other, generally in comic and prophetic circumstances. The meet-cute is prophetic in that it can often suggest the nature of the couple’s relationship. The situation is used to bring together the two central characters, bringing their conflicting personalities into comic collision, initiating the narrative dynamic” (Mortimer 6).
ideology, the intention to get married in wedding comedy is different from that in romantic comedy. In other words, there is not any sort of ulterior inducement(s) behind the decision to get married in wedding comedy. In The Bachelor (1999), which is a remake of the American silent film Seven Chances (1925), directed by Gary Sinyor and starring Chris O’Donnell as Jimmie Shannon, Shannon suddenly decides to get married with his girlfriend of three years, Anne Arden (Renee Zellweger), because he discovers that if he gives up the bachelor life before his thirtieth birthday, he will officially inherit the 100 million dollars property from his grandfather. The movie is an example of getting married for the ulterior benefits, which disqualify it as wedding comedy.
The wedding in wedding comedy is mostly an outcome of a profound and long-term relationship without any extra motive,9 which are the primary
presupposition and the critical element to define this genre. Although the three movies mentioned above circle around the topics of marriage, true love and weddings, they still do not accord with the primary presupposition and the definition of wedding comedy. As a result, these movies cannot be categorized as wedding comedy. Unlike the above mentioned movies. The following example contains the three key
components and is defined as wedding comedy. In Leap Year (2010), Anna Brady (Amy Adams) tries to propose to Jeremy Sloane (Adam Scott), a
four-year-relationship boyfriend, on the leap day. According to a Irish folklore, leap-year proposal dated back to the 5th century and on that day woman can propose to her lover to marry her. On her road trip to making the proposal, Anna encounters a
9 The following plots may often lead to a wedding in romantic comedy, but none of them can be
defined as wedding comedies: getting a green card, the right to stay in certain countries, marrying for huge inheritance, unconsciously getting married during a drunk night, playing some ludicrous competitive mind games, or accidently getting pregnant, in other word ‘shotgun wedding’ which according to OED’s definition is “[an] enforced or hurried wedding, especially because the bride is pregnant.”
total stranger, Declan O’Callaghan (Matthew Goode). The strong resolution for Anna to propose to Jeremy starts to thaw. Although Anna and Declan are not engaged to anyone when they first met, Anna puts a front and clear declaration that she is going to marry Jeremy. Such visual characteristic is crucial to wedding comedy that one of them has been engaged or is about to marry someone else. It explains why Leap Year falls in this genre.
The first climax and sign for the audience to be sure Anna and Declan should be the right couple is when they accidently run into a stranger’s wedding ceremony to seek shelter from a hailstorm. It is a sign to predict their intimacy later on, and it creates the first climax during the night. In wedding comedy, one of the usual narrative patterns is to break each other’s masquerade (McDonald 13) before the wedding ceremony or during the wedding preparation. This is exactly what happened between them when Declan says to Anna right after the wedding party:
DECLAN. The woman who is so desperate, she’s diddly-eying her way to Dublin making the most important decision of her life based on some ridiculous tradition which frankly, is a load of old poo.
ANNA. It’s not a load of poo. It’s romantic.
As the two adventurers finally arrive in Dublin, Anna finds out the reason why Declan hates the city so badly and suggests that he needs a closure with his ex-fiancé in order to move on. The masquerade is ultimately disappearing between each other. The self-transformation of Anne comes when Jeremy suddenly proposes to her not for love only, but for the fact that their getting married “was just the matter of time,” and for a “package deal” (Jeremy) to get the expensive condominium. Afterwards, Anna flies to Dingle to see if Declan has the same thought of starting a relationship with her.
Instead of saying yes, Declan proposes to Anna with the family ring he retrieved from his ex-fiancée while in Dublin and leads the movie toward the happy ending after the
“yes” (Anna). Leap Year demonstrates the primary and the most important setting in wedding comedy, and the ideology of this genre, which is getting married without any sort of ulterior motivations.
Two Categories of Wedding Comedy
According to my research and personal observation, wedding comedy can be divided into two categories, the runaway wedding plot and the obstacle-overcoming wedding plot. The runaway wedding plot has two typical patterns, the dynamic runaway plot and the passive runaway plot. The former depicts a groom or a bride running away from the altar before the wedding starts or even in the middle of the ceremony, while the latter depicts the interruption of a wedding ceremony.
In the dynamic runaway plot, the bride/groom runs away from his or her own wedding, which mostly happens to the bride who runs away to a third person that will provide her with true happiness. Both the runaway figure and the third person may fall in love with each other only under an incomprehensibly short period of time, or are romantically in love at first sight. The process of meeting a stranger and then falling in love with him/her perfectly matches with the “meet cute” and “key kiss” plots and can be seen as the common features shared by classic romantic comedy and wedding comedy. One of the differences is that the bride realizes that the man she is going to marry is not the one for her, especially during the wedding preparation, and then she performs the classic runaway drama. Why do the brides mostly fall in love with some guys whom they just know for a short period of time? This kind of
decision-making creates an illusion of destiny which is similar to the narrative pattern of Shumway’s “exhibit A.” That is to say, the heroine will inevitably and accidentally meet “the One.” After a rather brief encounter with the heroine, “the One” builds a passionate bond with the female protagonist that effortlessly replaces her previous
commitment and long-term relationship with her fiancé. This kind of plotline can be seen in Runaway Bride (1999), It Had to be you (2000), and The Wedding Planner (2001).
In the passive runaway plot, a man who is going to marry a woman will
gradually change from a central position into a male supporting role, which means he turns out not to be “the One.” This role changing plot is similar to the “prick foil plot” in romantic comedy, a term used by Mark Rubinfeld.10 Rubinfeld argues that the difficult choice for the female lead to determine who “the One” actually is apparently facile for the audience to make, “…the heroine often gets to pick between a
‘down-to-earth Joe’ and an ‘upper-class dick’” (34). Apparently the “down-to-earth Joe” is always the perfect match and the pre-destined choice for the bride. The main perception of the passive runaway plot focuses on finding the perfect match, Mr. Right or “the One.” The wedding interrupter or the intruder mostly has a significant liaison with the bride or groom. They may be close friends since childhood,
understanding working partners, soul mates, love relationship counselors, or relatives such as younger cousins or sisters. My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Bubble Boy (2001), and Made of Honor (2008) are the examples of this type. As observed, wedding comedy in earlier period depicts men as accelerators to precipitate in the self-transformation for the better of the female protagonists and to make them better people. For this reason, the male leads are mostly older and with more social
experiences than their female counterparts. The setting of elder men marrying
younger women is still commonly appearing in the early 21st century wedding comedy, yet the function of the male role has changed. The male lead may not always stand in
10 Rubinfeld categorizes four variations of the foil plot, and the definition of prick foil plot is as
following: “...the prick foil plot, depicts two man who are in love with or profess to be in love with the same woman. The heroine must eventually choose between the two suitors: figuring out for herself which one is the hero and which one is the prick foil” (34).
a superior position to guide and to comfort the female lead. On the contrary, in some recent wedding comedy, the heroine may overcome the obstacles with the hero or even takes over the job as the mentor to conduct the inexperienced one. The heroines in My Best Friend’s Wedding, 27 Dresses, and Leap Year not only devote their attention to the careers with promising future, and along with the excellent
performances they also provide helpful suggestions for the heroes to deal with their love relationships.
The other category is the obstacle-overcoming wedding plot. It also contains two variations, the obstacle from paternity plot and the obstacle from matriarch plot. The former mainly emphasizes the significance of family values through the overpowering methods while the later ensures the family unity under an over protecting affection. The couple in this category is certainly resolved to get married with each other, yet an uncontrollable obstacle blocks their way. The only way to finally say “I do” in front of the altar is by getting through lots of tests to prove their loyalty and faithfulness toward each other and their relationship. Different from the runaway wedding plot, in the obstacle-overcoming plot there is no third person involved such as a close friend or a passionate and thoughtful stranger who gets in between the couples to interfere with their relationship or to change their decision to get married. It is the father figure who represents patriarchy in the family system that typically acts as the biggest obstacle. The father pulls the trigger and switches on his defense mechanism when he confronts or is challenged by the charming and younger invader who is going to marry his lovely and adorable daughter. The typical fathers are depicted in Meet the
Parents (2000), The In-Laws (2003), Guess Who (2005), and Our Family Wedding
(2010). As for other participants in wedding comedy, including childhood best friends and all the other less important third, fourth, or fifth subordinate roles become the most powerful backups to fix the couples up in order to make sure the wedding goes
well without any unexpected interruption. The interesting thing is that the key point for the male and female leads to finally get married is to reconcile the past animosity and to let the father witness the true love between the couples.
As for the motherly obstacle plot, the mother plays a more important role in the family. In the early period, the character of the mother hardly existed as someone with any influence. As Marjorie L. DeVault points out in Feeding the Family: the Social
Organization of Caring as Gendered Work:
Through necessary for maintaining the social world as we have known it, caring has been mostly unpaid work, traditionally undertaken by women, activity whose value is not fully acknowledged even by those who do it....Social expectation has made the undefined, unacknowledged activity central to women’s identity....Both men and women have learned to think of these patterns as “natural.” (3)
The second-wave feminist movement helps raise the consciousness of women’s rights. Thus, these maternal influences surface to represent the female power in wedding comedy. Although there are some wedding comedy in which the mother comes between the bride and groom, such as Say It Isn't So (2001), and Monster-in-Law (2005), and acts as a destructive role to confront the daughter-in-law to-be in order to ensure that she is still her son’s priority, in most cases the settings of letting the mother both comfort her anxious husband and give the son-in-law to-be a hand/hint commonly appear in the early 21st century wedding comedy. When the daughter faces an oppressive form, mostly from a father figure, the character’s function also changes from contending with her father to attempting to communicate with him in a rational way. The conflicts between family values and the awakening of feminist
consciousness can be observed in wedding comedy such as Guess Who, License to
In chapter two, the transformation of the female protagonists in Hollywood wedding comedy will be discussed in the order of time. According to the historical background and social phenomena, I will divide the development of wedding comedy into four periods in chronological order from 1930 to 2010. I will explore the changes of women’s attitudes and self-transformations when they face weddings and long-term relationships during different periods. It Happened One Night (1934) will be
discussed as one of the first wedding comedy in the first period, 1930 to 1950 (The Early Period), which contains many classic clips and plot elements that recur in the early 21st Hollywood wedding comedy. Although no research directly lists It
Happened One Night as a wedding comedy, the change that the female protagonist
goes through clearly manifest the female self-transformation and the film itself certainly qualifies as this genre. In one of the first and famous scenes in the film, the spoiled daughter Ellen “Ellie” Andrews (Claudette Colbert) fights against her father’s will and seeks her true love, who is not of the same social status—having a
millionaire father is a typical background for the female lead in such a screwball comedy. In order to pursue her love, Ellie jumps off the family yacht, swims toward the river bank and hits on a road trip all by herself. Ellie’s action demonstrates two remarkable elements in wedding comedy: one is to bravely pursue what one’s heart desires, and the other is to achieve development and maturity during this process of pursuit. In this film, wedding ceremony is a symbol and a process of transformation revealing how a woman has changed from a naïve rich girl into a mature woman with confidence and independence. In the second period, 1950 to 1970 (The Declined Period), the movies selected for this period include films from the 1950s: Roman
Holiday (1953), and An Affair to Remember (1957); and from the 1960s: The
Graduate (1967). Annie Hall (1977), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), and Moonstruck
Resurgence Period). For the fourth and the latest period, 1990 to 2010 (The
Contemporary Period), I will mainly depict the following wedding comedy, My Best
Chapter Two
Transformation the Female Protagonists in Wedding Comedy
The number of wedding comedy, according to the chart I provided in my introductory chapter, has shown a sharp increase starting from 1990 onwards to the year of 2010. In order to provide possible explanations to such development, this chapter chiefly discusses the changing historical backgrounds, social phenomenon, political preferences, and the transformation of the female protagonist in each of the four periods as introduced in the introduction, namely, the Early Period (1930 to 1950), the Declined Period (1950 to 1970), the Resurgence Period (1970 to 1990), and, finally, the Contemporary Period (1990 to 2010). A wedding comedy will be assigned to each period as a mean of case study: It Happened One Night (1934) for The Early Period; The Graduate (1967) for The Declined Period; Moonstruck (1987) and My
Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) for The Resurgence Period and The Contemporary
Period respectively. Each case study analyzes the wedding scene and the runaway scene to unveil the message that indicates the transformation of women’s
self-knowledge in this derivative genre. In addition, shot angles that portray the female protagonists’ self-transformation will be particularly investigated to support my proposition that wedding comedy can reflect a change of attitude while facing one of the most important decisions in a woman’s life, getting married.
Before getting into details about each period, the fundamental appeals of romantic comedy and wedding comedy require a distinct clarification. As previously mentioned, wedding comedy is the representative mode of romantic comedy in the early 21st century Hollywood. Romantic comedy and wedding comedy share some “family resemblance” (Alastair Fowler 41).11
Kathrina Glitre in Hollywood Romantic
11
Fowler makes a metaphoric reference to treat genre as a family so that the “representative of a genre may then be regarded as making up a family whose steps and individual members are related in various
Comedy: States of the Union, 1934-1965 provides further explanation of the concept,
stating that both wedding and romance comedy share “many commonalities, each individual member will also be unique; and while the possibilities of cross-breeding are abundant, each generation will still bear some connection to the last” (11). In the 1990s, both romantic comedy and wedding comedy increased relatively, but the rising number of the films can be explained differently. In “Hanging on a Star: The
Resurrection of Romance Film in the 1990s,” Catherine L. Preston discovers the similarity of the rise.12 She observes, “Hollywood has not approached this level of romance films since the 1950s when there was a yearly average of 13 released over the course of the decade” (229), and announces the contribution to the upswing can be attributed to the change of the representation of love and marriage in the
contemporary society. The wedding as the crucial element stands in between love and marriage has gained a surprising attention in the film industry. This derivative genre represents a process of transformation for a woman to understand herself better through the preparation for the wedding and to take further action to achieve her true inner desire regardless of the pressure received from the crowd, the society or even be tempted by a seemingly perfect fiancé. Taking a departure from the so-called regular, customary and cliché happy endings of most of the romantic comedy, wedding comedy highlights its process and to further provide other kinds of happy endings for the moviegoers; runaway wedding plot is a significant one to be focused on. If a quest for true love is the ultimate goal for romantic comedy, in wedding comedy,
discovering her true womanhood is the ultimate objective for the female protagonist.
ways, without necessarily having any single feature shared in common by all” (41).
12 The production of Hollywood romance films stood steady in the past; however the number of the
films started to change, “[b]etween 1960 and 1969 there were an average of 7 romances released a year. In the 1970s that figure went down to 5 per year. In 1980 the production of romances began to rise and between 1984 and 1989 an average of 20 were released each year. Between 1990 and 1996, the annual average rose to 26, peaking at 40 in1991” (229).
Films on Quest
The alteration of women’s self-knowledge which leads to self-discovery and self-understanding does not happen spontaneously or suddenly, but it is motivated by the “wedding ceremony” itself. In other words, the ceremony initiates women onto the path of an enlightening pilgrimage. What is the meaning of a quest, then? The
motivation of a journey is to invoke people to seek for certain answers or to obtain particular goals. While reaching the end of the journey, the original goal and the final destination are somehow different. That is to say, the original goal is the motivation for the quester to head on the trip. The question is how to define a quest; in New York
Times Bestseller How to Read Literature like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster
demonstrates how to define it in a literary text. The five elements that constitute a quest are “(a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there” (3). Coincidently, most of the structures and storylines in wedding comedy display a questing theme and match Thomas’s definition of a “quest.”
In wedding comedy, a quester and a place to go are the first two elements to focus on. There are two canonical settings for a quester: one is those who are heavily involved in the arrangement of the wedding ceremony, such as the bride or the wedding planner, since the wedding will not be possible without them. The attendee of the wedding ceremony such as the maid of honor, the bride’s best friend, or a relative of hers is the other. The third element in Thomas’s theory of the “quest” is a reason or an intention to step on her journey; in this case, her wedding. Along the path, like Thomas’s fourth factor, she has to confront with various challenges and trials, to complete the wedding preparation. A perfect location, a stunning wedding dress and, most importantly, fiancée’s opinions and family approval are subsumed into her consideration along the way of wedding preparation. Any inadequacy in any of the
above may induce the cancellation of the wedding. The ultimate purpose to quest for wedding is a journey of self-discovering; towards the end, amidst all the setbacks, the protagonist finally realizes the true meaning of wedding and makes a better decision on her own.
The Epiphany in Wedding Comedy
In It Happened One Night, Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) comes to realize who she truly loves the moment she stands on the altar waiting for her fiancé, King Westley (Jameson Thomas). In The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) plays an innocent graduate student who has been striving very hard to fulfill his parents’ expectations. He never has a chance to make decision autonomously and has been seduced several times by Elaine Robinson’s mother, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Bursting into Elaine Robinson’s (Katharine Ross) wedding ceremony and convincing her to run away with him are his only two significant decisions in the film. According to Mike Nichols’s comment on the introspective final sequence, the
director of The Graduate considers the previous runaway scene to be an impulsive mistake. While I do not want to challenge this authorial opinion, I do want to offer my own interpretation of the ending sequence. As Elizabeth Grosz declares, “all readings are interpretive through and through.... Interpretations come from particular
perspectives and represent particular values” (141). To me, the acting out of blind impulse in this film presents the gist of wedding comedy, which takes over the power of determination as long as the leading character is willing to admit his or her mistake, and then advance to the next level of self-understanding.
Furthermore, in Moonstruck, Loretta Castorini (Cher), a 37-year-old accountant, is about to marry Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello). During the wedding preparation, she is attracted to Johnny’s estranged younger brother, Ronny (Nicolas Cage). As
Loretta’s mother, Rose, exposes her husband’s affair and announces her decision not to tolerate it any more in a family gathering, Loretta accepts Ronny’s proposal after throwing the engagement ring at Johnny, who halted their wedding because of the disapproval of his dying mother. The abandoned wife-to-be always represents the image of a victim in a conventional role, who can only gamble or rely on her “Prince Charming” to rescue her. However, in Moonstruck, the submissive wife and the ungrateful fiancé start to reverse such prototype, leading our attention to another unique feature of wedding comedy, which is the character of the Mother. In this film, Loretta’s mother, Rose Castorini, is expected to deal with her treacherous husband’s affair in a conventional and obedient way, accepting the betrayal and tolerating the affair. Surprisingly, the aged Rose refused to compromise with such infidelity. Instead, she faces it with confidence and wisdom, subverting the conventional image of the conservative woman, who constantly lives under patriarchal oppression. Rose’s words and deeds serve as an inspiration for her daughter. The chain reaction that leads to rejecting passive acceptance of traditional roles boosts up female power and solidifies images of strong women in wedding comedy.
In another example, Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) decides to sabotage the wedding of her old acquaintance, Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney), in My Best
Friend’s Wedding since Michael promises her that they will be marrying each other if
none of them is engaged at the age of 28. In the last chasing scene, she realizes that Michael does not love her as she loves him. She maturely accepts the truth and walks away. Instead of making Michael accept Julianne’s expectation or even the
moviegoers’, the director, P.J. Hogan, presents a fresh message to his audience: that finding the answer to one’s selfhood is more valuable than to simply giving away a predictable ending. True happiness outshines the clichéd happy ending. As Thomas states, “the real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge” (3), women in wedding
comedy finally break through the assumption of “what if” and lead to the destination of self-transformation.
In order to analyze the various stages of females’ self-transformation in wedding comedy and to indicate its flaws, the following section will focus on the historical backgrounds of each period. As historical events influence the development of
feminism and the revolution of female awareness, the portraits of female characters in wedding comedy as well as their responses while making crucial choices demonstrate the significances of the dramatic increasing in number of wedding comedy in the early 21st century.
I. The Early Period from 1930 to 1950: From Great Depression to WWII
In the 1930s, the historical background of screwball comedy13 influenced by The Great Depression, which erupted in 1929. Insufficient job opportunities with intense competitions led mass depression and helplessness. The setting of the film satisfied the audience and balanced their disquietude toward the society. Therefore, the films at the time presented the rich in an ambiguous way—they did not live as happily as common people presumed. For the rich, money and privileges were not equal to happiness, and deep down in their soul they were still lonely and unsatisfied. The female characters in wedding comedy are mostly born with a silver spoon. Conversely, the leading male characters often represent the image of the poor and are mostly unemployed. Such settings of the male characters are intended to urge the audience to identify with the male protagonists in the film. As mentioned earlier, the heroines in wedding comedy of this period are mostly born in a wealthy family. As Glitre mentions that they have been pampered since their childhood and none of them
13According to Claire Mortimer, the definition of screwball comedy is “…a warring couple are placed
in the center of the narrative and are responsible for the madcap escapades, chaos slapstick and witty, fast-paced dialogue that marks the progress of their explosive relationship” (11).
possesses sufficient social experience (25). When the Father resolutely forbids his lovely and naïve daughter to get into a relationship with some snobbish young men, the only way for the innocent daughter to stay with her lover is to break through the cage in which her father imprisons her, whether mentally or physically. Thus, in the beginning of It Happened One Night, spoiled heiress Ellen “Ellie” Andrew (Claudette Colbert) jumps off her father’s luxurious yacht, swims away to the river band and disappears. Ellie’s exaggerative behavior underlines her determination to marry the one she truly loved. Meanwhile, Ellie lives in a time where the society is governed by men. Under such patriarchal society, the Father has total economic control, not to mention his absolute power over the household. The women, on the contrary, have to rely on men financially and domestically. Such recourse compels them to be mere men’s subordinate, let alone to pursue their own happiness. Hence, it takes more than stubbornness and obstinacy for a woman to act independently as she may suffer from famine or, even worse, death, once she leaves the patriarchal guidance. Ellie’s
steadfast determination and staunch faith to be with her lover send the audience a message: women yearn to gain independence.
Meanwhile, Mortimer points out that watching screwball comedy in the movie theaters became a way for the needy and disappointed people to escape from the cruel reality temporarily. No matter how intensely the main male and female protagonists argue with each other, they will come to peace and the movie will end happily
eventually. Such happy endings provide something these moviegoers aspire to, that is, Hope. As Mortimer observes:
…chaos reigned supreme and resulted in happiness and hope for its hero and heroine.…strong contrast to the harsh realities of life in mid-1930s America, offering an exhilarating sense of escapism and, ultimately,
the chaos there will be a happy ending. (11)
The structure of the film has reflected the emotion of the audience. On the one hand, they had no alternative while confronting the chaotic economic depression; on the other hand they were still faithful that the crisis could be solved eventually and they would be led to a better future, just like the ending of the films in the 1930s.
During the time of World War II, 1935-45, more than seven million women started to devote themselves to vocations. As a result, female characters during this period had undergone a massive transformation. Heroines might have jobs or even become important people with high social status. Mortimer further states:
…the themes and narratives shifted, reflecting a concern with the new gender politics stemming from the movement of women out of the home and into work. Films such as His Girl Friday, Woman of the Year…explore what happens when a woman penetrates a man’s world and the domestic war of the sexes enters the workplace. (13)
In addition, the first and second wave French Feminism permeated through public arena, influencing women around the world significantly. Margaret Mead, an anthropologist and a professor of University of Columbia, was one of the leading feminists, who published Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies in 1935. It is a book that affected profoundly the way women dressed and talked in this period. The audience can notice that women in wedding comedy have gradually changed from a constrained and willful girl to a mature lady who possesses the ability to decide her own future in rational ways without making a tearful scene. In one of the well-known screwball comedies, and also wedding comedies, The Philadelphia Story (1940),14 Tracy Samantha Lord Haven (Katharine Hepburn) is a wealthy Main Line
14 The Philadelphia Story (1940) received 6 nominations, and won two Academy Awards, Best Actor
(James Stewart) and Best Writing, Screenplay (Donald Ogden Stewart). Film Daily named the film as one of the ten best of the year. Moreover, in 1995, The Philadelphia Story film was being commend for
Philadelphia socialite and she breaks off her own wedding and firmly says “No” to her fiancé in the presence of everyone instead of running away from the ceremony. In
It Had to Be You (1947), the situation gets more interesting. Not only does Victoria
Stafford, plays by Ginger Rogers, refuses to get married in front of the altar, but she retreats from her own wedding thrice before saying the two magical words, “I do.” As we can see, the resolution of the two female protagonists mentioned above shows that they are no longer constrained by common customary. Choosing to walk away from the wedding typifies Tracy’s and Victoria’s autonomies, or, to a larger extent, women’s independence.
Overall, towards the end of the early period, the leading female characters in wedding comedy are no longer a target to be easily manipulated as in the early 1930s. Although the heroines in such films mostly commence to decide their own fate and choose their own path at the last moment, the self-knowledge behind the actions to refuse and further to quest deserves a fair appreciation.
II. The Declining Period from 1950 to 1970: Conventional Values and the Male Gaze
As WWII came to an end in the mid-1940s, men were released from military service and began to crowd into the market. However, what surprised the men was the positions left behind by them were taken by women. Job opportunities were scarce with women reluctant to return back to the domestic sphere. As men and women were competing for job opportunities, a new conflict unfolded between the two sexes. During the post-war period, women were accused by men for “stealing” job opportunities from them. Such a conflict could be observed via the contemporary mass media. Advertisements and films at that time, if not displayed, hinted that
"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was chose as preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
women belonged to the household and men were the breadwinners. The Feminine
Mystique is a book that allegedly highlights the second-wave feminism in the United
States. In this book, Betty Friedan points out “the problem that has no name” in the 1950s and the early 1960s. What, then, is Friedan’s nameless problem? American post-war society believed that women could find fulfillment in marriage and housewifery. Mass media became an attire medium to convince women to stay in home and to be an “Angel of the House.”15
Mortimer states that “[t]he domestic idyll was all that the American woman was assumed to be interested in, sacrificing
education and career prospects for the fulfillment of being a wife and mother” (26). It was how society portrays the ideal American woman during this period. In general, wedding comedy was hardly produced during the post-war period. The reason is that the self-transformation achieved through the process of wedding preparation is not allowed in this “conservative morality of the fifties” (Cherry Potter xiv), which explains the decreasing number of wedding comedy during this period of time.
In addition, the efforts of representing female self-independence through career opportunities and self-knowledge faced serious challenges and were further repressed regularly in the declining period. Such setbacks can be simply observed in wedding comedy that was produced during this period as the image of woman was negatively distorted. In screwball comedy, the hero and heroine used to focus on a central value of mental attraction between men and women. Under the monitor of the Motion Picture Production Code,16 Nickie Ferrante and Terry McKay in An Affair to
15 The phrase originally came from a poem written in 1854 by Coventry Patmore, who believed his wife was perfect and all wives should be like her. Back in the 19th century, the phrase was used to describe the “perfect Victorian woman.” The “Angel of the House” was a woman who wasdevoted and submissive to her husband. She was supposed to be passive, powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all, pure. In the 1950s, the term was used to describe the “perfect woman” who chose to be a housewife rather than a career woman.
16 The Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, started in 1934 and was abandoned in 1968.
According to Mortimer, “Will Hays…[t]here had also been a number of high-profile Hollywood scandals involving the exposure of sordid details of the lifestyle of celebrated actors and filmmakers. The code consisted of a list of rules as to what could and could not be shown in film, censoring
Remember can only present their intimacy indirectly. For example, they hug in the
shadow and their kissing scene is skillfully blocked by the mast on the ship. However, the restriction of PCA17 started to exist in name, but not in reality. Sex comedy18 then rose and became a popular genre in this period. The female characters were portrayed in a depraved image as these heroines were morally criticized for their sexual liberation and enjoyment. The Moon Is Blue (1953) is one of the representative works of the sex comedy that was even nominated for the Oscar. An Academy Award was bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
(AMPAS) to honor its contribution to the film industry. Interestingly, the first Playboy magazine founded by Hugh Hefner was released in the same year and published in Chicago. The film that challenged the conventional values was on the list in the annually ceremony for excellence of cinematic achievements and the male-oriented weekly readings that features photographs of nude women were published to satisfied the male gaze. These social issues not only reflect the abandon of the production code but also highlight a more meaningful fact that with the embrace of the popular genre “the success of The Moon Is Blue and the acknowledgement of the possibility of female desire and sexual pleasure led to greater freedoms” (Mortimer 15).
Sex is no longer a taboo topic, and it can be discussed openly. Sex comedy also attributes male’s objectification of female. For instance, the stereotype of the “dumb blondes” was first accounted in Anita Loos’ novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The
Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady (1924). The novel was adapted into a silent
representations of sex and adultery, stating that the sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld and forbidding unnecessary scenes of passion…….’elephant in the corner’…read more into the film than what is made explicit” (14).
17 Production Code Administration: from 1930 to 1967, the production code of the motion picture
industry required all the films for approval before onscreen.
18 According to Kathrina Glitre, the definition of sex comedy is that “[b]roadly speaking, the majority
of Hollywood romantic comedies can be described as sex comedies, given that sex is usually an issue, albeit an implicit one. However, ‘sex comedy’ is more commonly used to describe a type of Hollywood comedy produced during the late 1950s and early 1960s” (33).
movie in 1928 and was remade by Howard Hawks 23 years later with Marilyn Monroe starring in the film. The female characters in the 1950s “[were] divided between the two opposing archetypes, the virgin and the whore” (Mortimer 27), which specifically implying the themes of “sexual desire and consumerism” (Glitre 34). As Mortimer states, films such as The Moon Is Blue and Pillow Talk (1959) “revolved around the narrative of both the man and the woman wanting sex, and the conflict created by the woman wanting marriage first, whereas the man wants his freedom” (16). Although women still visualized marriage as their final destination for a relationship, they no longer saw corporeal sex as a kind of confinement but as a mean to release them both physically and mentally. It is a huge leap forward for women in terms of sexual liberation as they show they have sexual needs, too.
A. Rebellious Adolescent: The Graduate (1967)
Unlike screwball comedy which provides a sense of escape for the audience from the financially collapsed society in the past, the New Hollywood cinema shifts to focus on everyday-life issue, especially the contemporary teenager’s attitude towards love and relationship. Whereas screwball comedy provides temporary refuge for its audience, the New Hollywood movie reflects the social reality. Along with the
abrogation of the PCA code, the previous interdicted shot such as the seduction scenes can be presented in an undisguised way in films such as The Graduate.
Rebellious teenagers have always been an issue for both parents and teachers. Generational gaps and conflicts between parents and their teenage children were pervasive in the films at that time. One of the representative wedding comedies in this period is Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. The background of the film sets in the 1960s, where many major occasions took place, such as the Vietnam War, sexual revolution, and feminist movement. However, the protagonist Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) cares
