Romantic Comedies

There's a stereotype that only women should like romantic comedies; as a matter of fact, the trailers, commercials and ads are all geared towards women. I think it's odd that men are expected to not enjoy anything romantic. They're certainly expected to enjoy comedies so clearly it's the "romantic" part of romantic comedy that is supposed to irk them. Weird. One of my favorite films, Elegy, is a romantic film and despite being a man (or so I'm told) I enjoy it quite a lot. I was moved to tears even by the ending.

However, and this is a big however, there is a problem with romantic comedies that goes further than them not being marketed to men. The problem is that they're sexist films intent on keeping the status quo in society while forming expectations that will never be met.

Let's start with sexist. For one, almost every romantic comedy portrays the woman as ditzy and casually cruel to whatever man they're interested in. I'm sorry, is this seventh grade? Not only that, the woman simply CANNOT FUNCTION without the man in question. Wow, that's quite a statement on the female gender.

Then we come to the man in the equation and he's always a real piece of work. Usually we get someone who is kind but, gee whiz, just doesn't quite know what to do with his life other than look rugged. It's a good thing that there's a woman about to come into his life that will SET HIM STRAIGHT.

So we're not exactly dealing with well drawn characters here.

Then we have the status quo. The characters in the film simply must be married by the end. This is never in question. Now, it's fairly obvious from divorce rates that some people shouldn't ever get married because it doesn't work for them but romantic comedies like to act like such people don't exist. You know who else doesn't exist? Gay people. When was the last time you saw a romantic comedy about gay people? Yeah, that's what I thought.

There are a lot of terrible movies out there (hell, MOST movies are terrible) but it's these sickening romantic comedies that bother me the most. When it comes to movies where characters are tortured there's at least an "ick, gross" factor coming from the audience. Not so with romantic comedies- the audience is supposed to leave thinking, "Yes, that's how things should be."