As Little Dwayne blasts from an iPod mix as a tattooed youth strolls through Facebook on their MacBook chatting about their day with a new crush. We’ve moved beyond the days of Frank Sinatra and who “truly” won the Nixon/Kennedy debate (but all know who really won). Times have changed but have they in the world of Rom Coms?

What are the recurring themes and motifs?

Montages, montages, and more montages. You can’t go wrong with a montage set to the cinematic equivalent of department store music. There are a few types o’ montages in these films. The initial dating montage; where they gradually get more comfortable with each other and kiss for the first time. The falling in love montage; where they start having sex, having brunch, and incorporating them into their family and friend circles. The falling out of love and the breakup montage; these are similar enough but slightly different. When you break it down it’s the man is alone and/or hanging with his friends but something is amiss, same happens to the girl. Finally there’s the getting back together montage; where they rekindle the romance that had faded, get married, and/or have a baby.

On the topic of friends, in the old films the man is a strong manly man loner with no friends because men don’t need a support system of friends with similar interests that can help you out. Things are a little bit different this time around. Dudes have a few best buds, 2 to 3 usually. These friends fit into a few categories. The Black friend, he is Black and usually seen with his buds or with Black women. Only Black, he is never Korean or Mexican or Estonian or anything else. It’s good to see some diversity but there be more. For example Ludacris in No Strings Attached. The loser friend, he is more of a loser and fatter than the main character, typically there is a joke about porn at him. Also he is single or a failing relationship. For example, Josh Gad in Love and Other Drugs. The weird friend, similar to loser friend but he’s more weird than lonely possibly a stoner. For example Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook (he’s the main character but this combined the main guy with the weird friend type). One of the main things keeping all these guys friends is basketball. If they aren’t shown playing basketball, you see them coming from playing it. Universally the friends are bro douchebags that don’t wanna get tied down in a relationship because come on, being in a happy stable relationship is horrid.

Instead of courting each other in a very chaste and traditional manner, people be fuckin’. The two lovers tend to start out as sex buddies but it doesn’t stay that way. The guy develops feelings first. Men can fall in love too but women also like sex. This causes conflict. She doesn’t want to ruin the situation. However eventually she realizes that she loves him too. I need to mention again like in the prior article, the movies I watched were heteronormative, a man and woman fall in love. Back to the article, the formula is reversed in who falls in love first. So that’s an improvement.

There are two more, one that’s really glaring and the other is odd. Their family life isn’t always bright and cheery when you take a closer look at their family situation. The glaring one was the successful sibling that has it all. They either are getting married or happily married already. This of course makes our lovers jealous and realize they need to find love to be a full, validated person. For example Josh Gad in Love and Other Drugs, he’s both the loser friend and successful sibling. Or the sibling can be super rich, like Josh Gad, because you can only be happy with you are rich and married. The odd theme I noticed was the guy has a strained and complicated relationship with his dad. It isn’t talked about and barely explained, if at all. It doesn’t go much beyond this.

So in modern Rom Coms, dudes and dads don’t get along, dude’s friends think commitment is for wimps, there is no such thing as too many montages (Love and Other Drugs has at least 5, it’s insane), and people be fuckin’.

Is the romance creepy at all?

Here’s the thing it isn’t. Maybe it’s because I’m comparing these films to films like The Apartment but dudes can be a little overbearing which is about it. The worst thing that happened in this regard is the guy shows up at her job unannounced a couple times but it’s discussed between them shortly after this. It is creepy behavior but at least he isn’t memorizing her address and social security number. You even get to see how they court each other from the female perspective, which is barely explored in the old films. So it isn’t that creepy really. Again, the dude can be a little overbearing but he is not a disgusting, grotesque monster in human flesh like C.C. Baxter.

Will there be a “Happily Ever After?”

It’s possible. They both appear to respect each other and treat each other like equals. This is better than say something like The Apartment. This probably taints my opinion of modern Rom Coms. There could be a “Happily Ever After,” but it depends on the specific situation.

In Review

The film I liked the most was Charade. I know it’s bizarre I picked one of the old ones. It manages to be part thrilling adventure and part Rom Com but balanced well. It did in fact have some not great aspects but it is tolerable and the overall movie is just a fun delight. Audrey Hepburn is great, Cary Grant is almost as good as her, but Walter Mathieu steals the show though.

The film I was most disappointed by was Silver Linings Playbook. It isn’t bad but it sure isn’t good. The performances were good enough but it managed to be boring. It’s just a meh, average movie. I’m probably not the right person for it.

The film I thought was complete garbage was…The Apartment. You know why.

In 50 years Rom Coms have really evolved. Unlike Dystopian Future movies, the differences are as clear as day. It’s really insane to see what was once considered romantic in mainstream films a mere 50 years ago. Women went from being the helpless victim to a real person and not a plot device. They are still portrayed in an unequal less dynamic way compared to men but things are looking much better than they were. They aren’t being kept in a stranger’s apartment anymore. They can be people and actual characters with agency. Up next, I will tackle another genre but that will be revealed in due time.

So the story centers around Claire Beauchamp Randall (Fraser) and begins just after WWII. She and her husband Frank Randall have spent the last 5 years of the war apart, and the story begins with Frank and Claire going on a second honeymoon in Scotland to try to reconnect. I love that it starts off with a healthy dose of the getting-to-know-you awkwardness. Frank worked in intelligence and so his whole life during the war was keeping secrets, while Claire was a infantry nurse, and you kind of see at the beginning how closed off she is. Even when they announce the end of the war she doesn’t join in the celebrations with the other people, she drinks alone, still covered in blood from her last patient. So it’s good to see them trying to deconstruct what the war has made them as individuals and build something new together as a unit.

Also they are pretty sexy.

So you have Claire and Frank trying to rebuild something, and getting to know each other again, and doing a splendid job of it when one day after witnessing what looks like a pagan rite, Claire touches a stone in a ring of standing stones, or henge if you prefer, and wakes up to find herself in the middle of a battle between English redcoats and Scottish Highlanders.

That’s the first shock…the second shock comes when she sees one of the redcoats is the spitting image of her husband Frank. And because Frank was such an avid ancestry hound, you realize this was his ancestor, the famous Black Jack Randall. Now, Frank Randall is a loving, calm, mild-mannered guy. Black Jack Randall is a monster who just happens to wear his face, and he wastes no time in assaulting Claire.

Less sexy, more terrifying.

Claire is saved by the highlanders, and taken in after she is able to fix one of the men’s dislocated shoulders. (Jamie) She’s taken back to Castle Leoch and  While at the castle (Clan MacKenzie) she’s grilled by the Laird (Colum Mackenzie) and his brother Dougal and suspected of being an english spy. the basic premise of the show is her trying to get back to the stones and back to her own time without getting herself killed in the meantime.

Part of this means protection. In those days, protection meant marriage. A husband, a clan. So Claire is married off to young Jamie, who we are supposed to believe is still a virgin despite looking like this.

#Iwatchitfortheplot

Through a bit of uncomfortable circumstance, the midseason point finds Claire this close to getting back to Frank, only to wind up in the none-too-gentle care of Black Jack, who flies his Psychopath flag loud and proud.

Tick tock, Clarice

Everything came together brilliantly. I read the books so I knew what was going to happen, but I was still on the edge of my seat saying “oh shit, oh shit!”

The biggest challenge for me, going forward, is to not SPOIL EVERYONE on how this season will end.

What did all of you think?

When I was about 14 years old my parents took my brother and I on a fishing trip, where we spent a long weekend in a friend’s cabin in the middle of nowhere. There was TV, but no cable, which meant nothing but fuzzy baseball games and public access church to watch. There were a few board games, which we tired of quickly. My brother soon decided he’d rather be fishing with my parents than stuck inside with his grouchy sister, leaving me to my own devices for entertainment.

What this cabin did have, I soon discovered, was a copy of Frank Slaughter’s The Scarlet Cord: A Novel of the Woman Of Jericho. Yes, folks…my first romance was Biblical in every sense of the word. This book novelizes the story of Rahab, the harlot who helped the Israelite spies in Jericho during the Israelite conquest. And to my teenage brain, it was the sexiest thing I’d ever read. 

After that I was hooked. My Aunt Betty, thrilled I’d finally put down Stephen King in favor of more “appropriate” novels, put copies of Jude Deveraux’s A Knight In Shining Armor and The Duchess into my hot little hands. To this day they’re still some of my favorite books of all time, period.

I was drawn to Claire, the main character of The Duchess, because she defied my expectations of what a woman in a Romance Novel should be like. Claire loved to read as much as I did. She was the Edwardian version of a total nerd. She had everything, but all she wanted to was to learn and grow as a person. Wait, I thought. Aren’t these women supposed to be wilting flowers?

Granted, my expectations for this type were very, very high. I thought all women in Romance Novels should be a grown-up version of Laura Chant from The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance, which I have called out several times as being one of the finest Young Adult books ever written.

What I found was that, while the women in these books oftentimes embraced their femininity, they were painted as strong individuals who wanted love and pleasure in equal parts. They wanted it all, and they weren’t afraid to go after it. (Well, sometimes they were, but they always seemed to get over that fear by the end of the book)

I can’t help feel that steeping myself in Romance Novels in my teens and early twenties help me to mold many aspects of my personality from my self esteem to my independent nature.

What I enjoyed so much about Have Mercy is how much I related to Emme, the female lead. I won’t say “main character” because both Emme and Tom are given equal time and equal measure in this book. Neither one is relegated to “main character” and “love interest.”

Emme is driven. Her life isn’t perfect, but she knows how to roll up her sleeves and take care of business. Maybe it’s just me, but that happens to be the #1 thing that draws me to a character. Other examples would be Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson, Diana Gabaldon’s Claire Beauchamp  or even Margaret Hale from Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. These women have their wants and their needs, but are driven and practical by nature. Shit has got to get done.

And then there’s Tom…smart, talented, opinionated Tom whose sexiest trait is his respect for Emme. Yeah, he’s insanely attracted to her. Yeah, they both have baggage, but Tom is always ready to step in and support her. Tom doesn’t want to sweep Emme off of her feet and rescue her, because he knows she can rescue herself. His emotional awareness fits beautifully with the strength of Emme’s personality.

I wouldn’t hesitate to say that a Romance Novel can be feminist (and I’m not alone!) and that this book is one of the better examples of feminism in a romance novel. Emme and Tom find themselves fully embracing their own sexuality in a way that neither ever had before, and there’s nothing more empowering than that.

Also, it’s sexy as hell. Now go get it.