RomCom: Fairy Tale for Adults

Once upon a time, there were fairy tale stories.  Each story began with those famous four words.  For adults, childhood fairy tale stories have been replaced with the romantic comedy genre.  In studying the romantic comedy genre in film, there is a noticeably lack of depth and complexity in the characters, yet there is a certain charismatic intrigue about them as well.  Romantic comedy movies typically have a “boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back” concept.  Although simplistic, this particular genre has become a significant contributor to the gross profits currently being enjoyed by the success at the box office since the genre first appeared in the 1950’s.  Tamar McDonald defines romantic comedies “RomCom” as a sex comedy in her book “Romantic Comedy – Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre” as a sub-genre of the screwball comedy (38). 

According to McDonald, “the sex comedy pits women against men in an elemental battle of wits, in which the goal of both is sex” (38). This seem to be the overall general plot theory of most RomCom’s in today’s film industry.  Movies such as “The Proposal” and “While You Were Sleeping” starring Sandra Bullock, and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” or “Notting Hill” with Julia Roberts, display this type of plot.  Although the goal of “sex” is not directly implied in the screenplays, it is an underlying and unmentioned end-result that exists in the form of the word “love”.  In fact, in all of these films and many more, love is the ultimate goal for both parties; whether it is “true love” or just “true love right now”.  Using McDonald’s theory of the goal being sex, sex and love would be synonymous in RomCom’s. 

RomCom’s display an unrealistic view of love that is geared towards twenty-or-thirty-something-year-old's.  They are “fluff”; a true escape from the viewer’s own reality, a guaranteed two hour form of entertainment that, most likely, will end with a happy ending.  This escape provides the average person with hope, regardless of the lack of depth and complexity of the characters.  These films make the viewer feel good, plain and simple.  Most of today’s romantic comedy films exceed expectations allowing the audience to feel, if even for a moment, that they lived happily ever after.   

Power of a Penny

          Today’s popular culture is overloaded with superhero characters through mainstream media.  However, there is one mighty crusader who has gone unnoticed and undetected for many years. Immeasurable capabilities are found in a young girl named Penny Alkaline.  Penny is not your average superhero, and her unsuspecting abilities are far more powerful than any superhero portrayed in mainstream media today.  According to Charles Moss’ “What the World Needs Now: Society’s Desperate Need for Superheroes”, today’s superheroes do not just fight the “clear-cut enemies who plan on world domination.  Today’s superheroes fight many battles within themselves” (3).  One’s internal voice and inner demons affect not just Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Ironman, or the like, but ordinary people.  At times the inner demons prove to be so strong that they debilitate even the strongest person and silently plague members of society. Penny combats them with effortless conviction through a series of electrical currents generated at her core.  This, in and of itself, proves to be more valuable to members of society and their culture than any leap from a tall building in a single bound.
          Born on the far away planet of Plusminus, which is in a previously undiscovered celestial body just outside of the Milky Way, Penny came to Earth through a series of electrical lightning storms in the year 1959.  Human-like and laced with copper-colored short pixie hair with a small framed body, Penny speaks in a hybrid language that is not heard by the average human.  This fact is of particular importance because once the average human hears Penny, her powers would be limited.  Penny’s powers, and what makes her heads and tails above any other superhero, are such that she possesses an inner magnetic power.  This electrical magnetic power is so strong that it permeates from her core as she simply walks down the street on any given day compelling ordinary individuals to listen to their positive inner voice and ignore the negative inner battle that is driven by their own fears and hesitations.
          In order to give definition to the importance of Penny and her super powers, one must first travel inward to discover the importance of listening to inner voices.  Susan Evangelista writes in “Women in Peacemaking: Inner Voices and Outer Positions” that each individual has their own inner voice and it speaks with insistent clarity, we simply must learn to listen to it (1).  Remembering to listen to your inner voice is a learned behavior.  According to Denise Riley in her essay “A Voice Without a Mouth”, inner speech is an index of one’s solitude and, dependent on the isolation of its speaker, this chatter can conjure an aura of loneliness (58).  Riley goes onto say that inner speech is closely related to hallucination and is the carrier of conscience that is a source of distinct style (60).  To argue Riley’s point, the inner voice is not a carrier of conscience, rather a reflection of personal morals and values. Regrettably, it is the uniqueness in people that bring about the biggest challenges in society as some people do not understand and accept differences of other people who are not like them.  Cultural and environmental issues lead people to assume and insinuate events on the outside; and unknowingly, these outside forces have a direct reflection on our inner voice often turning it into an inner critic or ignoring it altogether.  Coupled together with the fact that humans have an innate need to self-criticize, the critical self represents an internal enemy, a defensive foe, set on a path to destroy our self-assessment, and be destructive to our self-fulfillment.  This defense leads to anger and frustration which ultimately leads to unhappiness, loneliness, despair, and depression.  Riley suggests that our “own inner voice does not lie and to possess an inauthentic inner voice is impossible” (68).  Ignoring the inner voice, therefore, is deceiving one self, ultimately leading to self-destruction and sabotage of our authentic self.
          Superheroes, as depicted through the mainstream media, are not immune to the self-destruction inner demons cause.   Because of this destruction, they have become layered with complex emotions and are more sensitive to society around them (Moss 2). Ironman, himself, struggles with everyday social issues such as greed, lust, rage, and addiction.  Despite these social woes and inner flaws, the Ironman film trilogy grossed an estimated $1.3 billion (boxofficemojo.com). This landslide of gross profit is proof that mainstream pop culture believe that superheroes are just “brightly-colored, two-dimensional extensions of ourselves” (Moss 1) and the average consumer will support the fictional characters in the box office, merchandising, and other paraphernalia.  Movies are not the only pop culture element that has capitalized on inner demons and the challenges conquering them.  Most recently rapper Eminem, who has been publicly scrutinized for his song lyrics, relationship problems, and addiction battles, released a song titled “Monster” where the lyrics ,“I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed, get along with voices inside of my head” (Mathers), describe his own internal battle of getting in his own way.
          Getting along with one’s inner voice and exercising that voice are precisely the reasons why Penny Alkaline is important to the world, its’ societies and cultures.  Most of the inner voices in people go unheard and the people in power carry the day without listening to their inner thoughts (Evangelista 1).  Penny’s core silently acts as a generator for everyone around and her magnetism does not recognize racial, gender, or class differences, rather her powers focus on all of humanity.  The energy Penny radiates compels people to act according to their authentic self, exercise their own agency, and empowers them to accomplish great things.  Without even knowing what is happening, everyone within her general vicinity suddenly sees with extreme clarity the blending of their visions and their voices.  For 55 years, Penny, who never ages, has roamed this earth traveling from town to town exposing all humanity to her visions, and searching for others like her.  Over the years there have been a number of people resistant to Penny’s electrical charges.  These have been mostly individuals whose judgments and assumptions of their outward self have been too egotistical for Penny’s voltage to penetrate.  For these people, she has simply deposited a louder vocal box within their body and, as the years pass, she slowly increases the volume of the artificial inner voice box and decreases their outwardly voice in the hopes that eventually they will listen.
          Together with Penny’s energy and new-found inner strength, individuals no longer have to look to mainstream media, celebrities, fictional characters, and other pop culture icons for heroes to worship.  Cultures and societies would flourish with new and unique ideas instead of focusing on mass production for mass consumption.  Humans, regardless of race, religion, or gender, are able to find their own distinct greatness, their own absolute calling, and most importantly, their own superhero within themselves. Ultimately, humanity becomes the superhero.

Works Cited

Box Office Mojo.  Boxofficemojo.com.  Web.  17 July 2014. 

Evangelista, Susan.  “Women in Peacemaking: Inner Voices and Outer Positions” Peace Research. Vol 29. No. 1 (February 1997): 1-12. JSTOR. Web. 17 July 2014.

Mathers, Marshall.  “Monster”.  The Marshall Mathers LP 2. Perf. Eminem featuring Rihanna. Aftermath, Interscope, Shady. AAC.  2013.

Moss, Charles.  “What the World Needs Now: Society’s Desperate Need for Superheroes”. Popmatters.com. (5 September 2008): 1-3. Web. 15 July 2014.

Riley, Denise.  “A Voice Without a Mouth: Inner Speech”.  Qui Parl. 14.2. (Spring/Summer 2004): 57-104. JSTOR. Web. 17 July 2014.

Economics of "Dirty Dancing"

          A society’s culture can be defined by many different factors.  Race, religion, and gender are major influences on a particular society’s way of life or way of thinking.  Socioeconomic groups play a significant role in defining societal values as well.  In the essay “The Politics of Culture”, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan describe culture as a hierarchical capitalist society (1026).  Members of a society who are genetically linked to upper-class echelons will develop character traits and personalities where they learn to appreciate certain forms of culture which will, in turn, help them secure a prominent place in the class hierarchy.  Alternatively, working or lower class people will develop familial practices and norms that situate them towards the bottom of the class ladder.  Following this description, societal and cultural activity can be divided into two incomparable perspectives; culture from above and culture from below (Rivkin and Ryan 1026).
          Culture from above is driven by mass media such as television and film.  Typically owned by large corporations and managed by men, the media delivers the imagery and content to mass audiences that has been dictated from those at the top of the social hierarchy.  Conversely, culture from below focuses on the fundamentals of the way the content is presented and expresses personalities that are in conflict with the capitalist social order.  Television shows and film often reflect characteristics of culture from above or below.
          Emile Ardolino’s “Dirty Dancing”, released in 1987, reflect both economic perspectives.  Yet, the ideals of the lower social order show dominance in the film.  Set in the Catskill Mountains of New York in the 1960’s, “Dirty Dancing” is a story of a privileged young girl, Francis "Baby" Houseman, who vacations with her family at a high end resort only to become infatuated with the main dancer, Johnny Castle, who was hired to work at the resort for the summer.  Through a series of circumstances, Baby develops an infatuation with Johnny and they ultimately end up consummating their relationship.  Clearly on opposite ends of the socioeconomic chain, the lovers must keep their affection for one another secret because both of their respective groups have prejudices and assumptions of the other group which affect the two characters.
          There are numerous incidences throughout the movie that express both the working class and upper class discrimination toward the other group.  Both groups, over the course of the movie, tell members of their class not to associate with “them” which separates the two class distinctions with both groups coming across as superior.  In one scene, the manager of the resort is telling the workers to “be nice to them, even the dogs” (Dirty Dancing).  When the manager referred to unattractive guests as “dogs”, he projected negativity and actually dehumanized them.
          Moreover, the workers living quarters and socializing areas are not only isolated from the resort guests, but also are located geographically down hill from the resort.  This is symbolically significant as it indicates the workers are below the guests or at the bottom of the economic ladder. However, the scene that shows the most dominance and support of the "culture from below" perspective uses the iconic line "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" (Dirty Dancing).  Johnny was asked to leave the premises as a result of his relations with Baby.  Assuming that Baby's family does not have management ties with the resort as they are simply guests, it is provocative that they would have the influence to get a long term employee fired simply because of the relationship.  Her family had the power because they are upper class and Johnny was not.  Johnny returns to the resort, walks up to where Baby and her family were seated, and with conviction recites the iconic line taking her away from them to perform on stage.   Symbolically, this scene represents the working class exercising agency to stand up against the hegemonic ideals of the upper class.  On stage, Johnny says "I always do the last dance of the season, but this year someone told me not to.  So this year, I'm going to do my kind of dancing..." (Dirty Dancing).  The "someone" that Johnny is referring to are presumably the dominant leaders of the upper class, and the "my kind of dancing" represents the fundamental ideals of the working class.
          The movie focuses on the romantic aspect of the story line, yet it is clear to the audience that there is an “us and them” type of mentality with regards to the economics of the film.  Class differences and prejudices are a huge part of today’s society, and collision of two different socioeconomic classes has proven to be challenging; both in fictional movies and real life.

References:

Dirty Dancing. Dir Emile Ardolino. Vestron Pictures.  Film. 1987.

Internet Movie Database. Imdb.com.  Web.  12 July 2014.                  

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology.  Malden: Blackwell. 1998.  

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

     When Virginia Woolf first put pen to paper in her extended essay "A Room of One's Own", I would imagine that her vision of a woman's room is both in a literal and figurative sense.  A space, either physical or in one's mind, that would inspire and empower a woman to create fiction as she wishes.  Almost a century after the classic essay was first published, both men and women writers have an infinite room available to them in the world wide web.

     "A Blog of One's Own" will act as my own personal path to becoming a writer; presumably as a hobby, wishfully as a career.  It is my hope to publish various samples of my writing in original form of essays, research papers, and literary analysis.  As I broaden my skills towards creative writing, I will also be posting some original short stories, either fiction or non-fiction.  Additionally, through discovering my passion for writing and literature, I have come across several poems, quotes, short stories, and lyrics in songs that have inspired me.  Therefore, some of my posts may be sharing what inspires me in the hopes that they may inspire someone else.
     Speaking of inspiration, I will be forever grateful to my teacher who exposed me to literary classics that have revitalized my love for reading and passionate writing, and reminded me of the greatness that is Iron Maiden.  

     It is my objective to offer weekly posts on a variety of open topics from eighteenth century Romanticism to twenty-first century Pop Culture; anything from Samuel Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to Fonzie to "American Psycho".

     Writing has become a passion for me, and discovering classic literature has proven to be a love I never knew existed.  As you read my posts and essays, keep in mind that I am a novice writer at best.  However the more I post, the more I write.  And, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.