After "happily ever after" : romantic comedy in the post-romantic age /
San Filippo, Maria,editor.
McDonald, Tamar Jeffers,writer of foreword.
In defiance of the alleged "death of romantic comedy," After "Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age edited by Maria San Filippo attests to rom-com's continuing vitality in new modes and forms that reimagine and rejuvenate the genre in ideologically, artistically, and commercially innovative ways. No longer the idyllic fairy tale, today's romantic comedies ponder the realities and complexities of intimacy, fortifying the genre's gift for imagining human connection through love and laughter. It has often been observed that the rom-com's "happily ever after" trope enables the genre to avoid addressing the challenges of coupled life. This volume's contributors confront how recent rom-coms contend with a "post-romantic age" of romantic disillusionment and seismically shifting emotional and relational bonds. Fifteen chapters contemplate the resurgence of the "radical romantic comedy" and uncoupling comedy, new approaches in genre hybridity and serial narrative, and how recent rom-coms deal with divisive topical issues and contemporary sexual mores from reproductive politics and marriage equality to hook-up culture and technology-enabled sex. Rom-coms remain underappreciated and underexamined -- and still largely defined within Hollywood's parameters of culturally normative coupling and its persistent marginalization of racial and sexual minorities. Making the case for taking romantic comedy seriously, this volume employs critical perspectives drawn from feminist, queer, postcolonial, and race studies to critique the genre's homogeneity and social and sexual conservatism, recognizing innovative works inclusive of LGBTQ people, people of color, and the differently aged and abled. Encompassing a rich range of screen media from the last decade, After "Happily Ever After" celebrates works that disrupt and subvert rom-com fantasy and formula so as to open audience's eyes along with our hearts. This volume is intended for all readers with an interest in film, media, and gender studies
Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-344) and index.
Foreword: Romantic Comedy Today: Making Progress Always or Only Maybe? -- Introduction: Love Actually: Romantic Comedy since the Aughts -- Act 1. What's New Is Old: Regenerating Romcom -- 1. We Found Love in a Hopeless Place: Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age -- 2. Comedy and Melodrama from Sunrise to Midnight: Genre and Gender in Richard Linklater's Before Series -- 3. From Jane to Mindy: The Politics of Narrative Control in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy -- 4. "Third-Act Romances" in Contemporary American Film and Television -- 5. Queer Romance in Take My Wife: How the Television Rom-Sitcom Gives New Life to the Genre -- Act 2. Love in a Time of Precarity: Romcom Realism -- 6. In Love and Up in Smoke: Harold & Kumar and the Romantic Turn of the Post-9/11 Stoner Comedy -- 7. Romance as Business in the Capitalist Metropolis: Johnnie To's Don't Go Breaking My Heart 1 and 2 -- 8. Obvious Child, Bookshops, and Postcrisis Romcom Urbanism -- 9. Connecting with Strangers: Cosmopolitanism, Romance, and Hospitality in Transnational Romantic Comedy -- 10. "Money Can't Buy Me Love": Radical Right-Wing Populism in French Romantic Comedies of the 2010s -- Act 3. Reimagining "Happily Ever After" -- 11. The Radical Middle: Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and the Subversive Potential of the Television Post-Romcom -- 12. The Awkward Truth: Fractured Romance and the Art of Decoupling in the Films of Hong Sang-soo -- 13. Addicted to Love: The Productive Pathology of the Romantic Comedy in the Netflix Series Love -- 14. Breaking Upwards: The Creative Uncoupling of Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann -- 15. "I fantasize sometimes about being alone ... being in a quiet room, by myself, with no one touching me": "Wrong-coms" and the End of Marriage in Contemporary Romantic Comedy
In defiance of the alleged "death of romantic comedy," After "Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age edited by Maria San Filippo attests to rom-com's continuing vitality in new modes and forms that reimagine and rejuvenate the genre in ideologically, artistically, and commercially innovative ways. No longer the idyllic fairy tale, today's romantic comedies ponder the realities and complexities of intimacy, fortifying the genre's gift for imagining human connection through love and laughter. It has often been observed that the rom-com's "happily ever after" trope enables the genre to avoid addressing the challenges of coupled life. This volume's contributors confront how recent rom-coms contend with a "post-romantic age" of romantic disillusionment and seismically shifting emotional and relational bonds. Fifteen chapters contemplate the resurgence of the "radical romantic comedy" and uncoupling comedy, new approaches in genre hybridity and serial narrative, and how recent rom-coms deal with divisive topical issues and contemporary sexual mores from reproductive politics and marriage equality to hook-up culture and technology-enabled sex. Rom-coms remain underappreciated and underexamined -- and still largely defined within Hollywood's parameters of culturally normative coupling and its persistent marginalization of racial and sexual minorities. Making the case for taking romantic comedy seriously, this volume employs critical perspectives drawn from feminist, queer, postcolonial, and race studies to critique the genre's homogeneity and social and sexual conservatism, recognizing innovative works inclusive of LGBTQ people, people of color, and the differently aged and abled. Encompassing a rich range of screen media from the last decade, After "Happily Ever After" celebrates works that disrupt and subvert rom-com fantasy and formula so as to open audience's eyes along with our hearts. This volume is intended for all readers with an interest in film, media, and gender studies
Romantic comedy films
Situation comedies (Television programs)
Comédies romantiques (Films)
Comédies de situation
Romantic comedy films.
Situation comedies (Television programs)