The Rom Com

This past week in class, we discussed the “Rom Com,” or Romantic Comedy. Traditionally, there are three main stages in the romantic comedy: 1.) Boy meets girl, 2.) Boy loses girl, 3.) Boy gets girl. There are several ideologies that are presented in many romantic comedies. There is often the element of sex, who wants what when, the idea that love is “the norm”, monogamy, and marriage. If some of these elements are not obvious, more often than not, they are implied. In class we watched the movie “10”. The movie is basically about a man going through a mid-life crisis. One day he sees a random woman and instantly becomes intrigued and obsessed with her. He thinks she is the epitome of perfection; a “10.” What stuck out to me most in the movie was the scene after George and Jenny had just gotten intimate, which did not exactly go as George had planned. He finally realized that he had put Jenny on some pedestal that she would never be capable of reaching because that was not who she really was. In a sense, Jenny provided a mirror to George of himself, and he didn’t like it. Today, there are a lot of romantic comedies that are not traditional, but often still contain the elements typical of a rom com. Movies like Knocked Up, The Proposal, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall are all recent films that don’t necessarily present the stages of the romantic comedy in a specific order, however those elements of sex, love, and a happy ending are still present. I think this says a lot about our culture. Even with films like “No Strings Attatched” and “Friends With Benefits”, which start off with a relationship based strictly on sex only, they still focus on the love and relationship which builds between the two main characters. Finding true love is very important us, even if some of us don’t want to admit it.