American Film Comedies

by: Rebecca Rasche

1 INTRODUCTION  3

2 FILM SEMIOTIC APPROACHES AND THEORY ON ROMANTIC COMEDIES  5

2.1 Semantics 5

2.1.1 Typical Plots of Romantic Comedies  6
2.1.2 Stereotypical Characters in Romantic Comedies 6

2.2 Mise-en-scene 8

3 ANALYSIS OF MATING IN ROMANTIC COMEDIES 10

3.1 Cactus Flower  10

3.1.1 Characters  10
3.1.2 Plots  12
3.1.3 Mise-en-scene 12

3.2 Something’s Gotta Give  14

3.2.1 Characters  14
3.2.2 Plots  16
3.2.3 Mise-en-scene 18

4 PATRIARCHAL PATTERNS OF MATING IN ROMANTIC COMEDIES 20

5 SUMMARY 23

BIBLIOGRAPHY 24

SOURCES  24

APPENDIX  25

Plot of “Cactus Flower”  25
Plot of “Something’s Gotta Give”  26

1 Introduction

This dialogue from “Cactus Flower” is very likely to catch the attention of a 21st century woman instantly because of its chauvinist, discriminating tone against women. It is very intriguing to find this conversation in a film which was shot in the so-called liberal sixties, and which raised the question to me whether patriarchal values are only detectable in older romantic comedies such as “Cactus Flower” (1969) or whether these values became obsolete in newer romantic comedies such as “Something’s Gotta Give” (2003). In spite of the constant success of romantic comedies─ “There’s Something about Mary” (2001), for instance, passed the “gold record line” of $100 million with flying colours─ little attention has been paid to analyzing this film genre. The few critics who analyzed and interpreted film comedies tend to focus on masterpieces and on auteur films such as “The General” by Buster Keaton, but they are likely to neglect romantic comedies. Therefore, this paper focuses deliberately on romantic comedies which are neither in the canon of masterpieces nor directed by an auteur.

Interestingly, critics have not been able to agree on a final definition of romantic comedies, for which reason I chose to draw on Thomas Schatz’s definition: Romantic comedies are “fast-paced, witty comedies of manners exploiting the foibles of America’s leisure class” (Classical Hollywood Comedies 126). An additional characteristic of romantic comedies, is the fact that focus is put on the mating of the major characters, with the result that gender quarrels play a major role. Consequently, romantic comedies propose to the spectatorship how to find true love, and they communicate implicitly universal patterns of mating and morality.

Romantic comedies are obsessed with mating. Susanne Langer points out that romantic comedies are exhibiting the women’s battle with men, and that of men with women (123), and this is, indeed, the case in both films. Furthermore, Gerald Mast emphasizes the fact that “(t)he amorous conclusion grows directly and exclusively from amorous complications” (5). Consequently, these amorous complications must constitute the plot in romantic comedies, and therefore, it is obvious that the comparison of an older and a newer romantic comedies exhibits whether the patterns of mating and patriarchal values did alter or not.

To answer the research question whether romantic comedies are revealing patriarchal mating values and whether these values became outmoded in newer romantic comedies, the paper focuses on two relatively similar romantic comedies which were shot with a gap of almost 35 years. The romantic comedies being analyzed are “Cactus Flower” and “Something’s Gotta Give”. The former was shot in 1969 and directed by Gene Saks, whereas the latter was shot in 2003 and directed by Nancy Meyers. Both directors are recognized for their comedies, but nevertheless, neither their films belong to the film canon, nor do the directors belong to the auteur canon.

After introducing the filmsemiotic approaches on which the comparison of the two films is based, chapter three deals with the analysis of the two films. Based on the theoretical approach underlying the analysis, it is divided into two parts: Firstly, the semantics, consisting of characters and plots, and secondly, the syntax constituted by mise-en-scene. In these subchapters, special attention is paid to discovering how mating and patriarchy function in “Cactus Flower” and whether the findings are also evident in “Something’s Gotta Give”. After the analysis, the author answers in chapter four the question whether old gender roles and patriarchal values are reinforced only in older romantic comedies or whether they are also detectable in the more modern romantic comedy “Something’s Gotta Give”, consequently chapter four relates to the development of romantic comedies, to why romantic comedies tend to be depicted from a patriarchal male point of view, and to why romantic comedies are still a major genre despite the exhibiting of patriarchal values.

2 Film Semiotic Approaches and Theory on Romantic Comedies

Film semiotic theory indicates that films have a special system of signs, which implies that it approaches movies as if they have an own language (A Companion to Film Theory 11- 12). As all critics agree on this view, film semiotic approaches attempt to locate the elements that make up the text of a movie. This paper makes use of the filmsemiotic approaches to analyze the romantic comedies structurally.

The film semiotic terminology used in this paper was coined by Rick Altman. He argues that most debates on film genre center on the classification of genre according to either broadly inclusive, iconographic definitions, or more interpretive definitions. Altman calls inclusive definitions “semantic”, because they describe the “building blocks” of a film genre. Interpretive definitions are labelled “syntactic” as they represent the story in which the “building blocks” are presented (53). An example for semantics is the fact that most westerns deal with the stock character of the lonesome hero. Syntax than deals with the fact that a western is a film about historical tensions between individualism and society. In sum, Altman indicates that film genre can only be properly defined and analyzed by combining these two approaches. Therefore, the author used the semantic and syntactic approach, which will be introduced in the next subchapters, for analyzing the romantic comedies.

2.1 Semantics

Various elements belong to the class of semantics: The setting, particular techniques of editing and framing, the title of a film, costume and make-up, and naturally, specific plots and stock characters. However, as the authors of “A Companion to Film Theory” point out (126), the semantics are much less in number in romantic comedies: According to Kristine Karnick, there is no distinctive setting or iconography of romantic comedies (126). Furthermore, romantic comedies also lack specific costume and make-up, as it would be found in the sci-fi genre. With regard to romantic comedies, it seems that plot and character are the two most important elements. However, they have been analyzed in depth by Gerald Mast and Mark D. Rubinfeld. Accordingly, I will focus on plot and character in my analysis of the semantic level of the two comedies.

2.1.1 Typical Plots of Romantic Comedies

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