“Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.”
-- Anonymous
-- Anonymous
With barely a month left until Valentine's Day, we're about to be bombarded with ads for romantic movies, usually something starring Rachel McAdams, and heck, even Valentine's-Day-themed episodes of TV shows. Forget that Valentine's Day is a completely commercialized holiday designed to fill the shopping void between Christmas and the other holidays (that is said without a hint of bitterness; I actually don't mind Valentine's Day), the real problem is the message these schlocky romances always convey: that love is sudden, that it comes without work or effort, and that it is smooth sailing after one great tragedy, and conversely, all great romances have that one great tragedy to face.
This is a difficult topic to broach without sounding jaded, but the truth is, that's only because of the ridiculous expectations movies have given people. Man and woman have chance meeting, man and woman exhibit quirks, man and woman fall in love, obstacle to their love is encountered, overcome, and the couple live happily ever after. In real life, Blue Valentine is a sequel to plenty of these stories. But these 2-hour snapshots of a romance at its most compelling stage are heavy on the implications that the good times will never end. There have always been rogue elements in film to poke holes in this sort of flimsy storytelling, and only in recent years has the cookie-cutter "chick flick" been so perfectly mass-produced. Before that, even seminal works such as Gone With the Wind strayed pretty far from the mold. Even the influential French New Wave movie Breathless was hardly a happily ever after tale. But throughout the '90's and '00's, the tide turned and Pretty Woman and Sleepless in Seattle led the charge, drowning out the dissenting movies like Meet Joe Black and City of Angels.
It's harder to pin-down when these movies became so pervasive as to stop being escapist fantasy and start being the ideal people look to, but it was probably a combination of their increased number and a generation growing up with plenty of the movies to shape them. A quick scan of the Top 50 Earners for both Romantic Dramas and Romantic Comedies tells me there isn't one on either list where things go poorly for common reasons (one character dying doesn't count). That's not necessarily a bad thing. Cold Mountain and Brokeback Mountain are both fantastic films (rugged terrain apparently inspires filmmakers), but the industry is already crowded with contenders in that arena. Why not make a movie about the failure of a relationship? Blue Valentine proved those types of stories can make for amazing movies, so why don't we see more of them? It's a market inefficiency so to speak. Short answer: we're to blame. The profitability of these movies is easy to predict regardless of the film's quality. Assemble two bankable leads, have one or both fight seemingly insurmountable odds in the name of love, keep it within a reasonable budget (difficult to fail at on a movie like this), collect bonus points if one dies, and rake in the profits. The Vow holds a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, yet made almost $200 million. Dear John comes in even lower at a 28%, yet raked in $115 million. You see where I'm going with this: Hollywood isn't making compelling romantic movies because we, the audience, aren't making them do it. We're giving them our money regardless of what they churn out on that front, so why exhaust resources there?
There are obviously larger implications to the shifting cultural views on relationships, with divorce rate statistics providing an easy barometer. At least when it comes to cinema though, it's a chicken or the egg dilemma: did movies change to match their demographic's viewpoint, or did movies help fuel the shift? It's probably a little of both, with each regression in one sparking a matching shift in the other. At least on the movie front there is hope: Safe Haven and The Lucky One both failed to clear $100 million despite being the only Nicholas Sparks movies to play in over 3000 theaters (while sporting illustrious 12% and 20% ratings respectively). Am I viewing too small a sample size to look at just Sparks movies for an indicator of the trend? Probably, but such are the desperate measures required to draw hope from the situation. Just as blacksploitation films had a brief run as profitable before they had to evolve (Boyz n the Hood being a prime example of that evolution), perhaps "chicksploitation" can see a similar renaissance involving more nuanced characters and the genuine possibility the relationship can fail. The supremely creative have always been drawn to a medium where they can tell a story that hasn't been told before and the field of romance movies is wide open, making it an enticing target for a young up-and-coming screenwriter or director if Hollywood can think outside the box enough to identify them. For that to happen though, they'll need to be financially motivated to seek an alternative to their current model. A blackspoitation film in the original sense of the word would be met with picket lines and near-universal condemnation. Perhaps the audience can become similarly discerning towards romance. One can only hope.
This is a difficult topic to broach without sounding jaded, but the truth is, that's only because of the ridiculous expectations movies have given people. Man and woman have chance meeting, man and woman exhibit quirks, man and woman fall in love, obstacle to their love is encountered, overcome, and the couple live happily ever after. In real life, Blue Valentine is a sequel to plenty of these stories. But these 2-hour snapshots of a romance at its most compelling stage are heavy on the implications that the good times will never end. There have always been rogue elements in film to poke holes in this sort of flimsy storytelling, and only in recent years has the cookie-cutter "chick flick" been so perfectly mass-produced. Before that, even seminal works such as Gone With the Wind strayed pretty far from the mold. Even the influential French New Wave movie Breathless was hardly a happily ever after tale. But throughout the '90's and '00's, the tide turned and Pretty Woman and Sleepless in Seattle led the charge, drowning out the dissenting movies like Meet Joe Black and City of Angels.
It's harder to pin-down when these movies became so pervasive as to stop being escapist fantasy and start being the ideal people look to, but it was probably a combination of their increased number and a generation growing up with plenty of the movies to shape them. A quick scan of the Top 50 Earners for both Romantic Dramas and Romantic Comedies tells me there isn't one on either list where things go poorly for common reasons (one character dying doesn't count). That's not necessarily a bad thing. Cold Mountain and Brokeback Mountain are both fantastic films (rugged terrain apparently inspires filmmakers), but the industry is already crowded with contenders in that arena. Why not make a movie about the failure of a relationship? Blue Valentine proved those types of stories can make for amazing movies, so why don't we see more of them? It's a market inefficiency so to speak. Short answer: we're to blame. The profitability of these movies is easy to predict regardless of the film's quality. Assemble two bankable leads, have one or both fight seemingly insurmountable odds in the name of love, keep it within a reasonable budget (difficult to fail at on a movie like this), collect bonus points if one dies, and rake in the profits. The Vow holds a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, yet made almost $200 million. Dear John comes in even lower at a 28%, yet raked in $115 million. You see where I'm going with this: Hollywood isn't making compelling romantic movies because we, the audience, aren't making them do it. We're giving them our money regardless of what they churn out on that front, so why exhaust resources there?
There are obviously larger implications to the shifting cultural views on relationships, with divorce rate statistics providing an easy barometer. At least when it comes to cinema though, it's a chicken or the egg dilemma: did movies change to match their demographic's viewpoint, or did movies help fuel the shift? It's probably a little of both, with each regression in one sparking a matching shift in the other. At least on the movie front there is hope: Safe Haven and The Lucky One both failed to clear $100 million despite being the only Nicholas Sparks movies to play in over 3000 theaters (while sporting illustrious 12% and 20% ratings respectively). Am I viewing too small a sample size to look at just Sparks movies for an indicator of the trend? Probably, but such are the desperate measures required to draw hope from the situation. Just as blacksploitation films had a brief run as profitable before they had to evolve (Boyz n the Hood being a prime example of that evolution), perhaps "chicksploitation" can see a similar renaissance involving more nuanced characters and the genuine possibility the relationship can fail. The supremely creative have always been drawn to a medium where they can tell a story that hasn't been told before and the field of romance movies is wide open, making it an enticing target for a young up-and-coming screenwriter or director if Hollywood can think outside the box enough to identify them. For that to happen though, they'll need to be financially motivated to seek an alternative to their current model. A blackspoitation film in the original sense of the word would be met with picket lines and near-universal condemnation. Perhaps the audience can become similarly discerning towards romance. One can only hope.
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