THE DOCTOR IS IN: Ruminations on Romance

It’s a conundrum. The modern romantic comedy targets primarily women moviegoers. Why then is it (arguably) the most sexist of all the movie genres? Sure there is sexism and worse in all categories of film. But there are also the exceptions to balance this out. (See “Resident Evil” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (horror/supernatural/action); “The Brave One,” (thriller/action); “Lara Croft,” (action/video-game-into-movie); “Whale Rider,” (drama).

In the modern, romantic comedy, I can find few exceptions. Perhaps, “Baby Boom,” starring Diane Keaton. But that movie was made way back in 1987 and was mostly a comedy. The romance was icing on the cake, not the sole purpose of the film. (Ditto with “Legally Blonde.” More comedy than romance, Reese Witherspoon got her man, only after she proved to herself and everyone else, that she was as smart as they come, and not to be trifled with.)

Why do so many women continue to flock to romantic comedies? Would the most homophobic genre hook the greatest number of gay people? Or the most racist movies entice the highest percentage of people of color? I don’t think so. To be fair, romantic comedies weren’t always what they’ve come to be. Perhaps, audiences are nostalgic for the way they were in their heyday, 60-70 years ago.

If you haven’t seen the comedies from the 1930’s and 1940’s, you may not know what you’re missing. Years before the modern women’s movement, the female protagonists in these films fared far better than their modern day counterparts. To illustrate this point, let’s compare Katharine Hepburn, the lead in “Bringing up Baby,” which opened in 1938, to Sandra Bullock’s character in this summer’s hit, “The Proposal.”

In “Bringing Up Baby,” the sex roles of the two main characters are actually reversed from the norm. Cary Grant’s David is a paleontologist who is bossed around by his fiancée. He can’t remember to remove his lab coat or even the names of the people he works with. He is distracted and weak. We first see Katharine Hepburn’s Susan on the golf course – gorgeous, regal and athletic. She makes an impressive shot or two. She bosses David around as well. He perks up and starts to get angry. He argues with her. She gets angry and argues right back. She takes his car (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) and he jumps on the running board. She drives off with him holding on for dear life.

The next time they meet, they each accidentally tear the other’s clothing. She flattens his top hat; he crashes to the floor. She leaves him holding her purse; he gets accused of stealing. She drives him around in her car in the moonlight. She throws a rock and conks a guy on the head. She is in the driver’s seat; he continues to allow himself to be humiliated. This pattern continues throughout most of the film.

Susan lures David to her apartment, by pretending that she is being mauled by a leopard. When he arrives, she is perfectly fine, calm and collected. Disbelieving her tale of the leopard (and who can blame him?), he opens the bathroom door and shrieks in dismay. Sure enough, there is a leopard, standing on the sink. David stands on a chair, afraid, even when Susan reassures him that Baby (that’s the leopard) is perfectly tame. Susan is, once again, the brave one.

Susan next tricks David into accompanying her to Connecticut with the leopard, hours before he’s supposed to get married in New York. Again, she drives the car. She crashes and doesn’t apologize. She sends David to buy raw meat and he is, once more, humiliated. She steals his clothes, forcing him to wander around in an ultra-feminine women’s bathrobe.

Dressed in the bathrobe, he first meets Susan’s aunt, not realizing that she is the person who potentially will donate a million dollars to his museum so he can complete his giant brontosaurus skeleton. He fights back once – stepping hard on Susan’s foot to get her to stop arguing with her aunt. One point: the guy. 99 points: the woman.

Immediately after, David, wearing still another absurd outfit (pants and shoes that are too small and from another era) is seen chasing after a yapping terrier. To be fair, the dog did steal and bury David’s precious brontosaurus bone on Susan’s vast, 22-acre property. But Susan’s aunt doesn’t know this, as she watches him duck under branches, circle trees and litter the grounds with holes. Susan tells her aunt that David is a big game hunter who had a nervous breakdown. All the aunt sees is a grown man chasing a dog, as if his life depended on it. And what is he searching for? His bone. Subtext anyone?

Susan openly admits that she is in love with David and plans to marry him, whether he realizes it or not. She is clearly in the aggressor mode during the movie. As they roam around Connecticut, letting a second, more dangerous leopard loose without realizing it’s not Baby, and searching for the first leopard and the dog, David does get mad again and send Susan packing. But, he changes his mind the minute she cries. Even in this scene, she doesn’t appear weak. She cries to let him know that she feels remorse for all of the horrible things she’s done to him. We, the audience, learn she has a conscience after all.

Everyone – Susan, David, the aunt, the fiancée-- all wind up in jail. Only Susan figures out a way to escape. The men who own the second leopard come to the jail and announce that their leopard is a killer. David laments that, “poor, darling Susan is out trying to catch the wrong leopard, and she’s helpless without me.”

None of us are fooled. Susan helpless? Not for a second. True to character, Susan returns, triumphantly dragging the killer leopard behind her. David leaps out, in his one moment of bravery, and, with Susan by his side, uses a chair to shunt the leopard into a jail cell. When Susan praises his heroism, not letting him get a word in edge-wise, he FAINTS and SHE CATCHES HIM in her very strong arms.

At the end of the movie, Susan’s aunt gives Susan the million dollars and Susan goes to the museum to tell David that she’s found the bone and plans to give him the money. As soon as she arrives, he bounds up a very tall ladder to a platform where he has been constructing his brontosaurus. He admits that he’s afraid of her. In the most minimal of love declarations – he also admits that he’s had the best day in his life with her and that he loves her, he THINKS. She tells him she loves him right back (and that she did all of those crazy things to keep him near her).

All this time, she's been rocking from side to side on the ladder, in ever increasing arcs. Suddenly, she is about to lose all control and die. In her only moment of weakness, she hangs from one arm and he hoists her up onto the platform before the ladder crashes. The next minute, his entire brontosaurus, representing 4 year’s hard work, is destroyed. He forgives her. They kiss. Fade out.

Some might contend that “Bringing Up Baby,” is more of a screwball comedy than a pure romance. Whatever you call it, it is still about two people falling in love, or about how two people change when they do fall in love. Susan gets less self-centered and more generous. David realizes he had fun gallivanting with her and that, even if it is more chaotic, he’s never felt more alive.

At a recent screenwriting expo, I was told in a seminar on romantic comedies that the man (and only the man) always makes the declaration of love. This struck me as odd. Not only does it preclude any romantic comedies between two men or two women, but why must it always be the man who professes his love? The answer to this is simple, I was told. Women are dragging their boyfriends or husbands to these movies and, it is either a hint or a fantasy to hear these words spoken on screen.

It’s simply not romantic somehow if the woman proposes, holds open the door or declares her love. Some men and some women might beg to differ. It certainly wasn’t the case in “Bringing Up Baby,” where the man falls in love with the woman (and vice versa) despite their unorthodox behaviors and personas.

I really wanted to like “The Proposal,” starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I love Sandra Bullock who, like Katharine Hepburn, has tended to play gender-bending roles (“Miss Congeniality,” “The Net,” “Speed”), is athletic and possesses impeccable comic timing. When she says she turns down numerous roles – a common refrain for women in Hollywood—I believe her. When she said, in a recent interview, that she liked the role in “The Proposal” because she had the "guy" part, I was intrigued and predisposed to like the movie.

Sadly, this promise was not fulfilled. Yes, Sandra Bullock has the "guy" part, for about ten minutes. Her Margaret is the mean boss who calls the shots, earns the big bucks and forces her underlings to scurry around like scared mice. Ryan Reynolds’ Andrew not only gets the coffee (like the typical female assistant), but he gets the same coffee drink as his boss, just in case he spills hers on the way in. Like the typical male boss, Margaret winds up coercing her much younger employee into an inappropriate situation as a quid pro quo for keeping his job. But, it’s not sexual favors this time around. Instead, she forces him to marry her so she won’t get deported to Canada.

All of this occurs in about the first 10 minutes. After that, the characters completely switch places. Margaret no longer calls the shots, nor is she in the driver’s seat. Andrew is. He forces her to propose on her knees. He negotiates for what he wants in exchange. And the rest of the movie is about humiliating Margaret. She teeters around in such high heels that she is incapable of normal movement. She can’t go down a ladder (compare this to Katharine Hepburn who can scale any height and does). She can’t jump aboard a boat. She can’t swim. She must be rescued by Andrew (of course) when she falls in the water. And this time around, it’s not the woman who is rich. Andrew, we learn, isn’t a poor, scruffy schmoe, but the richest guy in town.

There is one moment where the two battle as equals –when they try to relay to his family and friends just how the proposal was made. She tries to effeminize him; he tries to put her on the spot. But the gist of it, the core message, is this: if a man and a woman are really in love, the man must offer up all the romance. If the woman is strong, she must be knocked down and shown to be a complete softie, at heart. You can argue that Margaret wasn’t just strong, but was awful and made everyone miserable. You can argue that everyone can relate to bringing down the mean boss.

I’m not buying it. Susan, in “Bringing Up Baby,” did horribly mean things too and wasn’t punished and certainly not diminished nearly as much. Not convinced?

Compare “The Proposal” to “His Girl Friday,” which opened in 1940, starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. Cary’s Walter Burns heads a grimy, macho newsroom. His best reporter is his wife, Hildy (Russell). Walter wants her to keep being the great newspaperwoman that she is. Hildy is leaving him. She thinks that her life would be infinitely better in a “traditional” romance and marriage living as a housewife in the suburbs, with a picket fence, and her mother-in-law in tow.

This is clearly conveyed as the wrong, supremely UNAPPEALING choice. Who could turn down gorgeous Cary and the excitement of covering an escaped death row inmate who holds you at gunpoint? Of course, Hildy goes where the true romance lies. Not in the far reaches of upstate New York, but in the newsroom, where her talents are appreciated, not extinguished.

In romance, we’ve only gone backwards, since the 1930’s and 1940’s. It’s high-time we brought this genre into the 21^st Century where it belongs.