Approaching Limits: Exhaustion and Recovery of a Film Genre

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Media/Film

Abstract

Earlier analyses of romance films have indicated that due to the decline of social barriers to romance between lovers of different ethnicity, race, and social class, the romantic drama – which depends on such barriers in order to create the necessary tension in a romance – is less likely to be made today than in decades past. This paper examines this question through an analysis of over 300 romantic films released in the fifteen period from 2000 to 2014. The analysis supports the earlier findings that romantic comedies are more likely to be produced than are dramas but also demonstrates how the romantic genre more generally continues to thrive by extending the traditional boundaries of the genre. The most important finding of this paper involves the way in which women are presented in these films. In the comedies, the behaviors and motivations of women are essentially alike in all relevant aspects to the behaviors and motivations of men. In the dramas, however, the traditional differences persist. Appreciating the greater power of dramas to illustrate, communicate, and reproduce existing social realities, the conclusion we reach as a result of our analysis is that regardless of the seemingly progressive shifts present in the presentation of gender roles in this persistently popular film genre, there is a secondary – arguably primary – theme in the contemporary romance, that is, the existence of natural differences between men and women that reproduce the condition of women’s subordinate position.

Authors

• Arialle Kaye Crabtree, University of Georgia

• Bryan Christopher Cannon, University of Georgia

• James J. Dowd, University of Georgia