RomCom Stereotypes

[lillibet]

There's a funny column from The New Yorker making the rounds today, picking on the ridiculous characters in romantic comedies.

Here's my favorite bit:

For me, there is no difference between Ripley from “Alien” and any Katherine Heigl character. They are equally implausible. They’re all participating in a similar level of fakey razzle-dazzle, and I enjoy every second of it.

The funniest (or saddest?) thing is that I know people who fit at least three of these stereotypes and have been at least two of them.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Years ago, I remember reading a column by some woman who suggested an equivalence scale for 'implausible action movie events' and 'implausible romantic comedy movie events'. So you could compare, for instance, "Billy Crystal running through New York City to be with Meg Ryan" and "Nic Cage injecting himself in the heart as the jets streak overhead on Alcatraz Island."

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of a post I read by a romance novelist who said she frequently heard the complaint that romance novels were "unrealistic". She related one such conversation, where she asked the complainer what kind of books s/he read and got "mysteries" as a response. She asked "OK, unrealistic...how many dead bodies have you seen in your lifetime? How many relationships have you had?"

In the comment thread of the post I recently linked to from Charlie Stross' blog, he had a nice takedown of someone dissing romances, which made me think much more highly of him, even though I don't read them any more.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

heh. yeah.

i figure the average romance novel and the average sf novel (or any other 'genre' novel, really) are probably about on par. there are the tropes of the genre, and sometimes it's done well and sometimes it's done ... less well.