Summary: Films show us how romance is changing in America. It’s a fundamental aspect of our society. This change is like plate tectonics: irresistible but indivisible unless looked for.
Romance is a social construct that has changed over time. Medieval romances were often between a knight and his Lord’s wife. Society changed, and the nuclear family needed a supporting scaffolding. In the mid-18th century social innovators created the modern concept of romance — such as Rousseau in his hot best seller Julie: Letters of Two Lovers
In the past two generations American society has changed again, re-classifying those classic romances as either fantasy (i.e., like The Lord of the Rings
The Prince and Me
(2004)
Staring Julia Stiles. With spoilers!
Most of us enjoy film fantasies about lives like ours — or our lives what be if we had been blessed by wondrous fortune. These stories reflect our desires and fears.
For the growing legion of children from broken families there is The Parent Trap
For young women there is Legally Blonde
Difficult as seems to top that, Hollywood tried with The Prince and Me
That is not enough for Paige. She wants it all! She dumps the Prince and returns to America — and Stanford. As usual in modern films, the Prince reveals his true nature as a beta. He flies to America, bows before Paige, and pledges to give her everything she wants — just as she wants it. It’s romance!
Modern fantasies of new age women
Everybody has their fantasies. The entertainment industry thrives by projecting them on the big screen, so we can see and better understand ourselves. Women emancipated from the patriarchy want men to accommodate their needs and desires. That is difficult to show in realistic settings. It works best in action adventure films, like The Jewel of the Nile
So we often get beta leading men in new films set in normal life. A wonderful example of updating classic literature for our time is Unleashing Mr. Darcy
The Hallmark Channel has a series of made-for-TV romances starring low-testosterone beta heroes. They are popular in their limited-appeal genre.
Another version of having it all is shown by Taylor Swift in “They Way I loved you” (2008): she has a nice beta boyfriend who takes her on dates with dinners and movies. Her father likes him. She has a thrilling bad boy (who treats her poorly) for excitement in her late-night second-shift dates. The lyrics are quite candid about this.
Conclusions
As a 60+ male, I have little in common with the target market for these fantasies. Hollywood’s classic romances were fantasies, but I could imagine the characters successfully living together. I watch most modern romances like these — or those on TV (e.g., “Castle”, “NCIS Los Angeles”, and “Forever”) with the certainty that the sequels will show divorces. Either the guy will get fed up with his high-maintenance wife’s demands, or the high-powered wife will dump her beta boy husband.
Not all of them. Here are my recommendations to nine of the best modern American romantic films.
Their fans either see happier endings, or are content with the likelihood of divorce for the romantic couple. Much as people pledge “to death do us part” with the certainty of divorce as an easy and likely option. Perhaps we live out our fantasies more than did previous generations.
For centuries every generation of the West has been a journey into the unknown, with social change the only constant. We have consistently stumbled our way to success, with the occasional failure like those of the communist and fascist nations. That those were intellectual experiments should worry us, since we too are making radical changes based only on ideology — abandoning our successful strategy of incremental changes.
The most common reaction in comments to this series is that “nothing much will change.” That’s delusional. We have had the current social system of romantic love and nuclear families for an eyeblink of time in humanity’s long history. It is no more natural than the many other systems our species has used.
My guess (emphasis on guess) is that these films show a transitional era in which the institution of American marriage has begun terminal decline. Marriage rates will begin a substantial fall in the decade. How we will react to that I cannot even guess. Radical change? Return to previous forms? Rise of Islam and fundamentalist Christianity? Only time will tell.
Always want more: Paige’s life gets even better in the sequels
The Prince & Me: A Royal Honeymoon
The Prince & Me: The Elephant Adventure
Update: fantasies for beta males
Everybody has fantasies. Hollywood is a machine to mine this and project them on the big screen. Captain America
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about romance, about women and gender, about feminism, and especially these…
- Do we want to bring back traditional marriage? What is traditional marriage?
- “Castle” shows us a dark vision of Romance in America.
- Taylor Swift shows us love in the 21st century.
- Why men are avoiding work and marriage.In the next decade we’ll see if the American family is broken. — Part 1.
- Will today’s young men marry? America’s future depends which of these answers is right. — Part 2.
- Technology will shape our society as porn and sexbots destroy 21st century marriage.
The trailer to The Prince & Me
>Rise of Islam and fundamentalist Christianity?
Possibly. What do you think of Houellebecq’s “Submission”, FM? One of the reasons Islam is so successful in the novel is because it provides meaning and societal structure again in a meaningless postmodern age-and deep down, there’s a strong emotional bias for having a community, having some higher purpose in life. In a weird way, it is a rejuvenating, virile force injected into a sterile, self-satisfied society.
As for Christianity, the demographics of the religion have massively shifted over the past 50 years. Nowadays, Africa and Asia are the epicenters of the Catholic Church, along with Latin America. I wonder how long it’ll be until we see a Filipino Pope.
Leaving,
As usual, salient and incisive observations. I haven’t read Houellebecq’s “Submission”, so any comments on it will be appreciated.
I agree about the appeal of Islam. It’s also true of Mormonism in the US. The future of religion in the US and world is one of the great wild cards. History has episodes where great revivals of religiosity reshaped society, without warning. As you note, we might be due for another.
Someone should do a part 2—today’s Hollywood and superheroes.
the 60’s – 80’s Christopher Reeves and Adam West superheroes fighting for truth, justice and an optimistic future have been replaced by brooding, dark, selfish, nihilistic dopplegangers in the latest reboots of superhero movies. eg, —
https://youtu.be/VGsrMaxx8N4
Bruce,
That’s a powerful point! I too have wondered about this. My guess (emphasis on guess) is that the comics originally were written for children and teens, reflecting the optimism of youth. Today’s graphic novels about superheroes are written for bitten aging boomers, who see the mess their generation has made from the high cards handed us by the Greatest Generation.
Your thoughts on this?
Hollywood is both a cause of social trends and a reflection of social trends/zeitgeist. And in the end, Hollywood follows the money. So I guess optimism does make money—and cinematic dystopias do?
See the latest Star Wars movies. So you thought our heroes lived happily ever after the Return of the Jedi? Wrong, 30 years later, our heroes are stuck in a purgatory fighting the same battle against an enemy that’s as indomitable as kudzu. Like the US military in the Middle East.
and economically real life is turning into a 1970’s/80’s dystopia film in which the entire world economy is dominated by a handful of corporations—-like OCP from Robocop.
this review made a great point about Darth Vader Star Wars: Rogue One … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3gf6qyAHOw … —replace Rogue One with the Civil War movie “Glory” , then replace Darth Vader with a Confederate soldier. The audience in “Rogue One” was rooting for a homicidal tyrant to slice up our nobel rebels. Dunno what to make of that from an academic point—harmless vicarious fantasy of being the antagonist or we’re all cheering on the dark side now..
Bruce,
That sounds interesting, but I don’t understand. Can you explain that a bit more? I traded away my memories of watching Rogue One to get those 90 minutes of my life back.
Also — watch the career of Jenny Nicholson. That was an impressive review by a young girl.
timestamp 18:51 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3gf6qyAHOw probably explains it better
In Rogue One, the audience has no qualms cheering on Darth Vader as he slices the rebels. The story of “Rogue One” is no different than a Civil War or WWII movie.
If the story of “Rogue One” took place in WWII, would the audience be cheering for an SS-Waffen ubermensch soldier? Of course not, because Nazis are bad.
But in “Rogue One” the audience has no problems cheering on Darth Vader—even though in that fictional universe Darth Vader literally is a space Nazi. The arguable point would be that Hollywood doesn’t have a clear duality between good and evil. By celebrating Darth Vader as a hero (like Walter White from “Breaking Bad”) what does that say about today’s society? (or one reasonably can call all this film analysis artsy-fartsy BS)
Bruce,
That is really strange. Beyond strange.
unfortunately i bungled at articulating/restating an insightful point about Darth Vader, Hollywood and fan service. And it doesn’t help that i can’t magically cue the relevant movie clips to convey the analogy.
one last try—-in the past, the good guys were good and bad guys were bad. today–bad guys can be good or bad, while the good guys aren’t always good and don’t always live happily ever after.
Bruce,
You were describing something from a film without being able to show the clip. Shakespeare would have difficulty doing that!
Your explanation was clear, but shocking. It is eerily similar to something I plan to write about. In modern films and TV I often hear the people like me say that the characters like them are the bad guys. Look at the rumors of the next Star Wars: the lead is a young girl (who is beyond awesome in the first film, with a character arc that might make her Jesus by the third). The two young males are rumored to become gay lovers. The only straight young guys among the leads are bad guys.
It’s an increasingly common pattern, especially with intelligent young men in films and TV.
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third instance of “than” on this page (ctrl-f) to find it probably, should be “THAT.”
Robert,
Thank you for catching and mentioning
thanthat! Fixed.