Hollywood Ending: Has movie romance ruined modern love?
“Romance on screen should come with a warning - to be consumed in moderation” - Emily Carlton
Pretty Woman. Notting Hill. My Best Friend’s Wedding.
Not the beginning of an invitation to a bougie hen-do, but some of the classics of the modern romantic ideal: the romantic comedy. From being read stories of princes and princesses as children, to trying to find something ‘light’ to watch on Netflix, we all enjoy the warm, saccharine feeling engendered by a good RomCom. The hope and optimism offered from the certainty that, no matter the predicament, the good guy wins in the end, gets the girl (it usually is in that order), and they live happily ever after.
That bit isn’t actually shown of course, given the film ends when the couple get together - but how could it now be? Did you not see the trials that they just went through and obstacles that they had to navigate to be together?! If there were a sequel (Still A Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Divorce etc) then they would surely show Richard Gere continuing his rapacious late 80s-style, asset stripping, slash-and-burn brand of capitalism and Julia Roberts living the life of Riley in his mansion, perhaps opening her a boutique on Sunset entitled, ‘Big Mistake. HUGE.’ Never mind the fact that he is an incredibly driven and high-strung individual who struggles to be satisfied or happy, will likely travel and be away from home regularly for his real passion - making money, ships, or deals with failing legacy companies - and they have almost nothing (Prince?) in common. But I’m sure it will work out. It has to. The genre compels it.
And this is the very problem, isn’t it. We know from painful lived experience that the real challenge for a couple is not getting together, when you barely know them and everything is new and exciting, but staying together - when you know far too much. This is one of the reasons why romanticism has taken complete hold of our cultural representation of what relationships are like: it tells us a pleasant fiction that we would like to believe. This social monoculture is, in some senses, strange. We all experience attraction, infatuation and love, but romanticism can set the framework around the way we view love in its absence, in its most idealised form.
“The real work and real joy of relationships starts after the film ends, after the Hollywood ending.”
Romanticism sets out some basic facets of love: you have one soulmate. They must understand you intrinsically and without explanation or judgement. Passion must trump practical considerations. You must suffer and look internally for reasons why you are unhappy, dwell in melancholy. Romanticism may have started as a poetic and literary movement several hundred years ago, but is it still having an influence on us now? This was what I wanted to interrogate with my guest this week, screenwriter Emily Carlton, whether romance as depicted on the silver screen helps, or hinders, relationships - especially given the digital innovations that weren’t available during the 1990s romcom golden age: is the fairytale that films have sold making us feel worse about our real life relationships?
Emily spoke about how the stories and scripts of romcoms and films have changed, that the archetypes of gender roles (i.e. the passive role of women in traditional stories),and the rise of recent films that have a younger man and older woman as the protagonists - “I feel like stories of older women dating younger guys was something that Hollywood was really excited about two years ago.”
“The story arc: Couple meets, never online. They have a conflict, then they have a resolution and get back together. The film ends.”
We also discussed how integral sex scenes are to the wider storylines, and how this has changed in the post-‘Me Too’ era. Emily’s film, The Eye, featured a love story and romantic scenes that they had to ensure were sensitively handled and the actors were comfortable. You only have to look at the ‘It Ends With Us’ to see how actors can dramatically fall out over how intimate scenes are directed and handled.
There needs to be drama and a source of tension in order to make the scene and their relationship compelling. However, if internalised, this could make the viewer think that this level of interpersonal conflict in a relationship is normal, even desirable. This can lead people to constantly look for pastures new in order to get the adrenaline and dopamine hits that a new relationship provides.
“You can almost become addicted to the butterflies, where there is jeopardy with speaking to someone new… I could be the best version of myself on these dates. Sometimes the date would end, and I would miss the version I was of myself during the date, more than them.”
There is less sex on screen now (a 40% decline in sex scenes in films since the year 2000), and this is perhaps due to audience appetite: nearly half of young people don't think sex is necessary to the plots of most movies and TV shows. Emily thought that the effect of the pandemic on young people and being comfortable around people may be a factor: “I think sex scenes have declined hugely… You only have to look at Challengers, which has perhaps, one heavy kiss in it?”
I wondered if perhaps, given the sensitivities of modern sexual politics and seeming ubiquitious perceptions of quasi-culural Marxist ‘power dynamics’ in every interaction, the moneymen (moneypeople?) in Hollywood are becoming ever more risk-averse and, therefore, prudish. Emily also spoke about the change that has been seen in the way that men and women are shot on camera - for instance in ‘Anora’ and ‘The Substance’. In the past, men would be shown as full people, in comparison to only sexualised parts of women’s bodies.
Emily candidly spoke about her own experience of using dating apps - having some good and bad experiences along the way. The personal bleeds into the professional for everyone, but I wanted to ask Emily how her previous relationships and experience of romance affected and informed her script writing, particularly when writing young characters that are in love: “The most difficult parts are writing cute, romantic dialogue that feels real… You need drama, you want to see the character cry and smash things… Things definitely get scrapped from your personal life to your writing - sometimes the romance that you want to see on screen is very different to the romance that you want to live”.
Finally, we discussed our favorite RomComs. Having married her best friend, Emily's clear favourite was ‘When Harry Met Sally’. She feels that the platonic to romantic arc particularly resonates. If you want to hear our full discussion, When Jim Met Emily, please search for ‘The Great RomCon?’ on all major podcast providers.