I don’t think it’s funny!
May 16th, 2009
Egon Scheile
Romantic Comedy.
Those words go together like flowers and chocolate, breakfast and Tiffany’s, vodka and razor blades, pillows and tears. But where is the comedy in romance? Is it like happiness, only discovered when looking into ones’ past or is it anticipated in the future? How many people would look back on their romances and remember the comedic nature rather than the pain of such episodes?
It’s only long afterwards, (and in some cases, never), that one can see the humour in it all. Occasionally one can see folly and wasted emotion while in the grip of it, but never humour. To have a laugh often requires people to share your situation, to be in the trenches with you. But mostly you are in that foxhole alone because the one doing the sniper firing is usually your loved one. This could be funny, depending on the nature of the bullets. But usually it’s not.
The writer of romantic comedy attempts to make the most painful scenes of loss, confusion and disappointment appear funny. Writing about the reality of romantic turmoil is one for the literary guys out the back with their overflowing ashtrays and quest for truth.
The truth that love does not triumph, people lose what they had, or wanted or needed. The truth that in the real world, love is quite often not enough, or it dies quietly while no one is looking or dwindles into deadening habit. How can we make that funny?
‘He went up into the bedroom and saw her dress hanging up at the foot of the bed. Then, leaning against the secretaire, he remained there till it was dark, lost in sorrowful meditation. After all, she had loved him.’ *
Where is the humour in this passage? It’s almost too painful to read.
And this,
‘Yes,’ he said dreamily, ‘an extraordinary woman. It’s not her cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I’m awfully sorry for her.’ **
Or this,
‘Lily lay on the unmade bed staring at nothing, empty of feeling. Robbie was selfish, Robbie put himself first, he’d betrayed her with other women, but never this. He’d always tried to clean up his own messes, tried to keep it from her, wept with remorse when she wept.’ ***
One of these quotes is from a romantic comedy. But there is nothing funny about any of them.
According to Wikipedia, ‘Clerical critics (in the middle ages) often deemed romances to be harmful worldly distractions from more substantive or moral works.’ Well, they would say that wouldn’t they? In the modern world we crave distraction, diversion, amusement,anything that provides an easy escape from the days concerns. Think of the insubstantial nature of free-to-air television, and think of the rows of best selling books in bookshops. All of them worldly distractions from the daily plod.
Few, these days, read for self-improvement or seek out books to provide moral instruction. We can get that from The Simpsons. And while Australia may have very high book sales per capita we are not talking about Thomas Aquinas or Noam Chomsky. Reg Hunt’s Fishing Guide perhaps or The Complete Dummies Guide to Doing Your BAS. Or romantic comedy, women’s fiction, cookbooks and the occasional thriller.
Google the word ‘romance’ and a range of items come up, ranging from ‘Sexy Ukrainian Girls’, to Hollywood stars’ tips for keeping romance alive, (eat together at expensive restaurants), to the truly sad advertisement for ‘pre-written love letters.’ On delving further into this article I found tips on writing ‘adoring’ love letters. The author of this article cautions the novice letter writer with this sage advice…
’Much safer to write a passionate love letter if you are engaged or married.’
This, one could assume, means it is safer to write such things if you are married but leaves open the question of whom you send the letter to. Is the author perhaps suggesting that passion needs the obstacle of your loved one’s prior commitment to another?
The concept of romance has changed over the centuries. The idea of falling in love, as we know it in the twenty first century, would be considered outlandish for most of the people who have lived on this planet. The medieval notion of courtly love is the true ancestor of today’s notions of romance, (a quick trot through Victorian times endowed it with cloying sentimentality). Courtly love is described as being ‘a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent.’ (1). This is not the sort of love one finds in today’s romantic comedies where the couple are shagging like minks on the first page. Courtly love was to love from afar, to have desire but never have it fulfilled.
To promise faithfulness in adversity was the epitome of romantic sentiment and needed not an expensive restaurant in LA but only a handkerchief, a sigh, a glance and then one got on with the business of marrying for position, fortune and family.
The modern person expects romantic attachment as a prelude to marriage. Erroneous thinking really, as marriage is, the French courtiers knew, about status, fortune and family. Romantic involvement is not the best indicator of a future successful marriage. However, this is our culture and this is how we do it. And there is much money to be made out of such cultural constructs. The desire is created; romance is yearned for, the pain follows and is concluded in a frenzy of retail therapy. And thus there is little profit in commitment. The writer of romantic comedy is well and truly implicated in this cycle, creating expectations and desire. But it is not the desire of courtly love. We would not tolerate perpetual desire with no consummation and all energies diverted to higher pursuits. The remnant institutions of medieval times -– convents and monasteries are almost spent, instant gratification and self-entitlement have taken over and we are all ‘entitled’ to romance. Just as, according to an advertisement I saw in a department store - ‘All Australians are entitled to look good.’
The romantic comedy writer also has a kinder imperative, kinder than kindling unfulfilled yearnings. The writer and the reader run away together, hand in hand escaping the real, the pain and the disappointment. Together they experience what some are too scared of to try, or to hurt to try again, or have never experienced at all. The writer makes it safe and puts a pretty cover on it, manages the reader’s emotions for them, highlight’s the absurdity of it all, and allows the reader to drift away into sleep undisturbed by pain or fevered imaginings.
It’s show business, colluding with the entertainment conglomerates, weaving a shimmering cloth to throw over the inevitable pain and failure of the romantic episode. In the end, however, the writer brings into being a place where they can be alone with their characters, a place where they can construct a better reality than this one, a place they are content to be in, whether a reader comes with them or not.
*Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
** Anne Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
***The Book of Love, Phillipa Fioretti
(it is with extreme humility that I list a quote from my own book next to such giants)
1.Francis X. Newman, ed. (1968). The Meaning of Courtly Love, vii.
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Categories: The Book of Love, on writing | Tags: Lily, love, reading, writing
6 Comments
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Interesting post, Phi. Humor is usually the best when it makes us look at something we’re scared of, or something painful, and makes us laugh at ourselves, our fears, our flaws, our imperfections. When we read something in which we recognize ourselves, but see it in a new light, and see it for the absurdity that it is. Romantic comedy fits that bill quite well, as we all experience love, romance, falling in love, love not returned, not fulfilled, the pain of love fading, dying, or the worse pain of losing a love. Romantic comedy is therapy for the soul - we can see it in a new light. Or perhaps reading about other people’s love pains is funny - like laughing when you see someone slip and fall, even though you know they might be hurt, or at least feeling very foolish. In the best romantic comedies, we do emphatize with the character, and can feel the sadness and the joy and can re-live our own loves, yet still see the human condition, including our own, for the silliness that it is when viewed from a distance.
Robb
Hi Phillipa,
This is such a luscious website; from the flesh and folds and thorny bits of artichokes, the delight of D.H Lawrence and surrendering to the beautiful distractions in life when we cunctate.
Helen
It’s very true that the reality of the romantic process is rarely funny for the people involved. I think, by turning it into comedy, the writer (and reader) are essentially indulging in a bit of schadenfreude. But hopefully it’s guiilt free as the objects of derision are fictional. Also, I know personally that I find it much easier as a writer to laugh at past miseries than wallow in them.
That’s why we like to read or see the happy-ever-after ending. Real life sucks.
everything should be turned into comedy sometime or other - if it wasn’t we couldn’t get out of bed in the morning
I thought romantic comedy was exactly “to have desire but to never have it fulfilled” at least not until the final scene. Ie the Shakespeare comedies, through Jane Austen to When Harry met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. The comedy comes from the bungling ineptitude, the romance from the tension of the contrary higher forces, one trying to get them together one trying to keep them apart; and the overriding emotion is “Come ON! Why don’t they just get on with it!”