Steve the Owl's Blog

I love movies. One of the things that is so great about movies, and a lot of great art, is the way that it so eloquently describes our conditions and our dreams. I have seen a lot of movies in many genres. One of those genres that I have thought about recently is the romantic comedy. Some versions of romantic comedies are geared towards a heavily female audience, and they get the sometimes undeserved label of “chick flick.”

The Need for Competition

My favorite romantic comedy of all time has to be The Baxter. It was released in 2005 starring Michael Showalter in a movie that examines what happens to the other guy in romantic comedies. In this movie, the other guy is referred to as a “baxter,” the man who is destined to be dumped. This got me thinking: how many romantic comedies that I have seen have the other person who is destined to be dumped because the leading lady is already in a relationship at the beginning of the movie? In Bridget Jones’s Diary, it is a battle between Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy; in You’ve Got Mail, it’s Joe Fox vs. the Greg Kinnear character. In The Baxter, there are actually multiple competing love interests going on involving people who must get hurt. However, this movie is a satire of the genre. I realize that there are times that there are multiple people who love the same person, which means that someone’s feelings will get hurt. However, there are also plenty of relationships that start between people who happen to be single when they meet.

The End… Or The Beginning?

At the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary, the words “The End” are crossed out and replaced by “The Beginning.” However, how many romantic comedies end things right there when the couple have found each other? With the prevalence of divorce, I wonder how many people decided that the reason why they couldn’t be in the relationship any more is because the “new relationship excitement” is gone, and they become junkies for that feeling. However, here is the problem with that line of thought: real life is often what happens after we lose that initial excitement and decide to commit to a lifetime.

Why This Happens

I don’t think that romantic comedies are doing this with a goal of sabotaging the institution of marriage. I think that they are trying to present a storybook fantasy, and they skip over just what “and they all lived happily ever after” really means. So, why do they end there? Because, from a cinematic point of view, the interesting part is the chase. There are some movies and TV shows that illustrate the difficulty of this thinking, although it seems more prevalent in TV where the artists get years to develop a character, as opposed to a few hours.

So, if you are looking for that fairy tale moment, never forget that these movies are meant to convey a fantasy. There is nothing wrong with fantasy at all, but we have to be able to tell the difference between the two, and decide every day to make the commitment to make our marriages work.