10th
ROMANCE. BY VERSACE WOMAN
I’ve been thinking a lot about Meg Ryan lately. To justify such thoughts to myself, I try to preface them with some sort of philosophical inquiry (really, though, I think I just like watching youtube clips of You’ve Got Mail over and over and over). Sleepless in Seattle, that’s a good one too.
The relative impracticality and fictitious nature of romantic comedies recall that lovely book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by my main man, Milan Kundera. The unbearable lightness of romantic comedies is obvious and completely self-aware. (admitting my fascination with Ryan is precisely because her movies are so painfully obvious, which is why I’m self-conscious for knowing all about them.) Romance (of the Meg Ryan variety) is nothing less than a whirlwind of fantasy, wonder, and exotic escapades with dashing leading men. Ryan romance has no thought towards long-term, serious significance. Romance is what happens when you need to call someone to escort you to your best friend’s wedding, or a Christmas party. The provincial love-and-marriage-horse-and-carriage is hinted at, and gestured towards (usually in the form of some final wedding scene where Meg and Tom/Julia Roberts and Richard Gere finally get together (like we knew they would)). The movie focuses on the courtship of the romance, as opposed to the second part of romance: the routinized life as a couple (this is not a flaw of the movie necessarily—You’ve Got Mail part 2, in which we just watch Meg Ryan getting a lot of spam and Amazon coupons would be horrendous/awesome/actually horrendous). So, we can criticize Meg Ryan movies as being “reactionary”, perpetuating the cultural Hollywood myth of romance as an idealized form of intimacy and one that will never be extinguished. She even admits it in one of her best/worst/worst films, Kate and Leopold (starring Hugh Jackman, where he is a duke from 1876 and magically time travels to her in contemporary New York and they meet and fall in love):
Kate: I’m not very good with men.
Leopold: Perhaps you haven’t found the right one.
Kate: Maybe. Or, uh… maybe that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we’ve been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney.
Aw. The fantasy of true love—it might just be the stuff of make believe. Of course, she takes it all back when she realizes she’s in love with Leopold. But Ryan romanticism doesn’t have any pretense of being anything other than “for the time being”, “in the moment”. The template shares many similarities with other stories throughout history (fairy tales, Shakespearian romance, etc characteristically end with a “happily ever after”). However, I think there is something distinctively modern (post-modern?) in the momentariness of Ryan romance. Perhaps I’m simply stating the (obvious) fact that the films are clearly products of their time.
Joe Fox: You’re crazy about him…
Kathleen Kelly: Yes. I am.
Joe Fox: Then why don’t you run off with him? What are you waiting for?
Kathleen Kelly: I don’t actually know him.
Joe Fox: Really?
Kathleen Kelly: We only know each other - oh, God, you’re not going to believe this…
Joe Fox: Let me guess. From the Internet.
Kathleen Kelly: Yes.
Joe Fox: You’ve got mail.
Kathleen Kelly: Yes.
Joe Fox: Three very powerful words.
Kathleen Kelly: Yes.
What were the “three very powerful words” of romantic dramas and comedies of the 1930s are now the observation of a new form of communication: a confluence of permanance and temporality, occuring instantaneously. This flavor of romance is mutually equal, as opposed to the male-driven pursuit scripts of yesteryear. M4W is the same as W4M—through the new technology highlighted in Ryan’s film, both men and women have equal roles in the searching, flirtation, and ensuing romance. Kathleen pursues Joe as much as he does her (but she doesn’t know it’s really her enemy—wokka wokka). Ryan romance is, in some way, distinct from its predecessors: it is notably progressive, recalling the 3rd Women’s Lib movement and the just-beginning-to-get-mainstream liberal lifestyles complete with buying organic food, going vegetarian, buying from local vendors, and owning Macintosh computers. Ryan is the mocha latte of the late 90s—after coffee started becoming fancy but before we realized we should ask for soymilk instead. The movies are not only historical artifact—they are a distinct subgenre of romantic comedy. Her comedies fill a cultural niche that extends beyond mere entertainment value. We are a species that demand to be lied to, that demand to slip up on our own modernity. Ryan romance is our solution: we immerse ourselves in fiction, in unbearable lightness, for 90 minutes with no thought towards the future (our own or the characters’). We’re caught in a ascension of leather jackets, crushed velvet tank tops, and platform sandals that reemphasize and idealize the present. For real, Paula Cole: I don’t wanna wait.
