In the most recent issue of The Atlantic film critic Christopher Orr asks the question, “Why are romantic comedies so bad?” His answer reveals much about the current state of our cultural decline:
“…there’s more at work here than the vagaries of stars or studios. It’s not just them; it’s us. Among the most fundamental obligations of romantic comedy is that there must be an obstacle to nuptial bliss for the budding couple to overcome. And, put simply, such obstacles are getting harder and harder to come by. They used to lie thick on the ground: parental disapproval, difference in social class, a promise made to another. But society has spent decades busily uprooting any impediment to the marriage of true minds. Love is increasingly presumed–perhaps in Hollywood most of all–to transcend class, profession, faith, age, race, gender, and (on occasion) marital status.”
Which explains why we’re not likely to see again a novel such as the one that in substantial ways defined the genre of romantic comedy for both fiction and film: Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice. In this year 2013 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the 1813 publication of Pride and Prejudice, a novel which, though still a delight to untold numbers of readers, in many ways represents a gone world.
To be sure, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy have their obstacles to overcome: class, family, and of course their respective attitudes of pride and prejudice. Jane Austen employed her prodigious talents to prod her social world beyond its limitations no less than contemporary screenwriters and chick lit novelists do. But it’s one thing to critique the pomposity of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as an unjust impediment to Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s union. It’s quite another to keep pushing the social envelope when class structures, family authority, and sexual taboos have all fallen by the wayside.
About sexual taboos in movies Orr reflects: “There was a time when carnal knowledge was the (implied) endpoint of the romantic comedy; today it’s just as likely to be the premise. In 2005’s A Lot Like Love–a dull, joyless rip-off of When Harry Met Sally–Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher meet cute by having sex in an airplane lavatory before they’ve spoken a single word to each other. Where’s a film to go when the “happy ending” takes place at the beginning?”
Orr is right to complain about A Lot Like Love, yet he’s content enough to accept a long-anticipated “hook up” as a sufficient “happy ending” of a romantic comedy. These fragments he would shore against our cultural ruin. But he’s really missing the whole point of what romantic comedy is all about.
The principal reason Pride and Prejudice is a masterpiece is not because two attractive lovers finally get together in the end. No. Pride and Prejudice is a masterpiece because it is a story about two young people realizing that they are morally flawed, and who, in working through their moral flaws, realize that they might just be able to pull off that virtuous friendship which is the only foundation of a successful marriage. “I was given good principles,” Darcy says to Elizabeth at the end, “but left to follow them in pride and conceit.” Elizabeth, too, has to overcome deficiencies in moral formation in order to recognize the goodness in Darcy. What is often missed is that, in neglecting their children’s moral education, the parents in Pride and Prejudice are the villains of the piece.
To put it mildly, the tradition of the virtues is no longer our reigning cultural paradigm. It is because of this that Orr can only predict that in scrounging around for dramatic obstacles rom com writers will have to resort to ever more outrageous elements. What could be more outrageous than for two lovers to be kept apart because each of them believes that premarital sex is contrary to the virtue of chastity? Will we ever see such a book or film outside the “Christian Fiction” section at Barnes and Noble?
Our admiration for Pride and Prejudice will go ever on, no doubt, because our desire for romance never dies. But in pursuing romance at any cost we have lost our appetite for true romance, for romance founded upon virtue, for romance that ends as all good comedies end: with a wedding.
Happy Birthday, Pride and Prejudice. We may never see your like again.
Books mentioned in this essay are available from The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore.
This passage is spot on.
“About sexual taboos in movies Orr reflects: “There was a time when carnal knowledge was the (implied) endpoint of the romantic comedy; today it’s just as likely to be the premise.”
While there are still comedies being made where there is no carnal interaction (God’s intent for every happy couple), They are few and far between.
Sleepless in Seattle…
While you were Sleeping…
You’ve Got Mail….
Even in a couple of great romances,
The Notebook
When Harry Met Sally…
They skip a few steps and hop into bed too soon.
In The Notebook it is supposedly the final achievement – “together at last, in every sense of the word” but in reality it isn’t the final achievement at all, as the poor man must await the decision of his true love to stay with him or go…
What torment…
Their physical union was premature.
In the best romances, coming together against all odds – before – hopping into bed is crucial.
The true happy ending is the long awaited union – what I referred to above as God’s idea, and what I believe was his greatest gift to mankind, in the realm of fulfilling relationships on earth;
The ability to be one, in spirit, soul, and body –
Precious, because it is the fulfillment of his intent –
Precious, because it is what completes us –
Precious, because it was His idea in the first place, and as grand designer, he knows what foundation will facilitate the strength and long standing of a home.
All great romances build to that point.
Couple faces obstacles, couple overcomes, couple is finally free to enjoy one another liberally in a serious committed relationship; Marriage.
Remove those ingredients – toss in physical union prematurely – and you tamper with perfection.
Gone forever? I could not disagree more. The author says, splendidly, “‘Pride and Prejudice’ is a masterpiece because it is a story about two young people realizing that they are morally flawed, and who, in working through their moral flaws, realize that they might just be able to pull off that virtuous friendship which is the only foundation of a successful marriage.” Modern social pressures and constraints are different but by no means gone. If anything, many moral romances could be written today, on overcoming today’s constraints. I am currently rereading CS Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength,” which contains a small subplot of a married couple pulled apart. Even without his vast canvas of good-versus-evil, his handling of two personalities adrift (and then reunified) works just fine.
Today, modern libertine-liberties are transcended daily by couples who flee shallowness and finally choose the altar. If we believe that tradition reflects the needs of our very nature, then in life and in fiction there is always a way home. It only requires imaginative conservatives to write them up.