Millennial Women May Never Recover From The Romcom
In our VERY FIRST video essay, Chelsea talks about the heyday of the classic romantic comedy and the lasting impact the genre has had on millennial women - from influencing their expectations of relationships to normalizing lifestyles that are almost exclusively available to rich people.
Thanks to @Princess_Weekes for her insight in this video!
Chapters:
00:00 TFD supports SAG!
00:55 Welcome To Our Romcom Era!
5:09 The Downfall Of The Mainstream Romcom
12:10 An Economically Chaotic Match
15:22 Romance Is For White People
18:14 The Romcom's Relationship With Money
27:01 He's Not Charming, He's Just A Prince
31:30 Your Job: The One True Love Of Capitalism
36:05 Wined, Dined, & Lightly Stalked
41:25 You Should Never Know You're Hot
46:48 Congratulations, Life Ends At 30!
50:48 Conclusion
Source links:
www.34st.com/article/2021/02/...
www.salon.com/2012/04/19/thin...
www.thedartmouth.com/article/...
www.statista.com/statistics/6...
www.npr.org/2018/08/25/641582...
www.salon.com/2023/02/11/netf...
www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-...
www.zumper.com/rent-research/...
www.zillow.com/homedetails/19...
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-ra...
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Is this a Mona sticker? ❤
@@holaleonorch.Yes! Members get to use the monamojis as well!!
...and Zoomer women will never recover from poisoning themselves with hormonal birth control, murdering their babies, supporting mutilating kids to "trans" them, rotting their brains on weed and synthetic cannabis, & rap1ng their own dignity by wh0ring on onlyfans...
Aren't you the CEO? If you're not directing this cut, who is 😂
What is with that "only white people can fall in love", the fact they were mostly white people is because blacks are only 13% of the population, so it was catering to the widest possible audience. Sorry, but thumbs down, and I see you got quite ratio'd here. Maybe stop the racist tropes in your videos...
One of the best things in My Big Fat Greek Wedding is that Toula worked in the service industry and lived at home, and Ian was a high school teacher and (from what we saw of his apartment) lived in a space that was comparable to his income. It was much much much more relatable
I think he was a college professor, but otherwise, I agree with your post. And their relationship was so sweet!
Aaaaand it wasn't her transformation that made her worthy of him. He noticed/remembered her from before her transformation. This made her transformation actually about her own understanding of herself. Plus, I love that her sexual inexperience at her age doesn't dictate her relationship, nor does it make her bad in bed! ❤️
Also her makeover was mostly a confidence and happiness makeover, not straightening her hair or changing what made her unique to appeal to society.
An amazing movie ❤
It’s my favorite rom com
As a millennial straight guy who always enjoyed the rom-com genre (because it's fun!), I'd say it also had pernicious effects on men's understandings of what might make them interesting to or meaningfully desired by women. As the male love interests are (as Chelsea pointed out), often portrayed as devoid of any interesting, notable or admirable personality traits (beyond rich or hot), the stories furthered the cultural notion that no other aspects of a man's personality or aspiration are worth cultivating or valued romantically. "Who cares if you're kind of a jerk, as long as you're rich enough and psychotically devoted to the right girl?"
Great point!
Thank you for sharing, sir. Good to be reminded that everyone is affected by the media we are offered.
Fellow Millennial straight guy here. I think there is WAY more than rom-cold telling guys that their personality is irrelevant & that money and status are all that is required if you want to have a woman in your life. With rom-coms (as well as romantic subplots in movies targeting men), is that the movies are not actually about romance, they are about the fantasy of a grand romance. If you made the male lead a more defined character & not someone with just the most generic desirable traits then the broadest subset of women aren’t going to necessarily vibe with that story when they are projecting onto the female lead.
🎯
@@TheJadedJames Boop! 💡
To be fair, Legally Blonde showed a romantic partner in both movie 1 and 2 who was truly supportive of his partner and saw her success as important to her and worth investing how she needed rather than how he thought she needed. He really is a winner and his love for her isn't the focus of her life, just a part of it. That is probably the least problematic romcom/chick flick romance ever.
Yeah. I mean they barely date during the first film. He's kind of secondary to the plot... in a good way.
Definitely, he’s definitely a B storyline. And even Warner is used as a motivation, but she finds her own motivation outside of him unrelated to Emmett
I agree, I actually just recently rewatched these (visiting my mom and she had them on her DVR) and I always loved these movies because of how genuinely supportive everyone is of each other. As far as generic storylines go, at least this one implies that most people are kind and loyal and accepting of others, while they still have flaws and make mistakes. The “bad guys” in the movies are bad because they minimize and underestimate people, the “good guys” are good because they uplift and accept people. Often, main characters and their love interests remain simplified so that the reader/viewer can overlay their own personalities onto them and imagine themselves as the protagonist, or as the love interests. All of the personality comes out in the supporting characters. Ginny Weasley vs. Hermoine Grainger is a good example. Harry and Ginny are pretty generic.
Plus, the movie showed how we shouldn’t judge people based on their looks, both those who are really good-looking and fashion-conscious and those who aren’t. It also showed Elle’s growth. Her only ambition early on was to be engaged to Warner. She wanted nothing else out of life, but it is through chasing him into law school she found that she is worth it without him, and that having a fulfilling career and helping people made her happier than a life with Warner ever could. I think that’s a great message for young girls: make a name for yourself apart from just becoming someone’s wife first, and if you should have a partner, let him be someone who supports you in all aspects of your life that make you happy.
@@priyaravindran6150 It also is so relatable to the generation who grew up on it. Growing up love & marriage were shoved down our throats. Society pressured us to put a career after a family. So many of us found ourselves because of our broken hearts and rebuilt. And when we became complete people, true supportive friends & love followed. We can't love others until we love ourselves, and this journey was her learning to love herself without external validations.
This is why I love “Confessions of a Shopaholic” not only do they address the fact that she’s consuming way more than she can afford, her growth in the story is about learning to let go of a lot of those material items in order to become responsible with her money again💚
But she married a rich man. Financial problems all solved 😅
@@quirkyhillHis wealthy background was so useless that I almost forgot it 😂 Honestly,it looked like a cheap way to give him some appeal and depth - when he was just a alright, regular, pragmatic guy. It's unfair to say Becky's troubles were solved by the money her partner didn't want to display
but she's still an impulsive shopper in the later novels though.
Gotta be honest, as a millennial whose bread and butter was rom coms, I still seek out those types of movies and shows on all of our streaming platforms. They're like a warm, familiar hug in this chaotic world. I do the same thing with books all the time. Sometimes I need a predictable plot line, no real surprises, in order to feel safe and secure in the unpredictability of everything else.
This is me. As an elder millennial (83) these are like my reprise from a hard world
I love watching and rewatching romcoms for the exact same reasons. They are comforting and take my mind off the stress and chaos of reality.
I'm Gen-Z but I still love rom-coms. Sometimes that escapist, modern fantasy is what I need to get through my day.
I'm the same, and also a millenial. It's an escape from reality
Yeah hallmark channel is that for me. Well it started to turn a bit woke but largely its still unaffected by the outside world. ❤
The "doesn't know she's beautiful" thing is such a pet peeve of mine. I think what they mean is "she doesn't use her beauty as a source of power, because that's alienating to men and many women." Women get such constant feedback and importance placed on our appearance... In reality, the women I've known who truly didn't "know they're beautiful" had severe issues with their self-perception/self-worth that caused them real suffering (and wasn't good for their relationships either).
manipulating people is generally considered to be evil
I personally never considered myself “pretty” growing up, but unless I was having a pretty severe (by my standards) dissociative episode it didn’t usually cause me distress (and even that didn’t start until I was around 17+). Turns out I’m just asexual and have no perception of sexual attractiveness whatsoever.
This is so true. It’s also very unlikely that he’d be attracted to her pre- or post-makeover because her self esteem would be so low. Wearing makeup and heels doesn’t suddenly get rid of self-esteem issues.
Either that or she is chronically insecure which is also really frustrating. Because in most cases they need someone else to give them a glow up or someone else to find them beautiful before they 'change'.
i agree. but there is a passive side to beauty. there are women around that don't know true north in regards to men, because they are used to preferential treatment. for example there are women who seriously consider their orbiters as friends and no out-of-scope gift could convince them otherwise. also ironically this will stop quite a few men from telling them to shut up, when they get lectured about their supposed male-privilege.
I was just talking about this. Waiting for love to run into me… I didn’t realize that romcoms had such a profound effect on me.
Yet at the same time modern Western men are chastised for walking up to women they are interested in in public. With so many conflicting expectations no wonder this is the loneliest generation.
EVERYTHING on TV has a profound effect on people. Millions of people yell at athletes on screens as if they can hear them. Companies spend millions of dollars on TV ads because they are effective.
@@josephbrown9685 does art imitate life or life imitate art?
@@josephbrown9685- I mean, I yell at people in YT videos all the time, as if they can hear me, lol.
I'm 47 ans still waiting for "love to just run into me"... Sigh.....🙄😞
I'm really glad to have learned the term "pick-me girl," because it perfectly describes my entire dating persona during my 20s. It was a bombshell moment when I realized that many of the things I thought I liked were actually just interests picked up from the men I had been trying to date. Suddenly, it was no longer a mystery why none of these relationships had worked out - I wasn't bringing my true self to the table, because "getting the man" at all costs was the goal. Now in my 30s, I'm happily single and rocking on with my weird self. It's bliss ❤
I knew a woman who framed the Red Sox shirt she was wearing when she met her Bostonian husband in a DC bar. The woman has never expressed to me once that she had even the slightest interest in baseball. Yes, they also had giant framed photos from their wedding on their walls.
I couldn't agree more.
Stay weird ya’ll!
This sounds like me whenever I get a new job 🙃
Oh man. I never thought of myself as a PMB but I was definitely a try hard "Cool Girl" - if you haven't seen it Gone Girl's Amy Dunne Cool Girl Monologue, you should! It definitely lives rent free in my head!
I haven't dated in 3 year's now and I've been in therapy for 2. I can say what I've really come to understand is that I had no real interest or hobbies. I always.... I mean ALWAYS became interested or even sometimes OBSESSED with whatever my crush or boyfriend at the time was interested in. What a waste of 15 years. However I'm so glad I've become aware of this and actively have sought my wants and interest.
Like Julia Roberts' character in "Runaway Bride?"
@@cariwaldick4898 never watched the movie but I will try to watch it now.
Lol 3 yrs is not much. In 15 yrs had 2 horrible dates, saves on hassles. I'm ugly and poor, and being worthless to women works out fine for me
No promises, but when you understand and maybe even like yourself, chances are a lot of things get a lot easier, life more enjoyable and you yourself more interesting/attractive. Anyways, in addition to learning your lessons, I wish you luck from here on. .. plus the intuition to avoid the wrong people and situations.
@@damianm-nordhorn116 well thank you. But it's ok, I know where I stand in the pecking order 🙂
I’m surprised you didn’t mention that some of these formative deception rom coms, like 10 Things and She’s All That were based on Shakespeare and classic lit. These tropes have been going on a lot longer than just the 90s through 2000s.
Absolutely. Whether Ashputtle or Cinderella. Austen or Jane Eyre. I’m even seeing traces of Cupid and Psyche coming through into the bridesmaids without lamp oil. I don’t know why. There have always been guiding and diverting stories. I wanna know, guiding to or diverting from what??? But that’s just me.
As someone who is genx and was in high school and college in the 90s, movies like you’ve got mail and the Shakespeare adaptations got me excited because I already knew the stories. You’ve got mail made me angry because the movie it was based on , the shop around the corner (1940), and the play it was based on ,Parfumerie (1937). In the original the main characters are both workers in a general store that don’t get along, but end up unwittingly penpals and fall in love through the letters. I grew up watching a lot of old romcoms from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s as I was growing up including the ones released in the 80s when I was between 5 to 15. Granted I knew they were old and out of date.
However taming of the strew which 10 things I hate about you was based off of, he never lied about his reason for pursuing her, he was straight to her face about it and played her games (but never hurt anyone unlike her) to get her to understand how insufferable she was. The only time it could’ve seemed like he lied was when he was “gaslighting her about rather it was day or if someone was a man or not” but it’s wasn’t truly gaslighting because she knew what he was doing and played along. it was his way of signaling “stop constantly insulting and contradicting me, and I will generous to you” which I think most of us as people deeply empathize with that sentiment. Sorry for the rant, it’s just that story is a masterpiece.
chivalrous love, defined as a mans absolute servitude to a woman, was invented by nobles in the 1200's and comissioned in the arts at great expense, this formed the cultural basis of europe, see peter wright's gynocentrism for more
@@doltBmB Chivalry was invented by nobles to keep the knights, who came back from war, from r*ping people. And their only servitude was to the nobles, who gave them the rules of chivalry.
How I Met Your Mother has a great episode about how all big romantic gestures are actually creepy if they don’t get together in the end.
Which one, do you remember?
@@sofitocyn100 S8 ep 15 P.S I Love You they call it the Dobler Dahmer Theory
not exactly 'get together in the end' But 'already somewhat attracted to the person who did the big romantic gesture' As marshal doing the gesture for lily but they werent together yet.
The fact that boys in high school were falling short of Heath Ledger in "10 Things I Hate About You" haunted me for so much longer than I care to admit.
A Heath Ledger lookalike in H.S. is so far right of the bell curve he's unlikely to exist.
@@jonathanmichaelsmith9012 it was more about the way he behaved tbh. I thought he was just everything ❤️
@@unicornL Even then, I don't recall anyone having his kind of charm at that age.
@@unicornLSure it was
🤣 You would have had to know better than to expect that from boys your age, you can barely expect it from 25 year olds. This is why age gap relationships never disappeared despite becoming politically incorrect. Men and women mature biologically at different ages and therefore emotionally too, and having both genders go to the same classroom at the same ages is an accident of the industrial revolution when the people who designed the educational system didn't know better.
Small thing about Bridget Jones's Diary - it focuses on her weight so much on purpose, because the book is formatted like (duh) her diary and it's mostly her self-hatred (plus the insane diet culture of the time) seeping through. She's supposed to be a perfectly average size yet think she's simply not thin enough. And you're supposed to notice it, because she stops even mentioning her body and her weight when she's with Mark, whereas with Daniel, she's super self conscious about it. The "I like you, just as you are" scene has GOT to be one of the dreamiest, most unrealistically romantic moments of any rom-com ever. Lol.
Oooh wait. Why unrealistic?
@@TNDCBaby they were doing fine until the end and I was like ??? the "I like you just the way you are" is literally what love is about in the real world 😅
@@mariaraquelfs Right. That should be what comes out of someone's mouth when making a declaration of love.
I am German and it’s interesting which films were defining here. For me these films were just over the top fantasies. We don’t use credit cards here. We don’t have typical malls (or just very few that were never a financial success). We don’t drive until we’re 18 and most people don’t have an own car until they’re 25. My favorite film of these was clueless. I loved Dionne‘s story and how Cher was mirrored by Tai and finally realized how toxic her behavior could be (although she was a genuinely nice girl). They never had the dream guys and the first love interests were toxic (Elton) or gay (Christian) what showed that the „true love“ is quite different from what you expect. It’s also one of the first glimpses I got of minimalism (well, a humorous version of it) when Cher realizes that she does not need the shopping and her stuff and donates tons to charity. I know, the movie gets a lot of critic because of age gap, but actually Josh is probably 19, Cher 16 what is a very normal gap here in Germany. And Josh is not the cool guy but the one who would pick up your best friend in the middle of the night. We were also totally hooked on cruel intentions (yeah, mostly because of the music). These films were so far away from our reality that we never related to them but just liked the escapism. It’s like a super hero movie. Just as I can enjoy it I don’t expect to save the world with supernatural powers tomorrow and so I don’t expect to go to the mall once a week because the female lead in a rom-com does it. But one problem also came here: normalization of toxic behavior. By ex really watched to much (anime)rom-coms and did not accept boundaries, because these movies or series picture stalking as true love and ignoring boundaries as cute because it shows how much in love you are. It was not until after we split up that I realized how much of his problematic behavior came from the media he consumed. He was also quite wealthy (well, his parents were, we were 17 and 20) and used it. There were also a few German rom-coms but we never liked them. They were for older audiences (gen x and boomers) and did not serve the purpose (escapism).
I'm from Finland, and I agree with a large portion of what you said. Romcoms were/are a form of escapism, like the period dramas I also enjoy.
Since Clueless is based on Jane Austen's Emma I wouldn't consider it a typicall RomCom, given that the original story is nearly 200 years older. In the original the age gap is also 16 years between Emma and Mr. Knightly. But they did a good job with keeping close to the original characters and relationships, while adjusting the setting to the 1990s.
I'm from Canada and also always saw these as unrealistic but fun fluff. I really can't fathom seeing these movies as anything but fantasy lol
What does the romcom have to do with finances? Welp! 1) promoting Prince Charming (pick me on steroids) 2) career women beware (or you might miss the guy) 3) loneliness is a precursor to void shopping (cue makeover montage) 4) casting is a precursor to aesthetic shopping (cue trends) 5) main character energy (every activity is about meeting someone) 6) reinforcing the financial ability of men over women and eye rolling at women who choose love over money (unless he makes glass ornaments in a small town)
huh
I don't know why having a functional relationship and having an amazing career is seen as mutually exclusive. There are people with both, and sadly, with neither.
Isn’t it anti capitalistic to tell career women beware? Wouldn’t the market pro capitalist want them to work? Please explain.
@@phoenix5054 Ask the directors and the writers of these films.
@@luminouscali Ask the directors and writers of these films.
The funny thing is Millennial women were not the people who wrote the most famous of those stories. I think a lot of the writers were working or had started their careers in the 80s. The time when many women were told they could "have it all."
I recently watched for the first time Madonna's Material girl official video and I was blown away by the sheer distillation of it all, those stories were clearly influenced heavily by the 80s brain rot, that's for sure
Yes! I grew up in the 80s (my teen years) and that is exactly what we were taught. All turned out to be a lie of course.
Almost all of our entertaiment from late 90's until now is writen, produced and supervised by the generation that almost everyone hate most: The X-Gens. They idealize their highschool years, the 2-pac and Kurt Cobain autodestructive legacy (they are autentic and geniune guys in their own, but their music WERE problematic and actually they shouldn't be mainstream artist, but underground) and they are too neurotic and riddle with a perpetual identity crisis of not create anything trascendent, that their only solution is made EXACT copies of their Boomer parents or want to act like a "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?"-mode to younger generations (and made them died of cringe). Sorry, but the X-Gen writing needs to diminish their influence in the moderm entertainment. I hate the perpetual cynism and thousound layers of irony.
The conversation about the glorification of alcohol consumption really hit me. I always thought the mark of myself as a sophisticated adult was indulging in luxe alcoholic beverages. So imagine my disdain when I finally tasted alcohol and found out I hate the taste. Today I don’t drink simply because I don’t like it, but I always feel a sense of loss when I’m in a social situation and my friends have this developed palate for alcoholic beverages.
Maybe try some more
Bingo! That’s def not talked about enough, it was also really bad when you rewatch a lot of reality tv in the 2000s, and early/mid 2010s
I fell for the alcohol culture, it's very damaging. I wasted years of my life abusing alcohol. Don't regret not drinking, be happy you don't like it.
It's not worth developing a taste for it. Dare to be different!
I like getting trashed occasionally but I'm so glad that GenZ is really challenging Alcohol Culture. As an older (British) Zoomer I genuinely see Alcohol consumption to the point of getting drunk as immature - what you do as a teenager and young adult, while (esp American) Millennials go on about "Adult" versions of Alcohol Free (often Childhood) drinks. Maybe its my own experience of drinking to excess limited pretty firmly (with the occssional exception) to university and the final year of high school.
I watched a video yesterday that was about reassuring women that it wasn't weird to have not been in love by your thirties, essentially, and as someone in their late twenties who has barely dated, it was nice to hear, but I still just couldn't take it to heart, and still felt very sad at the end of it. Watching this video has me thinking that yeah, it probably was romcoms, not to mention teen TV shows like Gossip Girl, that really embedded the idea in me that it's already over for me. And I was (and still am, really, though it's hard to find any that aren't terrible these days) a HUGE fan of romcoms growing up, and devoured and rewatched them a lot. And receiving that message so so many times is going to be impossible to unlearn with one reassuring video or the occasional portrayal in media of someone like me. It's going to take dozens or hundreds or thousands to undo the image that I'm still holding my life against. And that, honestly, continues to be discouraging, but at least having an idea of the source of my feelings is something.
Maybe therapy would help?
@@liabw05 Haha, you're so right
But it is weired not to have been in love by the age of 30. Sorry, I think it's very unusual and therefore "weired" 😮
My first serious relationship didn’t happen until I was 31! And now I’m single in my mid 30s and I am pretty okay with that honestly…men are pretty terrible 😂
@@heylana719 It's not unusual. Some people are aromantic or asexual. Some people are very introverted. Others may have had toxic relationships (with friends, family or previous partners) that have caused them to put their guard up romantically. There are plenty of reasons why someone may not have fallen in love by some arbitrary age that was set by society.
I could never understood how Carrie Bradshaw worked as a columnist from home, never went to the office, yet had enough money to rent an amazing apartment for herself in New York and spend money on high-end shoes and clothes 😂
Debt. Lots of debt until she got that book deal.
She didn’t, there's literally an episode where she learns she's 40k in debt and she may lose her appartment, that was rent controled (a NY building law that says the rent can't go up a certain amount)
And now there is Emily in Paris. That’s a laugh!
I remember an episode where she says what’s in her bank account and it was a 900-something bucks and I thought that was wild… like „girl, you are broke af!“
She was just lucky. Many prostitutes in their 40s do their trades because they were in too much debts due to their spending habits. I know a few.
Great video. I'm a guy so romcoms aren't necessarily made for me, but I grew up in the golden age of the genre and because I had a mother who loved them I've seen A LOT of them. I've actually never been one of those guys who hates them; I can think of several that I really enjoy (While You were Sleeping might be my favorite). But when you actually analyze them as a genre it does become clear that these movies are a form of wish fulfillment, geared specifically towards women movie-goers similar to how big budget action movies can often be seen as wish fulfilment for men. An interesting difference is that while the action blockbusters can certainly promote toxic ideas and behaviors there's always the cushion that those movies aren't actually real and the audience should know that. With romcoms though, as Chelsea outlined, they're able to stretch the boundaries of reality way further. The average person seeing the movie doesn't have a media job nor do they live in NYC or LA so they don't necessarily have the frame of reference to realize most of the people in these stories are living way beyond what their actual means would be. It's also notable how in so many of these stories the woman has literally everything but true love, which implies that finding love will be the most challenging thing a young woman will ever have to do. (This isn't to say dating is easy today, it isn't) And what's more, a lot of the time what ultimately brings our lovers together is pure happenstance, which suggest that every woman just has to wait until it's "her turn" and love will just show up ready and willing. *Side-note: I could never get over You Got Mail and how we were supposed to be ok that the big corporate guy put the little small business owner out of business and then they got together and there were absolutely no unresolved tensions there. I'm convinced if the dude had been played by anybody but Tom Hanks, America's charming surrogate uncle, that movie wouldn't be remembered nearly as fondly as it is.
AND THEY BOTH LOWKEY CHEATED ON THEIR S.O.s
@@jolleyk13 Yeah that was kinda awkward. Of course, at the beginning the movie goes out of its way to show our leads are both very clearly with the wrong people...which I guess is supposed to make it ok?.
This was incredibly thoughtful and well-written. Kudos. 👏
@@emiliabolsas Thank you. :)
Loving these great points! Interestingly, some of these movies have insanely low Rotten Tomato scores for how “classic” they are.
IMO this is why "Under the Tuscan Sun" is one of the most underrated anti-rom-com rom-coms. Starts with a woman who loses everything society values (husband, career, nice house) and leaves to start her life afresh in italy in hopes of finding love, adventure and family-all of which she ultimately gets but not in the way society conditions her to expect it.
That's a wonderful movie! Great actors and lovely landscapes as well ❤
One of my favorites
Thank you so much for talking about the food angle: my husband LOVES 30 Rock, but I take issue with the fact that Liz Lemon is MOSTLY food motivated, yet stays incredibly thin--when the reality is that Lorne Michaels made Tina Fey the head writer of SNL but never considered putting her in front of the camera until she lost 30 pounds. With her on camera celebrity came unprecedented power.
I too absolutely adore 30 Rock, but rewatching with more grownup clarity is pretty eye-opening! -holly
WOW. Enlightening
Thanks for this fun fact! I do appreciate the cringe worthiness of some of 30 Rock’s jokes as time goes on. It really sheds light on the absurdity of things. Also, there are some very weird “predictions” in some of the jokes.
Anyone else watch Ever After and has it as a core memory? Also looking back its quite feminist for that time (definitely not perfect). I remember the whole sleepover literally cheering when Drew's character punched the evil stepsister in the face.
Whomst among Us of A Certain Age doesn't have Ever After as a core sleepover memory? XD
women fighting family members to get a rich white man is not very feminist tbh
I still like to watch it during rainy days, it's a very beautiful fairy tail, but even being a teenager I never understood why this strong woman needed this weak prince charming 😅
@@iranaumenko She didn't need him really. He came to rescue her but she had already rescured herself. She loved him, was the point of the movie.
Okay, so as a millennial girl who LOVED romcoms and grew up in a Christian bubble community, I def need to hear more often that it’s okay to be unmarried past 30. The dark spiral around this topic is REAL. Like, to the “my life is over” spiral. And romcoms also might contribute to our high expectations of love, as well.
In most cases thats true. Because the whole women's personality in their 20s based on dating, relationship and marriage. No self-sufficiency in any sense. Freakin NPCs who lose the single point of their existence in 30s, becuase they chose path of least resistance.
Thank God that era is over 😂
@@Georgggg. That’s false. Women on average aren’t married until 28-35+ in the west. Those that marry at 25 are back on the market by 30 with a higher chance of never escaping poverty and this is according to studies. Plus, we are in an era where we are decentering men and do not care to live up to those social norms anymore and I love that for us 😂😴
I live in a larger city in germany and I can assure you that no one here thinks about marriage in their 20s. Most people I know starting their 30s are just now finishing their master's and starting their careers. Most of them still live with flatmates or some even with their parents (since it's expensive to move out while still at uni). And most are either single or not yet ready to even move in with their partners. Recently a friend of mine who is 27 got engaged and everyone was shocked because they thought she was too young😂 Life is so much more than marriage. There is so much to discover about yourself and the world and so many amazing people to meet. I hope you learn to love your life and yourself without needing a partner;)
What nobody ever tells you: If you do not get married (or settled, whether married or not) by 30 as a woman, it is very likely you will never have kids. That is fine if you do not want them, but not so nice if you do. You can have your periods into your 50ies, but getting pregnant even in your early 30ies with a guy the same age is less likely than if the two of you had been 10 years younger. So - if you are sure you want children at some point, it makes perfect sense to put a lot of energy into finding a guy to go steady with fast.
I'm going to defend Bridget Jones diary a bit. It was conceived as a newspaper column where the character wrote her insecurities and confided in her diary how she felt and what pressures she was feeling. The book grew from there and was intended as a homage to Pride and Prejudice. It was never intended to be a "you should aspire to be like this" film or book, just to be relatable to the audience who were reading/watching. As someone who was in the workplace in the UK when the book was written and can say it was a reasonably accurate portrayal of what life was like back then. Pressure to be coupled up before you were 30, to have a career that was heading somewhere, and to aspire to the healthiest body whilst also seeming to not have to watch what you ate or drank - but still eat and drink. The drinking culture in Britain is different to that in the US and in London most people used public transport to get to work so the after work drinking was rife. Financially Bridget was better off because she was older and had been working for 10+ years at the time of the story, would have had no tuition fees to pay off (UK universities were free back then) and came from a well-to-do but not-rich family who I'm sure would not have let her struggle too badly if things had got sticky. Looking back at any film that is 25-30 years old is going to have bits that aren't really relatable now. Although - that said I was the right age to appreciate the film because it was more of a reflection of life, if I'd been another 10-15 years younger it might be different. Don't know!
Yes! I read it initially as a newspaper column, and alot of what was funny was Bridget trying to live up to the version of Modern Woman that the media set out in magazines etc - and failing, on a totally human level, as we all would. The blue soup was a pretty typical 'trying her best and making a mess of it' moment. She was never an aspirational figure. Quite the opposite.
@@jen-dy6tm Yes. I think this is something this video gets wrong - you have to understand the culture at the time the film was made. Watching a film 20+ years later gives a completely different impression, because times have changed. Bridget Junes is ironic, not aspirational. Carrie Bradshaw was intended to be a ridiculous figure when Sex and the City was first broadcast. It was poking fun at the stereotypes of the time.
As a millennial woman who grew up in backwater eastern europe in the 90s and 00s it's mindblowing to me that there are people who viewed these movies as anything more than a fairytale set in some fantasy land. Great video!
Yeah, I'm in a similar boat but from Canada. I never took them seriously and they didn't influence me in any meaningful way, I kept thinking how unrealistic they were haha. I don't know that anyone else in know took them that way either - I guess I can't be 100% sure they didn't, but I don't recall anyone acting like they did. But then I was poor, my parents were separated, and at the time I was living in a rural area, and went to high schools where people were respectively a bunch of pinak and goths, or a bunch of military kids and rural kids - maybe all that together means none of us would be very likely to take them seriously.
@@aerialpunk I've known many Midwestern Millennial women who expected this to be their life. Graduate from college. Move to New York. Live with friends in an apartment. Work some job. Live the life. Find love. Move back to the Midwest.
It addressed in the beginning of this video- the most affected were the teen girls not children or women
Yes, I think us, eastern europeans in general are a lot more down to earth because of where we live: Eastern Europe always struggled, historically we dealt with a lot and we developed a much higher sense of reality. But western europeans have always been spoiled from all points of view (I’m not sauing it in a negative way, but that’s the truth) so no wonder they think everything is ‘just as easy as it is in the societies they live in’ where, because they typically didn’t have to worry about a lot of basic stuff, they gad the time and resources to daydream like this:))
Hi, I'm also from Eastern Europe. While the lifestyle of people in the movies wasn't realistic for us, can you honestly say the movies didn't form your opinion on love, how you live your life, and an ideal partner? Things like stalking, crossing boundaries, what love looks like, what it feels like, what a relationship looks like? I think the movies influenced me heavily in that way, and what I considered to be romantic, especially when I was in my early 20s.
I love romcoms but I've never watched one and thought, "Why isn't my life like this?"
I know, they always starred women in size 0 bodies and here I was a size 8. If anything rom coms gave me body dysmorphia.
@alinatarkhanian Right! Same here, and same with romance novels. It was always just entertainment to me.
@thementallevelup1866 in romance novels they are dutchesses in corsets
I mean, good for you, but that doesn't mean they still didn't have a huge effect on society.
@@scootergirl3662 The said "huge effect" is absolutely not demonstrated by the video, yet wide-ranging conclusions are being drawn on this basis. This sounds too much like the wild speculation about video games turning people into violent killers.
I had to laugh though at the comment on "13 going on 30" where you say that she chooses the suburban married path instead of the career path "implying that the city career girl path is not the fulfilling one." That might be a problem in itself these days - believing (despite these rom-coms) that the career path is always better and more fulfilling than any sort of human relationship (spouses, siblings, parents, children, friends, etc...). Personally, I had no problem with the ending of this movie, but I did have a problem with "My Best Friend's Wedding", where Kimmy (Cameron Diaz) decides to quit college to get married. She was supposedly 20 years old, with a year left in her education. Why could they not wait a year before getting married? That never made sense to me. Jobs come and go, but a college education is forever (especially since she was studying architecture - something actually useful).
I can't stand my best friends wedding purely over the protagonist going after an engaged man? Her supposed best friend? But... Damn that's also a terrible idea (not finishing your education at such a young age).
Geez, I had forgotten (or never realized) that Kimmy was that young! That makes the relationship extremely weird to me. That's an awkward age gap.
I think the only thing that doesn't piss me off about her choice in 13 Going On To 30 is that Mark Ruffalo's character ALSO chooses that suburban life. He's super happy to be moving into their new house too and is show to be pretty miserable as well in the alternate universe being a NYC fashion photographer...though it would have been nice to have Jennifer Garner's mention a job at the end so that she just doesn't appear to be doing nothing at home.
Love the long-form video essay, and LOVE the guest star! It's funny--even as an 89er myself I always considered myself pretty immune to internalizing these romcoms. Most of them I watched only because of my sister and I'm not straight, so it's not like this was the "fairy-tale ending" I was looking for. But I do remember distinctly hitting my 28th birthday, I hadn't had a serious relationship since grad school, and feeling like "welp, I think I've finally made my peace with just being single forever and dying alone." These things are insidious. My favorite romcom moment is in "The Wedding Planner" where there's a montage of JLo like, doing laundry and other perfectly normal things, and we're supposed to be sad and concerned for her.
What a great example! Also re: 28, I think My Best Friend's Wedding helped solidify that as "old" when the main characters' pact was to get married by 28 if they were still single lol (we talk about that one in the member video too)
I am an 89er too and these films had a HUGE impact on me in terms of the career I wanted to go in IE journalism. I wanted to be a magazine editor SO bad. And these films are to blame in some part because they showed the protagonists having such glamorous lives on such meagre salaries and we re supposed to believe that. I think the love part is a little off for me seeing as I chose to remain single my whole life but the 'dying alone" insecurity does creep up from time to time.
You lost me once I got to the part where you believe that movies are educational. That isn't the purpose. It was never the purpose. It will never be the purpose. People who believe this had parents who failed them.
You are so right - and as an '87 who didnt really watch many movies; I think the giant culprit behind that is Friends. The generalised anxiety towards getting older and not having your life together/marriage/kids coupled with all the monica fat jokes was just on repeat in the background. I guess because before the office, friends was the original comfort show for many people.
@@JoJo-rr6lm that show has aged so badly looking back. I remember there was an episode devoted to Rachel dumping her boyfriend because she turned 30 and didn't think he was ready for marriage.
I think that now romcoms are replaced by book smut. And it is not the same of course and people seem to be more aware of all the “rad flags” but you know what I mean. Main heroine is still mostly early 20s, unexpected and a bit naive and she meets someone who is super powerful/rich.
"50 shades of grey, but vampires" "just remember, an alpha werewolf can shapeshift individual body parts *eyewaggle*"
Between watching too many old movies that were pre-rom-com,( so more rom than com), reading too much Dickens, and being surrounded by my mom's collection of porcelain couples, I am still messed up at 60 years old! There is so much more to life than being obsessed with pairing up in order to become fulfilled. Limerence is addictive.
I went out with my friend yesterday. We had pizza do two cocktails and payed 130€ for both of us….. so it’s actually not affordable anymore to go out once a week.
what type of pizza ands cocktails are you ordering 😭
I never really noticed that all these characters were so well off financially. I think as a kid I just thought it was normal and I must be poor. Even in Sweet Home Alabama she turns down her rich fiancé for her humble husband…who turns out to be a VERY successful business owner.
Its needed in a plot to make story finalized. Marriage in romcom supposed to be ultimate goal and silver bullet for all character problems. They kick this narrative down the road for decades.
@@Georgggg Ah yeah, the happy ever after and had many children fantasy. That one is so damaging to real couple , nothing last forever and no couple will always be happy unless both work for it and continue to work after. The last part is always left unsaid in those stories.
lol the art glass. When that came out I was living a mile away from a well known center for glass making. All the people that make the art glass were not bringing in the bucks. When I saw that character was successful at selling glass I cracked up laughing.
When looking at portrayals of women, I think it would be interesting to split films into ones dominated with male writers / directors vs those with more balance. 50 shades is a great example of this, in the first movie (with female writes/directors) they actually understood what appealing shots of Christian would be, whereas after that (with male writers/directors) the “sexy” shots are super masculine activities like working out. I think this is partly to blame why the male characters are so bland in romcoms, like they asked a room full of men what women like, they all shrugged their shoulders and said “I dunno, money? What else could there be?”
Why do women act like men don't talk to each other? Men who attract a lot of women have certain traits. They're usually modeled after that.
Good point. It's as if the men won't allow themselves to see the men as sexual, but stereotypically active.
This would be an interesting experience with action films as well. Female writers/directed films (WW84, She Hulk) vs men's writi/action (John Wick, 90's movies).
This is why k-dramas are such a big hit with women - overwhelmingly from the women's perspective. Still very unrealistic but at least the female gaze is front and center
@@duchylocs I keep seeing k dramas being mentioned but the ones I've peeked into all felt like "woman worthless without man" and that was so disappointing lmao. I know about the cultural differences but still. Which were the ones that you really enjoyed?
I think writers are obsessed with writing scripts about writers. They are writing scripts about what they know most. So there are a ridiculous amount of movies with main characters who are journalists, authors, magazine editors, screen writers, everything. Like branch out a bit writers.
Also a problem with romance novels lol (which I do love) -holly
LMAO this makes so much sense.
I was a newspaper reporter during the height of the rom-com chick flicks in the early- to mid-00s. Too poor to see these films in the theatre, but also painfully and woefully single and unable to relate at all to the scenarios. I would watch and wonder why they were never in the bathroom crying at work or struggling at the horror of discovering the guy who sits next to them makes $10K more a year and writes only the occasional article. Or volunteering for all the holiday slots because there was extra pay and they had nowhere to go because they were living at the other end of the country from their family. Irony being that I now live in NYC and own an apartment in part because of my intense work ethic and frugality in my 20s. But also still single. *natch*
I’m a writer and I love movies about writers😂😂😂😂 this is too funny
FR realistically the only women fresh out of undergrad who would be making the kind of money to support the romcom lifestyle are programmers or engineers, but that’s not a sexy fashionable job
I'm Gen X and was in college as rom coms were gathering steam. I remember a very lively debate in one of my classes about whether or not men and women can really be friends. (Yes, they can. 😊) And while earlier rom coms certainly had their issues, many of them at least had some good writing. The later ones were more like generic copycats. And, finally, I think Netflix and Hallmark had a hand in destroying the genre. Netflix with its awful, toxic relationship stories (and terrible writing), and Hallmark with it's dull, whitewashed, generic scripts, tropes of independent women moving back to their small town in order to make cupcakes and marry the loser boyfriend they dumped in high school, or the struggling single mom (who just happens to live in a sprawling 4-bedroom house) saved by Rich-Jerk-Who-Mends-His-Ways. And terrible writing.
The "Can men and women be friends?" discussion is funny to me because I'm a guy who generally doesn't mind romcoms. One of my favorites is "When Harry Met Sally" often considered one of the best of the genre and for some reason one of the ones that is "ok" for men to like (dunno what that's about). But "Can men and women just be friends?" is the primary question the movie asks and ultimately it seems the answer was no. That was a weird moment when I noticed that.
LOL!!!!!
@@ariwl1 It's socially acceptable to like When Harry Met Sally because it has "that scene" on the restaurant. Period. It's the right amount of wild spice to make the delicate female audiences blush without leaving the theater, and yet enough scandal for manly dudes that want to justify themselves for watching romcoms.
they cant but thats another discussion
Whenever my wife watches those LMN movies I laugh at the struggling single moms living in mansions as well. I had a few female "friends", in the end either they wanted to sleep with me or vice versa. While I think male female friendships are possible, I think mainly in the short term, long term, someone starts feeling a way.
Younger millennial here and completely relate to “The complete absence of student loans in these movies” 👏🏼 I lose so much of my pay check every month on student loans. I’m married (met my husband at 22 in university), so I live in a two income household. If I was single I wouldn’t be doing nearly as much cool stuff. And I’m middle manager level, I would have been laughing pre 2008 but the cost of living is so high now. I wouldn’t be able too afford the house I live in, the clothes I can buy, the social things I do with my friends. I would have to really scale back my lifestyle, which is only possible because of being supplemented by my husband’s income. I have single friends and they can’t afford to go out as much without putting it on a credit card and getting into debt. We all have student loans to pay and it drastically reduces disposable income.
Thank you so much for this . As a struggling teacher in Florida, I asked my sister how she made it before she was married and she said her then boyfriend covered her rent. Meanwhile I worked two jobs and eventually moved abroad to make ends meet. I went deep down the FIRE hole but many young leaders in this area had parents pay for college and partners since college which is a huge factor that should be more acknowledged IMHO. so, thanks!
We female boomers never recovered from 1940ies until 60ies depictions of women in movies e.g. Doris Day... 🧐
What impact did those movies/characters have on you?
Feeling obligated to be giving up on being taken seriously when angry and that the purpose of your life is being cute and being a mom and also finally feeling responsible for other people's emotions and behaviour whilst working your ass off at home. Ugh, damn Beverly Boyer. Childfree by choice was never posed as a viable Option.
Yeah, I’m loving how many Boomer wives are divorcing their parasite husbands and living for themselves now! Better late than never❤
Oh yeah, watching Doris Day with my mother-in-law really showed it… She had a good education but is totally dependent from her husband (it’s kind of OK, he’s a great man) because she put homemaking and family over everything. She only worked very few hours even when her sons were grown up because she still was the homemaker. I profit from it since they’re doing a lot of this stuff for us, too, but
The purpose of women is to be pregnant.
I always found it weird how these people could afford apartments in major metropolitan areas, go out every weekend, have designer clothes, use private transportation and barely show up to work
I think also the death of the rom-com is similar to the challenges in modern romance novels: it's extremely hard to create realistic obstacles in todays (at least Western) society. Like, if two people fall in love these days, there's literally no insurmountable external reason that they can't be together if they really want to be. Family can be ignored or cut out completely, a difference in class/status/income can be brushed aside, people can move half-way around the world to be together, people can change jobs, etc. So they have to make the internal obstacles more and more extreme and ridiculous to make the plot make sense and have some stakes and a real narrative arc that's interesting to watch. They were really jumping the shark after a while and audiences got bored with seeing the same thing over and over again. That's why, as silly as it is, I really like How To Be Single. (It really is a bad movie, but it's kinda my guilty pleasure.) And I think The Break Up is a fabulous movie about the ending of a relationship. Those are the non-rom-coms I get a kick out of.
Except romance is the best selling book genre in the entire world?
@@thekeiraclementineRomance novels are not rom-com films.
@@thekeiraclementine Doesn't mean that the cutesy new contemporary stories with the pastel artsy covers are as good as the historical romances used to be. It's just that non-romance readers are discovering them for the first time because of Bridgerton. Those of us who have been reading romance for decades know how dumb a lot of those books are now.
@@thekeiraclementine People are not reading “Jane Eyre.” They’re reading “50 Shades,” which is at best the shittiest of prose and at worst, well, I can’t type that here 🤣
Which is interesting, because there are so many real life examples of couples having real issues and how they could work through them! Financial issues, fidelity issues, lack of compromise, illness, mental health, addictions, toxic family members, children... So many real life scenarios that can be portrayed and that they can showcase the couple working through over time. But no, we get "she's getting married tomorrow and we have to stall the wedding beacause now that she's unavailable, I want her"
Another thing I hate about rom-coms is the idea that you must be so magical and special that the guy will change for you. The guy will realize what he has lost the moment you become unavailable and will change for you because ✨you're special✨ and losing you is the reason that he will change being a cheater or a man whore. This would never happen before you became unavailable or for another person. And I feel like it teaches women that men will only correct bad behavior when they are threatened to lose something valuable, which shouldn't be the case. Women do not need to be putting themselves in a position where they are constantly threatening the relationship in order to get the guy to do better. Good men should and can change because they want the best for you, them and the relationship, and we shouldn't accept or settle for less. And truthfully, they won't change their behavior when you decide to keep them, they just say that they will/have changed so you don't go. Many abusive relationships work like this, so it's a dangerous dynamic to romanticize.
Romcoms normalizing heavy drinking really messed me up. I thought to be cool I needed to being drinking all of the time at work events, with friends after work, brunch on the weekends, etc. Now I recognize my alcoholism of it all and honestly, it makes it hard to hang out with friends because drinking is the activity we were taught to bond with.
Yes same. It glamourised and normalised it.
You’re making me want to write a story where she comes from an ACTUAL middle class life and learns the beauty of a Dollar Tree
She's not really middle class if she has to learn the value of a dollar tree. Middle class girlies KNOW.
At least in the Devil wears Prada, she explicitely got all the clothes free from work. They were all in tiny sizes and, in the book, stress kept her underweight.
Yeah she talks about this: they all work too hard to eat, their lunch breaks are 15 minutes long and so on…
My heart when Chelsea called Annie’s sweater blue 😩…it will always be cerulean 😂
OK but the Twilight scene - that's the Cullen's house and their money is explained by being hundreds of years old and having someone in the family who can accurately predict the future (including the future of the stock market lol). I know the point is likely the "man must be wealthy in order to be the lead" aspect but it did make me laugh a little
If there's something that twilight did right is show how normal and working class most homes were. ofc the vampire family with a psychic that see the future is rich, but everyone else lives in very modest homes.
You've Got Mail never sat right with me, even as a 13? 14yo. Maybe especially at that age because you are questioning things and figuring out who you are. I was like, whyyyyy does she like him?! He destroyed her livelihood!? That gorgeous little store that she worked so hard for, and she just overlooked losing it because of that smug wanker? No. Just no. I never bought it. Just imagine the festering resentment as the relationship went on 😂 Cool and normal!
She likes him because he’s charming. It’s not like he’s an axe murderer and he didn’t set out to ruin her business, it was the result of undercutting her on price. His company would subsequently have been destroyed by Amazon who aren’t evil either.
Yes! I love that you included Princess Weekes in this 💕
My issue witch Carrie Bradshaw is not that she can afford all those shoes on a once a week column pay- my issue with her is that in almost every episode she eats cupcakes, pizza, steak, apple pie or fries and still manages to stay super thin
Totally agree no wonder so many millennials have binge eating disorders
Right! Also, she acts like she never work out (I think she told once that shopping is her only cardio?) but her body looks like she works out A LOT.
Maybe she only eats those things on camera, because the episodes only show the interesting stuff, and eating those things would be interesting occasions and not the every day healthy food? Or she could indeed be a witch, relying on spells to banish overweight? 😉
It also gave no substance to real communication needed to have a long-lasting relationships, giving a false narrative that love is smooth and easy and if it’s not, it’s not right.
The point about non realistic standards is so spot on! There are so many women I know who get so depressed because they view themselves as a failure since they aren’t living the life that was portrayed on screen their whole life My best friend is a teacher, and yes there is a whole discussion about teachers being underpaid. She knew going into the field, and was told by her own teachers, that right now teaching is 100% a labor of love. She’s depressed because her salary is affording her a very modest apartment, not the sprawling home many shows depicted. So now she’s trying to find a man to help get her the life she wants..which is leading her into a non stop spiral of toxic relationships. I’m trying to kick her out of her mentality..but it really woke me up to just HOW MUCH these movies brainwashed an entire generation of women. Undoing years of brainwashing is like trying to get a loved one out of a cult!
What does your friend think about her job itself?
I love the new format, kudos Chelsea and Team TFD!
Thank you for posting about this. I grew up watching Gilmore girls as it came out and I'm 80% sure it set me up for unrealistic expectations for relationships and caused me to put myself in situations as a young teen where I was straight up traumatized & abused and now in my thirties I'm still trying to undo my unrealistic expectations of men/relationships/interpersonal relations
New Yorker here - Renting an apartment in NYC requires 40x the rent at a minimum to qualify for a unit. $78,564 would get you an apartment for $1,963/mon at max. That's not going to cut it unless you're sharing a 1-bedroom with a partner or roommate or you're living in the armpit of NYC - The average cost of an apartment right now is over $,3500.
I love that you brought up this topic. It's so relevant to me as a millenial woman, I can tell my life expectation were formed by movies and sitcoms like these. I still have to fight these strange expectations in me, and it's not comfortable
I feel that this is why us as millennials really gravitate to K Drama. It gives you that hit of ‘swoon’ even through cultural differences.
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The Devil Wears Prada was one of my favorites. As a kid I admired Miranda and Emily for being career driven women, but as an adult I admire Andrea so much more. Her character development is one of the bests IMO!
Nothing is a good as a good villain so for my part I'm team Miranda/Emily. And NIGEL!!
i admire her not prioritising the job over herself but god did i hate her boyfriend, I always pretend she dumped him shortly after the ending of the movie.
@@SoVidushi me too!! My husband and I mock the boyfriend and pretend he never came back at the end 😆
Very few romcoms from any decade have portrayed female relationships in a realistic way. It's more relentless now than it used to be, though. That's the only difference.
Agreed, one thing i feel with American movies in general is that it protrays the girls as super easy and desparate to sleep with rando guys.
The point about women and alcohol reminded me of Army Wives. The "wild" wife was a "raging alcoholic" but very thin. What's interesting is that she was an older woman and very thin, which is a totally different set of standards 😂
Growing up when I was exposed to these rom coms and their toxic messages I would have an almost visceral reaction. Being autistic, I have always been hyper aware of what I’m exposing myself to, including media. So I avoided most of them. I was able to develop my own ideas around love and romance outside that influence, something that continues to shape who I am today.
I’m so glad I stumbled upon this tonight. I’ve talked to my therapist about how romcoms have negatively impacted my already-negative view on relationships, especially romantic ones. The idea of stalking, deception and manipulation being the foundation for a “loving” relationship is so messed up. Thank you for validating me. Love this video essay!
I remember being obsessed with Grease as a kid. Looking back, it has a terrible message-Sandy has to totally change who she is to get the guy. But I lived with a strong independent mother and a father who loved her. That shaped my expectations more than anything else.
Have not finished the video yet, so sorry if it comes up - the rom com has simply moved from cinemas to streaming services and explains the rise of the hallmark movies and the popularity of K-dramas which have filled the void for many.
I just read Crazy Rich Asians and I was floored by the differences in the Peik Lin and Astrid characters. Peik Lin was very much dulled down and portrayed as “Asian Ellen” and it was interesting how it worked in the whole new story arc
As someone who read the entire CRA book trilogy long before that movie came out, the biggest issue for me is how dramatically different the “couple breaks up over an obstacle and gets back together” phase is, because I thought that was best part of the book & then the movie sucked it dry & just made it more like any other rom-com and made Nick’s character way more generic in the process because he we don’t see him confront his mom
Oh my. Gen X was influenced heavily by romcoms as well. I'm 54 and still not over it.
How can you talk about the death of RomComs without mentioning the growth of the Hallmark Channel and the Lifetime Movie Network. They stepped in and filled the void with literally 100s of RomCom made-for-tv movies.
Yes!
And those movies are all really sh--y. The plots are usually identical and the recently displayed diversity is performative.
In Crazy Rich Asians I liked the scene of Nicks best friend delivering some home truths about his inherent privilege as the heir apparent and the real difficulties him and Rachel are going to face in being together.
Loved watching this all come together
Thanks Chelsea! I rarely watch long form video essays like this but the way you present I love. As a 29 y/o male I can’t really attest to the female side of the romcom fallout, but as a millennial I would definitely say that these types of films influenced my generation tremendously whether we wanted to admit it or not. The line between reality and romedy was always blurred. Seeing as our frontal cortexes aren’t even fully formed until around 25, the expectations these movies placed upon people to “have it all together” by 30 were often a net negative. Hell, I feel like I’m just starting out and I turn 30 next month. The most captivating thing to me is how such stories permeated the culture to the point of no return as a kind of tricky and unrealistic Trojan horse 😂. Still love the Jennifer Garner one though, always will.
This isn't an essay, this is your political opinions presented as fact.
These romcoms allow escapism. I take it all at face value and no more 😊
Bingo! they just simplify (almost in an innocent child like way) the whole idea of "girl meets boy...etc." which is pretty refreshing now a days imo because of how back words dating and relationships are now.
It's like being upset a medieval fantasy has dragons in it because it's not historically accurate. I don't know anyone who thinks romcoms are meant to represent real life. It's just an exaggerated, fun fantasy.
As someone who her whole life dreamed of becoming a writer, SATC really did a number of my expectations for the career I chose fiscally.
Same! I’ve wanted to be Carrie since I was 14.
I've lived in NYC off and on and this is hilarious. You can actually visit the apartment on Google maps, but don't look up the prices of the neighborhood 😂 I also noticed that movies and shows were always being shot and filmed in my neighborhood on the east side. Sort of like they're selling the dream, eh? 😉
Heck, I’d say Gen Z and Millenials are having a tough time now thanks Korean dramas.
Oooh yes, some of the absolute worst portrayals of relationships (like why is jealousy and lack of communication always always always the drama), but also super addictive
Koreans portrayed in Doramas are very closed people compared to western culture. I can't comprehend how they even make it in relationship. It seems like they reading each other minds or something 👽💀 But at least there is no sex scenes.
Absolutely LOVE a good video essay, so pleased to see TFD making this content! 💛
Some of my favorite romantic movies are the Before Sunrise trilogy because they just feel so real, the characters just walk around talking and the conversations feel very real
Last time I watched a rom-com (The Holiday), it was with my bf, and we picked it apart. We talked about how they were relating to each other, what was acceptable, what was not, and the predictable ending (I must turn around and leave my life and job back home and stay with him because he made me happy cry!) Nonetheless, it was fun, but in a way that we talked and discussed what would have been the healthier ways to handle their situations, and I think it helped us understand each other more and it was a fun way to bond.
Your boyfriend talks during movies? How rude of him.
😂
Omg yes! I love “13 Going on 30”. I really do. But that is where I gained the belief that I was supposed to end up with my best guy friend. And when that didn’t happen for me in high school, it felt like there was something wrong with me. Luckily I have healed from that experience but I do blame that movie for engraining that trope into my head.
Omg! Still watching but yes to How Stella Got Her Groove Back. You literally walked me through memory lane for a moment there lol
I like romcoms and have always enjoyed the first half of them a lot. The glamorous lifestyle, clothes, career, and friends. I always found that more aspirational and enviable than the romance. In my life there has always been guys but the rest didn't come easily.
Unfortunately, the men are a constant 😂
Constant annoyance, that is
Very interesting. Has a gay man. I don’t think that I received romance points the same way as women, but the idea of having an aspirational life definitely affected how I perceive what I should be doing in my 30s. The idea of “I need to make all the money so I can look successful“ is deeply entrenched in How my life functions and a lot of my decision. It’s hard not to feel pressure to “look successful“ when all the movies we watched, growing up, told me that being rich and successful, and having unlimited money was the best way to secure a romantic partner
"women should young and beautiful while men get to age and move on" She forgot the part of "men get to age and move on only if they are rich. Because only the rich guy gets any recognition"
I’ve been waiting for this video to drop! Thank you!
This was excellent! Looking forward to this era of TFD
Yes! Loving the new long form Chelsea rant, absolutely spectacular! 🖤✨️
Never realized how much these romcoms had fuel my own insecurities 😅 it didn’t help if you had parents who encouraged these tropes or didn’t teach you not to believe these narratives. Thank you for this video! 😊
Been waiting so long for this!
I love rom coms and this is so true. Though am not taking any pointers from these movies and I truly hope too many people aren't since there hasn't been any research establishing a direct correlation. Like at this point it's hard to say whether life is imitating art or art is imitating life. It would be nice to have movies that are more grounded in reality, even if it's a comedic or exaggerated tone they take on it. But rom coms in their nature and their dependence on tropes means that's not happening anytime soon so I hope no one is looking at these movies for guidance.
A romcom which is relatively less problematic and which was from the peak romcom era is Runaway Bride. It kinda decoded the 'pick me /cool girl' behavior way before the Gone Girl monologue, and also explored how the behaviour stems from patriarchal expectations, social conditioning and deep rooted insecurities and fears. Also, the female lead is a mechanic in the movie, a departure from the cliche jobs in romcoms.
So so happy that I never bought into the Rom com narrative. They always seemed disingenuous and manipulative to me. To this day I meet a lot of women with this firm Rom com idea of what love should be or how they want their love life to be. It’s a horrible delusion and I can only cringe and pity those kind of women because of it. Those women would rather be with the wrong partner than alone and figuring things out. It’s unfortunate.
Chelsea! I am dying because all this summarizes the arguments of the redpill manosphere community. This is brilliant proof of how badly romcom also affected guys of our generation.
I'm going to take it a bit further, and say that a lot of the red pill looks very different through an anticapitalist lens. Yogopnik did some great videos on how many of the gripes these guys make are actually related to capitalism, and how the commodification and monetization not only of relationships, not only of sexuality, but the shaping of what sexuality "should" look like. Granted, there's absolutely misogyny and male supremacy going on and is absolutely hideous, but to act like there aren't real issues at all because "they're just a bunch of bad people" cuts out any pressure to actually do something. Patriarchy may hurt lower class men differently than upper class women, but to act as if class has nothing to do with it is hideous as well.
I really object to your categorizing all films aimed at women as “rom-coms” when some are simply not (The Devil Wears Prada is not romantic, 50 Shades is not a comedy… well not intentionally, OG SATC is a television show.) A romantic comedy is a real film genre that is as old as film itself, and older ones from 1930s-50s have few or even none of these qualities. What you really mean are Films Since the 80s that Are On Cable A Lot Plus Some TV that Shaped People’s Perceptions. And that’s… valid but it’s not a rom-com. Legally Blonde is kind of an anti-rom com, where we start with romantic comedy tropes that get turned on their heads. The Devil Wears Prada is actually a dark comedy about corporate America. The issue I have is when we lump all films into this broad a category simply because the characters are affluent white women we’re doing Hollywood’s job for them. We are accepting their idea of what a woman’s picture is or can be. Most of these films are written by men, directed by men or both (the better ones like Bridget Jones Diary are based on books written by women.) These are versions of the female experience through the lens of affluent white men (some may be gay but otherwise not a diverse perspective). And that may be what you are striving to articulate: in the 80s and 90s when direct misogyny was no longer acceptable (Overboard) they had to craft an image of women that at best reflected the women of their own race and class and at worst was a stereotype of covert misogyny. That may give a lot of these films a sense of sameness, whether they are romantic comedies at all or not.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the best RomCom ever. EVER. This is because of all the drama going on in that movie, NONE of it was between the couple. I have never seen another RomCom where I legitimately wanted every moment of that relationship.
Hart to Hart from 1979-1984 plus 8 movies starring Stephanie Powers and Robert Wagner was a blend of RomComDramAction and they never fought. They had humor romance and drama but never between the couple. That's why everyone loved it.
I'd like to add what's crazy about Devil Wears Prada besides Pat Field nailing the fashion, was that it was better than the book. I read the book and it's so much worse. I was going to read the follow up, but I hated everyone so much in the book that I can't.
I was angry at the thought of Andy following the guy to his dream job as the ending...... like DAFUQ?
it is also much slower in pacing which really allows you to marinate in every single negative aspect of the book, haven't finished it yet because I keep getting tired of it.
I really enjoy this long-form content! Great video :)
This is a great video essay - insightful, fun, and well informed. I hope you do more!
Yayyy for essay videos! 50 First Dates for me and Legally blond are gems ❤
This was such a great video! So much information and so many contributing factors and ideas. At first when I saw it was almost an hour long I was like, we'll see... but it is so well done. I am loving it, thank you so much for going through all the work to create this and share these ideas!!!
Great video! I hold a lot of resentment towards my mother in particular for encouraging me to watch rom-coms when I was young. I think they are a large part of why I still struggle with an obsession with "romance" and "first love" as portrayed in those movies, which makes committing to my healthy, long-term relationship really difficult.