Towards a New Sexual Conservatism in Postfeminist Romantic Comedy

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, the re-emergence of visible feminist debate within romantic comedy is a characteristic of the genre today that was notably absent in successful films of the late 1980s and 1990s. However, as the noughties and its women have progressed, transformations in feminist thought have again begun to make their textual and conceptual presence felt. Yet, what is also apparent, in the typically conservative genre’s efforts to cope with shifts in contemporary socio-sexual codes and practices, is the growing intensity of the genre’s ‘stand-off’ with feminism as it ideologically perpetuates reactionary gender regimes that reify hegemonic ideals. The complexity of young women’s relationship and engagement with feminist history in contemporary popular Hollywood films, as Joel Gwynne argues in his earlier chapter, cannot be underestimated and more often than not involves a complex renegotiation and balancing of second-wave ideas and postfeminist interests. However, beyond the arguably pro-sisterhood teen chick flick, throughout its many different cycles (screwball, sex comedies and nervous romances), the romantic comedy has had a characteristically fraught relationship with feminism and feminist sexual politics, never more so than in the cycle of films that date from the late 1960s–1970s, a trend which can be repeating itself in postfeminist romantic comedy today. As such, this chapter explores the genre’s renewed and arguably intensified conflict with feminism and feminist sexual politics within the contemporary postfeminist moment.