‘Romantic comedy is undeserving of its reputation for being ‘un-feminist’, since it holds a critical light up to romantic bargaining, the sexual economy and shifting cultural standards’. Discuss this statement in relation to two post-1990 Hollywood romantic comedies.

The aim of this essay is to discuss why romantic comedy is undeserving of its reputation for being ‘un-feminist’. This statement will be discussed by close analysis of two post-1990 Hollywood romantic comedies such as Something’s Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers, 2003, USA) and Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001, UK).
Romantic comedy films which are also known as ‘‘romcoms’’, are a sub-genre of comedy films and romantic films which can be traced back from the ‘‘screwball …show more content…

As expected, the film ends with Erica going back with Harry who is much more age appropriate and her daughter having a baby with her husband, again, more age appropriate and both couples living happily ever after.
Sadie Wearing claims that Erica is ‘‘coded’’ as feminist, judging by her language used to describe men and popular culture; describing Harry as ‘‘chauvinistic’’ and rap music produced by his record company as being ‘‘a tad misogynistic’’. Erica’s daughter Marin on the other hand, understands the rap music and finds it ‘‘unproblematic’’, saying to her mum Erica that ‘‘wrong’’ can sometimes be ‘‘fun’’ (2007: 282). Wearing also notes that the opening scene of the film plays an important role in Erica’s opinion about rap music as ‘’misogynistic’’ because it objectifies the young females’ bodies ‘to be looked at’ by subjecting them to the ‘male gaze’ using Laura Mulvey’s coined terms. The scene opens with the rap song ‘‘Butterfly’’ played by Crazytown and cuts between images of eight beautiful young women who are easy to be identified by the viewer with ‘‘models’’ in an urban setting while making their entrance to nightclubs, walking the streets and socializing with men in clubs. Their appearance and catwalk-like suggests absolute self-confidence and public visibility and validity with close-ups of velvet ropes in V.I.P. areas of the clubs being easily lifted by the bouncers over a