We focus on the changing understanding of romance in contemporary American
society. Through an analysis of romantic comedies and dramas produced in
Hollywood between 1930 and the present, we demonstrate how the decline of the
romantic drama is due to significant social and cultural change, the most
important of which is the weakening of norms governing the choice of romantic
partners. The romantic comedy, however, has more than compensated for the
decline in dramas, with the decade of the 1990s seeing more romantic films
produced than in any previous time in the history of filmmaking. Although the
contemporary romantic comedy almost invariably reinforces the most conservative
tendencies in our culture, we argue that these films nonetheless work
effectively to reinforce a usable cultural script governing romantic behavior.
By depicting ideal culture as a real possibility, the romantic comedy nurtures
the utopian wish of “slipping one over on modernity.”
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