Is Romantic Comedy Less Challenging To Society At Large Than Other Kinds Of Comedy?

Is Romantic Comedy Less Challenging To Society At Large Than Other Kinds Of Comedy?

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to expand the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring some relevant facts and figures relating to the assessment of the question, whether romantic comedy is less challenging to society at large than other kinds of comedy. In this paper, the author will take the assistance of literary work from the other authors to create an understanding of the phenomenon. The romantic comedy seeks above all to tell a love story. The typical scenario of romantic comedy can be summarized as follows: two people from very different in appearance (man and woman, wealthy businessman and the poor prostitute) meet and will gradually fall in love with each other but are struggling to admit. Finally, their love conquers obstacles and the protagonists end up together. The romantic comedy tells a love story in a humorous way, but not trying to constantly make people laugh. A work like Something About Mary (which, admittedly, tells a love story) cannot be attached to the genre, because it contains no scene that does not seek to make the audience laugh, it is actually of a pure comedy, and not a romantic comedy.

The romantic comedy typically does not spare the unpredictable falls: the audience knows from the beginning of the novel or the film (or rather, before even entering the room), the protagonists will fall in love and they will eventually live together. The question is how they will end up together, and it is here that the writers must be imaginative. The other matter related to the kind of romantic comedy and that cannot be considered a variant, is that of history or genealogy. If the features of the romantic comedy that has been retained in its definition are those of the 'New Comedy' Jonson, we must think also of his great rival of the Elizabethan theater: Shakespeare (and the model of the 'old comedy'). As a critic Northrop Frye noted that while in the New Comedy we witness the efforts of a young man to overcome the obstacles that creates an image of old against his marriage to the young woman in the Old Comedy (of Shakespeare), the emphasis is on heroin who holds perhaps the key to a successful conclusion and especially undergoing something of the order of death and resurrection that we find the model in his later comedies (including The Winter's Tale). In the next section, we will analyze William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1598) and David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow (1998), to find out whether romantic comedy is less challenging to society at large than other kinds of comedy.

Discussion & Analysis

David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow (1998)

Speed-the-Plow (1988) is set in Hollywood and revolves around Bob Gould, who is torn between "greenlighting" a script, which is a piece of trash but has potential as a moneymaker and which is sponsored by Charlie Fox, ...