So that's why I hate modern romantic comedies

Via Faux Real comes this piece in the New Yorker about how modern romantic comedies are less about sex and love and lust and more about responsibility and unequal matches.

I have always said that I would only marry if Cary Grant came back from the dead and asked me to elope to Italy with him. Grant, and other classic film hotties like Jimmy Stewart, were always equal to the women they were paired with, and the women were zany and eclectic and human in ways that women in modern romances are not.The point of the movies was usually women needed to save themselves from an unequal match with the kind of milquetoast buffoons who are now the leads in modern movies. In old movies, love was an adventure. In new movies, love is some horrible burden of grown up expectations.

I am sure that there is a backlash against feminism in all this. We still have this idea that all women are itching to get married right now, when from my experience and that of most of the women I'm friends with, marriage is something that is only thought of in lukewarm terms if it's thought of at all. So why are we subjected to all these stupid movies about desperate women trying to turn boys into marriageable men?

One of my favorite Cary Grant movies is Indiscreet with Ingrid Bergman. Bergman is a famous actress, Grant is a diplomat who fakes having a wife so people will stop trying to get him married off. They have a lovely affair full of wit and charm and all sorts of good stuff. Of course, Grant comes to realize that he loves Bergman enough to marry her, but not because she pulls and pushes him into it, but exactly the opposite. She accepted him as he was and was fine with their arrangement.

I'm tired of only seeing women as the killjoys of adventure in movies (and television) and I am tired of this portrayal of us as the dour gatekeepers of responsibility. It seems like in exchange getting some measure of sexual freedom and education and careers, we have to put up with being turned into boring cardboard funblockers.

I think this is also why things like Sex and the City and Bridget Jones Diary were so popular. With the exception of Charlotte, these were stories full of zany eclectic women looking for the adventure of love and not the commitment of marriage. In Bridget Jones, Bridget is far closer to the screwball characters of 50 years ago than to her bland and responsible modern counterparts.

So until Hollywood starts making women fun again, I'm sticking with classics romances and foreign films. I can't find anything to relate to in the modern movies. I don't know anyone that boring.