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“The romantic comedy has emerged as one of our primary cultural stories of heterosexuality, and the ongoing influence of It Happened One Night ...
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An Analysis of the Depiction of Romantic Relationships in Western Cinema Compared to Cultural Perceptions of Relationships A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements of Graduation From the Honors Tutorial College With the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film By Ben Bouxsein April, 2019
Ben Bouxsein HTC Film Maidoff and Ross 4/29/ An Analysis of the Depiction of Romantic Relationships in Western Cinema Compared to Cultural Perceptions of Relationships Section 1: Introduction Throughout history, every aspect of society and/or culture has, in some way, been impacted by media, in particular, entertainment, and vice versa. In ancient Greek culture, plays, both comedic and tragic, became a mainstay of the social fabric, and this style of performance influenced how people saw the world, other cultures, etc. For a long time, the only window people had into the outside world was through stories told by other people who had experienced it firsthand. Thus, it comes as no wonder that storytelling is one of the oldest forms of communication; The weight and influence that stories can hold is universal across all cultures. In modern times, with the invention of electronic media, we’ve been gifted with a number of new methods of storytelling. Not least among these is the visual medium of film. Film has become one one of the most popular and widely received forms of storytelling, entertainment, and mass communication in the world since its inception in the late 19th century, so it’s no wonder how influential it is in terms of influencing cultural perceptions across the world. While
Page 3 era, relationships were perceived much differently than they were today, for example. With the rise of Disney films, such as Aladdin, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc. the expectations surrounding romantic relationships, especially for girls and young women, began to change at a much younger age. The popularity of underground cinema to escape the confines of Hollywood’s code at the time heavily influenced the counterculture movement and the free love ideals of the late 60s and 70s. Overall, western cinema and cultural perceptions of romantic relationships in western society have a symbiotic relationship with one another throughout history. Section 2: A History of the Depiction of Romantic Relationships in Western Cinema Since the inception of cinema in the west, romantic relationships have been depicted in all manners. According to a report completed in 2013, the earliest recorded romantic film was created by Thomas Edison in 1896, and was titled, The May Irwin Kiss. It was approximately eighteen seconds long, and was actually a scene from the “New York stage comedy.” (Webb, 2013) What is so notable about this film is that it came at a time when public kissing was greatly frowned upon by Victorian society and as such, was regarded as extremely scandalous. This was a time where no such thing
Page 4 as a “Hollywood code” existed, not to mention any kind of rating system such as the one later implemented by the MPAA. With this freedom of expression, filmmakers were more or less free to film and display anything that they desired, resulting in films that became part of what would later be called the pre-code era. Among these films were many classic romance films that were unrestricted from any kind of boundaries, such as It Happened One Night , Shanghai Express, and Laughing Sinners. While none of these films are necessarily as explicit both with their detail of romance as modern films, by the standards of the early 20th century, they more than pushed the boundary. According to a book written by Linda Mizejewski, “ It Happened One Night is the boilerplate for Hollywood’s favorite way of constructing the heterosexual couple.” (Mizejewski, 2011) It was a light-hearted romantic comedy that cemented Frank Capra as a major Hollywood director and Clark Gable as the go-to leading man. While it may not have been as boundary-pushing in terms of its content as many other pre-code films, the amount of influence it exerted at a time when cinema was an important escape in many people’s lives cannot be understated. “The romantic comedy has emerged as one of our primary cultural stories of heterosexuality, and the ongoing influence of It Happened One Night speaks to the weight of this particular picturing of the couple: cantankerous, willful, needful of lessons
Page 6 guidelines filmmakers, directors, and producers alike had to adhere to in order to get their films approved and distributed. The code included plenty of specific articles concerning romance and the depiction of it, including “Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a ‘heavy’.” (Motion Picture Production Code, 1934) as well as men and women in bed together, first-night scenes, etc. Because of this, depictions of romantic relationships in cinema during this time became much more tame and controlled than they had been. However, there were of course several notable examples of influential movies from this time that had a hand in influencing cultural perceptions surrounding romantic relationships. Some of these included Casablanca, The Philadelphia Story, and His Girl Friday. The first of these, Casablanca , contrasts with It Happened One Night as it would be classified as a romantic drama rather than a comedy. That being said it was no less influential. It created depictions of passionate romantic love as an exotic idea. According to a book written on the topic of love in cinema, “In Casablanca , screenwriters deliberately made the choice to change Ilsa’s character from American, as she was in the original play, to European.” (Todd, 2013) While it might not seem like a big deal, it plays toward this idea of exoticism as related to passion, something which began to permeate popular culture during this time.
Page 7 Two years before the release of Casablanca , a film was released called His Girl Friday. The film was directed by Howard Hawks and starred Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The film follows a newspaper editor played by Grant who tries to lure his ex-wife away from her fiance with a story about an impending execution. The film followed in the footsteps of previous examples such as It Happened One Night , providing a more comedic and light-hearted look at romance as an idea compared to something like Casablanca. In this way, during this time, there was a variety in the ways that romantic relationships were being depicted, even if the nature of the depiction had to be more implicit than in previous years. During the late 1950s, while the production code was still in effect, it was faced with some serious competitive threats. The first of these came with the inception of television as a medium, meaning people did not have to leave the house to watch motion pictures. Also, an influx of foreign films threatened the code by offering viewers depictions they couldn’t get under the rigorous purview of the production code. Because of this, more explicit films began to be made, including one very notable example, Notorious , by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite being a brilliant suspense film that more than stands on its own merit, Notorious also features one of the most glaring and well-known attacks on the production code from a romance perspective in its famous kiss sequence, in which
Page 9 It was a golden age for romantic and sexual freedom, and that was reflected in the cinema of the time. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris was and remains, a controversial filmic depiction of a romantic relationship. It follows an American whose wife has just killed herself, who begins an anonymous sexual affair with a frenchwoman in Paris. According to a text written by Joan Mellen for the University of California Press, Last Tango in Paris is, “A startling visualization of the conflict between sexual freedom and the psychological repression of which we are all victims.” (Mellen, 1973) The film was explicit in its depictions of such sexual acts such as its infamous anal sex scene. It became closely tied with the free love movement and the politics of the time, but its impact on how people perceived romantic relationships cannot be denied. Without the production code for enforcement, there were plenty of romantic depictions that were different from anything that had been seen before. One such example of this is Harold and Maude , a cult drama by director Hal Ashby. The film follows a young man named Harold who begins a pseudo-sensual relationship with a much older woman, Maude. While the film wasn’t huge for its time, it is notable in its depiction of the age gap between its two titular characters. While there is nothing explicitly sexual or romantic about their relationship, it is heavily implied that they have
Page 10 romantic feelings for each other. This goes against all kinds of cultural norms when it came to the idea of a relationship by the standards of the time. This same kind of depiction appeared in the famous Mike Nichols film, The Graduate. In this film, the protagonist, played by Dustin Hoffman, gets seduced into a steamy affair with his love interest’s mother, Mrs. Robinson. Both of these films presented a taboo version of a relationship that had not really been seen before, that of a much older woman with a much younger man. These kinds of depictions had a huge impact on cultural perceptions of these kinds of romantic relationships. While even today they are considered somewhat taboo, they are received much more positively than they had been previously. Another huge aspect of romantic depictions in film was aimed at a much younger audience, especially young girls. This came in the form of a company that has become a household name: Disney. Since the late thirties, with the release of the first animated feature film, Snow White , Disney has been instrumental in creating idyllic and unrealistically utopian ideas of romantic relationships, that, due to Disney’s ever-increasing popularity, have been adopted into the mainstream public consciousness. This was contributed to by most Disney releases in the mid 20th century, such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc. This popular perception created its
Page 12 realism the heartache and pain that can be involved in romantic relationships and the end of such relationships. Blue Valentine follows a young married couple in a downward spiral as their marriage slowly disintegrates. It’s a poignant story about love and loss, and much more realistic and raw than many love stories that came out previously. This is true also of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , which mixes a bit of science fiction into the mix. The film follows two people who, after a painful breakup, undergo a procedure to erase their relationship from their memory. The film really explores the intricacy of relationships and loss. What’s intriguing about this film in the context of social perceptions of romantic relationships is that the film was released in 2004, the same year another majorly popular, yet entirely different kind of romance movie was released, The Notebook. The Notebook is often considered by a mainstream audience to be the quintessential romance movie of the 21st century. It follows the popular hallmarks of the romance genre that It Happened One Night laid out seventy years ago, but does it for a new generation. Overall, the 21st century is a melting pot of different perspectives when it comes to how romance is being depicted in western cinema. This also comes at a time when cultural horizons are being continually broadened in the west, so it comes as no wonder that these two things are playing into each other. The question becomes, to what extent do they play into each other?
Page 13 Section 3: Pre-code films and social perceptions of romantic relationships As previously discussed, the pre-code era in Hollywood allowed for more freedom for filmmakers to depict what they wanted to in their films. This, of course, also applied to how romance was depicted. One of the most important romance films of the pre-code era was It Happened One Night. A screwball comedy that was as impactful as it was funny and romantic, the film had some real depictions of romance and romantic moments that were lighthearted while still maintaining a sense of realism. “The third night together marks a turning point in the story. Again sharing a motel room separated by a blanket, they are only a few hours from New York and Ellie’s return to her husband. Both are obviously depressed about this. In a shocking moment, Ellie leaves her bed, pulls aside the blanket, goes to Peter’s bed, and declares her love for him. Audiences in 1934 must have gasped.” (Mizejewski, 2011) This is an iconic moment in the film, partially because, as Mizejewski states, audiences had never seen anything like this before. Society in the mid 1930s was very conservative when it came to the topic of romance and sexuality, and while the scene would not raise any eyebrows by today’s standards, the scene was controversial to say the least and began to change those standards that people had at the time. What was socially acceptable to depict in film when it came to romance was being pushed in a more liberal direction, so of course the Hays Code decided to clap back.
Page 15 of first lady in Eleanor Roosevelt. She took a more active role in the role than previous first ladies because of her assertive, capable, and active personality—she had been active as a settlement house worker before her marriage—but also because she needed to provide extra help for her husband, because of the limiting effects of his polio.” (Lewis, 2019) Women were becoming more equal to men in all sorts of cultural contexts, including that of relationships. Especially in the case of marriages, women began to earn money much more than they been previously, partially out of necessity as the depression was in full swing at the time. As Shanghai Express demonstrates, depictions of romance in film echoed, or perhaps helped to inspire this change in perspectives. Section 3: Code-era Hollywood and cultural perceptions of romance In the latter half of 1934, the Motion Picture Production Code began to really be enforced by William Hays and Joseph Breen. Whether such depictions of romance as are found in the motel scene from It Happened One Night are partially to blame for this can be speculated, one thing is for sure: The freedom American artists and filmmakers had to depict what they wanted would not be the same for the next decade or two. As such, many depictions of romance in film during this time played into the general conservatism experienced by American society during this time.
Page 16 During this time, such light-hearted romantic movies as His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story were quite popular. While these films were what could be generally referred to as romantic comedies, the depictions of romance that they contained were tame thanks to the specific rules the Hays Code outlined. Specifically, a kiss couldn’t last longer than three seconds, a man and woman could not be depicted in bed together, etc. So while these romance films were very popular, they were confined by an overall social stigma surrounding the topic of intimacy within romance. This in itself, however, says something worth noting about cultural perceptions of romance at the time. Romance was an important aspect of popular culture, but interestingly enough, the idea that any kind of romantic interaction would contain or lead to any sort of intimacy was strictly taboo. It’s an intriguing contrast that certain aspects of romantic relationships were glorified and others were simply ignored or cast aside in social expectations of society and popular entertainment culture. Another aspect of the code-era was found in the depiction of the romantic drama and passionate romance. The film Casablanca was released in 1942, at the height of the code-era. It was by no means a light-hearted film, and was fairly heavy in many of its themes and depictions. What remains so notable about Casablanca’s depictions of romantic relationships is that it helped solidify the western cultural concept of passionate love or romance as exotic. “Within the actual texts for passionate love
Page 18 romance between the two lovers, but the Hays code prohibited depicting a kiss longer than three seconds, so what does he do? He writes in a passionate two and a half minute kissing sequence, but has the actors break the kiss every three seconds. This was a depiction of romance that hadn’t been seen before in the cinema. In fact, it was later published as the “longest kiss in cinema history.” This was one way in which filmmakers tried to reclaim their artistic freedom, and offered a window into how social perspectives of intimacy within romantic scenarios were starting to loosen. Section 4: Post-code films and the rise of sexual freedom In the late 1960s, The Hays Code, which had been under threat for about a decade at this point, was completely abandoned as the MPAA began working on a rating system instead. This offered a newfound freedom for filmmakers to depict what they liked compared to the restrictions they had been used to working under. This newfound freedom came at the same time as a rise of freedom of sexual expression and the “free love” movement, a social perspective that influenced a lot of artists and filmmakers. During this time, the youth especially disregarded the concept of marriage as the ideal for romantic relationships. “Many among the counterculture youth sided with New Left arguments that marriage was a symbol of the traditional capitalist culture which supported war.” (Goldman, 2014)
Page 19 Because of the radical direction the hippie counterculture was taking ideas of sex and romance, filmmakers followed their lead, and and without the Hays Code to stand in their way, depictions of romance in film became much more radical themselves. One of the most infamous examples of this new direction filmmakers were going with these concepts was the Bernardo Bertolucci film, Last Tango in Paris. “The film's raw portrayal of sexual violence and emotional turmoil led to international controversy and drew various levels of government censorship in different venues.” One scene in particular stands out in which Marlon Brando rapes Maria Schneider’s character using a stick of butter as lube. While not necessarily a film created with the peaceful tenants of the free love movement in mind, there can be no doubt that the film was created in a cultural context of political, social, and sexual contrasts. Despite this, the nature of the gender roles in the film’s depiction of the central relationship are problematic and don’t quite fit into the attitudes of the time. Perhaps this can be attributed to Bertolucci’s own political beliefs. “Bertolucci ultimately shares with Sam Peckinpah, despite their political differences, the idea that the successful relationship between a man and a woman occurs when the woman is passive and the man as furiously domineering as a stud bull.” (Mellen, 1973) Despite this, the idea of sexual freedom is a significant theme in the film, and it comes at a time when such themes are prevalent throughout western culture.
