I’ve talked about the denigration of romance in modern media before, and once again, my social media friend Misha Burnett hits it out of the park with a post on Google Plus.
One thing I’ve noticed in recent TV and movies is the continual inclusion of a scene in which an awkward male character makes clumsy pass at a cool female character and gets publicly rejected.
It’s so prevalent, in fact, that it wasn’t until recently that I started questioning it. Because it gets shoehorned into all kinds of stories, many of which have no romantic element whatsoever, except for that one cringe-worthy scene. There is no narrative reason to include it–it doesn’t lead to any change in the group dynamics. It doesn’t usher in any romantic subplot that ends in characters becoming an item or any emotional growth in the characters.
It just sits there, an undigested lump of exposition wedged into the middle of a cop show or a disaster epic or a space opera–stories where a romantic subplot would be an unnecessary distraction from the main plot in any event.
It seems to me to be included more or less by rote–if you have an ensemble cast that includes both male and female characters (or, more often, one female character in a group of men) the writers feel the need to stop the action and explain that even though the female character is dressed in skintight leather pants and high heels she is not to be seen as a sex object, and we’ll demonstrate that by showing an icky man (usually the most maladroit of the characters) trying to hit on her and getting shot down.
Once I started seeing it, though, I can’t not see it, and I start waiting for it to come up. Very seldom does it not happen, usually fairly early in the film or in the pilot of the TV show.
One possible reason for this is the increasing use of feminist litmus tests on scripts:
Gary Whitta, one of the story writers for the upcoming Star Wars film Rogue One, tweeted that after seeing the feed he began “going through my old scripts to see if my female characters would pass the @femscriptintros test.” He eventually gave himself poor marks for his female introductions in The Book of Eli and After Earth, but then said “I just checked the intros of the last two female protags I wrote, waaaaay better.” (Let’s hope one of those was the Rogue one.) Parenthood writer Sarah Watson tweeted “scanning through my latest pilot and so far I pass the #FemaleCharacterIntro test. I’m guessing that I haven’t always.” Other writers scoured their old scripts and did the same.
Another is the fear by writers and directors of appearing “sexist.” They studiously avoid damsels in distress, helpful girlfriends, or, as Misha mentioned above, girls receptive to a male character’s charms. The idea is that by showing icy, harsh women who eschew romance, they will appear strong and aspirational; to these creators, being romanced by a man is somehow demeaning. I strongly believe that pretty much any script with a traditional male/female romance — or a feminine female lead — is rejected on that basis alone.
And thus, Hollywood will remain as ideologically rigid as ever, for they believe romance is sexist.
