E-Journal 4

A Romantic Comedy Just Like Any Other

I have struggled for weeks trying to find a perfect movie to analyze for our latest e-journal entry, when one day driving home it hit me--any movie will work. I could take any movie and find the concepts and ideas we have discussed throughout the text, American on Film by Benshoff and Griffin, within it.

So, I decided to do just that with the 2002 romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama starring Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas. Reviewing the film, it didn't take long to find issues of class, gender, and race come foward. Sweet Home Alabama follows the similar story line of all romantic comedies where the beautiful girl finds her perfect husband, and along the way Sweet Home Alabama has very stereotypical and classical displays of characters.

The Basics of Sweet Home Alabama-

Sweet Home Alabama is a comedy about the successful New York fashion designer, Melanie Carmeichal who is dating Andrew Hennings, the son of New York City's mayor, Katherine Henning. When the couple becomes engaged, Melanie has to head home to wrap up some unfinished business. Her unfinished business happens to involve a stubborn ex-husband that won't sign the divorce papers and a lower-class family to cover up. In her efforts to fix her past, Melanie is dragged back into her earlier life and finds that maybe, it wasn't all that bad after all.

Just like every romantic comedy, Melanie Carmeichal finds her true love and along the way we all get to laugh at her sweet southern drawl and crazy friends. But this sweet romantic comedy is full of media's misrepresentation of popular culture, particularly in gender roles, racial characters and class.

The Perfect Love Story--Hollywood's Heterosexism
We have discussed that movies are often a form of escape for viewers, and the romantic comedy genre is no different. Most viewers head to the theater to see one thing: a happy ending. Jojo Moyes, a romantic comedy author summed up the goal in London's The Telegraph, saying,

Indeed. Romantic comedy is a reliably successful film genre because the audience knows what it wants and the filmmakers know how to provide it. It does not require computer-generated imagery, explosions or exotic locations - just the answer to a never-ending preoccupation: how do we find love and how do we keep it?

Pretty simple when put in those words, but not only are romantic comedies sometimes an unrealistic view of love and life, they are a classic example of how media reinforces heterosexual relationships. Bensoff and Griffin explain how classical Hollywood cinema,

almost always includes the struggle to unite the male-female couple. In these films, not only heterosexuality is considered better than other sexual orientations, it is presented as the only sexual orientation. Such an assumption-that heterosexuality is the only (or normal) sexual orientation-- is a powerful aspect of Hollywood's hetero sexism. p. 309

The romantic comedy is Hollywood's heteosexism at it's finest, however, heterosexism is much like "whiteness" in TV and film, it is often invisible. The following clip is the final scene of Sweet Home Alabama--



Jake and Melanie have their happy ever after and left audiences in tears. Women across America, tearfully wished that could be them. But, not everyone in America wants to find the perfect man or woman, and well, we don't have a movie that serves as a guideline for them. The romantic comedy is a high-selling movie genre that some viewers love, including me, but not everyone realizes Jake and Melanie's perfect ending isn't always going to happen. Even more, some people don't want that happy ending that Hollywood forces upon us.

The Token Character
To avoid racial accusations, many movies place a token character in their film, and the southern love story of Sweet Home Alabama is guilty as well. Tokenism is described in the text as,

Token characters can often be found in small supporting roles that are peripheral to the white leads and their stories. (Benshoff & Griffin, 2008, p. 52).

Sweet Home Alabama is a southern story that has a dominant white cast, except for the Melanie's friend who plays Frederick Montana. Frederick however is not only the supportive black friend, but he also is homosexual, which is an example of Hollywood's newest trend of piecing two controversial characters into one minimal supporting role.

Frederick and Tabatha stand behind Melanie at a run in with Jake

The role is a very small role that could be filled by anyone. Melanie could have had two girlfriends supporting her throughout the movie, but since she was high in the fashion world which is often stereotyped for gay males, the creators chose to place the character "Frederick" in the movie. And just to cover all of their bases, they made Frederick black as well.

The token character is becoming so common in movies today that most of us don't recognize the problem and when some audiences do notice it, it is considered a "racist cliche" according to Benshoff and Griffin (2008, p. 53). Frederick was an unneeded addition to the film, why didn't Melanie have a southern friend that was black? Maybe it was even more of a racial move that most of us recognize but on the flip side, maybe it was just a habit that was too hard to break for producers.


The American Dream

Sweet Home Alabama brings the issue of class and social status to the fore front as we watch the love story of sweet southern guy and a posh northern girl. Throughout the whole movie, Melanie fights her Southern roots and tells her friends to make a life for themselves, especially her ex-husband, Jake. The following clip is a little bit longer, but in the middle of the clip you will see how Melanie so furiously breaks down her friend's middle-class lifestyle.



The clip is an example of the American Dream and the Horatio Alger myth, but to the extreme. Melanie left her small town and made a life for herself in New York City and is almost embarrassed of her friends that didn't. The Horatio Alger myth is described in the text as,

starting with a little or nothing but a "get-up-and-go" attitude, Alger's heroes (always white and male) were rewarded for their gumption by gaining a successful career in industry, a valuable fortune, and the camaraderie of other businessmen. (Benshoff and Griffin, 2008, p. 174).

She tells Jake to make a life of him self and that he has to find a dream other than football. She critiques her friends for what they where and gives side way glances to her once-best friend that has her kid at the bar. She is judgmental and snotty. Melanie is an example of how many American's now feel because of how media portrays the American Dream. Media shows that it is so easy to go from nothing to the top; but in reality, it isn't. It is a challenge and some people can't do it, not because they aren't working hard enough but because the cards don't fall right. Melanie didn't see that her friends were happy and successful, in their own ways.

Bobby Rae, a friend, also points out what everyone tries to avoid. He says, "You can take the girl out of the honky tonk, but you can't take the honky tonk out of the girl." Melanie is trying to escape her past and try to make herself look better along the way, but it doesn't quite work.

Sweet Home Alabama is a typical romantic comedy, but even the typical romantic comedy has media stereotypes and hidden concepts. I pointed out only three things, the American Dream, heteosexism story line, and the token character; but these are only a few things that happen still today in Hollywood film. Almost all of our films are littered with these concepts, and most audiences choose to ignore it; however, that is why we still see them in films today.