Primary Research

Breakfast at Tiffanys, The Sweetest Thing, Brigit Jones, Love Actually.

Analyse in terms of the qualities, personalities, characteristics of the main female characters, the narratives they are part of (what happens to them and what are they in control of), and what you think are the main PLEASURES the texts offer to female audiences, (in relation to Radway's ideas about romance as wishing for a transformation of masculinity). Do these romcom narratives fit the Radway theory?

Then ask a group of female romcom fans to consider the pleasures they get from romcoms (in relation to the Radway theory).

Reading the Romance

This is a book by Ann Radway which suggests that romance is about wish-fulfilment and the fantasy transformation of masculinity. Women's normal, day-to-day experience of me is that they are harsh, hard, uncaring, unemotional, ungiving. Romance books endlessly replay stories of such me changing into kind, thoughtful, generous, emotional creatures (think Mark Darcy in Briget Jones). You could explore whether this is what romcoms do as well, or do women get other pleasures from them, or ar the narratives quite different in any case. I have the book so get some photocopies from it.

Sean

Your first ideas

Women and film


Changing Representations of Women.

I think it will be hard to say much that is generally applicable if you focus on these two films alone (Breakfast at T and The Sweetest Thing). Why have you chosen them? What about looking at romcom as a genre a bit more broadly, but with these two as main texts? You could take in a few more like Brigit Jones etc.

First reading you need to do is several chapters from Media Gender and Identity, by David Gauntlett. These are Ch 3 and 4.
What about primary research? You could show some clips to a group of female romcom fans and try to work out what contemporary women want their female heroines to be like?