MyRomanceStory Blog

The Sex and the City Movie: A Classic Romance

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:29:00 +0000

Allow me to gush. I finally finished watching the last season of “Sex and the City” on DVD, and then headed out for the cineplex to see the movie of the same name. Since I was there nearly two months after the well-hyped opening, I saw it in a theater that had two other women in it. I think the previous showing had only one person watching.

SPOILERS AHEAD, but you must be kidding if you care by now. Most people who intend to see this movie in a theater are done. Even so, I had managed to carefully guard against encountering any spoilers. It was tough, considering the 63-page section about SATC in “Entertainment Weekly” that sat staring at me for over a month. But I had never seen the last TV season, and I wanted to catch up first. I’m always late to the party.

And what a party it was! I just loved this movie. The classic romance themes were especially strong. I’ve read a lot of reactions to the movie now, and I find it interesting that most of the complaints are about elements that are standard in romances, in fact, that are beloved. The opportunity to wear fancy clothing, for instance. Going out to fabulous clubs and parties. Being around rich and glamorous people whose lives are more uninhibited than your own. And, of course, the delights and miseries of love.

Carrie takes it in the heart in this movie. Big treats her about as badly as we all expected him to, considering how he has slighted and hurt her over the years. Their relationship has always, always been about him. Couldn’t the wedding have been about her for a change? But no, he had to chicken out. I must confess that I have never been a fan of Big. (That’s the reason I hadn’t watched Season Six four years ago. I just knew Carrie would pick him, and sight unseen, I wanted Baryshnikov to win. But I confess I was wrong about that.) Chris Noth’s looks do not appeal to me, and Big’s attitude has always been infuriating. But I have always understood why Carrie couldn’t say goodbye to Big and make it stick. Because she’s in love with him.

It’s love that rules her. And it’s love, in this movie, that nearly destroys her. The devastation that Carrie suffers when she is jilted on her wedding day was absolutely familiar to me from many romances I have read. And I ate it up. I loved it. It was done perfectly. There wasn’t a false note. Though I am no fan of scatalogical humor, even I laughed at how Charlotte’s embarrassing case of Montezuma’s Revenge finally brought Carrie out of her morose mood and into laughter again. This was brilliant, especially because Charlotte is the one character who would find the situation truly humiliating.

The movie shows the pain of being betrayed in love in more than one version, with Miranda’s and Samantha’s stories. Miranda and Steve have lost their way because their life has gotten so busy. She’s the perfect wife and has let the lover part go away. And he can’t handle it, and can’t get her to see what’s happened (we don’t see much of that, and as people have commented, that’s slighting Miranda so Carrie can have more of the spotlight). Steve takes some comfort elsewhere. But because Steve loves Miranda and admires her, he can’t help telling her and asking for forgiveness. But Miranda has always been tough on Steve because she’s tough on herself. She fights her softer feelings. As many people have said, she’s a control freak. Her need to control starts with herself. Her consequent anger and anti-marriage remarks perhaps shove Big in the direction of doubts on the eve of his wedding. And doom her and Steve to months of misery.

Samantha has a trickier betrayal to live through. Smith remains the perfect man, but he’s busy, and she’s not busy enough. She spends too much time at home eyeing the sexual antics of the man next door. Finally she realizes that the life she’s living with Smith is not the life she wants to lead. She has betrayed herself. It’s a very interesting and rather subtle ending—or is it a hiatus?—to their love affair. Samantha turns 50 as the movie draws to its conclusion, and she’s just embarking on a new journey towards self-fulfillment. You go, girl.

Several people have cited the lack of attention paid to Charlotte’s marriage to Harry. But as Leo Tolstoy famously said in the opening of Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike.” What makes Charlotte interesting is not her happiness, but her collection of fears and her reactions to her friends’ situations. Her “I curse the day you were born” line is endearing. It’s so completely useless, so in concert with Charlotte’s way of mincing quickly in her high heels. What’s a nine months pregnant woman doing in stilts like those? But it packs a wallop anyway. It declares her love and loyalty to Carrie.

What surprised me about this movie was not merely the classic romantic suffering that Carrie’s storyline epitomizes so perfectly. But that she eventually sees beyond her own hurt. Instead of just forgiving and forgetting, she learns from it. Carries realizes that she failed Big in a crucial moment and caused her own suffering. We’re used to mocking Bridezillas, and there seems to be nothing of the Bridezilla about Carrie as she happily accepts the perfect gown and finds the perfect venue for her dream wedding. Yet she implicitly asks Big to be a prop on her big day, as Bridezillas do. She ignores his needs (and some of her own; she originally planned to get married in a simple suit). And in a leap to more socially expected behavior, Carrie pressures Big to play the role, as so many women push their men to, through formal events and daily family life, as if it all isn’t ringing hollow to them. Big’s character shows some depth at last when he needs Carrie to get him through the misery of his third fancy wedding day. And she doesn’t understand at the time, or come through for him.

When they finally do reunite (again!), we want it to happen. That’s the ideal ending of the romantic suffering plot. Not that the woman gives in. Nor that the man gives in. But that they both have grown. That they both recognize how fragile and important love is. When Big kneels of his own accord, and proposes because he wants to, their romance is finally complete.

Classic romance at its best.

And Since We’re Talking about Villains...

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:33:00 +0000

In romances, villains can be redeemed, but few villainesses get that opportunity. The villainess in a classic romance may try to control or ruin the heroine’s life, but her real purpose is to win the hero away from the heroine. It’s a tougher job description than just being a villain. And she almost never gets a sequel book in which the writer shows her mending her ways.

In modern contemporary romances set in America, we don’t see a lot of villainesses anymore. The reason is that women’s and men’s lives intersect much less formally today than they used to. Women and men often have the same jobs and work together as equals. They may exercise at the same fitness centers or in the same running club. They may meet up socially in groups, and mingle freely. They have access to each other via Internet sites. And they can join the same community associations as equals, not necessarily as gender-separated subgroups such as the ladies’ auxiliaries of old.

Why does all this access mean fewer villainesses? Because in a world in which women are not competing with each other directly in some female-only social pool (it used to be the typing pool) for the attention of men who are on a higher social and financial rung than they are, woman-to-woman competition just isn’t all that important. If women can leave their small towns and have thousands of men to choose from in big cities, they don’t need to compete with their elementary school nemesis or the boss’s daughter or the town rich girl for the few attractive young men who go to their high school. If the primary meeting place between the sexes is not a formal dance, there is no belle of the ball. The matriarchs of the old social world wield little or no social power to exclude today’s young women from access to eligible men by reason of lack of birth, wealth, or social graces.

Which is not to say that all of these ages-old situations don’t still apply in some locales or social subsets. A young woman living in an ethnic community with strong bonds may be constrained to follow all kinds of traditions, some of which may put her in direct competition with other women, and some of which may insist that she be subservient to other women who rank higher in the social structure, including women of her own family. And this can work to her disadvantage in winning her hero. But for the majority of American women, meeting new men is the issue, finding attractive ones, and establishing serious relationships. None of which has anything to do with a villainess. Unless she happens to be your best friend who is so hot that the guys at the club prefer her and ignore you. Still, that does not make her a genuine villainess.

A romance villainess isn’t an accidental spoiler. She deliberately sets out to improve her own chances of success with the hero by actively sabotaging the heroine. She does everything she can to highlight her social perfection, as opposed to the gaucherie of the heroine. She dresses provocatively when the heroine does not, and she has wealthy social and business contacts that could be a dowry to the hero, all of which make her more valuable to him. What the romance villainess does not have is a heart. She doesn’t do love. She does money and power, expressed as fame, connections, appearances, and deals. Romance heroes classically have been quite willing to have liaisons with villainesses. Mr. Rochester toyed with a brilliant heiress, deliberately making poor Jane Eyre sick with jealousy. But although uninterested in exploring their own hearts, villainesses have a shrewd ability to recognize the emotions of others. Think of all the catty remarks Miss Bingley makes about Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, hoping to convince Mr. Darcy that the heroine is beneath his notice. Does it work? No. Darcy is drawn to Elizabeth by the power of love, a power so strong that even he unwillingly admits it is totally against common sense.

With the disappearance of the older social structures, the villainess in modern romances changed from being the socialite or boss’s daughter to being a cold-hearted career woman. They were all over romances for a while, a backlash against feminism. The problem was that as a type, even that woman was sympathetic. The women reading romances slowly learned how hard it was to be a career woman, regardless of all the media hype about superwoman. Even the most conservative of romance readers soon had friends or relatives who were career women, or were themselves. Wanting a career just didn’t seem so bad or unfeminine anymore. So romance writers upped the ante. The villainess wasn’t just cold and ruthless in business. She became cold and ruthless in her intimate life.

And that leads us to the most twisted of all romance clichés, the abortion. It’s a controversial topic, but not in romances because just about 100% of the time it is described with horror as something the heroine would never, ever consider. And as something the villainess did. She was the hero’s first wife and she had an abortion because she cared more about her career than her husband or baby. She was his whacko (ex-)girlfriend and she was moving up, man by man, and refused to be slowed down by a baby. She was an utterly selfish movie star or model who refused to mess up her figure with a pregnancy. And so on. Although in real life, many decent women have had abortions for various reasons that they felt were morally justifiable or economically necessary or simply life-saving, in romances abortion is always portrayed only as the selfish action of a cold-hearted villainess. Romance readers are mostly looking for an optimistic, even sugar-coated view of life, and this isn't it. They don't want to be slapped in the face by a brutal reality, or be judged as bad themselves. I have known a lot of real-life women who have had abortions, none of them is a villainess. And all of them have expressed regret, something that a romance villainess never shows. It's a cliché whose time has passed.

Now that romances have moved beyond the melodramatic clichés of a closed society with few options or opportunities for women, we don't need to reconsider the role of the villainess. Is the other woman who wants the hero a villainess? Or just the wrong woman for him because she will not make him happy? Or is another woman a villainess because she wants to foil the endeavors of the heroine or the hero, irrespective of romantic considerations? As our society changes and women openly achieve positions of power different from those they held in the past (such as matriarch or social arbiter), it is quite possible that the romance villainess could become a powerful antagonist without being a romantic rival to the heroine. What if a woman is the head of the company? Or the powerful senator who manipulates political outcomes? If women’s roles expand as antagonists, the romance villainess wouldn’t just be the cliché glamorous bitch from hell with the heart of ice. And then maybe the romance villainess would have the potential to be redeemable.

Villainous Potential

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:55:00 +0000

Sometimes there’s an attractive character in a romance who acts like a villain, but in every other sense is not. Georgette Heyer, the grand dame of Regency and Georgian romances, was so taken with her villain in The Black Moth that she wrote These Old Shades to redeem him. It was unusual at the time to have a romance end with a chapter showing the villain of the piece regretting his behavior, after the heroine was safely united with her hero. But that’s how The Black Moth ends. And although the character names in These Old Shades are different, the first chapter specifically refers back to the last one of The Black Moth. Presumably, Heyer’s editor back in the 1920s thought that a story with continuing characters would not appeal to romance readers. But also, the redeemed duke of These Old Shades is a cut above the villainous duke of The Black Moth. Skimming both books to remind myself of the details, I was almost captured back into that lovely, perfectly described historical never-never world that Georgette Heyer was unsurpassed at creating. No wonder I still keep all of her romances, when I have recycled thousands of books I’ve read since first reading hers.

Georgette Heyer revisited the idea of redeeming rogues in other novels, but her other villainous heroes never were allowed to cross the line and be outright villains as in The Black Moth. Decades later, other romance writers have centered entire stories on the redemption of a villain. But before you can redeem a villain, he must actually be one. Centuries ago, a villain was a mere henchman, a servant. But when we think of a villain today, we think of a mastermind, a grand plotter, someone who wants to bend people and events to his advantage. Whatever the villain’s vices, they must not be petty. Heroes are larger than life and so are villains. Maybe he’s a puppet master, coldly manipulating other people for his own ends, and not caring about their pain. Maybe he’s a firebrand, determined to forge the world in his own image, willing to destroy anyone who stands in his way. But he’s never just an ordinary man who makes bad choices.

A villain who is to be redeemed must start out as a good person. He can’t be a psychopath whose nastiness was apparent from childhood. Instead, something happened along the way, and today he is shut off from most feelings of compassion. Come to think of it, that’s Rigoletto in the opera of the same name. He’s physically deformed and has been scorned his whole life because of that. Suffering twists him into a person who enjoys seeing others suffer, who actively wallows in the filth of human behavior. When the one pure love in his life, his daughter, is defiled, he crosses the line and tries to have his enemy murdered. Needless to say, the opera does not end happily.

In a romance, the villain who is going to be redeemed doesn’t get so twisted that he can’t recover. It just seems that way. In fact, in the hands of an expert writer, that’s the major conflict of the story. Will the heroine inspire the hero to redeem himself, or will he pass up the opportunity that she offers? In Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades, she was breaking new ground. The outcome wasn’t a sure thing. Later writers, notably Barbara Cartland, imitated the key situation in Heyer’s work, and now it’s basically a cliché that a heroine will reform a rake. But the one reformed in Heyer’s book was substantially colder and more villainous than a mere rake, a pleasure seeker who indulges in immoral conduct. No, a true villain has to be a man with a blacker past than mere public drunkenness, immoderate gambling, and hanging around with women of ill repute.

But how does a good man turn into a villain? Perhaps his own innocence and goodness are abused by others. He draws into himself for his own protection. And he begins to act in ways that will please him first of all, regardless of the consequences to others. Or perhaps, the good man looks around him and decides that being bad will gain him more than will being good. Stanton Peele, the eminent psychologist, has written frequently about who turns to crime and who does not. Peele points out that it isn’t just a movie cliché that two brothers in an impoverished neighborhood will make radically different choices, one becoming a priest, one becoming a criminal. It’s a well-documented fact. The environmental situation is not the determiner. Individuals choose whether to be good or bad, whether to be upstanding citizens or drug addicts.

Which also means that they can change, and that’s why redeeming a villain in a romance is believable. It can happen in real life. Villains can get tired of being bad. The initial, vengeful pleasure involved may fade to ennui and self-disgust. And just think of the unpleasant people with whom villains must associate. In the Richard Brinsley Sheridan play, “The School for Scandal,” a naive lady associates with a gossipy, backbiting group of people headed by Lady Sneerwell. Her henchman is named Snake. Their friend Mrs. Candour carries vicious tales. And so on. H is for Homicide, a Sue Grafton mystery in which her detective heroine, Kinsey Milhone, goes undercover in a Los Angeles barrio describes in minute detail how boring, annoying, and scary it is to be around vicious petty criminals day and night.

When the naïve heroine comes along, wanting to pull the villain into the light, wanting him to find his path to redemption, she’s also offering him a rescue from being around people who reinforce his villainy, but also his disgust with himself. She’s showing him that he can lead his life differently. Some of this is through her sheer innocence or goodness. Radiance, you might say. The villain yearns to bask in her glow. And some of it, depending on the heroine, is through her stubbornness and her own determination to win this one. Yes, of course the villain must himself change if he is to achieve redemption. But the love of a good woman is a classic motivator. The wonderful line, “You make me want to be a better man,” from the Jack Nicholson movie “As Good as It Gets” encapsulates the villain’s reason for trying to change. As for the heroine, well, women are known for seeing potential in men. Even in villains.

Fireworks

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:07:00 +0000

This week, people who live in urban areas who do not like loud bangs are in trouble. Because whether fireworks are legal or illegal, somebody will be almost continuously setting off firecrackers, the noisy type of firework with no pretty sparks. Just a sudden, loud disruption of the peace. People who live in the country are used to loud bangs because target shooting is often a local entertainment. But the noise level intensifies as July 4th gets closer. And then on the day itself, things go up for grabs everywhere. Yes, in certain areas there are police crackdowns. Despite that, it’s an American tradition to set off fireworks of some kind on the Fourth of July.

When a heroine and a hero meet in a romance, it is often said that fireworks go off. In movies made before sex scenes were allowed, fireworks were substituted for the sex, most famously in Alfred Hitchcock’s stylish thriller, “To Catch a Thief.” Cary Grant and Grace Kelly start kissing, and then the screen fills with showy public fireworks, the kind that burst high in the air and send a shower of artfully contrived, multicolored sparks shooting in all directions and then falling to the earth. A good metaphor for sex, to be sure.

But when a heroine describes fireworks in her body on merely meeting the hero, sometimes I wonder if the author is exaggerating. It all sounds so uncomfortable. And overdone. And too soon.

I can understand instant attraction that is physical. It’s more common to men than to women, I was raised to believe. But I don’t know if that is still considered to be the truth. So much of what I was taught about male and female sexual response was sheer hogwash. In fact, if you’d like a laugh, check out any antiquated science book. And for the most absurdities read an old sex manual, or rather, what they used to call a family life manual, one that is at least 50 years old. In them, sex ends with middle age, and women don’t much like sex to begin with, and take forever to have an orgasm or never have one at all. And that’s supposedly okay. How times have changed!

Anyway, fine, the fireworks of instant attraction are credible. But not too much of it, please. Not so much that a woman falls all over herself or a man goes berserk. That’s not attractive. And one of the chief tasks of the romance writer is to make sex sound attractive. Because let’s face it, the desire to rut is merely an animal response unless you add some romantic details. And carefully filter them and describe them in attractive terms. It’s not attractive if a man breaks out in a nasty sweat when he sees the heroine. But a romance writer can make it sound attractive.

And then there are the blushers. The women (and men) who experience a strong flush of blood to their faces when they feel something. In novels, women get teased a lot for blushing, which they are usually doing while denying that they have any feelings for the hero. Their faces tell a different story. And as for men, they are said to experience an occasional dark flush of emotion. When I was a kid, we had a handsome young hillbilly for a math teacher, a Mr. Brown. If a lady teacher came by the classroom, he would blush and automatically straighten his already immaculate tie. Even at the merciless age of 14, we all thought it was sweet. Teenage students are careful observers of their teachers, and I remember another, fairer-skinned teacher who turned red on occasion. The time I remember best was when he caught me passing a note (forbidden behavior) and swooped down and seized it. And then discovered I had simply folded a blank piece of paper. He went red. Okay, enough about my youthful escapades. My point is that physical reactions can be sexual or they can just be related to temper or embarrassment. Was Mr. Brown hot for every lady teacher he saw? Doubtful. And the other teacher was ticked off for sure. Similarly, most women do not feel gerbils dancing on our spines if we see a hot guy. Of course the problem may be that we seldom see really hot guys except through the cool medium of television. Or is it a hot medium? Marshall McLuhan was the one who claimed that certain media draw us in and others don’t, and he rated them hot or cool. Darned if I can remember how he rated a romance novel or any novel, for that matter.

But back to fireworks as a metaphor for physical attraction. If fireworks go off when the heroine and heroine first meet, what happens when they finally kiss? Or when they make love? What’s left? So maybe the fireworks in the first scenes should just be the prelude, the firecrackers of June that lead up to the displays of July. That's a good reason to delay the more emotional and passionate scenes in any story, or even in your life, until the tale has developed to its full potential. Meanwhile, for all you annoyed city dwellers, may I suggest noise reduction earphones?

No Mush

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:21:00 +0000

It has been a month since the movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” opened to enormous fanfare. I’m going to assume that you’ve seen it, or else you don’t care. Either way, spoilers ahead.

To be honest, I don’t remember a lot about the previous Indiana Jones movies. I remember how tantalizing Harrison Ford was in the first one, playing an intelligent, cultured university professor in some scenes, and a macho adventurer in others. He was the unattainable man, and he was worth attaining because he had a secret identity just like Zorro or a comic book superhero. On the one hand he demonstrated all the refined qualities that a woman could want in a man, and on the other, he could handle himself in a bar fight. A woman likes to know that a man is capable of defending her in a bar fight. Of course, his love interest in that movie, Marion Ravenwood, was quite capable of doing the bar fighting, which was kinda cool. But when he hitched a ride on a submarine, and did that stunt on the speeding truck, I knew the movie was not meant to be convincing or a romance. It was meant to be fun.

The two sequels were too violent (“Temple of Doom”) and too lightweight (“Last Crusade”). There was nothing in them that I could even pretend was real romance, even by (metaphorically) squinting. In fact, Jones’ cavalier attitude toward women always grated on me. But then, this whole series was a boys’ adventure fantasy, and in them the hero never is interested in the girl, not really. That would be mushy, and boys don’t like mush.

Then why am I even talking about the fourth Indiana Jones movie? The series has never featured a satisfactory romance between a man and a woman. The movies never were aimed at women; they were aimed at men. But so was the first “Star Wars,” and it had one of the strongest and truest female lead characters I ever saw in an adventure movie, Princess Leia. Loved that woman. Loved her sarcasm. Loved Han Solo’s sarcasm right back. Even if at times, Dennis the Menace and his friend/antagonist Margaret came to mind, quintessential child opponents divided by the differing interests of gender. The Indiana Jones series was equally true to the same divide, only it did not sustain a strong female lead character through the series.

What were my expectations of this fourth Indiana Jones movie? Lots of action. Hopefully nothing too embarrassing. Harrison Ford had a smoking hot body well into his fifties from all the tennis he played, but those geezer pants he was wearing in the trailer didn’t augur well. Maybe they were hiding a gut he has grown since his second divorce. Dunno, and this movie was so lacking in physical intimacy that I never had to care. Yeah, he’s seen without a shirt here and there. But his pants were big enough for two men.

It’s not that the plot didn’t have any possibilities. I thought we were getting them when the FBI guys looking for Commies showed up and got Jones fired. And then started following Jones. But then they simply vanished from the movie, and so did any semblance of an adult, layered struggle. I should have known it when he survived the atomic bomb test in a refrigerator. In this series, the over-the-top action has always clearly signaled that there would not be serious tension, or genuine intimacy, or any depth to characterization.

This latest sequel was true to the series, and more. Every scene was a reference to something in a previous Lucas movie. I’ve got news for George Lucas. We don’t all memorize his movies. Even so, once I suspended disbelief (which incidentally is the only way to enjoy Marx Brothers movies, too), it was sheer fun. I thought it was silly and sort of heart-warming. Jones never was a mighty thinker when it came to his personal relationships. But in this movie he does recognize that it’s time to marry Marion Ravenwood, his girlfriend from the first movie, and settle down and be a father and resume his academic career. The adventuring is over. In a way, it’s not much of a romance. But in a way, it’s perfect. His excuse for decades of not committing to any other woman is that they weren’t her. That line can just make a woman melt. It’s enough of a declaration. And how about a mature man actually marrying a woman of his own generation!? Totally cool. It also solved the problem in this boys’ adventure movie that, like most little boys, Jones didn’t want any mush.

My Father, My Enemy

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:43:00 +0000

Sons and fathers notoriously have bad relationships. They don’t understand each other. They don’t appreciate each other. One’s too sissy for the other. One’s too macho for the other. They cause the fights at family reunions. They order wives and mothers and grandmothers and daughters to shun the offending other, as if their own anger is so righteous that everyone around should feel it to the same degree. And they keep the estrangements going for years and years, because they’re too stubborn to ever give up trying to prove that they’re right, and too filled with testosterone to make peace. Maybe on a deathbed. But then again, often not.

If fathers and sons are so tough on each other, is it any wonder that in romances, fathers and brothers often betray and abuse the heroine? They lose her in a card game, as if she’s an extra pile of something they don’t need around. They barter her in a land deal, as if she’s a tree to be harvested. They enmesh her in poverty, as if their comfort is much more important than hers. And they quite frequently prostitute her.

And yet, the estranged son yearns for his father’s openly expressed love. And the betrayed heroine yearns equally for proof of her father’s or brother’s affection. But we know that they are looking in vain.

How strange, then, that the romantic hero also knows this and somehow resolves most of this emotional turmoil. Simply by loving the heroine. Sometimes even by being a substitute father figure to a misbehaving brother of the heroine. But what the hero also does is provide the economic rock upon which a new family can be created. Thus, he takes up the father’s basic task.

The thing is, both sons and daughters were cash assets to a father in the old days. The father used them to increase his own wealth or save himself from poverty. He saw that as his right, but also as his duty, to keep the family unit as intact as possible. For the son, it might mean a lifetime of slavery to the family business, often a farm. For the daughter, it might mean a marriage to a man she didn’t much like, who might work in the family business or otherwise help it flourish.

As sons and daughters have become more able to escape the tyranny of their fathers, largely because our society now offers superior mobility and thus economic independence, have they been able to forge different or better relationships with them? Or is a father still an enemy?

It does seem counterintuitive to talk about the negatives of fathers around Father’s Day, another sentimental American celebration of a myth. The myth of the great dad. Who is that father? Have you ever met one? A friend just e-mailed me Ben Stein’s essay about how hard fathers work and how unappreciated they are especially because they don’t whine about the difficulties of their years of labor supporting a family. Okay. Fair enough. But isn’t the lack of whining part of that stubborn refusal to show any emotion that could be construed as a weakness? And why is it a weakness if it is expressed inside the family? Why can’t a father come home from work and say the boss is a jerk and the job is in jeopardy? The children see the father put on his business uniform, much as they see the mother put on hers, plus an extra coating of face makeup for many moms, to armor themselves for the battle. So why is in impossible for the father to relax and admit that he might not win the battle? Or that he’s doing it for people he loves? Or that he appreciates his family members for who they are, not only to the degree that they become pawns or foot soldiers in his war? A father becomes an enemy within if he undermines or openly scoffs at his family. If he tells them they aren’t good enough, they spend their whole lives fighting that pronouncement. So why do it?

A lot of people have mixed feelings about their fathers. And even if grown children want to heal breaches, sometimes fathers won’t let them. Sometimes, the only satisfactory conversation with a father is with his tombstone. This Father’s Day, have the conversation with the living father if possible. Because no matter what he is and what he has done, your father is not really your enemy. Just watch out for his famous sucker punch, okay?

As American as Apple Pie

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:04:00 +0000

Recently there were some lengthy debates at another romance-oriented site about race and ethnicity in romances. What I realized from reading and contributing to them (yes, I put in my two cents) was that things have changed a lot in romances since the Big Change. As almost everyone knows, about 30 years ago, modern American romance writers finally got a voice. They’d been stifled and locked out by progressively less relevant girl-next-door stories from American publishers that completely ignored the sexual revolution, or by harsh, sexist melodramas that British Mills & Boon (Canadian Harlequin) could sell all over the world to women with fewer freedoms than American women enjoyed. There has been no looking back since then. The voices of American women have strongly impacted the romance publishing scene, and, to the degree that American-written romance gets reprinted in other countries, the world. Romance writers have branched out into many different territories that previously were considered taboo. And then created new paradigms, newly acceptable standards. It’s pretty amazing. Romances are continuously developing.

But there still are some topics that are being avoided. Either writers don’t write about them, or editors don’t buy stories about them for fear the published book either won’t sell well or will cause a controversy. Publishers only like controversy if it sells more books. This doesn’t usually happen with genre writing. Instead, the book that offends gets pulled from stores, maybe somebody gets sued, and the rest of the world doesn’t notice. Contrast that to the controversy that sells political memoirs, for instance.

The wild world of epublishing has given many hot topics a place to be aired. That discussion about race and ethnicity cited any number of romances, mostly epublished, that feature interracial couples as the main characters, for instance. The traditional print publishers have lagged behind.

Meanwhile, over the years we’ve seen some additions to the romance marketplace, chiefly romances by African-Americans about African-American heroes and heroines. And more recently, romances written by and about Latinas. (I don’t count Native American romances because to my knowledge they’re still being written from the point of view of a white woman meeting a hot Native American guy, in other words, they are stories about the fallout of colonial conquest.) But sometimes authors who write about a specific ethnic group have been expected to use ethnic-sounding pseudonyms, as if a person whose name does not sound Latina can’t write a Latina romance. What is this? Reverse discrimination? And whose idea is it? The romance readers’? Or the editors’?

Most American romances still ignore the vast, very mixed ethnic heritage of our citizens. This is deliberate, to appeal to the widest possible romance audience. And I think the part that bothers me the most is the blandness of the characters’ names. Everybody is Matt or Jessica, and they all have essentially middle-of-the-road, vaguely Anglo-Saxon last names. There are a few exceptions here and there, but mostly these exceptions prove the rule, because the “unusual” name indicates an unusual cultural heritage that’s going to be important to the plot. Never mind that in any phone book of any major city in America you can find all kinds of names; in romances, you don’t. If a character has a Spanish name, he or she is going to be Spanish. If, as in the case of a couple of romances that I’ve read, the names are clearly Jewish, then they’re in the diamond trade. A lousy cliché. The only Armenian I’ve seen in a category romance was a rug dealer. Sigh. And so it goes. Yes, we’re seeing more feisty Italians from big, noisy families. The Godfather movies brought Italian families—well, not quite the type one sees in romances—into national prominence. And yes, there are the Irish. But 150 years after being despised immigrants, the Irish are considered more charming than ethnic in this country. They have assimilated to the point that having an Irish character doesn’t mean that the heroine’s brother is a priest and her sister is a nun. Yet in romances written 100 years ago by and about Irish-Americans, those types of characters were common.

Chick lit, which is women-oriented fiction but is not considered technically romance, has definitely broken the name and ethnic heritage barrier. Lots of chick lit heroines are Jewish, or Italian, or Latina, or Eastern European. And they revel in their multicultural heritage and aren’t cliché types. Do we need more? Of course. Do we need to cross ethnic boundaries and delve into conflicts arising from ethnic differences? Why not, if it makes a good story?

But first, romance writers can start small, by daring to use names for their characters and pseudonyms as authors that proclaim something other than a whitebread cultural heritage. Let’s see Polish and French and Korean names. And let’s see another enduring cultural heritage, ethnic food. Have the otherwise bland heroine long for the oil crust apple pie made by her Pennsylvania Dutch great-grandmother. Allow characters to enjoy eating a kosher hot dog from Nathan’s in Coney Island. Make it a plot point to have the hero bring Russian Easter bread to a gathering.

America is full of interesting people with interesting family heritages. Instead of trying to turn romance characters into clones of each other who resemble some bland American ideal that is stripped of any ethnic roots, romance writers need to find the individualism of their characters and help show the world that it is appealing. It used to be a cliché that first-generation Americans were ashamed of their parents’ foreign accents and odd ways. Not enough respect is given to these people who had the courage to flee poverty, war, and oppression to start at the bottom here and make a good life for their families. Can a romance writer make it all sound glamorous? Yes. A romance writer can make a name like Zbigniew Brzezinski sound sexy, too.

American Romance Manga

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:47:00 +0000

I just read the prettiest, sweetest book. It was a Harlequin Ginger Blossom manga, an adaptation of a Debbie Macomber novel that first appeared in the US as part of their Silhouette Romance series, their sweetest and least overtly sexy line of romances. Such sweetness and lack of sexual detail has become so unpopular in the United States that the decades-old Silhouette Romance was finally discontinued and collapsed into Harlequin Romance. At about the same time that Harlequin was facing up to this market rejection, it was experimenting with manga (comic book) versions of the same material.

Harlequin has a strong worldwide translation and adaptation program, so it’s not surprising that in Japan, where comic books are big, Harlequin novels have been adapted as manga for many years. Because of Japanese laws and conventions regarding sexual expression, even the Harlequin titles that were very hot for their day, ones by Charlotte Lamb and Penny Jordan, for instance (that included the main characters having very passionate sex before marriage), were turned into sweeter versions that emphasized the romance over the sex. In Japan, these stories became manga aimed at young teenage (under 16) girls and up.

Manga have become big stuff in the US for that same market, and the female-oriented manga is mostly imported from Japan. Very little of it originates from American writers, or from American romance writers either for that matter, although that is changing. But meanwhile, perhaps it’s not surprising that when Harlequin stuck its toe in the water by trying out manga in this country, it simply brought over reprints from Japan. It had an American comic book company, Dark Horse, oversee adapting the previously Japanized material back to English for an American readership.

The result has fairly obviously been a commercial failure. These books are almost impossible to locate in physical bookstores or in comic book shops, although they can still be ordered online. No American-published Harlequin line of books is so obscure. Soon after they began, the publication schedule was slowed down, the price point was dropped, and then Harlequin took back the rights from Dark Horse and produced some on their own. Except that no new titles have come out since January 2007. The Ginger Blossom website was still up and running a few months ago, clearly aimed at young teenage girls, not at adult romance readers. And no new Harlequin Violet, the portion of the Ginger Blossom series that contained premarital sex, were published during Harlequin’s tenure of the line. Now, that same website has nothing to do with any Harlequin manga, and they can’t be ordered directly from eHarlequin. Maybe the line has not been officially pronounced dead, or maybe it has and so few people care that nobody heard about it.

This is a shame. The American public is missing a delightful extra dimension to a romance reading experience. It probably takes a little getting used to that the entire comic book is printed in pink ink. (The more adult line, Harlequin Violet, is printed in purple ink to indicate passion.) This is common practice in Japan. And the stylized artwork, with the male model, boyish hero, and the very girlish, ultra-sweet looking heroine, also takes some getting used to. In this country we no longer look to comics to be pretty, yet girl-oriented manga are very pretty indeed. That’s at least half of their charm, the delicacy of the ink line, the smoothness of the finish to how each character is drawn. These are qualities that American comic books and comic strips used to have. The acme of American comic art was such newspaper strips as “The Heart of Juliet Jones” by Stan Drake and “Mary Perkins On Stage” by Leonard Starr. And let’s not forget “Steve Canyon,” and “Terry and the Pirates,” both adventure strips by Milton Caniff whose high gloss made them major American hits for decades. John Romita and Gene Colan in the comic books gave the same kind of attractive polish to their artwork, whether in superhero or romance comics.

American girls are used to pretty, so that’s all right. They’re even used to excessive femininity. This generation of girls was raised in pink, and wore a lot of Disney princess outfits through the years. It’s the satori of an otherwise forward-looking culture that we tell girls they can be anything, but now as never before in recent years we raise girls to be girly. So it’s a little surprising that the Harlequin manga seem to have tanked.

On the other hand, it’s usually a mistake to start a new anything with old material, and that’s essentially what Harlequin did. Harlequin did not adapt brand new stories that today’s romance novel readers in America are reading right now and might want to see in comic book format. The newest was several years old and the oldest were over 20 years old. Worse, Harlequin took previously created adaptations meant for a different culture. Stories that were out of style here. Passé. No longer the mainstream of romance excitement.

It’s too bad. I enjoyed the way the Ginger Blossom manga softened some of the worst Harlequin excesses of domineering males and cowering females (a style of story that Harlequin itself has mostly dropped, even though their book titles often suggest it anyway). The light and airy, dreamy manga art style gave a sense of rightness to even the most preposterous plots. Like the one with the Greek tycoon who manages to go through a marriage ceremony with the heroine and whisk her off to a Greek isle--while she’s in a coma! This is the stuff of fantasy, and the manga art style is a great complement to such stories because it revels in the fantastic.

I hope some other American publisher will try to adapt current romances and use this beautiful art style in the future. I like manga but Japanese imports are very limited in scope because the position of women in Japan is subservient and the Japanese have this whole schoolgirl thing going. I’d love to read comic book style romances about adult women in believable American situations. Wait a minute. That’s exactly what MyRomanceStory.com is all about. Okay, we’re good.

Older Woman, Younger Man?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:48:00 +0000

Romances in which the woman is the older-and-wiser character are beginning to be more frequently seen. Sometimes a romance hero is a few years younger than the heroine. Or a lot of years younger. Whatever, in these romances the power in a relationship that is based on age alone is definitely on the woman’s side. This is a fantasy that writers are only starting to explore as women’s roles in our society have expanded. A woman who earns more than many men her age do, a scenario that has become typical in many urban areas today, might also be dating younger men. And she might not care too much about either disparity. But the men might care a lot. Articles have already appeared about the perils of unequal dating when it’s the woman who has the good job and can afford the expensive entertainments, and the man doesn’t. There even is advice dished out by psychologists on how to cope with unequal income situations in a marriage.

But first we have to get to a marriage, both in real life and in romance fiction. Both men and women marry for the first time at older ages than they used to. (Maybe that’s because it takes so long to read the enormous bride magazines and plan a Bridezilla wedding?) Yet a high proportion of first marriages end in divorce. So both men and women are still looking for lifelong partners at far older ages than they used to. In fact, second marriages these days are entered into with about as much hope and naiveté (and as much pomp and expense) as first marriages used to be. Mirroring real life, a romance heroine who is in her thirties and has never married is no longer cast as a repressed virgin who sacrificed her one chance at love to fetch and carry for a selfish parent. Instead, the thirtyish heroine is usually sexually and emotionally experienced. Which again can mean a difference in the balance of power in a relationship with a younger man if he happens to have less sexual or emotional experience. Or even if those are equal, but she feels the pressure of her biological clock.

A recent take on the age difference was Keanu Reeves playing a youngish doctor going after Diane Keaton’s definitely middle-aged woman in the movie “Something’s Gotta Give.” Their romance doesn’t deal with financial or childbearing issues. And he’s a doctor and she’s a playwright whom he admires, so their respective areas of career success are sufficiently separate not to cause friction. But alas, Keanu is actually just there to be an ego-soother, since Diane is in love with Jack Nicholson’s character, who is her age and more. Keanu bows out gracefully and the older two end up together. To tell the truth, I was far more attracted to Keanu’s character; he’s a romantic ideal. The prospect of sharing the last years of a sick old ex-roue’s life is not as romantically appealing as sharing the best years of a young and healthy one-woman-man’s life. On the other hand, it can be far more comfortable and intellectually stimulating to be with a contemporary, someone who experienced similar world events at the same age, and who faces the same future issues at the same time as you. Plus, there is a certain amount of triumph involved when the older woman lands the older man. Keaton’s character and Nicholson’s are well matched.

But I was talking about couples whom at first glance seem ill-suited because the woman is older than the man. What do we think of real-life pairings such as the marriage of actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore? She’s 15 years older than he is and has three children, one of whom is only ten years younger that he is. Typical high-publicity Hollywood behavior today is serial relationships and relatively short marriages, so is their three-year marriage then already a success by celebrity standards? And should it be compared at all to the search for lifelong love that the general population and romance heroines and heroes engage in? And in romances at least, a relationship, however seemingly unequal, still is supposed to last a lifetime. That’s perhaps more of a fantasy today than ever before. But it’s still the prevailing fantasy.

A situation in which the heroine is less than ten years older than the hero is treated as a throwaway these days, a phony issue that gives the heroine pause but is easily shrugged off. A few years’ difference isn’t important in a society that doesn’t draw an arbitrary line between what is a marriagable age for a woman and what is over the hill. Especially what is still attractive in a woman. We aren’t presenting teenage debutantes much anymore, and a grown woman who has a career is a valuable asset to a man.

Another issue that used to plague the older woman-younger man situation and still does is fertility. But modern medicine has extended female fertility well into what used to be middle age. So a fortyish woman who meets a twentyish man might still be able to give him children, if they both want them and are at the family-building stage of life. Or a significant age disparity can be the major conflict of the novel, when the heroine is done with being a mom regardless of her ability to have more babies. I read a story like that a long time ago, but I haven’t seen a lot of mention of it since. It’s still rare in our society. But then, so are childless-by-choice couples who marry young.

At its core, the older woman-younger man romance involves the idea that we aren’t all moving on the same time track and it’s okay to be different. Late blooming women still have a shot at a full life, and early blooming men can grab for the older and more interesting women they want. There is also the idea that life has more than one stage, and that new loves can be found in maturity, but I don’t think it is essential to an older woman-younger man pairing. Have any of these become a staple in romances? Not yet. And depending on population curves, they never may. But they are no longer taboo.

One style of relationship that isn’t showing up in romances is the older-woman younger-man romance that mimics the real life scandals in which female teachers seduce their very young male pupils. It’s not yet an acceptable fantasy for women to take advantage of the youth and inexperience of boys. And thank goodness for that, because it’s major ick. Worse even than the classic older man-young girl ick that always does take advantage of an innocent, powerless girl.

But let’s not end this on a low note. Here’s hoping that Ashton and Demi are happy and will remain so for long enough to be able to look back and say “That was a good marriage.” And that the next romance you read has a heroine who doesn’t obsess over her age and a hero who honors her for the life she has lived before she met him.

Men of Iron

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:19:00 +0000

Men of Iron is writer-illustrator Howard Pyle’s popular tale about the adventures of knights in shining armor. Originally published in 1891, it’s full of colorful detail about the 15th century English system of attaining knighthood, a lengthy and often bloody process. It also contains a romance. The hero, Myles Falworth, woos and eventually wins Lady Alice, a resident at the noble house where he spends many months going through squirehood to become a knight. A tale of knighthood just wouldn’t be the complete without a highborn lady to whom the hero can aspire.

Flash forward to today, and there is “Iron Man,” the movie made from the comic book. Superheroes are modern knights. They follow an implicit code of honor that requires them to do good, and of course to rescue damsels in distress. And they have power beyond that of the ordinary man with which to accomplish their noble deeds.

Spoilers ahead, but not big ones.

I like movies in which things blow up. And I’m a longtime comics fan. So I went to see “Iron Man.” Lots of things blew up, which made me happy. But something else occurred that made me happier. Pepper Potts, the devoted secretary to Tony Stark, the billionaire industrialist, may or may not be secretly in love with him. And they do flirt once and almost kiss. But it goes no farther, and when Tony tries to build on it another day, Pepper shuts him down. This is so refreshing. In the comic books on which this movie was based, Pepper Potts has a very longstanding professional relationship with Tony Stark, but it does not move into romance right away. In fact, she first has a funny romance with the comical ex-boxer chauffeur, Happy Hogan. The movie was true to the character’s origin story in that respect. And it was true to the needs of romance, because there was a bit of wooing, but no bedding of the heroine. Yes, Tony Stark does have a cheap one-night stand with another woman, à la “Jerry Maguire.” He does have a playboy jerk reputation to uphold.

Still, “Iron Man” was romantic, despite all the things blowing up (and crashing, and shattering, and so on). Romance is about the development of a relationship. In this movie, we see the beginning of one, and no more. We are left with something to look forward to. Contrast that with those old Batman movies in which sex is merely dessert after a first date. No romance. No development of a relationship. Very disappointing.

A friend of mine said he was disappointed because in the almost-kiss scene Pepper is the one who moves in for the kiss. He felt it broke with the characterization. And he also believes that as two people who have forged a longtime work relationship, the sex issue would have been resolved long ago. I thought it was credible that Pepper could be confused fleetingly, and follow her instincts. Anyway, thank goodness, the scene ends without anything more happening. I got very ticked off at the Michael Keaton Batman movies in which women would appear and would immediately have sex with Bruce Wayne. It demeaned them. But then, those were mean-spirited movies. How else to explain the one in which women kept being thrown off buildings?

Of course times have changed since Howard Pyle was writing about knighthood, and since it even existed as a system in one small country for a short period of time. Still, in various eras, knighthood in one form or another has captured people’s imagination. The Iron Man movie is yet another version of these traditional tales. And no tale of a knight in shining armor is complete without a ladylove to be wooed. I’m so glad that Pepper is there (in ridiculously high heels) upholding her part of the tradition.

Mother’s Day

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:30:00 +0000

It’s Mother’s Day. Restaurants are packed, because the very first thing on people’s minds is to relieve mothers of the classic burden of cooking for their families today. Yesterday and earlier this week, stores were packed with desperate shoppers trying to find a gift that in some way measures up to all their mothers have given to them. It can’t be done.

Girls and women dream of romance and of having babies and having big, happy families. If all goes well, by bearing children they become a part of the historical stream of humanity that links us physically both to the ancient past and to the far future. Of all the celebrations throughout the year, some spiritual, some completely temporal, this day is special because it’s about endless love of the human variety. Women expect to love their babies. But when they actually meet them, they fall in love with them, which is a very different thing. And it is very necessary, because the demands of motherhood are tremendous. It is love, not duty, that gets mothers through it.

I always dislike Mother’s Day greeting cards that start out talking about the mother, but end up talking about the child instead. It’s about your mother today, not you. Could you manage to say something about her? But of course it’s about this woman being your mother, not about her other life achievements. Thus we easily fall into the trap of celebrating our mothers by celebrating ourselves. I guess we’re trying to prove to her that all her hard work and sacrifice was worth it, because she created and nurtured a functional human being. But it’s hopeless to believe that taking her out to lunch once a year, or sending her a bouquet, will do that.

My mother hated Mother’s Day and always refused to celebrate it. Full stop. She didn’t want cards, she didn’t want gifts, and she didn’t want flowers. She said and I quote, “You should be good to your mother every day of the year, not just on Mother’s Day.” She had lost her own mother to an epidemic at a very young age, and celebrating Mother’s Day initially just made her feel her lack of a mother. But later, when she was a mother herself, she believed that the job description was far too cannibalistic. Children should not eat up their mothers’ lives. Children should learn to be unselfish, to become part of a family that pulls together, instead of being lazy and demanding and making work and worry for their mothers. Guess which kind of child I was?

Both, my mother insisted. And that’s the miracle of being a mother. You can see your children quite realistically, be annoyed by their youthful errors, and love them anyway. You always remember the first moment you met that baby, the total helplessness and purity of that child. And your own fierce determination to protect your baby from all the woes of life. It can’t be done, but as a mother you try. To the degree that you fail, you also have to acknowledge that life is not perfectible. You are not the perfect mother and your child is not the perfect child. But close.

As a child, the embrace from your mother is the one embrace in the world that demands nothing and accepts all. It is both hope and tolerance. When we look for adult love, in part we are looking for that same kind of all-encompassing acceptance we found in our mother’s embrace. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we find it. Sometimes we don’t. For various reasons, some women don’t become mothers. And for some children, mothers are the treacherous enemy. It happens. Still, the impulses of motherhood can be replicated in situations that aren’t directly maternal, such as mentoring, or creating art, or any number of other achievements. But today we celebrate a classic womanly achievement. Since I do listen to my mother, I try to celebrate Mother’s Day every day. I hope you do, too.

Stop Pulling Punches

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:00:00 +0000

I know someone who has nothing better to do in the morning than read a lot of newspapers in the Internet and then e-mail his friends all the articles relating to our shared interest in comic books. These days, there are a ton of them (which is definitely a change from when I was a kid and comics were clearly considered trashy reading. Come to think of it, romances still are). Even a hint of a new movie about a Marvel or DC Comics superhero merits an e-mail. Plus, everything that is written about the new Indiana Jones movie, about the new James Bond movie, or about the next movies or TV shows featuring comic book characters gets forwarded. Most recently, this has meant that I have received more than a half-dozen e-mails alone on the superhero costume exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Just how interesting can such an exhibit be? My friend says he thinks it is the novelty that there is a comic book costume exhibit at all in such an august establishment, one that is famous for having extensive collections of elaborate ancient Egyptian and Greek artifacts.

I guess he’s got a point. But not only has he become a willing part of the viral hype machine, but sometimes he’s sending me articles with spoilers. And I don’t know they contain spoilers until I open them. Just yesterday there was one about somebody managing to crack the Spielberg-Lucas dread security on the new Indiana Jones movie, and reveal the plot. Why do I want to know the plot in advance, for gosh sakes? I don’t. I want there to be some surprises left by the time I get to the theater.

Today I was reading an old manuscript evaluation I did for an author in which I advised her to stop pulling her punches. She’d reveal something dramatic at an undramatic moment in the story. And then at a dramatic moment she’d tell it all over again in the same detail. By then it was no surprise to the reader and thus the impact of the emotional confession was lost. As a romance reader (or a movie viewer), I want some surprises. Not a lot of surprises, that’s why I read genre novels. I want to have a guaranteed happy ending in a romance, for instance, or see the murderer brought to justice in a mystery. Is this too much to ask?

But there are some people who like genre stories, but still want to check out the details in advance. I might read a back cover blurb describing a romance or a mystery. They read the last few pages of the book itself. I couldn’t do that. It would spoil all the surprises. Of course once I know who the heroine and hero are, the happy ending isn’t really a surprise. But I want to go down every emotional and plot path the author leads me on along the way to that happy ending.

Thus for me, even seeing a promo for a new movie is a problem. I don’t want to know about every pratfall in the movie in advance. (And don't let me get started on how difficult it is not to get blindsided by spoilers regarding upcoming plot twists on "Lost," the enigmatic TV show. That's a whole other area of frustration.) I certainly don’t want a romance cover to give away plot details. I try to pick up books based on less information than is available. Because even when the author isn’t pulling her punches, the publicity machine is. As I read the romance, it might take many chapters and many thousands of words for the author to develop the key conflict of the story. But the person who writes the back cover blurb summarizes it in 250 words or less. And sometimes reveals major surprises in the plot, too. I hate when that happens.

And it is not necessary. A book (or a movie) can be enticingly described without every single clever moment being detailed in advance. But increasingly, that’s exactly what movie trailers do. Sometimes I’ve seen trailers so lengthy that there appears to be no point in actually returning to see the movie. When I read reviews of the movie later, they refer to those moments and precious little else. So because the movie ads pulled the punches, I walk away informed and with no compulsion to see more. Book covers haven’t gotten this bad, thank goodness. But inept amateur book reviewers make this mistake. There are a lot of romance reviews available on the Internet today, and most of them are poorly written. They usually detail the plot, when what they should do is allude to it and then critique the author’s execution of it. But then these reviews are also driven by the typical genre reader’s desire to read a certain kind of story. So the reviewers, by describing exactly what happens, do actually give the reader what she wants, a blueprint of the plot that reassures her that this is the kind of story she’ll want to read.

Still, all these reviews and promotional trailers are kind of like somebody chewing my meat for me. The result of too many pulled punches is lack of tang.

My List of Hotties

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:51:00 +0000

Maybe this will be considered offensive, but at least it’s not cheesecake as such. No bare chests or coy poses with underwear showing. And this is purely in the spirit of admiring beauty that just happens to be male.

As I roam the net in search of interesting topics and illustrations, sometimes I happen upon publicity photos of hot-looking guys. For instance, this one, of Sean Bean, whom I just saw play the arch villain in “National Treasure.” He looked attractive in that movie, but he was a villain, after all. I didn’t have moral permission to love him. Then I found this shot of him from a while back, when he played “Richard Sharpe,” a more heroic character. And frankly, Sean Bean was looking good. This photo makes you understand the 19th century fetish for fancy military uniforms.

I confess that movie star Matthew McConaughey leaves me cold. Not because he doesn’t have a great body that he’s always willing to display in movies. In fact, it’s hard to find a good shot of him that isn’t bare-chested. Although I eventually did. No, it’s because I’ve only seen him in roles where he comes across as being annoyingly live-for-the-moment, and thus not my type. Is my type a 19th century guttersnipe turned professional soldier? Well, not really. But it definitely isn’t a surfer dude. So here's Matthew all covered up. Do you still see his charm?

On the other hand, Adrian Grenier comes across as eminently huggable. He's cute. Love the curly hair, the serious eyelashes, and the brilliant smile. I know so little about him that I thought his name was Adam, not Adrian. He’s a young hottie. Twenty years from now, maybe he’ll look like Sting, another attractive male who started off looking lovable by sheer dint of hopping around in videos. But as he settled into his stride, his serious demeanor has made him look extremely unapproachable and humorless. Or maybe he’s just squinting, because by god, no rock musician is ever seen wearing glasses.

Josh Holloway of “Lost.” Hot. Very hot. Plays a sympathetic but flawed character. No, I’m not drooling. That would be unbecoming a true admirer of the male form. I am happy that he’s married and living in beautiful Hawaii and working on a hit TV show and that this is probably the highlight of his career. His big break could have happened when he was 60 and bitter. But he’s young and handsome and enjoying life (I hope) because the world has opened up to him. You go, guy.

Is it disrespectful to mention George Clooney? Ever since he finally made it big, he's been busy proving that he's much more than a pretty face. Good thing, too, since it took all of his youth to grow beyond his stunning handsomeness into something more, a genuine movie star. Burt Lancaster had a similar fire to act in notable drama, not just play around in pretty-boy adventure tales. Both men succeeded. George, I admire you and it's not just that you look like you were born to wear a tux.

There are other hotties. But enough for now. Enjoy the view.

“Somewhere in Time” Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:38:00 +0000

“Somewhere in Time” is a preeminent romantic movie, one that predictably makes lists when romance readers are asked for recommendations. But it doesn’t show up on most of the easily-accessed top 50 or 100 movies of all time lists on the net. I looked in vain. Various Julia Roberts comedies and Hugh Grant comedies and Cary Grant comedies hogged the top spots on one list. Mainstream movies like “Titanic” and “Gone With the Wind” or thrillers like “Vertigo” were high on others. I’ve decided that many of the people compiling these lists think that “romance” and “romantic comedy” are the same. Or “romance” and “romantic thriller.” They are not. I also suspect this is partially a male-female divide. I mean, what woman really thinks that “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is primarily a romance? But I swear, it was on one of those lists. “Somewhere in Time” belongs on a more specialized romance movie list, the kind that is dominated by what used to be called “women’s pictures.” Ever heard of “Miracle in the Rain,” for instance? Or “Now, Voyager”? These are romantic movies that focus on the romance, and on the intense romantic feelings of the protagonists, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. Like romance novels.

“Somewhere in Time” was a flop when it first came out in 1980. Vincent Canby of the New York Times subjected it to such a scathing review that Christopher Reeve could still quote it from memory 20 years later. Ouch. But the movie has slowly garnered a following, because it has the reputation of being a satisfyingly romantic movie. And it delivers. The story is about a modern young man who goes back in time and falls in love with an actress in 1912. It doesn’t end with marriage and babies and a white picket fence, but it does end happily.

I am not blind to the movie’s faults. Reeve is clearly still too bulked up from playing Superman to be wearing such a tight suit (very seventies). In fact, he shows some of the awkwardness of being far too handsome, and the awkwardness of wearing the wrong suit helps diminish it somewhat. But that does make him more a figure of boyish eagerness than of manly desire. Which is okay, really, since the story is about him being this woman’s eager but clueless suitor. All he knows about, or seems to, is how to be charming. And how to make love with reverent tenderness. Which is saying a lot. Every moment he spends with Jane Seymour is tender, attentive, gallant. Yes, he wants her. But his pushiness is all eagerness, not aggression. And that’s why their spending the day talking to each other can be a montage, because they don’t have anything they need to say to each other, not really. They’re focused on being in love. He just wants to worship her. And consume her. And he does so very nicely. Tender love stories like this are rare. “Somewhere in Time” is unapologetically lyrical as well, more of an emotional experience than a detailed story.

On the other hand, a lot of the movie is stilted and very artificial. Reeve is not believable as a burnt-out playwright. He looks too fresh and young. A very thin contrivance, the cliché that he has broken up with his girlfriend and is having trouble writing his current play, is what sends him looking for his true love. This doesn’t tie in with his briefly-noted past, or with his behavior during the rest of the movie. And so it goes. The scenes with the boy Arthur and the grown-up hotel servant Arthur are barely convincing. Most movie scenes with little children are pretty bad, and these were par for the course. These are plot devices that five more minutes of screen time could have made convincing, and it’s a shame that they didn’t. But the critics didn’t savage the story for its awkward moments, they hated it because it so carefully and reverently followed the romance. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said the movie was boring and too solemn. But then again, he bemoaned the movie’s lack of slyness and fun. Slyness and fun? Are those the qualities romance fans look for in a romantic story? No, those are what guys look for in chick flicks so they don’t have to get embarrassed by serious emotions.

Yet this romantic movie has worn well. Not a single romantic scene is tacky and dated. You can’t really tell that this movie was done in the 1970s, because there isno gratuitous nude scene or excess on camera lovemaking. As Reeve says in the 20th anniversary edition, showing the sex act would have been in bad taste. And the movie doesn’t do bad taste. Jane Seymour is a beautiful woman and she has youthful appeal in this story as well. She and Reeve have chemistry. Even though he is supposedly older than she, he plays younger and more naive, possibly because success has come so easily to him, whereas she may have come up through the school of hard knocks. Yet, they are well-matched and their scenes together do seem romantic and special and precious.

It was a revelation to learn how hard the moviemakers worked to achieve every romantic aspect of the movie. That they deliberately shot part of the film with a different brand of film, to achieve a different visual tone, shows the care and love with which everybody involved worked on this film. And the music is overwhlemingly romantic. Too much so, according to critics. I guess the movie’s initial lack of success broke the hearts of all involved. But they have been vindicated over time, as “Somewhere in Time” retains a strong following, and now that I have finally seen it, I’m one of its fans too. There aren’t many movies that allow a love story to be the most important thing, that have the courage to talk about love reverently. This one does.

Confessions of a (Former) Harrison Ford Junkie

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:53:00 +0000

Okay, I admit it, I used to have a major crush on Harrison Ford. I loved Carrie Fisher in the first Star Wars when she was being totally sarcastic to Han Solo. I related to her intelligence and sharp wit. But I absolutely adored Harrison Ford as Han Solo being a smartass back at her even more. They both struck me as totally believable, she as a bright woman who showed it, and he as an archetype of the reluctant hero with the heart of gold. But he also was the hero who won’t give an inch when it comes to sentiment because mentally he still belongs to the all-boys club he joined when he was ten years old. That’s the kind of man we used to accept as a grown-up romance hero. In The Empire Strikes Back, when Princess Leia says she loves him and he replies “I know,” I thought, oh, thanks a lot. I wrench open my guts in an extreme moment in front of our enemies and all you do is acknowledge it? Be frozen for a long time, Han Solo.

But I forgave him soon enough, when as Deckard in Blade Runner he tried to save the life of the replicant beauty he pushed around but also loved. His Indiana Jones persona was far less emotionally involved with women, and it showed. But then, Indiana Jones was a grown-up version of the old Saturday afternoon movie serials aimed at young boys. They certainly didn’t want any icky romantic feelings in their adventures. So he was pushing me away all during the years he was drawing me in.

Witness, a movie that was a tense thriller rather than a romance, ironically showed Harrison Ford at the height of both his romantic powers and his romantic repression. He and his Amish love mostly gaze at each other. It’s a doomed attraction and they both know it. But Ford had figured out how to show enough love and longing in his gaze, and acclaimed Shakespearean actress-to-be Kelly McGillis was a beautiful object of desire. It’s mesmerizing even today.

Harrison Ford has flirted with romance since then, most notably in Working Girl. As a Wall Street exec he is both sympathetic and sweet to Melanie Griffith’s ambitious but insecure gal with moxie. I briefly adored Sabrina, a flop remake that was nevertheless quite convincing at moments. I liked it so much I went out and bought the tape and played the few intense scenes over and over. Harrison Ford’s later attempts to be romantic, such as Six Days, Seven Nights and Random Hearts, seemed unconvincing. I think audiences were more in love with his action hero hijinks all along. Of course, Anne Heche being a declared lesbian at the time that Six Days, Seven Nights came out did not help make the romance in that movie convincing. Even if actors know the difference between their roles and their real lives, we the audience tend not to. Still, my fascination with Harrison Ford as a romantic lead didn’t lessen until the millenium was nearly upon us. Finally it occurred to me that he always was more credible when he had little to say and do about love. I crossed him off my list of movie hotties.

But I had always wanted to see Harrison Ford in the World War II romance, Hanover Street, that he did early in his career. It sounded like just the kind of modest little romance that might be wonderful. I finally rented it, and oh, was I sorry. The passage of time has not been kind to this movie with its 1979 hair and clothing that supposedly takes place in London in the 1940s. The heroine’s exceedingly heavy eye makeup is always getting in the way. Harrison Ford doesn’t have the makeup problem, but what he does have is an utter inability to make himself believable as a man in love with this woman. Oh, he says all the right things. But they sound hollow.

Why? Not really the fault of the actors so much as of the script. If the writer/director (call him an auteur, but call it a mistake) had bothered to create fully rounded characters before throwing them into a romantic clinch at the end of the very first scene, some of the relationship would have been plausible. Both main characters are blank slates emotionally and remain so. It’s too much work for the audience to imagine feelings and personalities that the actors have not conveyed. Harrison Ford is a pilot from Chicago. And we know nothing else about him. He behaves like a wiseass in briefings, but we don’t know why. We don’t know why he falls in love at the very moment the movie opens, during a rude power play with Lesley-Anne Down on the street. And why does she succumb to his advances? Happy marriages are a sealed unit, so something is wrong in her marriage, and nobody is talking about it. Christopher Plummer plays the husband and he’s the most convincing actor in the movie. I actually winced away from the bedroom scenes between Harrison Ford and Lesley-Anne Down. I felt I did not know these people and did not want to see them having sex. Especially adulterous sex, once we learn that she has a loving husband and an adorable little girl. Oh, phooey. This is not the stuff of romantic fantasy. Maybe it was in the past, when people were more trapped in marriage. But with divorce freely available today and careers for women finally happening, this heroine’s passivity and yet her lack of honor grate. This movie is a tarnished fairy tale with a hollow core. Probably its best moment is when Ford’s character renounces his lover to send her back to her husband, with whom he has formed a comrades-in-action bond. But it’s spoiled by all the mascara running down Lesley-Anne Down’s face.

If anything could have killed my long-held passion for Harrison Ford, it was Hanover Street. On the other hand, I was already over him by the time I finally caught up with this stinker. But here’s my current worry. Harrison Ford has a big movie coming out this summer, the trumpeted last in the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He’s in his middle sixties now and showing his age, and my concern is that his longtime audience has completely unrealistic expectations. Are we expecting him to still be young? The baby boom isn’t going into old age gently. And Harrison Ford is from the tail end of the generation prior to it (born in 1942), even older than the baby boom. Is all his whip-cracking going to seem like the behavior of a geezer? We want too much from our fantasy figures. So me being over him is perhaps just another stupid fan behavior, too. Maybe that accounts for his sarcastic attitude all along.

Old Guy, Young Girl, Ick

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:44:00 +0000

We just don’t see that kind of romance anymore, do we? The ones with 36-year-old heroes and 17-year-old heroines? (Okay, maybe we still do in historical romances. It’s been a long time since I read any, so let me know.) I remember that as the age difference in Dr. Syn, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, a novel based on Russell Thorndike’s smuggler character. I was totally grossed out at the very idea of a teenager being with an old guy like that. Patrick McGoohan’s portrayal of the character for Disney made it more palatable, since he was young and handsome, not the implied old codger of 36. Then I learned that it used to be common for men to spend their youth making a place in the world, and only later look to marry. When they did, they chose the young, fresh-faced girls. Most of the older women were already married, and the rest were already losing their teeth. Also, girls were considered far more biddable. A widow might have money and property, but she also had a mind of her own by then.

The cover of My Love, My Enemy (classic romance title!) by Jan Cox Speas depicts a grown woman and a rather dour man. But this story is about a spunky teenaged heroine who has a romance with a grown man, thirtyish at least, during the Regency period. And it’s actually a rather light-hearted tale, well worth checking out in used book stores. True, the hero talks more sense to her father than he does to the heroine. But that was the historical reality, and it also was common enough in contemporary romances not so long ago. Today we don’t see that kind of marriage much in our culture or in romances. Girls have better things to do than just hang around the house waiting for a daddy figure to show up. Parents send them to college and help launch them into careers, not into complete economic dependency on an older man.

Women still do marry significantly older men, but usually it’s a trophy wife situation or a marriage of elderly people who happen to have a big age gap. Neither situation is typically seen in romances today, although they may show up in mainstream bestseller fiction. The fact that nobody writes or publishes such themes as romances suggests that they simply are not a fantasy most women hold. They may fantasize about wealth and good looks, but part of the package is also youth, or at the very least, sexy maturity. There have been many romantic suspense stories involving hard-bitten cops and serious-about-their-career female DAs, and retired secret agents and scientists, and the like, none of whom are exactly young anymore. But a big age gap is rare. And a hero over age 50 is rare unless the heroine is nearly the same age.

In real life, although most teenage girls in our country are not being sold into marriage with much-older men anymore, plenty are having sex (and babies) with boys their own age or a few significant years older. (That’s another unequal situation, though slightly less icky since both people involved are often below the age of consent.) What we don’t see are a lot of teen marriages or teen love relationships that continue into adulthood, or fictional depictions of same. We see serial relationships instead. And while there are some teenage romance novels, they don’t generally end in marriage. We definitely don’t have contemporary romances aimed at adults anymore that feature teenage heroines. In romances written for adult women today, the heroines are in their twenties or even their thirties, and sometimes older.

But the topic of teenage love is not ignored. The reunion storyline is based on a frustrated teenage relationship that comes to fruition when the hero and hero meet up as adults. Typically, the heroine was a lovestruck teen and the hero was just old enough to have scruples about getting involved. He either attempted to discourage a relationship, or refused one that she unwisely tried to force, or he managed to completely disguise his own interest in her through outright hostility. Years later, meeting as adults, none of these issues apply, and they can finally act on their sexual attraction as well as explore who they are as people in a way their mental inequality did not allow before. Even so, they are never far apart in chronological age, only in experience and maturity when they first met.

Another version of a teenage love in adult romances today this is the story that pivots on memories of a prom night consummation of a teenage romance. After prom night, as the characters recall once they meet again, they broke up or were parted. But they had been age equals at the time, and it was their youth and their divergent paths that usually parted them. (Also meddling or downright hostile relatives.) By the time they meet again, they’re both mature enough to recognize that they hadn’t been ready for marriage at age 18. Again, these romances all take place between equals in maturity, not between an adult man and a teenage girl.

Even when heroines today are marrying very rich men in otherwise extremely unequal matches such as The Tycoon’s Bartered Bride (I made that one up) and contemporary romances of that ilk, the hero and heroine have only a small age difference. They may be separated by life experience, cultural differences, and wealth and power, but the worldly hero isn’t taking advantage of the innocence of a young, inexperienced girl. Romance heroines today mostly are adult women. No more old guy, young girl, ick.

Love Potion Number Nine

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:11:00 +0000

The romantic tale of Tristan and Isolde dates to the 11th century and exists in many versions. The basic situation is that aged King Mark sends his nephew, Sir Tristan, to fetch the king’s bride, Princess Isolde. And on the ship back to Mark’s kingdom, the two young people fall in love and become lovers.

But that’s not really what happens, according to the centuries of this story’s retelling. The key to the Tristan and Isolde love story is the love potion that Isolde’s servant gives them. It is the reason they become deaf to honor and to duty. The love potion makes them betray others, and also makes their love so strong that no arguments of common sense can penetrate it. The story continues with Isolde marrying King Mark yet trysting secretly with Tristan. Of course the lovers get caught. It doesn’t end happily.

The story we know best today is that of the opera version by Richard Wagner, “Tristan und Isolde,” based on a 19th century German retelling. At the beginning, Isolde vengefully wants to poison Tristan for having killed her betrothed. She demands that he drink a potion that she also drinks. And both of them believe it will kill them. Instead, her servant has substituted a love potion. It unleashes their mad passion, a passion so consuming that they cannot contemplate a life without it. To them, love is life, and love is death. Love is both night and day, all of light and all of darkness. It’s amazing. Wagner knew what he was doing when he created the mystical, moving music that tells this intensely romantic story. It can’t be called a tragedy when the lovers achieve an apotheosis that is so intense.

Of course I went home on a high from seeing this opera (inexpensively at a convenient simulcast to a movie theater in hi-def), and my significant other said the equivalent of “Bah, humbug!” He thinks that a romance in which the love happens because of a love potion is no romance at all. But I disagree with him. I think he is being too literal. When the tale of Tristan and Isolde was a big deal, 900 years ago and thereafter, the concept of individual free will didn’t really exist. People were born into a hierarchy, and they knew they had duties to perform. And beyond that, whatever inchoate urgings they had were kept to themselves. Maybe never even examined. It’s not that people were lacking in a desire to love, or in an ability to love. They just didn’t have a way to think about love, a path, if you will, for their thoughts and feelings.

So what’s really happening in Tristan und Isolde is that the love potion is made the symbol of emotions for which the characters don’t know how to take responsibility. Today, careless people mess up their love lives and irresponsibly shrug and say “It just happened.” But almost a millennium ago, people said, in confusion and amazement, “It was a potion,” or “It was witchcraft.” They had no other way to explain why they were impelled to turn their backs on honor and duty in the name of love.

Honor and duty, especially family duty or duty to an overlord, have ruled society for far longer than free will has. Today, most of us live our lives believing we have free will, often in spite of evidence that we are trapped in many ways. One of the reasons that romances retain eternal relevance to the human condition is that they encapsulate some of the most irrational, inconvenient, impractical, and downright suicidal yearnings of which men and woman are capable. It’s crazy for Tristan and Isolde to be in love and to act on their love. But they simply cannot resist the ineffable pull to one another. Tristan’s last words are of his endless yearning for his beloved. Even in death, there is peace for them because they will be together, inseparably in love.

I don’t care if it was a love potion that started it. This is love.

Mr. Darcy, Perennial Romance Hero

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:43:00 +0000

I finally broke down and watched the British miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice. On romance blogs, people are always sighing over Colin Firth, the actor who played Mr. Darcy in the series. Of course, my own prior knowledge of Colin Firth comes from seeing him wear that hideous Christmas reindeer sweater in the movie version of Bridget Jones’ Diary. And I can’t get the stupid reindeer out of my head. But now I understand about Firth’s Darcy. He’s handsome in that lush, curly-haired manner that is so much the epitome of romance novels.

In a prior movie version in 1940, Laurence Oliver did a wonderful turn as an extremely genteel yet manly Darcy opposite Greer Garson, quite civilized and restrained. I’ve always thought that Olivier was extremely handsome and sensitive looking, just perfect to play Darcy. But thinking about his version of Darcy, I realized that it is missing the genuine male mulishness that Colin Firth manages to convey. And mulishness is really what Darcy is all about.

Darcy is the annoying guest who shows up at the party but is above being pleased. He makes it clear that he’s not having a good time, but still he hangs around, a visible downer to others. Darcy is in fact typical of many young men who act like silent boors in social situations where there is no woman present with whom they want to have sex. (I know; that’s a rather crude and cynical statement. But true, I believe.) Darcy can’t be bothered to do his share to oil the social waters. He wanders around the fringes of the party instead. The heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, overhears his too-loud, slighting estimation of her lack of appeal—the 19th century version of “No, I wouldn’t do her,” although couched in polite language. She spends most of the rest of the story resenting his attitude, and rightly so. It’s bad enough not to be invited to dance. It’s worse to be both dismissed and insulted by a stranger without ever having exchanged a word with him.

But I’ve noticed that—at least in romances—when a woman meets a very handsome, rich young man who is also insufferably arrogant, she doesn’t just forget about him. She wants to make him change his mind about her. I’m not so sure about the guy wearing the reindeer sweater, but Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy does inspire that kind of female aggression. And that’s the secret of his appeal. He makes few overt moves. But he’s around, and he’s watching, and he won’t reveal what he’s thinking or feeling. Isn’t that just like a typical man!? How horrid and frustrating. And what a shock when he does open up and he admits that he’s in love with Elizabeth despite all her vulgar relatives and her personal lack of fortune!

Pride and Prejudice is most convincing when Elizabeth Bennet tells off Darcy. She says out loud the kinds of things that Jane Austen herself wasn’t likely to be able to say out loud to the young men who dismissed and ignored her because of lack of looks or of fortune. And where Pride and Prejudice is most contrived is where Jane Austen gives Elizabeth and Darcy a second chance despite their hostile and openly expressed opinions of each other. Because in real life, they would never have met again. Or worse, if they had, he would never have broached the marriage topic again, and she would never have dared to reopen it. But in a romance, the mulish, unobtainable, handsome, and rich hero not only falls for the poor but charming heroine, and gets told off by her, he comes back for more as soon as he sees her again. In Pride and Prejudice, this happens via a contrivance so thin as to be the kind of situation modern editors would immediately reject. Elizabeth just happens to be touring his mansion and he just happens to show up there. Oh, come on. But that’s how they meet again and how he comes to do her such a service that her whole opinion of him changes. Not just her attraction to him, which was present from the moment they met despite her denials, but her estimation of him as a man.

So in the end, despite Darcy’s mulish manners in company, he proves that he’s a hero. And he and Elizabeth Bennet marry and live happily ever after, even though he probably still has very little to say much of the time. Kind of like a stereotypical real-life husband, come to think of it. Which may account for the story's long-lasting appeal. The attractive, unknown man becomes the known, and his faults become a minor issue because he is revealed as a hero after all. Many of us marry men because we see their noble hearts. Like Darcy's.

Romance with a Message

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:06:00 +0000

Maybe you think that the romances we all consume are completely without any agenda other than boy meets girl. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are plenty of social messages in romances. Probably the most visible message in recent years is about women who are in abusive relationships or running from them. Wife-beating, as it used to be called, is an historically longstanding behavior. It is only in the last quarter century that our culture has cried out to stop it by promoting a zero tolerance reaction to it. As mentioned in a previous post, Jealousy, even as late as the 1970s, spousal abuse was something that wives (the chief sufferers) were supposed to accept without complaint. No more, and along with all the public discussion of it today, there are scores of romances that specifically encourage women to recognize and flee abusive situations.

But what about other social messages? By now it is well known that romances in the 1950s promoted the idea that a woman’s place was the home. Career girl romances always ended with the young woman quitting to get married. And any woman with an actual talent, such as art or music or dance, was forced to give it up. There was no acceptance of a heroine who wanted to keep on dancing, or playing the piano for anyone but her husband and children. Today’s romances have long since finished fighting the career wars. It’s not even an issue anymore, but it was the major issue in romances of the late 1970s and early 1980s. And guess who won?

You might think that romances are written merely to entertain, and the writers just use socially relevant themes as part of being current. And of course that is true. But all writers hold certain personal beliefs that inevitably come through in their stories. And at least some writers actively craft their stories to showcase their beliefs. Today, we attend classic plays such as George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” and “Pygmalion” for sheer entertainment, as period pieces, even. They’re extremely witty and amusing. When we go to “My Fair Lady,” the musical version of “Pygmalion,” we laugh at Henry Higgins’ theories about how an educated tone of voice determined class perception in Edwardian England. But Shaw was a founder of the Fabian Socialists, and he was deliberately crafting his comedic and romantic social tangles of plays believing that playwriting was “the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world.”

And talking about romances with an agenda, there’s the entire panoply of evangelical Christian romances being published today specifically with a religious message. They have a crucial requirement: The success of the romantic relationship must hinge on the born-again Christian faith of the protagonists. A roundup of the publishers’ guidelines for writers of these books makes this clear. Yes, the suppression of sexual behavior is extremely important to these romances. Even kissing must not be portrayed as passionate in carnal detail. But the sexual elements take a back seat to the issue of religious faith. It’s not enough to be a practicing Episcopalian or Roman Catholic (and forget being Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist) in these romances. Evangelism is viewed as the only true Christianity, and Christianity as the only true religion. That’s quite a burden to put on a romance.

The grande dame of such romances of the 20th century was Grace Livingston Hill. In the dozens of books she wrote, she covered many situations that related to happiness with Christianity, always drawing the line very distinctly. If the hero or heroine’s love was not a true Christian by her definition, they were as damned as Satan (they might even be Satan) and must be rejected until they repented and came to the fold. There was no room for compromise, or for opposing views of the proper relationship to God. As much as romances have changed over the years, this is still the agenda of evangelical Christian romances.

Ironically, the next most frequent religion covered in any detail in romances is wicca. Yes, wicca, the nature-based religion whose practitioners hold a wide variety of beliefs, sometimes including paganism, priestesses dancing around in the nude, moon goddess worship, and just about anything any sect happens to want. Many fantasy and paranormal romances include wicca elements or characters, often as misunderstood, flaky, or outcast figures, but sometimes as establishment figures in fantasy worlds. But there aren’t any major publishers putting out entire lines of wicca romances. Any proseletyzing for wicca is on an author-by-author basis. Generally, the non-wicca hero or heroine is not required to join a coven by the story’s end in order to win the true love. But learning to respect a different religious view of the world is often a significant element of such stories.

Are there other messages in the romances you’re reading today? Of course. Even a book about The Tycoon’s Pregnant Mistress promotes the idea that money is power, and yet that true love linked to middle class morality can conquer tremendous worldly inequities. You don’t have to look for the message behind every romance you read. But it’s there.