Meta-meta: Watching the Modern Romance
Feb. 20th, 2019 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aly22Most of the meta pieces I’ve read prior to Reading the Romance had been written like blog posts on social media platforms. Janice Radway, however, wrote her analysis on romantic fiction in a style more akin to that of a scientific journal. It could be argued that her stylistic choice was a reflection of the writing in her time, but her academic, slightly more detached tone has allowed her to remain relatively impartial. Like how Dorothy Evans helped her customers pick their next romance novels, Radway avoided forcing her own opinions upon the reader by laying out her observations and asking the readers to draw their own conclusions.
Radway’s interviews with the Smithton women in the 1980’s provided me a rare window through time to gauge just how romance has evolve over the decades. One of the women she interviewed claimed that she enjoyed romances as they “are not depressing and very seldom leave you feeling sad inside,” and could be used as a means of escape from life (though she and others preferred not to use the exact word “escape”).
Modern romances tend to lean more on evoking powerful emotions other than just happiness. At the end of “Surprise” and “Innocence” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s relationship with Angel/Angelus did not end as happily as it would’ve in the traditional romance. I was left with a mind full of “what ifs?” and “if only’s” and another a bajillion ways Buffy and Angel could have had a “happily ever after”, despite not being familiar with the characters and their relationships at all. It was around then I decided that I needed to watch more, and proceeded to finish the next three assigned episodes.
The modern romance seems to have an opposite effect on us viewers. While the women of Radway’s time needed something to brighten their lives, we look instead to something to make us feel. We laugh with our characters, we cry with our characters, and if they die or something terrible happens to them, then we cry a bit more and come back for more. That’s left me wondering: have our lives become so stable and unremarkable that we go looking for things to make us experience emotional turmoil? Or are we attracted to these stories because we find the circumstances of our own lives reflected in them? Honestly, I wouldn’t know either way.
Radway’s interviews with the Smithton women in the 1980’s provided me a rare window through time to gauge just how romance has evolve over the decades. One of the women she interviewed claimed that she enjoyed romances as they “are not depressing and very seldom leave you feeling sad inside,” and could be used as a means of escape from life (though she and others preferred not to use the exact word “escape”).
Modern romances tend to lean more on evoking powerful emotions other than just happiness. At the end of “Surprise” and “Innocence” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s relationship with Angel/Angelus did not end as happily as it would’ve in the traditional romance. I was left with a mind full of “what ifs?” and “if only’s” and another a bajillion ways Buffy and Angel could have had a “happily ever after”, despite not being familiar with the characters and their relationships at all. It was around then I decided that I needed to watch more, and proceeded to finish the next three assigned episodes.
The modern romance seems to have an opposite effect on us viewers. While the women of Radway’s time needed something to brighten their lives, we look instead to something to make us feel. We laugh with our characters, we cry with our characters, and if they die or something terrible happens to them, then we cry a bit more and come back for more. That’s left me wondering: have our lives become so stable and unremarkable that we go looking for things to make us experience emotional turmoil? Or are we attracted to these stories because we find the circumstances of our own lives reflected in them? Honestly, I wouldn’t know either way.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 06:32 pm (UTC)