Ah, the modern fairytale. We have all seen it at one point or another—a film about a single and successful female in her early thirties with a high-powered career who seems to find success in all of her endeavors—other than love. It is the modern fairytale formula in which our heroine undergoes a powerful transformation, all with the help of a dreamy yet stubborn costar.
Here’s how the story goes: We meet our fashionable, well-heeled protagonist as she rushes around in the morning, latte in hand, on her way to work. At her job, she holds an established if not under-appreciated position in which she can express her wonderfully feminine creativity in a fast-paced environment. Think wedding planner, fashion designer, home stager, interior decorator, magazine columnist, television personality or gallery owner.
The story establishes that although she seems to have it all (fancy clothes, fancy apartment, fancy job), she is still missing the man of her dreams; if only she could pencil in the time to meet him. But find him she does. Enter our ruggedly handsome and yet pestering costar, someone with whom our heroine is obliged to work due to unavoidable outside circumstances. The two are forced together by a series of unlikely circumstances and, as much as she tries to fight it, there is strong chemistry between them. They of course fall in love and the tale climaxes when one finds out that the other is not who he or she says they are. The offending party runs to find their forlorn counterpart at an airport and they patch it up. Cue happily-ever-after-sequence.
Not to forget the subtle variations on this classic formula. Sometimes she already has her man–a fabulously wealthy fiancé that she has convinced herself she loves (remember “Leap Year” and “Sweet Home Alabama”?) But we, the audience, know better. She will forsake stock options and a house in the Hamptons to be with her dream man who, hopefully, has a cute European accent. This is the twenty-first century after all; she can fork over her own half of the mortgage, thank you very much.
Even more fascinating is the transformation our contemporary Cinderella must undergo in order to get the guy. She must ditch her serious corporate up-do in favor of a more relaxed and less career-oriented down-do. She learns to live with a little dirty laundry and holds her temper if her rugged costar forgets to put the seat down.
The surge of these films in the past five to ten years is astonishing. Off the top of my head, I can name almost a dozen: “Leap Year,” “When in Rome,” “The Wedding Planner,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “The Ugly Truth,” “The Holiday,” “Knocked Up,” and “The Proposal.” The pattern is undeniable. What comes next is the question, “What does this say about us?”
In many ways, entertainment is one of the best hallmarks of culture; it defines and describes the tastes of a given period and allows us to better understand the mood of an era. So what is the moral of all these stories?
Are we trying to tell ourselves that women spend too much time on their careers and not enough time on themselves? Have we lost balance and lost touch? Is the best anecdote to a corporate woman’s bossiness a man?
Call me crazy, but it all seems pretty Victorian to me, an age in which the cure for hysteria was, appropriately enough, a hysterectomy.
I can be a hopeless romantic, and I enjoy chick flicks with cute clothes and cute costars as much as the next twenty-something, but I do hope that a century down the road historians will not measure our social and cultural climate by the latest Katherine Heigl film.
Rebecca Quinn is a junior art history, Spanish, and French triple major. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].
