50 pages 1 hour read

Romantic Comedy

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Background

Cultural Context: The Influence of Saturday Night Live

Romantic Comedy’s setting is inspired by the cultural phenomenon Saturday Night Live, a live sketch-comedy show that airs every week on Saturday night.

First introduced in 1975 by legendary producer Lorne Michaels, SNL has been a cultural influencer in America for decades, creating cultural commentary on politics, pop culture, and celebrity and launching numerous writers and actors to fame.

The show Sally writes for, The Night Owls, is modeled after SNL. Like SNL, The Night Owls is known by its abbreviated form, TNO, is filmed live every week with a new celebrity host and musical guest, and requires actors and writers to work round-the-clock during the week to make the live show happen. In the novel, the Lorne Michaels figure, producer extraordinaire, is Nigel, who, like Michaels, is notoriously mysterious and deeply supportive of his cast and team of writers. Comedy as an industry and professional culture is traditionally a very male space; a high percentage of stand-up comedians and comedy writers are men. Female comedy writers like Sally must work twice as hard to prove themselves among the men in their workplaces. SNL has launched the careers of men like Adam Sandler, Seth Meyers, John Mulaney, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell, and Eddie Murphy, whereas far fewer female stars (such as Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Maya Rudolph) have become iconic and culturally influential in the same way. Women in comedy still deal with sexist ideas that women are not funny or are hypersensitive and easily offended by male comedy. Sittenfeld sets her story amid the systemic sexism of professional comedy and uses it to comment on dating practices as well.

Sally’s Danny Horst Rule is also inspired by the real-life couples that came out of SNL. Oscar-nominated actress Scarlett Johansson married SNL head writer Colin Jost after meeting him on her weeklong stint as guest host; the mega-popstar Ariana Grande dated SNL comedian Pete Davidson after she hosted the show; and Oscar-nominated actress Emma Stone married SNL writer Dave McCary after her hosting gig—all examples of the Danny Horst Rule, in which men notable for their sense of humor found relationships with some of America’s most famous and beautiful superstars. There are no known examples of a celebrity coupling between a famous male host and a less famous female writer or actress on SNL.

Like Saturday Night Live, The Night Owls provides a public place for a comedy writer’s sketches, but the names of comedy writers are often unknown, eclipsed by the actors of SNL, who become household names, and the famous celebrities who host the show. Sally has had some sketches go viral, becoming a part of America’s cultural consciousness, but her fans are limited to a niche group of comedy lovers. This novel explores the inner workings of a show like SNL, in which a group of intelligent comedy writers conduct a lot of the creative work that makes SNL (TNO) successful without individual recognition.

Literary Context: Romance and the Romantic Comedy

Sittenfeld titles her novel Romantic Comedy because the novel itself is a structural map of the romantic-comedy genre—a map she uses to break new ground in the genre itself. While Sittenfeld adheres to many of the tropes of the romantic comedy, she also comments on and subtly subverts them. First, the novel focuses on a female protagonist, appealing to the romantic-comedy genre’s traditionally female audience. Often, even when a romantic comedy’s heroine is presented as “average,” she’s still not relatable to everyday women, but in more contemporary romantic comedies, writers and producers present women with more updated sensibilities and perspectives—for example, women who are more focused on self-actualization than on finding a husband. However, even these more updated heroines inevitably end up finding true happiness in romantic relationships with men, reifying the idea that a woman’s desire for love and companionship will always be primary. Sittenfeld organizes her plot and characters to dissect and question these tropes through a feminist lens.

In a traditional romantic comedy, the heroine often possess some quality that renders her “unlovable.” For example, in the hit romantic-comedy film Bridget Jones’s Diary, the heroine, Bridget Jones, is considered too overweight to be attractive. And yet two handsome and successful men fight for her attention. Similarly, Sally is presented as average-looking and witty, making her unattractive to superficial men who want a woman who is better looking yet slightly less intelligent than they are.

Crucially, a romantic comedy presents a man of higher status in both conventional beauty and wealth, who looks past the woman’s insecurities and proves that men are less superficial than the heroine has previously experienced. Thus, the man and the woman in a straight romantic comedy become exceptions to the rule. For example, in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a woman portrayed as frumpy and forlorn falls in love with a handsome teacher who is good, kind, and embracing of her conservative Greek family. In Romantic Comedy, Noah Brewster is good-looking, famous, and wealthy—all archetypically desirable traits—but Noah’s true appeal for Sally actually comes from his vulnerability and genuine desire for companionship.

In romantic comedies, love can never come easily, and there must be a point when all seems lost and the lovers get a second chance to make it work. There must be conflict that the couple works through and obstacles they overcome in order to fall in love. For Noah and Sally, Sally’s insecurities and Noah’s overwhelming fame are obstacles they overcome to become partners in life and love. They get a second chance at love after their awkward parting in 2018, when Noah reaches out to her in 2020. The second-chance trope of the romantic comedy implies that there is something destined or unique about the couple in question. Despite all odds, they come together again and learn from their past mistakes to arrive at their happy ending.

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