54 pages • 1 hour read
Romantic Comedy
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Themes
Having It All
As with the other traditional romantic-comedy elements, Sittenfeld’s novel actively engages with the idea of a female protagonist in pursuit of having it all—love, career, happiness. Again, Sittenfeld is defining for the reader what a feminist romantic comedy looks like. In Romantic Comedy, the breakneck pace of the late-night comedy world is nuanced by an acknowledgment of the inherent misogyny of the industry itself. The central stakes of the story are raised through the lens of this reality. Sally is independent, self-sufficient, and driven, but her survival in the comedy world has come at a cost. Years of needing to neglect her love life to keep her head above water in an industry dominated by men, as well as the insecurities developed as a result of her immersion in that world, have made Sally closed off to the idea of love at all. The misogyny and discrimination she experiences require her to self-protectively arm herself against it, and she’s begun to use her job as an excuse not to get close with men she meets. The question of Sittenfeld’s novel isn’t simply whether women can have it all. Rather, she asks if Sally and other female comedy writers like her can overcome additional obstacles in an industry that wasn’t built for them; in other words, she explores whether they can achieve career success and equitable professional power while also making a loving romantic relationship work.
For Sally, answering this question requires acknowledging the reality of working and loving as a woman in the world. For women, time spent away from work may enhance their personal relationships but hurt career prospects, and vice versa. Traditionally, men achieve success in both personal and professional spheres simultaneously because the world is systemically and culturally built for them to do so. For women, there are myriad additional obstacles to navigate. Sittenfeld largely focuses on gender inequality in the scope of her story, but the intersection of gender with other marginalized identities such as race or class adds additional layers of discrimination and further complicates this landscape for women.
Sally gets her happy ending by the conclusion of the novel, which suggests that in Sittenfeld’s version of a romantic comedy, having it all also involves doing so on one’s own terms and by one’s own definition. Sally’s relationship with Noah gives her the space to explore her own desires—to fall in love, to transform her career, and to become the writer she wants to be. Sally has long been considering leaving TNO to pursue her dream of screenwriting, but the risk of leaving an established job is understandably frightening. Falling in love with Noah allows Sally to reframe her perceptions of herself and her job at TNO, which no longer serve her. At the same time, her restlessness and dissatisfaction at TNO prompts Sally to consider a relationship with Noah more seriously. By the end of the novel, Sally gets the guy and her dream job: She marries Noah, and her screenplay gets produced into a major motion picture. Looking at herself and her future through her own lens rather than that of her industry allows Sally to engage with what she truly wants.
Through Sittenfeld’s lens, the classic theme of a woman having it all is nuanced by an acknowledgment of the systemic external obstacles to her success and the energy required to battle the internalized effects of those obstacles. The result is a romantic comedy that utilizes its own classic tropes to highlight the very reality from which it traditionally provides an escape—and also offer a subversive sense of hope.
Female Desire and Its Relationship to Insecurity
Sittenfeld’s novel confronts the external misogyny that Sally (and all women) navigate every day and utilizes Sally’s internal perspective to acknowledge the effects of that misogyny on her own desire. The conflicted relationship between Sally’s desire and her insecurities is introduced as early as the prologue—Sally feels rage about the double standards of dateability in her workplace. She resentfully notes how the average-looking men she works with date and marry women of immense beauty and power, while the reverse never happens. Sally frames this perspective as solely social critique; she doesn’t yet recognize the ways her own self-image has been shaped by this reality, internalizing the misogyny of her workplace and critiquing herself for not measuring up to the physical and social standards to which women are held.
When the story begins, Sally rarely dates and prefers friends-with-benefits situations in which she can have sex with no strings attached. Sally tells herself that these “situationships” are all she needs when, in fact, she’s repressing her desire for something more meaningful because she’s convinced herself that men don’t find her attractive. Sally doesn’t find herself attractive, so she projects that insecurity onto others, holding tight to the belief that no man will truly appreciate her for her looks, her wit, or her intelligence. Essentially, she has subscribed to sexist notions of men’s superficiality and women’s levels of attractiveness. While the misogyny and societal double standards to which Sally is reacting are very real, she’s also using them as a shield to protect herself from the vulnerability of acting on her desire for romantic love.
Sally pushes Noah’s away in part because she senses that he’s attracted to her and is flirting with her. Allowing herself to trust her instincts means accepting that her understanding of the world and her place in it is incorrect. When Sally thinks Noah might kiss her, she sabotages the moment by insulting him. There’s a part of Sally that believes what Noah says about being attracted to her, but it’s safer to repress her desire by convincing herself that she’s out of Noah’s league. In doing so, she inadvertently dehumanizes Noah, denying him what she herself wants—to be accepted and loved for herself, on her own terms.
Sally is embarrassed by the paparazzo photos of her and Noah; she looks at the photo again and again, criticizing her own legs and reading the online comments that only fuel the negative feelings about her body. Some of Noah’s fans indicate that they support her relationship with him because dating someone as average as Sally makes Noah seem down-to-earth, a backhanded insult that Sally takes to heart. Other commenters are explicit about Noah’s ability to date any model he wants and critical of him settling for someone who looks like Sally. Sally’s insecurities are reinforced and exacerbated by the online hate. Sally’s character development is reliant on her being able to handle this social pressure without letting it break her. Sally arc ultimately involves learning to acknowledge the ways in which internalized misogyny has warped her self-image and sense of worth and held her back from expressing and pursuing her desires.
Celebrity and Its Impact on the Individual
As a writer at TNO, Sally’s perspective on celebrity is primarily formed by observing the way her male colleagues place value on and utilize fame to fuel their own success. The rejection Sally experienced from Elliot, who constantly sought proximity to celebrity in his personal and professional life, created a deep resentment and sense of inadequacy in her that eventually served as a kind of shield. She watches Elliot getting closer with Nigel, dating celebrities, and focusing all of his attention on the guest host. She sees the way Annabel teases her millions of social media followers with the details of her relationship with Danny and posts cryptic public messages about their potential breakups, fostering an on-again-off-again situation to generate drama and attention. For Danny, their relationship is much more intimate and private, but he must sacrifice his private self in order to exist in Annabel’s orbit.
Sittenfeld uses Noah’s character to explore the duality of a public celebrity image and the private person behind it—the fantasy and the reality. It’s important to Noah that his music resonates with his audience. As a songwriter, having an audience connect to his art validates him and affords him a deeply privileged lifestyle, but the version of him to the whom the audience feels connect is one that they themselves have created. The fantasy of him stays static even as the reality of him necessarily evolves and changes. The greater the distance between the two selves, the more grueling the task of synthesizing them becomes. The privilege Noah enjoys in his career is predicated on his ability to maintain the fantasy. He wears a wig because he’s known for his full head of hair, even though in reality he’s balding. His celebrity limits Noah’s relationship with himself and others—he can’t decide how he will look or what he’ll do without public scrutiny, and he’s necessarily wary of the people him. Many women have dated Noah to give their own careers a boost, leaving him constantly assessing the actions and motives others. For Noah, his connection with Sally is evidence he can still exist as and be loved for his private self, independent of the specter of his fame.
Sally is unimpressed by celebrity, but she is intimidated by it. She’s nervous about a relationship with Noah because she knows from watching Danny’s experience with Annabel that being in a relationship with a celebrity puts you in the crosshairs of public scrutiny. Sally falls in love with Noah but fears the cruelty of being picked apart by the public for being Noah’s girlfriend, triggering all of her worst insecurities about herself. Being with Noah means accepting him, the same way she will ultimately accept herself—by acknowledging that the public, fantasy version of him exists, just as she acknowledges the existence of her own insecurity—without it detracting from what is real and true between them.
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