Secondary Research Book Extracts

Extracts from Secondary Book Research

Terms of Endearment Edited by Peter William Evans and Celestino Deleyto

Theory - Bourgeois Feminism
‘Interestingly enough, Rowe’s ‘women on top’ syndrome echoes, in caricatured or magnified form, the slogan ‘woman at the top’ which integrates goals and aspirations of bourgeois feminism. In political terms, bourgeois feminism asserts that women, if really want to, and try hard enough, can make it to the top. Basically, this political strand of feminism simply seeks a larger share of social power for women. In practice, bourgeois feminism accepts the world as it is, in other words, what men actually do is seen as the norm, which usually means that from this ideological viewpoint, the real basis of power relations between the sexes remains concealed.’

Generic Conventions
‘Marriage or some promise of a permanent relationship between the protagonists has traditionally consisted the happy ending of romantic comedy’

‘Even though like all mainstream cinema, the genre is ultimately conservative, it does manage to give expression to the contradictory nature of women’s desires concerning romantic love and the relations between the sexes, reminding us of the doubleness of all cultural forms, the intermingling of ideological and utopian within them.’

‘Romantic comedies tend to focus on either the male and female protagonists as the main subject of the process of learning.’

I Love You But… By Cherry Potter

Costume grants representational for both men and women in the romantic comedy genre – extract in which writer speaks about Four Weddings and a Funeral (Directed by Mike Newell, starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell)

‘Charles is looking particularly soft in a loose floral patterned shirt and baggy shorts; Carrie’s wearing a man’s check shirt and casual trousers. As if to emphasize even further how, in life as well as in fashion, the gender differences appear to be increasingly overlapping, over coffee Carrie lists all 33 of the men she has slept with in her life. She rates each of them according to their sexual performance…’
‘So the new woman of the nineties knows what she wants and she wants everything. Not only has she moved into the traditionally masculine territory of promiscuity but she also insists on the traditional wife’s right to faithfulness. Could this be one of the reasons why men line Charles appear to have retreated to a position of passive bewilderment?’