American Cinema Post 7: American Comedy

The film genre known as comedy has many sub genres. One of these is the ever-present romantic comedy. In this genre, the prevailing theme of society versus the main character or characters can be found. There are many examples of how films address this larger issue. Two of these examples are integration and reforming the workplace.
When the issue of integration is faced in an American comedy it rarely is faced head-on in the form of the immigrant experience, but rather in a more abstract fashion where a character or characters assimilate to some society; either the society at large or a microcosm of society. It usually ends in the marriage of two dissimilar group/class/ethnicity/etc. members, symbolically signaling the end of the old perception of society and ushering in a new society. Examples of this can be seen in It Happened One Night and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. With the former film, the female lead is initially wed to a socialite whom she does not love. The marriage is shown as one without happiness. After she meets a less prestigious middle-class newspaper journalist, she falls in love and annuls her former marriage to marry the journalist. This ending is happy because they are in love and the audience accepts it because the social order has been broken to positive effect. In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the traditional Greek father does not wish her daughter to marry a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Eventually the two are married and her family learns to accept and appreciate him. Once again, the social and ethnic class divide has been bridged.
The second theme visible in many romantic comedies is that of the reforming of the workplace. This typically shows the struggles of lower on the corporate ladder employees versus the fat cats of the company. It also typically shows the struggles of women in the workplace, who traditionally have been restricted and continue to be so in the work place. An example of this is the film 9 to 5. In this film, female secretaries undercut their chauvinist, male bosses. The film recounts their struggle to undo the corruption that has prevailed in their workplace and celebrates their efforts. In the film Working Girl, the main character is a lower class secretary who, behind the back of her boss, works out a business deal with a competing company. By doing so, she assembles a team consisting of a diverse group of various socioeconomic class members that outdoes the old more hierarchical order in the workplace. This once again reinforces the idea that a highly stratified society is not ideal.