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In
Guilty Pleasures, Alice Guilluy examines the reception of contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy by European audiences. She offers a new look at the romantic comedy genre through a qualitative study of its consumption by actual audiences. In doing so, she attempts to challenge traditional critiques of the genre as trite "escapism" at best, and dangerous "guilty pleasure" at worst. Despite this cultural anxiety, little work has been done on the genre's real audiences. Guilluy addresses this gap by presenting the results of a major qualitative study of the genre's reception, based on interview research with rom-com viewers in Britain, France and Germany, focusing on
Sweet Home Alabama (2002, dir. Andy Tennant). Throughout the interviews, participants attempted to distance themselves from what they described as the "typical" rom-com viewer: the uneducated, gullible, overly emotional (American) woman. Guilluy calls this fantasy figure the "phantom spectatrix". Guilluy complements this with a critical examination of the press reviews of the 20 biggest-grossing rom-coms at the worldwide box-office in order to contextualise the findings of her audience research.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Transcription Conventions
Series Editors' Foreword
Introduction: 'Lights, action. and pure treacle'
1. 'Health warning: high-sugar content': The Rom-com and the Critics
2. 'The pudding works splendidly': Genre, Emotions and Pleasure
3. 'Candy-pink cage?' Gender, Feminism and the Phantom Viewer
4. 'Chomping on a burger with a glass of coke': the Americanness of Romantic Comedy
Conclusion: 'Cinder-fuckin'-rella'
Endnotes
Works Cited
Appendix 1: Semi-Structured Interview Questions
Appendix 2: Participant Tables
Appendix 3: Sweet Home Alabama Synopsis
Index
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Alice Guilluy is the MA Deputy Programme Leader at MetFilm School. She has published articles in The Bulletin of Sociological Methodology and in the edited collections Love Across the Atlantic (2019) and After Happily Ever After: Romantic Comedy in the Post Romantic Age (2021). She tweets @romcomresearch.
Zusammenfassung
In Guilty Pleasures, Alice Guilluy examines the reception of contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy by European audiences. She offers a new look at the romantic comedy genre through a qualitative study of its consumption by actual audiences. In doing so, she attempts to challenge traditional critiques of the genre as trite “escapism” at best, and dangerous “guilty pleasure” at worst. Despite this cultural anxiety, little work has been done on the genre’s real audiences. Guilluy addresses this gap by presenting the results of a major qualitative study of the genre’s reception, based on interview research with rom-com viewers in Britain, France and Germany, focusing on Sweet Home Alabama (2002, dir. Andy Tennant). Throughout the interviews, participants attempted to distance themselves from what they described as the “typical” rom-com viewer: the uneducated, gullible, overly emotional (American) woman. Guilluy calls this fantasy figure the “phantom spectatrix”. Guilluy complements this with a critical examination of the press reviews of the 20 biggest-grossing rom-coms at the worldwide box-office in order to contextualise the findings of her audience research.
Vorwort
Examines the intersection of gender and cultural politics in the reception of contemporary romantic comedy.
Zusatztext
Guilty Pleasures will appeal to a very particular range of readers, though its niche field of interest also allows for analytical precision. Those who study the rom-com as a genre will benefit from the fresh outlook on how these films are appreciated on the fringes of fan culture. Additionally, scholars focused on European reception studies will enjoy Guilluy’s deft articulation of how different European audiences respond to the comedy stylings of contemporary Hollywood.
