Culture or Stereotypes? & In Defense of Romantic Comedies

Culture or Stereotypes?

When we watched the clip from the Chappelle's Show in class, I wondered whether percussion plays a large role in black culture.  For the rest of the day, I thought about whether my comment in class asserting that it does was perpetuating a stereotype. I knew, however that the idea of a black culture did exist because I recently read Hilton Als's new book White Girls which includes essays on black culture (it also includes a response to the Virginia Woolf essay "Shakespeare's Sister" in the voice of Richard Pryor's fictitious, porn-star sister), so I wondered where culture ends and stereotype begins.

When I got home, I immediately looked up "black culture" and found a Wikipedia page about it.  The music section of the page mentioned that percussion is a central element of historically and culturally black music.  I was relieved when I read this but was then confused about what stereotype was being made fun of in the clip.  I came to the conclusion that it was "black people are unable to resist a beat." I think this was lost on me while viewing the clip because I was unaware of that stereotype. Please comment if you have anything to add because I still do not feel completely sure I am correct and wonder what other people think.

In Defense of Romantic Comedies

Romantic comedy films are often trivialized as "rom-coms" or "chick-flicks," the cinematic equivalent of the pejorative "clit-lit."  Because these films are often female-centric or because the films are more geared toward "feminine" interests, they are dismissed by our patriarchal society.  This is not to say that everyone who dislikes romantic comedies is a misogynist, but I think that on a larger cultural level, it is a valid explanation.  People dismissive of these films often suggest that the films rely on the same tropes and structure; that they are generic.  It is important, however to recognize the difference between a film being generic and belonging to a genre and to question whether romantic comedies truly are more often generic than movies of other genres.

The difference reminds me of the literary "genre debate," which is about whether there is a significant difference between genre fiction and literary fiction.  In the more conservative view, genre fiction is lowbrow while literary fiction is highbrow; genre fiction is not art while literary fiction is; genre fiction is easily categorized while literary fiction defies categorization.  This definition leads to the dismissal of books that are easily categorized as mystery, romance, fantasy, queer, adventure, science fiction, or crime novels despite their individual merits.  This is hard to navigate because many great novels fit into these categories.  Pride and Prejudice is a canonical novel that is easily categorized as a romance novel.  Does that mean it is an example of genre fiction?  Most people would say it does not.  It seems to me that at its core the "genre fiction" discussed in opposition to literary fiction is not fiction that belongs to a genre but rather fiction that is generic.  Unfortunately, by using the word genre, literatis have created a stigma around what really is genre fiction: fiction that either is not based in reality or is not of interest to straight males.  

Here are some of my favorite romantic comedy films (or maybe more accurately, films that are at times both romantic and comedic):

• The Royal Tenenbaums
• Jules et Jim
• Harold and Maude
• Stolen Kisses
• Une Femme Est Une Femme
• Broadcast News
• The Lady Eve
• Annie Hall
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• Something Wild