All Romantic Comedies Are the Same

 Even before the days of Netflix, the niche market for romantic comedies was as abundant as it continues to be today. Romantic comedies are an essential movie genre that attract millions of viewers. With its reliable storylines and reaffirmations about the expectations we should have of love, the basic structure for romantic comedies has not changed significantly with the passage of time and its criticisms have not either. 

Long before the days of modern streaming platforms that can give you several dozen selections to choose from within a very specific niche genre, people had already began to accuse this genre of standardization. Specifically, Adorno and Horkheimer were particularly ahead of the times when they made the assessment in the 1940's that the modern culture industry would be reduced to producing safe, standardized products that are aimed at the ever-demanding capitalist consumer culture. Being members of the Frankfurt School, they both were critical of the notion of a "culture industry" that was taking place in capitalist societies. They argued that people feel like they are required to spend money on leisure items in order to feel a sense of happiness. The capitalist culture industry encourages this by conditioning the public with familiar plot-structures; in doing so, the public is encouraged to keep watching similar movies because the familiarity will be attractive. Since the viewer will know more or less what to expect from a film based on its genre, the characteristics will continue to be the same for future romantic comedies. 

Adorno and Horkheimer called that sense of consuming the same content"pre-digest". Or in other terms: pseudo-individualization. Romantic comedies, for example, have some very basic characteristics at their core. Many viewers don't realize that the same basic structure is consistent across all romantic comedies, regardless of the one they are watching. Take these three for example:

These three romantic comedies are each from different decades (1990s, 2000s, 2010s). And yet the effects of standardization are evident just from their movie posters: the main actors in the movies are often high-profile Hollywood celebrities that the public is already familiar with to some extent (some become famous after the fact). Additionally, in the movie poster they often make similar poses: notice that in every case they are either facing each other or back-to-back in some precarious position. More than just visuals, the structure of the plot is more or less consistent with the clichés of romantic comedies: 

Kissing at the very end (2/3 of the up-top movies fall into this category)

The plot ends with the right person being there the entire time (all three)

The Part where they list everything they like about the other person (2/3)

The Wedding being interrupted (1/3) (but a common one)

There is some sort of agreement or bet that sets the plot in motion between the two that will fall in love later (all three)

Polar opposites fall for each other (2/3)

The epic love confession that takes place in public (2/3)

You can come up with more movies for each one of these clichés than clichés for movies. This is in keeping with what Adorno and Horkheimer tried to warn about the culture industry. Many genres, types of music or media all share a specific formula. To the credit of movie makers and artists, the public has been conditioned to be expect the same basic material. That is what allows us to identify romantic comedies as such. We know that a romantic comedy must have: a boy meeting a girl (or vice-versa), they slowly fall in love over the course of the movie, their witty but helpful friends often support the plot with the comedic relief, they eventually face and overcome some sort of obstacle, and end up together in the end. You cannot categorize a romantic comedy as such if it does not follow this basic formula. You can, however, more or less guess what is going to occur in a film based on that formula. 

This is the ultimate irony that Adorno and Horkheimer were trying to emphasize: the public is essentially aware of what is going to occur but is conditioned to go to a movie theatre (or more recently) stream them when Netflix comes out with a new one. As they stated in their essay:

"It does so by representing “average” life for purposes of pure entertainment or distraction as seductively and realistically as possible"