Love builds bridges: on the romantic comedy in transnational cinema

Last updated June 1, 2010

Image of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn on the set of Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938). See Kartina Richardson's short video essay on this film at her new audio commentary website Mirror.

Film Studies For Free's author sensibly decided, on balance, that it was probably better to stay at home and draft the below list of links to good quality, openly accessible, and disciplinarily-diverse, scholarly studies of the transnational, transhistorical, romantic comedy film mode, than to haul herself out (in the rain) to the cinema to see Sex and the City 2.

Enough said, probably, but if you think she has made the wrong choice, please do leave a comment below... (More links should be added in the next few days - if you have any to suggest, please get in touch).

• María del Mar Azcona Montoliú, 'Love is a Many-Person’d Thing: Multi-Protagonist Tales of Contemporary Desire', BELLS, 17, 2008

• Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow, 'Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre', Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2002, pp. 87–105

• Christopher Beach, Class, Language and American Film Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) long excerpt

• Michael Black, Bonnie Friel, Joan Jasak, Matthew Lombard, Anne Russ, 'An Evaluation of Portrayals of Telepresence and Romantic Relationships in Film and Television', Edited by Anna Spagnolli, Luciano Gamberini, Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Workshop on Presence, Padova, 16-18 October 2008

• Karen Boyle, 'Attractions and distractions: Mums, babies and ‘early’ cinemagoing', Participations, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2009

• Mary M Chan, 'Mr. Collins on Screen: Jane Austen’s Legacy of the Ridiculous', Persuasion On-Line, V.29, NO.1 (Winter 2008) 

• Isabel Sterling Clark, 'The Challenge of Being Yourself: Adaptation, Adolescence, and Disguise in Teenage Romantic Comedy Films of the Late 1990s and Early 2000s', Senior Thesis, Haverford College, 2009

• Brenda Cossman, 'Sexuality,Queer Theory,and "Feminism After": Reading and Rereading the Sexual Subject', McGill Law Journal, Vol. 49, 2004

• Celestino Deleyto, 'The Dupes Strike Back: Comedy, Melodrama and Point of View in The Apartment,' Atlantis: Revista de la Asociacion Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos 14.1-2 (1992): 37-61

• Jonathan Fletcher, ‘"Anything can happen": Narrative Ambiguity and Musical Intertextuality in The Holiday', Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung, 2, 2008 / 135

• Marcy J. Goodfleisch, 'Gentlemen gigolos, deceptive damsels, comedy and film: A dangerous mix', MA Thesis, Excelsior College, 2008

• Tamar Jeffers McDonald, 'Review of Celestino Deleyto's The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy. (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009), ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 31.2 (December 2009): 163-168

• Kimberly R. Johnson and Bjarne M. Holmes, 'Contradictory Messages: A Content Analysis of Hollywood-produced Romantic Comedy Feature Films', (draft article for Communication Quarterly, Volume 57, Issue 3 January 2009 , pages 352 - 373)

• Betty (Despoina) Kaklamanidou, 'The "Light" Side of Feminine Evil: Film Comedies', Paper at Evil, Women and the Feminine Conference, Budapest, Hungary, May 2009

• James MacDowell, 'Romantic Comedy: Love, Nervousness & Intertextuality', Alternate Takes, February 15, 2009

• Sergio Melo , 'The phenomenology of adaptation of classics: A Midsummer Night’s Dream as viewed by Ingmar Bergman’s and Woody Allen’s perspectives', Paper for FOOT 2006, The Festival of Original Theatre: Performing Adaptations

• Linda Mizejewski, 'Queen Latifah, Unruly Women, and the Bodies of Romantic Comedy ', Genders, Issue 46, 2007

• Linda Mizejewski, 'Chapter 1: Rules and Unruliness: Romantic Comedy' in It Happened One Night (Oxfod: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)

• Diane Negra, 'Quality Postfeminism?"Sex and the Single Girl on HBO', Genders, Issue 39, 2004 

• Kenny K. K. Ng, 'Romantic comedies of Cathay-MP and GI in the 1950s and 60s: language, locality, and urban character', from Jump Cut, No. 49, spring 2007

• Jakob Isak Nielsen, 'There's something about comedy theory', P.O.V. No.26, 2008

• Beatriz Oria Gomez, 'The Importance of Being Famous: Romance and Self-identity in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998)', Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos no 12 (2007), pp. 83-98

• Renee Penney, Desperately Seeking Redundancy? Queer Romantic Comedy and the Festival Audience, PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2010

• Polona Petek, ‘"I deserve the best and I accept the best": Exploring Female Narcissism in Me Myself I', Voicing Dissent, New Talents 21C: Next Generation Australian Studies, No. 76, 2003, pp. 159-68

• Helene A. Shugart, 'Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media', Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2003, pp. 67–91

• Douglas A Sonheim, 'Walker Percy's The Moviegoer as Romantic Comedy', Baiko English Journal (1987)

• Lesley Speed, 'A World Ruled by Hilarity: Gender and Low Comedy in the Films of Amy Heckerling', Senses of Cinema, Issue 22, 2002

• Lisa Trahair, 'Comedy and Beyond: Geoff King's Film Comedy', Film-Philosophy, Volume 8, 2004

• Jyotika Virdi, 'Mr. and Mrs. 55: Comedy of gender, law, and nation', from Jump Cut, no. 43, July 2000, pp. 75-85, 130 

• Stephen J. Whitfield, 'Cinéma Verité [on Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. By Stanley Cavell]', Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1983 

• Rachel Williams, "It's Like Painting Toys Blue and Pink" (Martha Coolidge, 1996): Marketing and the Female-Directed Hollywood Film , Scope, December 2000

• Norman Yusoff, 'Genre and Pleasure: The Case of Malay(sian) Romantic Comedy', SKRIN: Volume 1 Issue 1 Jan 2004