Tag Archives: Rom-Com

LOVE ~ Fiction’s Greatest Common Denominator

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Love, Story, Writing

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I love you heart❤️ It’s Valentine’s Day ❤️ 

Love is in the air, whether you adore the holiday or not.

Many bemoan the grandiose expectations the holiday puts on…well…everyone.

Don’t blame Hallmark.

Instead, look to fiction for insights into why this holiday has become a national obsession.

Love … Has Everything to Do With It

As Blake Snyder, Mr. Save the Cat!, used to say, “The motivating force of a story has color heart lightto be primal.” And nothing is more primal than love. I’d go so far as to say that love is fiction’s greatest common denominator, that the roots of every story are based in love.

Whether it’s seeking love, giving love, protecting love, grieving for love, or the ugliness that springs from lack of love or unrequited love.

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is one of the most popular stories of all time, because it resonates with humanity’s innermost core. Love.

Love’s Joyful Eccentricities

The romantic comedy (rom-com) is the popular love story of today. Shakespeare was the first to make that particular story type popular, though. Shakespeare wrote a total of 16 romantic comedies, earning him the title as the original Rom-Com King. Rossini, and other composers, carried the romantic comedy into the opera houses with great success. Later, Hollywood was quick to spin the romantic comedy into a film genre.

In children’s literature, the net of love stretches to include other species. For example, TheOneAndOnlyIvan_coverin The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate, a young girl’s compassionate love for Ivan, the shopping mall gorilla, is the catalyst for his freedom.

Likewise, Ivan’s love for the elephants who are also trapped in the roadside shopping mall attraction sparks his imagination and fuels his actions that provide the means for the young girl to help them.

Spanning centuries, artistic mediums, and species…the love story has touched the hearts of audiences everywhere. To such a great extent, it has permeated the fabric of our consciousness. Such is the power of love. Because it’s primal.

Love’s Darker Faces

The primal motivating force of a character always comes back to love. “Even the villain?” you ask. Yes. Severus Snape, in J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter series, is a perfect example of denied love giving the character a villainous face.

City of Heavenly Fire coverShakespeare’s dramatic plays reflect the darker facets of love, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello. Jane Austen, thought by many to be the Queen of Romance in fiction, touches the sadder sides of love in her works, such as Persuasion.

Cassandra Clare‘s Mortal Instruments series is woven through with characters’ experiences and expressions of the grimmer facets of love, that sometimes grow so dark as to perpetuate murder. However, the main theme revolving throughout the series is self-acceptance.

The characters come to see and understand that the choices they make and the consequences that follow are a reflection of their level of self-love. This realization leads some through their darkness, to where they can embrace the healing power of love.

Shakespeare: The Rom-Com King

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Humor, Rom-Com, Shakespeare

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Happy Bardacious Birthday!

Fireworks heartsToday is Shakespeare’s 449th birthday! If you missed last year’s Bardacious Birthday post on YA-spin adaptations of his plays, you can read it here.

This year I wanted to do a celebratory shout out for Shakespeare’s happy plays … the romantic comedies. Rom-coms, in the current vernacular

Shakespeare’s comedies are my favorites, shallow (but happily so) as that may be. Though I’m not alone, if you consider how long they’ve been hits … 400+ years!

When I was researching my post, Rom-Coms ~The Lighter Side of Love, I came across an article that claimed “Shakespeare was the first [author] to make rom-coms popular.” I don’t know if that’s true. But it sounds true, so I’m going to roll with it seeing how it’s his birthday and all.

The following is a list of Shakespeare’s comedies. I’m sure you’ve heard of at least a few, and maybe even seen a movie of one or two:

  • All’s Well That Ends WellMidsummer's Nigh Dream movie poster
  • As You Like It
  • The Comedy of Errors
  • Love’s Labour’s Lost
  • Measure for Measure
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
  • The Taming of the Shrew
  • The Tempest
  • Twelfth Night
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • The Two Noble Kinsmen
  • The Winter’s Tale

Forsooth! Formulaic or Fantastic?

I may be a huge Shakespeare comedy fan, but there are some who insist his comedies are formulaic. That he even “borrowed” the formula and used it over, and over, and over again. Whatever.

I love Shakespeare’s comedies for what they are — witty and fun. In their time, they entertained nobility and the uneducated common folk. In the same theater. No small feat, breaching a target audience gap that wide.

How now! A 16 Play Mashup!

Shakespeare was a man of his time, and if he were alive today he’d embrace the humor and whimsy of our modern world. Enter the mashup. It’s popular in today’s music, why not plays? The following mashup of Shakespeare’s 16 comedies was contrived by none other than the raucously irreverent Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC), creators of the Othello Rap…

The Comedy of Two Well Measured Gentlemen Lost in the Merry Wives of Venice on a Midsummer’s-Twelfth Night in Winter; or Cymbeline Taming Pericles the Merchant in the Tempest of Love as Much as you like it for Nothing; or Four Weddings and a Transvestite

Trust me. You don’t want to miss the performance of the comedy mashup…

Reduced Shakespeare Company ~ 16 Comedies in 4 Minutes!

Rom-Coms ~ The Lighter Side of Love

09 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Humor, Love, Rom-Com

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???????????????????????????????????????Shakespeare was the first writer to popularize the Romantic Comedy (Rom-Com) with A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his other comedies. Who knew?

The invention of moving pictures brought back the Rom-Com craze, reaching new heights in the 1930’s and ’40s with such screwball comedies as Bringing Up Baby, Some Like it Hot, and It Happened One Night.

Rom-Com fever faded away for a few decades, then made a big comeback in the 90’s with Pretty Woman, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and While You Were Sleeping to name just a few.

One of My Fave Rom-Coms: Never Been Kissed

NeverBeenKissed4Some people wish they could go back to high school, knowing what they know as an adult. Twenty-five year-old copy editor Josie Geller (Drew Barrymore) gets the chance to do just that, with the opportunity to nab a story on the state of America’s youth for her Chicago paper. The only problem is, Josie was a total geek in high school, which her brother Rob (David Arquette) reminds her of … along with her nickname: Josie Grossie.

Josie has no choice but to enroll in high school and face her nerdy demons. But sheNeverBeenKissed2 soon learns that the seven years since her graduation didn’t bring her any closer to coolness. She quickly befriends Aldys (Leelee Sobieski) the bookish mathlete, and gets her handsome English teacher Mr. Coulson’s (Michael Vartan) attention by reciting a romantic except from Shakespeare in class. While Josie is geeking out, a rival paper scoops the underage drinking and teen promiscuity story, and Josie’s boss is livid.

To land the story that will save her job, Josie sets out to infiltrate the cool girls’ clique, only to end up making a bigger fool out of herself in front the cool kids and her English teacher at a local club. She’s left branded as a Loser. Literally.

NeverBeenKissed3Rob, the ultimate Cool Dude, hears of Josie’s latest escapades and intervenes by enrolling in high school. True to form, Rob instantly becomes Mr. Popular, giving Josie the street creds she needs to win over the cool girls and get Guy — the hottest boy in her class — crushing on her. Sparks start to fly between Josie and her English teacher, and as her feelings deepen for Mr. Coulson, her boss turns up the heat, demanding a defamatory article on inappropriate relationships between teachers and their students.

The path Josie takes to acing her story with integrity, and winning the guy of her dreams, is as empowering as it is satisfying.

What’s Your Favorite Rom-Com?

We all have at least one Rom-Com we love to watch (over and over). I have several. In honor of Valentine’s Day, come clean and shout it out!

Don’t be shy.

To know you (and your rom-com fave) is to love you.