“I'm taken … by myself”: romantic crisis in the self-centered indie rom-com

Oria, Beatriz (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: This essay identifies a new tendency in contemporary US romantic comedy that is especially prevalent in the independent sector: the “self-centered rom-com”. It argues that this trend can be read as a symptom of a crisis of romantic love in the early twenty-first century, deploying sociological theory on contemporary romantic suffering as theoretical framework to explore these films’ underscoring of self-realization and simultaneous de-emphasis on romance to achieve it. The close reading of Lola Versus (2012), a representative example of this trend, reveals that by presenting the individual quest for self-identity as the answer to romantic disappointments, the self-centered indie rom-com poses itself as a fitting genre for the self-absorbed millennial culture in which it is inscribed while naturalizing a neoliberal rationality that constructs the subject in entrepreneurial terms and renders gender inequality as an individual affair rather than a structural problem.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.1.0003

Año: 2021

Publicado en: Journal of film and video 73, 1 (2021), 3-17
ISSN: 0742-4671

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.115 - Visual Arts and Performing Arts (Q2)

Tipo y forma: Artículo (PostPrint)

Área (Departamento): Área Filología Inglesa (Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema.)