Sexual Fantasies: A kind of Radical Romance

If RomCom is the fantasy of the beginning and early struggle of a relationship, then what is a core text for the inbetween of a relationship? If looked at historically, the genre of RomCom can be looked at as a fine line between the human need to be love (emotionally) and sex (physically), with the well being, a good or bad relationship, of the partners (psychology) within a comic framework. In the chapter on sex comedy, MacDonald states "I think there has always been a strand within romantic comedy where much of the pleasure and energy of the film is derived from the couple's efforts to resist being a couple, to deny their fitness for each other and the inevitability of their union." I would like to add that it is also vice versa, the couple's desire to be a couple and the comedy that derives from their attempt to stay as one. Recent films like "Knocked Up" and "Meet the Parents" and its sequel "Meet the Fockners", is essentially a reversal of the sex comedy genre, emphasis on unity of the partners through sex. Sex or the physical manifestation of their love, is only viable when both partners are honest about their needs and emotions or come upon the revelation of their need for one another as a result of it.

A real good example of this psychological well being of a relationship in a dichotomy of emotional and physical equilibrium is demonstrated in "When Harry Met Sally" (Meg Ryan's best romcom for me). In the film two best friends of opposite sex enlivens their relationship to that of couple status and the fear of loss in mutual respect and likability. Harry (Billy Crystal) states early in the story the film's essential question: "Can a man and a woman stay friends, without being lovers?" and the humor of the film derives from Harry's observation that men, when in the company of the opposite sex, can only think of Sex and not much else. Sally disproves this in the famous diner scene ("I'll have what she's having") and in the rest of the film with her talks/gossips with her female friends, showing that women are just as obsessed with sex as their counterpart. Sex to the film's characters, looks like it just complicates matters, but as a result can also deepen it and make it more enriching.

McDonald's definition of the Sex Comedy that "with women wanting sex after, and men before or without, marriage" might have applied to the mid 50s cinema of the RomCom, and like I'm sure McDonald will illustrate in following chapters, that the genre has evolved with the times and views of popular culture of the ideals and ideas of relationships, but the unity and or coming together of differing individuals is what keeps suckering us in.