Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 80s and 90s

This text examines how recent cultural discourses on gender and sexuality have found their way into the apparently inflexible structure of romantic comedy. Using a range of popular mainstream films, the book explains how this situation has come about since the 1980s. While romantic comedy retains a relatively unchanged view of love, sexuality and marriage, the authors demonstrate how more recent films have developed the genre with ussies of love, heterosexual and gay romance, interracial relationships and female subjectivity. Films featured in this examination include: Annie Hall , When Harry Met Sally , Working Girl , Murphy’s Romance , Peggy Sue Got Married , Something Wild and Green Card .