MS135 PO

The complexity and formal sophistication of the romantic comedy film genre is often overlooked. While a historical tendency has viewed romantic comedies as light, thoughtless escapes, this course will trouble this evaluation. Examining classic and contemporary romcoms alongside theories of comedy, this course will investigate how romantic comedies stage unique sites for desire, social fantasy, and subjectivity to meet. The course will explore theories of comedy from thinkers such as Henri Bergson, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, Umberto Eco, and Alenka Zupančič as students watch films primarily from the peak of the Screwball Comedy era (1930s-40s) and its renaissance in the 1980s-2000s.