Horrifying romantic comedies

I heard an interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation today with Chloe Angyal who wrote an article in The Atlantic about what we can learn about romantic comedies.

You know, he embarrasses her in front of her peers, and she's mortified and tells him in no uncertain terms, for probably the fourth time, to back off. So one of the things that rom-coms teach us is that this persistence, this grand gesture of fighting for the people that you love - it's OK if you humiliate them. It's OK if you, you know, in the real world we might term stalk them - as long as you love them because then it's romantic. And I think that's a harmful message. And that's something that we need to be a little more - we need to sort of view a little more critically.

I've been saying that for years. Romantic comedies are essentially stalker movies. The plots from any of these movies would work perfectly well as slasher films.

I realized this years ago when I was dragged off to see a horrible romantic comedy called Picture Perfect. It starred some woman who was on that show, Friends, I think. I never watched Friends. Her name's Jennifer Aniston.

Here's the plot:

There's this woman. Jennifer Aniston. She's unmarried. She goes to a wedding. Someone takes a picture of her with a guy (Jay Mohr) who's a firefighter by trade.She has a print of the photo.

Jennifer Aniston's boss won't give her a promotion because she's not married, so she blurts out that she's engaged. She shows her boss the picture of her with the fireman. But now her boss demands to meet her fiance.

Jennifer Aniston finds the firefighter. She offers to pay him to pretend to be her fiance. He says he'll do it for free!

He stays with her in her apartment (he's from out of town.) The plan is that they will have dinner with her boss, there will be an argument and they will announce that the engagement is off. But Jay Mohr instead assures the boss that they're going to be married right away!

So this woman has a guy staying in her apartment who insists that she marry him even though they're strangers. She can't get rid of him without losing her job. Imagine this happening in real life. You'd assume this poor woman was in danger.

It reminded me of a call to Dr Harvey Rubin, the radio psychiatrist.

Some guy called into the show. He sounded like a biker or something, with a gravelly voice. He said that he wanted to get married and have children, but he was 40---he was old and didn't have much time! So he bought an engagement ring. Then he went out looking for someone to marry.

He went into a store in a shopping mall. He walked up to the cashier, offered her the ring, explained he was old and didn't have much time, and asked her to marry him.

The girl's mother owned the store. She tried to get rid of him. He refused to leave. She said she would talk to him outside, so he stepped outside and she locked the door and called security.

The guy was clearly deranged. But Dr Rubin played it cool. He cheerfully suggested that he see a psychiatrist or a counselor. The guy didn't think a counselor would help him get a woman, and Dr Rubin told him that a counselor could help him understand why people react as they do.