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“Slightly Overlooked Professionally”: Popular Music in Postmillennial Romantic Comedies

Kirkendoll, Elizabeth
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531250614267114

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Music.
In recent years film scholars has turned their attention to the cinematic conventions of romantic comedies. Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Deborah Jermyn, and Stacey Abbott have advocated for the scholarly merits of the genre; these scholars posit that through romantic comedies, we can trace developments in women’s rights and feminist critiques of hegemonic masculinity. Scholars have recently focused attention on popular music in film, as well, and argued for its inclusion in serious musical study in works such as The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music (Jeff Smith, 1998), Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music (ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur Knight, 2001), and Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema (ed. Steve Lannin and Matthew Caley, 2005), among others. Nonetheless, romantic comedies are largely missing from the discourse about popular music, possibly because of the common assumption that the genre’s conventions hold no merit as a subject for academic investigation. Based on information gathered from romantic comedy audiences this dissertation makes the case that postmillennial romantic comedies deploy popular song conventions to underscore character development, create irony, and question the validity of the happy ending. Thus, rather than conveying superficial messages of romance, songs in postmillennial romantic comedies destabilize a postfeminist ideology that asserts the achievement of gender equality. As they are deployed in the films, these songs are not a simple marketing ploy or entertainment intended for a mindless audience; rather they convey an argument for female autonomy and the continued need for feminist discourse. Films discussed in this dissertation include Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), Love Actually (2003), Trainwreck (2015), and Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016), among others.
Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Advisor)
Arved Ashby (Committee Co-Chair)
Sean O'Sullivan (Committee Member)
Daniel Goldmark (Committee Member)
238 p.
Music
romantic comedy; music; popular music; popular song; film; feminism; women in film; postmillennial; chick flick; media; comedy; bridget jones; love actually; trainwreck; subversion; romcom; interview; intertextual; greys anatomy; reception

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kirkendoll, E. (2018). “Slightly Overlooked Professionally”: Popular Music in Postmillennial Romantic Comedies [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531250614267114

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kirkendoll, Elizabeth. “Slightly Overlooked Professionally”: Popular Music in Postmillennial Romantic Comedies . 2018. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531250614267114.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kirkendoll, Elizabeth. "“Slightly Overlooked Professionally”: Popular Music in Postmillennial Romantic Comedies ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531250614267114

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1531250614267114
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.