A few weeks ago I went to go see the film “Confessions of a Shopaholic”. I had read the book a few years ago, and I figured that the plot and characters would be very similar because it was already a simple romantic comedy that could easily be compressed into 100 minutes. Though many parts of the movie were the same, there was one major change that I found rather annoying and pointless; however, I also found its defects to be relevant to this class so there was a silver lining.
In the film the relationship between the main character (Becky) and her love interest Luke is quite different from the novel. The book portrays Luke as a confident self-satisfied billionaire who owns the building Becky works in as a financial journalist. The two eventually get together after Becky solves her debt problem (without him being aware of it). In the film Luke comes from a wealthy family, but he takes a lower paying job at a financial magazine so he can ‘make it on his own’. He finds out that Becky lied about all her financial trouble and feels betrayed, but forgives her after she mends her ways.
It seems that the screen-writers/film studio decided that the emphasis of the conflict within the story needed to be placed much more heavily on the relationship between Becky and Luke, as opposed to Becky and her friends and family (as in the novel). At first I couldn’t fathom why they would try to force this story line upon the audience when it’s been so played out. Especially since the relationship was not developed far enough for such a passionate response to be appropriate. Then I started to consider that this film had fallen prey to the structure of a romantic comedy, or rather the “myth” of the romantic comedy.
Roland Barthes describes mythology with three “systems” or terms. The first term, the “form” would be the dialogue: Luke’s outcry of betrayal, and then forgiveness. This form then demonstrates the “concept” of a relationship. The signification or message of the correlation between the form and concept is the idea of ‘romance’ within this romantic-comedy. The film industry feels the need to classify and conform this story, and to limit the definition of relationship, or romance through a very exclusive form. Indeed, they rely upon the idea that the conflict within a story must be between the two romantically involved characters, in order for the story to be considered a romantic comedy. This made me think more about Barthes annoyance at “Julius Caesar” and the ‘Roman haircuts’. As that film relied upon the haircuts in order to convey “Roman-ness”, which excused everything utterly un-Roman about them, “Confessions” tries to shift the conflict of the story and expects that to substitute all the important development in the relationship that should have taken place if the conflict arose between those two characters.
Although that particular sequence of events and Luke’s reaction are one way of demonstrating the romance, just as a haircut can stand for the Romans, it was certainly not the best way. I think that Hollywood can get caught up in the myth because it can be easier. It’s a shortcut. In the novel the relationship wasn’t that important, but from the filmmaker’s imagined expectations of the audience, it needed to become a central theme. Then, instead of making a film with enough substance, they decided to rely heavily upon this structure, this myth, in order to give the relationship some meaning. However, meaning is not what we actually get from the film. We understand that the events are supposed to derive meaning because those particular signifiers are shown to us constantly in films, but the repetitive nature and hollowness of this structure renders it meaningless.
Structuralism can give a work meaning, but when a work starts to rely on the myth, it can become somewhat of a disappointment.
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