Course outline
Module 1
Module 1: Origins of the Romantic Comedy
Origins of the Romantic Comedy
Knowledge check
Q1. Which ancient playwright is often cited as an early precursor to the romantic comedy through his plays featuring comic plots resolved by marriage or reconciliation?
- A. Sophocles
- B. Aristophanes ✓
- C. Aeschylus
- D. Euripides
Why: Aristophanes wrote comedies such as Lysistrata and The Birds that mixed bawdy humor, social satire and romantic entanglements, and his works are frequently cited as early models for comedic plots driven by love and desire. Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides are primarily known for tragedy.
Q2. Which Shakespearean comedy features a plot in which a woman disguises herself as a young man and the romantic confusion that follows drives the comedy?
- A. A Midsummer Night's Dream
- B. Much Ado About Nothing
- C. Twelfth Night ✓
- D. The Merchant of Venice
Why: In Twelfth Night, Viola disguises herself as the young man Cesario, leading to romantic mix-ups involving Orsino, Olivia and Sebastian. The gender disguise trope is a central engine of the comedy, making it a useful example for studying how early comedies explored gender and romance.
Q3. What term describes the Restoration-era comedy of manners, popular in England in the late 1600s, which often portrayed witty, cynical courtship between sophisticated characters?
- A. Sentimental comedy
- B. Screwball comedy
- C. Comedy of manners ✓
- D. Slapstick farce
Why: The comedy of manners, associated with writers such as William Congreve and William Wycherley, focuses on witty dialogue and the social rules of courtship and marriage. It is a direct ancestor of the sharp, verbal sparring found in later romantic comedies.
Q4. Which 1934 Hollywood film is widely regarded as a foundational example of the screwball comedy and helped establish many conventions of the romantic comedy genre?
- A. Casablanca
- B. It Happened One Night ✓
- C. Gone with the Wind
- D. Citizen Kane
Why: It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, won major Academy Awards and popularized the fast-talking, mismatched-couple formula. Its conventions, including the battle of the sexes and the initially antagonistic leads who fall in love, became templates for the genre.
Q5. Which 1940s Hollywood production code limited depictions of sexuality and required that marriage and moral order be upheld, shaping how romantic comedies handled love and desire?
- A. The Hays Code ✓
- B. The Comstock Act
- C. The Wilson Doctrine
- D. The Sullivan Ordinance
Why: The Hays Code, enforced from the 1930s into the 1960s, restricted explicit sexual content and insisted that sin be punished and marriage respected. As a result, romantic comedies of the era relied on innuendo, witty dialogue and implied desire, which shaped the genre's distinctive style.
Module 2
Module 2: Screwball Roots: Gender and Wit in 1930s Hollywood
Screwball Roots: Gender and Wit in 1930s Hollywood
Knowledge check
Q1. Which 1934 film is widely regarded as a foundational screwball comedy and helped establish the genre's conventions of fast dialogue and a battling couple?
- A. Bringing Up Baby
- B. It Happened One Night ✓
- C. Top Hat
- D. The Thin Man
Why: It Happened One Night (1934), directed by Frank Capra, is often cited as the film that launched the screwball cycle, combining witty banter, a sparring romantic pair (Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert), and a road-trip structure. Bringing Up Baby (1938) is a later screwball classic, while Top Hat is a musical and The Thin Man a detective comedy.
Q2. What role did the Production Code (Hays Code), enforced from 1934, play in shaping screwball comedy?
- A. It banned all romantic comedies outright until 1940.
- B. It required that sexual content be implied rather than shown, pushing wit and innuendo to carry romantic tension. ✓
- C. It mandated that heroines always be punished for their wit.
- D. It had no effect on Hollywood films until the 1950s.
Why: The Production Code discouraged explicit sexuality and required moral resolution, so screwball filmmakers relied on verbal sparring, innuendo, and suggestive situations to convey desire. This made dialogue a central vehicle for romance.
Q3. In many screwball comedies, what is the typical gender dynamic between the male and female leads?
- A. The woman is passive and the man makes all the decisions.
- B. The woman is often an independent, fast-talking equal who matches or outwits the man. ✓
- C. The man is consistently the one who needs rescuing.
- D. The leads rarely interact until the final scene.
Why: Screwball heroines were frequently witty, assertive, and mentally quick, often equaling or outmaneuvering their male counterparts. This 'battle of the sexes' dynamic is a hallmark of the genre's gender politics.
Q4. Which actress is most associated with the sharp, fast-talking screwball heroine of the 1930s, starring in films such as Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday?
- A. Bette Davis
- B. Katharine Hepburn ✓
- C. Joan Crawford
- D. Greta Garbo
Why: Katharine Hepburn became a defining screwball performer, known for characters who are eccentric, articulate, and unafraid to challenge male authority, as in Bringing Up Baby and Holiday. Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday is another key example, but Hepburn is the most iconic figure among the options.
Q5. What is a common narrative device in screwball comedy that drives the plot and escalates chaos?
- A. A long flashback sequence explaining each character's childhood
- B. A sudden disguise, mistaken identity, or misunderstanding that spirals into complications ✓
- C. A courtroom drama resolved by a jury verdict
- D. A tragic death that forces the couple apart permanently
Why: Mistaken identity, disguises, and misunderstandings are central to screwball plots, creating escalating farce and comic complications that test the couple's bond. The genre thrives on rapid reversals and absurd situations.
Module 3
Module 3: The Meet-Cute and the Myth of Chance
The Meet-Cute and the Myth of Chance
Knowledge check
Q1. In romantic comedy, what is a 'meet-cute'?
- A. A scene where the lead characters have a heated argument before falling in love
- B. A charming, often accidental first encounter between the future romantic leads ✓
- C. The final wedding sequence that resolves the story
- D. A montage showing the couple growing closer over several months
Why: A meet-cute is a staged, charming first encounter, often accidental-seeming, that establishes the romantic premise and chemistry between the leads.
Q2. Why do many meet-cutes rely on the appearance of chance?
- A. Because screenwriters are legally required to avoid planning in films
- B. Because the genre presents romance as fated, suggesting love arises from destiny rather than deliberate choice ✓
- C. Because audiences prefer documentary-style realism in romantic films
- D. Because chance encounters reduce the production budget
Why: The genre frames romance as destined and spontaneous, making the couple's eventual union feel inevitable rather than engineered.
Q3. Which film is widely cited as a classic example of a meet-cute involving a chance encounter in a public space?
- A. Casablanca, where Rick and Ilsa reunite in Paris
- B. When Harry Met Sally, where the leads keep bumping into each other across years ✓
- C. Titanic, where Jack and Rose meet on the ship's deck
- D. Pride and Prejudice, where Darcy and Elizabeth meet at a ball
Why: When Harry Met Sally structures its romance around repeated chance meetings, a recurring device that underlines the myth that love emerges from coincidence.
Q4. What critique is often made of the 'myth of chance' in romantic comedies?
- A. It makes romance seem too realistic and unromantic
- B. It can obscure how social factors like class, race, and gender shape who meets whom ✓
- C. It shows too many scenes of characters working
- D. It relies too heavily on dialogue rather than visuals
Why: Critics argue that presenting meetings as random hides the structural forces, such as class, geography, and social networks, that actually determine who encounters whom.
Q5. In the context of gender and romance, what does the meet-cute often reinforce?
- A. Women taking the initiative in all romantic pursuits
- B. Traditional scripts where a male protagonist is the active pursuer and a female lead is the desired object ✓
- C. Equal distribution of narrative focus between partners
- D. Romance occurring only between characters of the same social background
Why: Many classic meet-cutes cast the man as the active pursuer and the woman as the one being won over, reflecting and reinforcing traditional gender scripts.
Module 4
Module 4: Sexual Politics of the Battle of the Sexes
Sexual Politics of the Battle of the Sexes
Knowledge check
Q1. In the 'battle of the sexes' framing common to classic screwball comedies, what is the central source of comedic conflict between the romantic leads?
- A. A rivalry over inheritance or property
- B. Opposing views on gender roles, power, and how love should work ✓
- C. A mistaken identity that is never resolved
- D. Competing careers in unrelated industries
Why: The battle of the sexes typically stages conflict through clashing attitudes about gender roles, independence, and power within relationships, which the romance gradually resolves into mutual respect.
Q2. Which 1930s screwball comedy is most often cited as a foundational example of the battle-of-the-sexes narrative structure?
- A. Casablanca
- B. It Happened One Night ✓
- C. Gone with the Wind
- D. Citizen Kane
Why: It Happened One Night (1934) features a headstrong heiress and a cynical journalist whose antagonism gives way to romance, establishing many conventions the rom-com genre later reused.
Q3. What does the term 'sexual politics' most directly refer to in the study of romantic comedy?
- A. Legislation governing marriage and divorce
- B. The power dynamics between men and women as expressed in personal and social relationships ✓
- C. The political campaigns of film directors
- D. Debates over sexual education in schools
Why: Sexual politics examines how power, gender norms, and control operate within intimate relationships, and rom-coms often dramatize these tensions through courtship and conflict.
Q4. A common feature of the battle-of-the-sexes plot is that the lead characters begin the story:
- A. Already deeply in love and seeking to marry
- B. Antagonistic or mutually disdainful toward one another ✓
- C. Strangers who never interact again
- D. Siblings who discover a shared secret
Why: The genre typically opens with hostility or mutual disdain, and the narrative tension comes from the characters' gradual movement from conflict toward romantic recognition.
Q5. Why do scholars often interpret the resolution of battle-of-the-sexes narratives critically?
- A. Because the couples always end up separated
- B. Because the endings may reinforce traditional gender hierarchies by having one partner yield to the other ✓
- C. Because the films are always shot in black and white
- D. Because they rarely include any dialogue
Why: Critics argue that many such endings resolve the conflict by having the independent woman soften or submit to the man's worldview, which can reinforce patriarchal expectations rather than genuinely balancing power.
Module 5
Module 5: Masculinity, Vulnerability and the Male Romantic Lead
Masculinity, Vulnerability and the Male Romantic Lead
Knowledge check
Q1. In many classic romantic comedies, what role does the male lead most often play in relation to his own emotional life?
- A. He is openly expressive about his feelings from the first scene onward
- B. He is initially emotionally guarded and must learn to express vulnerability
- C. He consistently serves as a confidant to the female lead about her emotions
- D. He is portrayed as having no emotional arc at all
Q2. Which trait is most commonly associated with the 'hegemonic' masculinity typically reinforced in older romantic comedies?
- A. Emotional openness and nurturing behaviour
- B. Self-reliance, stoicism and emotional control
- C. Willingness to defer to a partner's decisions
- D. Frequent public displays of tenderness
Q3. What does the term 'vulnerability' mean in the context of the male romantic lead?
- A. Physical weakness that prevents him from performing romantic gestures
- B. A willingness to show emotional needs, uncertainty or fear to a romantic partner
- C. A tendency to be easily manipulated by other characters
- D. A lack of financial stability that the plot must resolve
Q4. Why might later rom-coms depict male leads crying, admitting insecurity or asking for help?
- A. To reflect changing cultural expectations about masculinity and emotional honesty
- B. Because audiences have stopped watching films with male protagonists
- C. To remove the need for any conflict in the storyline
- D. Because the screenwriting format requires a confession scene in every film
Q5. What is a common narrative function of the male lead's emotional breakthrough in a romantic comedy?
- A. It usually ends the film before the romance is resolved
- B. It typically resolves the central romantic conflict and enables the couple to commit
- C. It removes the female lead's agency from the story
- D. It is mainly included to provide comic relief
Module 6
Module 6: Evolutionary Psychology and Mate Choice on Screen
Evolutionary Psychology and Mate Choice on Screen
Knowledge check
Q1. In evolutionary psychology, why do researchers often say men and women face different 'reproductive costs' when choosing a mate?
- A. Women can have many more children than men in a lifetime, so men always invest less effort in courtship.
- B. Women carry the biological burden of pregnancy and childbirth, so a poor mate choice can cost them far more in time and energy than it costs men.
- C. Men are physically unable to commit to long-term relationships due to hormonal differences.
- D. Women have no biological stake in reproduction, so their choices are purely cultural.
Q2. Which film trope is most commonly analysed as reflecting the evolutionary idea of 'resource signalling' in mate choice?
- A. The protagonist who forgets their lover's birthday.
- B. The wealthy or successful love interest whose status and generosity are shown as attractive.
- C. The friendship group that never discusses romance.
- D. The rival who wins the heroine through a bet with no emotional content.
Q3. David Buss's large cross-cultural studies of mate preferences found which pattern in relation to partner characteristics?
- A. Men and women rated physical attractiveness and resources identically across all cultures.
- B. Women placed relatively greater value on a partner's resources and ambition, while men placed relatively greater value on youth and physical attractiveness.
- C. Neither sex considered attractiveness or resources important in any culture studied.
- D. Only men expressed preferences, while women's preferences were consistently absent from the data.
Q4. In the rom-com genre, what does the 'meet-cute' most directly serve as, from an evolutionary-psychology perspective of signalling?
- A. A random accident with no informational value.
- B. A display of wit, confidence, or playfulness that signals desirable traits to a potential partner.
- C. A way of proving that the couple already shares a long history.
- D. A plot device to show that romance is irrational and unrelated to biology.
Q5. Why do many evolutionary psychologists caution against using evolution to justify stereotypes seen in romantic comedies?
- A. Because evolutionary theory has been fully disproven as a framework for human behaviour.
- B. Because mate preferences are shaped by both biology and culture, and describing a tendency does not mean it is fixed, universal, or morally prescriptive.
- C. Because all romantic films are based entirely on random chance with no psychological content.
- D. Because evolution only affects plants and animals, not humans.
Module 7
Module 7: From Rom-Com to Streaming: Reinventing Love for New Audiences
From Rom-Com to Streaming: Reinventing Love for New Audiences
Knowledge check
Q1. Which factor is most often cited as pushing romantic comedy from cinemas toward streaming platforms in the 2010s and 2020s?
- A. A decline in audience interest in romance as a genre
- B. Shifting distribution economics that made mid-budget studio films harder to sustain in theatres ✓
- C. A government regulation requiring romantic films to be released only online
- D. The invention of the home video cassette in the 1980s
Why: Mid-budget films, including many rom-coms, became financially risky for major studios as theatrical strategies concentrated on blockbusters and franchises. Streaming platforms offered a new home for these films, which were often commissioned or acquired at lower cost and reached audiences directly.
Q2. What does the term 'algorithmic romance' most commonly refer to in discussions of streaming-era love stories?
- A. Romantic plots written entirely by computer software
- B. Stories shaped by recommendation systems that favour genre patterns and predictable tropes to retain viewers ✓
- C. Love stories that take place inside computer programming environments
- D. Films that use mathematical formulas to determine the length of romantic scenes
Why: Streaming recommendation systems reward content that matches viewer tastes and keeps people watching, which encourages reliance on familiar romantic tropes and formulas. The term describes how data-driven distribution influences what kinds of romance get made and promoted.
Q3. Which of the following is an example of a streaming-era trend that reimagines traditional rom-com conventions?
- A. Strictly adhering to the 1950s Hollywood studio system
- B. Series that stretch romance across many episodes, allowing slower development and more varied couple dynamics ✓
- C. Eliminating all romantic content from comedic programming
- D. Releasing every romantic film in black and white only
Why: Episodic streaming formats let writers develop relationships over longer arcs, explore more complex and diverse couples, and move beyond the compressed two-hour structure of classic rom-coms. This reshapes how love is portrayed and paced.
Q4. Why do scholars studying gender and rom-coms pay attention to who is shown as the 'romantic protagonist' on streaming platforms?
- A. Because streaming platforms are legally required to feature equal numbers of men and women
- B. Because expanded representation of LGBTQ+ and non-white leads can challenge the heteronormative and gendered assumptions of classic rom-com storytelling ✓
- C. Because streaming audiences only watch content featuring their own gender
- D. Because romantic protagonists on streaming are always animated characters
Why: Classic rom-coms largely centred white, heterosexual couples with fixed gender roles. Streaming's broader market and niche audiences have enabled more diverse leads, prompting critical analysis of how these shifts alter the genre's assumptions about love, desire, and gender.
Q5. In the context of reinventing love for new audiences, what is a common critical concern about streaming rom-coms?
- A. That they are too long for viewers to finish
- B. That reliance on data-driven recommendations may produce formulaic, risk-averse romance that recycles tropes rather than innovating ✓
- C. That they never include any humour
- D. That they are always shot on mobile phones
Why: A frequent critique is that algorithm-driven commissioning favours proven formulas, which can narrow creative risk-taking and repeat familiar romantic tropes. Scholars weigh this against the genuine gains in diversity and representation that streaming has also enabled.