“System of Objects,” and the Romantic Comedy.
In Baudrillard’s article “The System of Objects,” he states that we
as a people and a culture consume products not because we are a passive species hoping to absorb and assimilate into one giant uniform mass audience; but we actively consume objects because they are a
manipulation of signs that our culture finds meaningful. If this is true then the Romantic Comedy is just one manipulation that our culture
finds to be meaningful as applied to how our society should mate with
the opposite sex. Through McDonalds reasoning the romantic comedy genre has been classified as a lighthearted expression of a couple falling in love with each other, while battling or competing with one another in order to successfully find their perfect mate. The Sex comedy like the romantic comedy does place emphasis on competition for specific mates but also expresses the former attitudes of society and how women were to be the celestial virgins while men were allowed to be promiscuous with their sexuality. One thing I found disturbing was the blatant shock towards the Doctors studies of women’s sexuality. How is it that in the 1950’s it was acceptable for men to sleep around, while all the women were to be seen as virgins. They must have known that if the men were loosing their virginity it wasn’t amongst themselves, but with the opposite sex. So why was it so shocking to them to find out that 50% of women were not virgins during that time. How else did they think men were getting
experienced? Another thing I found interesting is that if we as a mass
audience consumes the romcoms and the sex comedies are we actively hoping our relationships are going to mirror what is seen on the screen? If this is to be true we must wake up and realize life and relationships are not meant to be lighthearted. The mass consumption of romcoms is an escape from actually having to talk to one another while in the courting phase of a relationship and is used passively as a device/ means to defer the situation at hand. We as a mass audience watch these movies to feel better about our own relationships and find comfort in the message the movies are trying to promote. Life needs to be seen as reality and not a romantic comedy. Things don’t always work out in the end. Boy and girl don’t always live happily ever after, and in fact boy and girl don’t even have to meet. It can be girl girl, boy boy or whatever the individual prefers. The ideologies promoted should be seen for what they are and not used as propaganda as how we should model our lives.
