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Guilty Pleasures
European Audiences and Contemporary Hollywood Romantic Comedy
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Book Presentation:
In Guilty Pleasures, Alice Guilluy examines the reception of contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy by European audiences. She offers a new look at the romantic comedy genre through a qualitative study of its consumption by actual audiences. In doing so, she attempts to challenge traditional critiques of the genre as trite “escapism” at best, and dangerous “guilty pleasure” at worst. Despite this cultural anxiety, little work has been done on the genre’s real audiences. Guilluy addresses this gap by presenting the results of a major qualitative study of the genre’s reception, based on interview research with rom-com viewers in Britain, France and Germany, focusing on Sweet Home Alabama (2002, dir. Andy Tennant). Throughout the interviews, participants attempted to distance themselves from what they described as the “typical” rom-com viewer: the uneducated, gullible, overly emotional (American) woman. Guilluy calls this fantasy figure the “phantom spectatrix”. Guilluy complements this with a critical examination of the press reviews of the 20 biggest-grossing rom-coms at the worldwide box-office in order to contextualise the findings of her audience research.
About the Author:
Alice Guilluy is the MA Deputy Programme Leader at MetFilm School. She has published articles in The Bulletin of Sociological Methodology and in the edited collections Love Across the Atlantic (2019) and After Happily Ever After: Romantic Comedy in the Post Romantic Age (2021). She tweets @romcomresearch.Claire Nally is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature in the Department of English Literature, Linguistics and Creative Writing at Northumbria University, UK. She is the author of Steampunk: Gender, Subculture and the Neo-Victorian (Bloomsbury, 2019), co-editor or Bloomsbury Library of Gender and Popular Culture and Deputy Editor (including reviews) of the open access journal C21 Literature.Angela Smith is Professor of Language and Culture at the University of Sunderland, UK. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on media discourses, gender, the portrayal of immigrants and the representation of politicians.
Press Reviews:
"Those who study the rom-com as a genre will benefit from the fresh outlook on how these films are appreciated on the fringes of fan culture. Additionally, scholars focused on European reception studies will enjoy Guilluy's deft articulation of how different European audiences respond to the comedy stylings of contemporary Hollywood." ―EuropeNow
"At last, a serious study of romantic comedy, so often dismissed as 'chick lit' for frivolous feminine filmgoers. Alice Guilluy explores with great subtlety the pleasures and problems of female rom-com consumption through three European viewing groups, addressing one exemplary film, Sweet Home Alabama. The result is an original and lively contribution to audience studies, offering new insights into the role of romance in women's imaginative lives" ―Helen Taylor, University of Exeter, UK
"There is much pleasure to be gained from Alice Guilluy's absorbing investigation of European viewers' consumption of the Hollywood romcom, and no guilt, since this book fully justifies its readers' attention. Guilty Pleasures delivers a provocative and robust defence of an often-derided genre, and in so doing both brings to light the tacit assumptions about taste, gender and class that underlie such critical snobbery, and casts doubt on their validity." ―Tamar Jeffers McDonald, University of Kent, UK
"This is a fascinating exploration of the romantic comedy's feminist viewers and the cultural taboo of 'woke' audiences enjoying the 'guilty pleasure' of watching these movies." ―Maria DeBlassie, University of New Mexico's Honors College, USA
"Embrace the politics of pleasure in Guilluy's groundbreaking feminist fieldwork and brilliant analysis on rom-com audience reception, where viewers negotiate the heady pleasure of critique and heart-tingling delight of emotional and social engagement! Gratification guaranteed for film and gender scholars alike." ―Catherine M. Roach, The University of Alabama, USA
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic
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