The 40-Year-Old Virgin

I was part of a group presentation on the film The 40-Year-Old Virgin which analyzed the film in terms of a sex comedy, disciplining the body, the ritual of dating and the reversal of gender roles as related to our course theme of the radical romance. My contribution to the presentation of the film was the discussion of the reversal of tradition gender roles. This reversal of gender roles helped the audience to identify with Andy at moments in the film as well as made Andy a more vulnerable character. Generally, the women in the film are self-sufficient and are actually more socially successful than the men. I also helped to develop the discussion on The 40-Year-Old Virgin as a sex comedy where the film fit the criteria of having disguise and masquerade, a “hierarchy of knowledge” and reversions and inversions of the “natural order” as described by Tamar McDonald in her book Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. Overall this was a good experience and our group worked extremely well together as we have very good feedback and discussion from the rest of the class.

The Neo-Traditional Romantic Comedy

The neo-traditional romantic comedy is defined by Tamar McDonald
in her book Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre as, “The neo-traditional romantic comedy reasserts the old, ‘boy meets, loses, regains girl’ structure emphasizing the couple will be heterosexual, will form a lasting relationship and that their story will end as soon as they do so.” An example of the neo-traditional romantic comedy is How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days staring Kate Hudson as Andie a writer for the “How to” column in a women’s magazine and Matthew McConaughey as Ben an advertising executive. Ben makes a bet with his friends that he can make any woman fall in love with him in 10 days as he is a self-proclaimed
ladies man and Andie is writing a column on “How to Loose a Guy in
10 Days.” The couple meet in a bar a soon target each other for
their personal experiments. The film evokes some of the essential
elements and characteristics of the neo-traditional romantic
comedy: the over determination of romantic signifiers used in the
title of the film, and the evoking of earlier traditional romantic
comedy characteristics and the fairy tale ending moment or
the “Love Santa” moment as described by McDonald. The title of the
movie alone evokes a romantic feel for the comedy. If a viewer only
looked at the title they would know that the film was going to be
light and funny as well as have romance involved. As McDonald
states, “the film titles themselves parade their romantic comedy
status.” The film also evokes the earlier traditional romantic comedy
characteristics of the masquerade and the boy meets, loses and
regains girl scenario. Both main characters are masquerading for the
other; both do not know the other’s real intentions in the
relationship. The irony and comedy comes from situations where
Andie is trying to act the opposite of how a good girlfriend should act
and the audience sees that if she really acted as herself the couple
would ultimately fall in love through their similarities in likes, dislikes
and personalities. Also Ben meets Andie, has her superficially, looses
her when she realizes his intentions and regains her at the end of the
film. The end of the film also shows the “Love Santa” scene where
Ben wins Andie back on a bridge in the city, in the rain and they
make up, kiss and the camera pans out and they are assumed to
live happily ever after. How to Loose a Guy in 10 days debuted in
2003 and followed the neo-traditional characteristics for a romantic
comedy.