5 ms·

Just makes the stories suck all that much more when you have to shoehorn a romance into the plot.

busterarm 3y ago
It's worse because they're shoehorning in a romance plot performatively to show off how progressive the showrunners are because every romance plot on TV now has to demonstrate a high degree of intersectionality. Representation is great but now we're over-representing and alienating the audience. Plus it feels so hacky.
- busterarm 3y ago
  Just want to add to this -- sometimes the sex is so gratuitous and over the top that it's distracting from the meaning and message of the show. I'm looking at you, Sense8 -- the one show where doing the above actually made sense.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Just curious, were you also criticizing over-representation back when it was 99% straight white relationships? Or did that feel normal?
  - busterarm 3y ago
    But that hasn't been a thing since before I was alive. We've had a strong run of popular sitcoms depicting black families on all of the major TV networks since the '70s. Many times they've led the ratings. And I watched them. Maybe you didn't? Edit: Heck, "I Love Lucy" aired in the early 1950s and the show's entire plot was about an interracial marriage. And that show only started two years after commercial TV in most homes was even a thing. It was the very first sitcom to be a #1 rated show. The "bad times" scenario you're depicting is largely a fiction. What was that Jennifer Lawrence quote? “I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn't work — we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead,”
    - ungamedplayer 3y ago
      The last sentence irks me a bit. Lawrence can't be that ignorant of female action star heros What dude didn't want to kick ass like Ripley in aliens. As the age old saying goes... She protec, she attack,.but most important of all she uses large mechanised exoskeleton to fight aliens.
      - busterarm 3y ago
        She was clearly expressing a sentiment that she felt to be true at the time, even though it isn't backed up by the data -- much like this similar scenario.
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        > She was clearly expressing a sentiment that she felt to be true at the time, Is that clear? She's a professional actress; if she were reading a line written by some PR hack that she didn't really believe was true, how can you be sure you could tell? Maybe she believed it, or maybe she was told to say this sort of thing to promote the movie. Since she's a professional actress, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. She probably wasn't totally ignorant of her own industry.
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        Or maybe it came out wrong like she said. People commonly say ever when they mean hardly ever.
        ungamedplayer 3y ago
        Now that you point it out.. I think this might be the most likely case.
    - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
      I remember watching The Cosby Show as a kid and also a bunch of white family sitcoms. Now I see shows that don't feel so categorized or partitioned as either a black show or a white one, which feels like an improvement.
- logicalmonster 3y ago
  > every romance plot on TV now has to demonstrate a high degree of intersectionality It's not hard for people to begin noticing how unrealistic many stories end up becoming. It's shoddy writing and story-telling and the artificial nature takes you out of the world that's been created. > A Milestone: All Of The Walking Dead's Relationships Are Now Interracial Or LGBT https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/11/14/a-milestone-all-of-the-walking-deads-relationships-are-now-interracial-or-lgbt https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/11/14/a-milesto...
the_only_law 3y ago
A while back I decided to see a movie in theaters after a night out and it was allegedly the billionth iteration of some horror franchise (Scream I think? Maybe Halloween?). Turned out to not even really be a horror movie, but some dopey drama/romance. Waste of my money, but thankfully it wasn’t much money.
jeffbee 3y ago
Is this now worse or better? It seems like there were tons on 1970s films that had a sex subplot awkwardly crammed in. For example, the ridiculous and seemingly endless sex scene in "Three Days of the Condor", an otherwise fairly tight 1974 spy film.
- busterarm 3y ago
  Sex themes were already an established trope in spy fiction at that point. Books, television and movies. That was a large part of the appeal of the genre. You're talking about a movie released a decade and a half after fans had been ogling Emma Peel.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    It seems like there's a range of better and worse ways to do it. The contemporaneous and comparable film "The Day of the Jackal" has a seduction element that is central to the plot, so it doesn't seem shoehorned in.
throw4847285 3y ago
For some reason, people (usually but not only men) are way more likely to see romance as shoehorned in to a plot than, say, action or violence. I think it says more about the viewer than the art in question.

It's worse because they're shoehorning in a romance plot performatively to show off how progressive the showrunners are because every romance plot on TV now has to demonstrate a high degree of intersectionality. Representation is great but now we're over-representing and alienating the audience. Plus it feels so hacky.

busterarm 3y ago
Just want to add to this -- sometimes the sex is so gratuitous and over the top that it's distracting from the meaning and message of the show. I'm looking at you, Sense8 -- the one show where doing the above actually made sense.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
Just curious, were you also criticizing over-representation back when it was 99% straight white relationships? Or did that feel normal?
- busterarm 3y ago
  But that hasn't been a thing since before I was alive. We've had a strong run of popular sitcoms depicting black families on all of the major TV networks since the '70s. Many times they've led the ratings. And I watched them. Maybe you didn't? Edit: Heck, "I Love Lucy" aired in the early 1950s and the show's entire plot was about an interracial marriage. And that show only started two years after commercial TV in most homes was even a thing. It was the very first sitcom to be a #1 rated show. The "bad times" scenario you're depicting is largely a fiction. What was that Jennifer Lawrence quote? “I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn't work — we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead,”
  - ungamedplayer 3y ago
    The last sentence irks me a bit. Lawrence can't be that ignorant of female action star heros What dude didn't want to kick ass like Ripley in aliens. As the age old saying goes... She protec, she attack,.but most important of all she uses large mechanised exoskeleton to fight aliens.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      She was clearly expressing a sentiment that she felt to be true at the time, even though it isn't backed up by the data -- much like this similar scenario.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        > She was clearly expressing a sentiment that she felt to be true at the time, Is that clear? She's a professional actress; if she were reading a line written by some PR hack that she didn't really believe was true, how can you be sure you could tell? Maybe she believed it, or maybe she was told to say this sort of thing to promote the movie. Since she's a professional actress, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. She probably wasn't totally ignorant of her own industry.
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        Or maybe it came out wrong like she said. People commonly say ever when they mean hardly ever.
        ungamedplayer 3y ago
        Now that you point it out.. I think this might be the most likely case.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    I remember watching The Cosby Show as a kid and also a bunch of white family sitcoms. Now I see shows that don't feel so categorized or partitioned as either a black show or a white one, which feels like an improvement.
logicalmonster 3y ago
> every romance plot on TV now has to demonstrate a high degree of intersectionality It's not hard for people to begin noticing how unrealistic many stories end up becoming. It's shoddy writing and story-telling and the artificial nature takes you out of the world that's been created. > A Milestone: All Of The Walking Dead's Relationships Are Now Interracial Or LGBT https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/11/14/a-milestone-all-of-the-walking-deads-relationships-are-now-interracial-or-lgbt https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/11/14/a-milesto...

the_only_law 3y ago

A while back I decided to see a movie in theaters after a night out and it was allegedly the billionth iteration of some horror franchise (Scream I think? Maybe Halloween?). Turned out to not even really be a horror movie, but some dopey drama/romance. Waste of my money, but thankfully it wasn’t much money.

jeffbee 3y ago

Is this now worse or better? It seems like there were tons on 1970s films that had a sex subplot awkwardly crammed in. For example, the ridiculous and seemingly endless sex scene in "Three Days of the Condor", an otherwise fairly tight 1974 spy film.

busterarm 3y ago
Sex themes were already an established trope in spy fiction at that point. Books, television and movies. That was a large part of the appeal of the genre. You're talking about a movie released a decade and a half after fans had been ogling Emma Peel.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  It seems like there's a range of better and worse ways to do it. The contemporaneous and comparable film "The Day of the Jackal" has a seduction element that is central to the plot, so it doesn't seem shoehorned in.

throw4847285 3y ago

For some reason, people (usually but not only men) are way more likely to see romance as shoehorned in to a plot than, say, action or violence. I think it says more about the viewer than the art in question.