Rom com fantasy
Why is a woman’s creative work a ‘fantasy’ while a man’s creative work distills to us the meaning of life?
Update: Rosemary messaged me after my last newsletter to correct me on something. Turns out deleting my WhatsApp chats have no effect on anything. I have to delete the app and reinstall and maybe stop talking to people online as much.
The phones aren’t listening in, Aisling Bea is. I binged her new show This Way Up on the Channel 4 player this weekend and there were moments of such recognition I felt like I had been shouted at, pushed, hugged, told to take care of myself. It’s the most cathartic, feeling, human show and you should set aside time to watch it. Quick summary: Bea plays Aine, an Irish woman living in London fresh from a rehab stint after mental health struggles. She is trying to exist, cope, survive, perhaps get better. Or whatever better means when your brain has survived a near drowning in tar.
Also, as someone who has fancied Tobias Menzies - a minor character who is being set up for a season 2 storyline it seems - for a very long time and felt somewhat isolated in this fancying, thank you for the vindication. It’s been a tough time to promote the sexiness of a man named Tobias whose Big Role is the absolutely evil Captain Jack in Outlander. He is a truly heinous piece of work in season one of that show. So horrible that the bonkfest of episode seven - the closest you’ll get to pornography without seeing it go in - gets bleached from one’s erotic memory.
You know what, let’s pretend I’ve invented the concept of erotic memory. We won’t google it. I have invented the term erotic memory. Erotic memory is the mainstream-ish cultural moments that helped you divine your sexuality during whatever sliver of your ongoing existence made you pay attention. The 2004 Summer Olympics. Timothy Olyphant on chat shows. Timothy Olyphant in Justified. Timothy Olyphant in a very mediocre rom com dram Catch & Release where he capital k kisses Jennifer Garner in a shed. Christoph Waltz. Aragon. Faramir in the books. The Winter Soldier. Daniel Craig in the Big Little Lies of its day, the television adaptation of Minette Walter’s novel The Ice House. John Carter. Ryan Atwood kissing Marissa on New Year’s Eve.
Of course, sometimes you have to reevaluate your erotic memory. #MeToo means I didn’t watch Chalet Girl last year. There was an actor in Misfits who then showed up in Game of Thrones and redefined what perversity means. I used to love Han Solo but then I read a thinkpiece about him being a deadbeat dad who abandoned his ambitious wife at the first sign of trouble and that flame extinguished. Then there are stale erotic memories. Did I ever fancy Colin Firth as Mr Darcy or was that just what I was told to do? In fact, anything Andrew Davies has touched now sews me shut. Is it not just super odd how he talks about sex All The Time?
Anyway, there was a review of This Way Up in one of the papers and it contained the phrase “generic RomCom fantasy” to describe one plotline. The words, amid mostly praise, came across as a gentle condemnation. What is wrong with a rom com fantasy? As an insult shorthand it always rattles me. Can we seance Nora Ephron please to lay it out? Rom com fantasy means a story about love that doesn't end up like Anna fucking Karenina. It means a story about love without violence, without abuse, with everyone trying their best. It's how we're meant to love, platonically and romantically.
Raymond Carver’s poem Late Fragment is many people’s favourite poem for that very reason.
“And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
Why is a woman’s creative work a ‘fantasy’, while a man’s creative work distills to us 80 proof the meaning of life? Someone said to me recently that love is about compromise. I said no, I think love is about support.
Other Quick Thoughts on Recent Lady Culture: Between Fleabag and now-in-cinemas Animals, it is apparent I will not self-actualise without the help of an urban fox so I guess we’ll see each other night walking with some lamb chop gristle bones. Only joking! I live 150 metres or so from a house where a man was murdered a few weeks ago. This bitch goes to bed early. Is Animals worth going to see? I’ll repeat what I said to my sister, a toilet stall between us: “I don’t get people won’t make 80-minute long movies.”