We focus on the changing understanding of romance in contemporary American
society. Through an analysis of romantic comedies and dramas produced in Ho
llywood between 1930 and the present, we demonstrate how the decline of the
romantic drama is due to significant social and cultural change, tire most
important of which is the weakening of norms governing the choice of roman
tic partners. The romantic comedy, however, has more than compensated for t
he decline in dramas, with the decade of the 1990s seeing more romantic fil
ms produced than in any previous time in the history of filmmaking. Althoug
h the contemporary romantic comedy almost invariably reinforces the mosi co
nservative tendencies in our culture, we argue that these films nonetheless
work effectively to reinforce a usable cultural script governing romantic
behavior. By depicting ideal culture as a real possibility, tire romantic c
omedy nurtures the utopian wish of "slipping one over on modernity."