Romantic Comedy and Female Spectatorship

Abstract

The early 1990s discussion of ‘blockbuster’ women’s films – circulating via the trade press, fan magazines and popular film reviews – proposed the likelihood of a long-term shift towards female-orientated production cycles which would gather momentum throughout the decade. As the comments from these sources in the previous chapter indicate, much of this discussion relied on a broad definition of women’s films, loosely drawn together through a common interest in romance, relationships and the primacy of a female figure. As I have already suggested, re-assessing production trends linked to critical responses and assumptions about the gendered audience for certain kinds of texts, demonstrates the emergence of a number of distinct, generically based subcycles which were perceived as the ‘property’ of the female audience in the early 1990s.