Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage

The Screwball Bromance: Regression, Bisexuality, and Reconfigured Masculinity in Step Brothers

“…David Shumway (1991) describes of the how romance occurs in more conventional plots. Even though Step Brothers is a modified version of this mode, it still retains the major plot points.…”

“…To argue that Step Brothers is an example of what I am dubbing the “screwball bromance,” it is also necessary to acknowledge the pioneering work of Stanley Cavell’s (1981) Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage and David Shumway’s (1991) “Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage.” Both authors argue that this particular form exclusively constructs the heterosexual couple while eradicating all other possibilities within their narratives (Cavell, 1981; Shumway, 1991). Such a message may have served the 1930s, when these films were popular, but ignores the many fissures within these original texts, as well as assuming that these comic forms were set in stone.…”

A Lonely Place: Gender Relations and Hybridization of In a Lonely Place

“…David Shumway, in "Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage" argues: "What distinguishes screwball comedies from dyadic narrative forms is that the woman is never merely an item of exchange between two men; she is also presented as a desiring subject." 6 In screwball, the heroines are not immediately recognized by their male counterparts as worthy of the desirable quality of the femme fatale. Rather, the women of screwball exert a certain amount of control in attempting to gain this quality.…”

Jogos de amor e de espectador

“…David Shumway (2003) se apropria dessa mesma estrutura para analisar filmes de comédias românticas da década de 1930, as chamadas screwball comedies, primeiro ciclo de comédias românticas faladas que Hollywood produziu. Também baseado na idealização de um amor heterossexual que deveria ser conquistado por aventuras, essas narrativas, ao contrário das histórias medievais, usariam o triângulo amoroso como forma de mistificar o casamento, escolhido como desfecho principal.…”