So in honor of Valentine's Day (or for the luckier ones out there, Single Awareness Day ;D), I've decided to write a post about romance comics~!
I'll admit it, I've read a lot of romance manga over the years. In fact, one of the first manga I read, Peach Girl, was a romantic roller-coaster of a story. The heterosexual romance manga I read is geared towards young girls, or Shoujo Manga, although I do read the occasional Josei title, and some romance manga geared towards guys as well, in the Shounen and Seinen category. And that's only the heterosexual end of the spectrum. On the other end, I read comics focusing on LGBT relationships as well, most commonly Yaoi and Yuri manga. As I was doing research for this topic, however, I didn't want to focus on any particular genre, so I typed in the general term "romance comics" and found that this is actually a term "generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War (1947 - 1977)"! Wow, I did not know that, but that's what this blog is for after all, to learn more about the history of comics! (And apparently women read these sorts of comics in the past just as casually as they read these sorts of novels nowadays!).
For a brief summary, I went to Wikipedia and got: "Romance comics (sometimes love comics) is a comics
genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as
jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache.
Romance comics of the period typically featured dramatic scripts about
the love lives of older high school teens and young adults, with
accompanying artwork depicting an urban or rural America contemporaneous
with publication."
Upon doing a little more searching, I came across Matt Thorn's article on the subject and was intrigued by his statement near the end: "you can't help concluding that the vast majority of these comics were dreadful, both visually and narratively. Of course, the same can be said of every genre of any medium, but I
think the biggest problem in the romance comics was the fact that the
stories were being written mostly by men in their forties and fifties". When I read this statement I was reminded of the yaoi genre - manga about romantic relationships between males written by women for women. I've read many manga within the yaoi genre, searching for gems, and I can say that there are few. However, I do believe more gems will pop up in the future, as the genre matures and changes and can hopefully gain a more respectable standing within society. But if it were to decline without being given the chance to develop properly as a genre, would it end up with the same reputation as romance comics have nowadays?
In fact, I am convinced that the fall of the romance genre was due to just that: its growth was stunted by the Comics Code in 1954, after which romance comics were self-censored by the publishers themselves and they started playing it safe "with stories focusing on traditional patriarchial concepts of female behavior, gender roles, love, sex, and marriage". Ironically enough, it's never safe to play it safe.
One only needs to look to Japan to see how the growth and maturation of shoujo manga has only made it more popular (Matt Thorn also has an excellent article on the history of shoujo manga). Genres spawn subgenres which in turn spawn more subgenres. A genre does not stay homogenous for long left to its own devices, but unfortunately the romance genre was contained, in a jar, so to speak, and bottled up until it finally imploded on itself. I am left saddened by the loss of potential of what could've been.
However, there is hope. At the end of his essay, Matt Thorn speaks of the changing landscape caused by the digital world, in which comic artists are left unrestricted by editors who think they know best what their audience wants (more specifically, "female artists who have been restricted for decades by male editors who think they know best what female readers want". But it applies to all artists and editors, male and female). In addition, in a TED Talk by Johanna Blakley about Social media and the end of demographics, Blakley speaks about how "women are driving the social media revolution". She later goes on to say, "Will the next big blockbuster movies actually be chick flicks? Could
this be possible that suddenly our media landscape will become a
feminist landscape?" But later discounts it, saying it probably won't happen and even going as far as to say that women will actually be the ones to "drive a stick through the heart of cheesy genre categories such as the chick flick".
"Cheesy genre categories". That is the key word of the last quotation. "Cheesy". Romance, in one form or another, has always been relegated to such a category, whether overly dramatic or comedic or with their happy endings and all that. Sure, many stories that contain romance are highly regarded and there is a romantic element to many critically-acclaimed features/novels, but once romance becomes the main element of the story, it is labeled with that word, "cheesy".
And maybe it is cheesy. I'd have to say a happily ever after ending after a long duck and goose chase which barely allowed the development of any substantial form of relationship is a tad superficial. If chick flicks want their place in the Oscars they're gonna have to step it up a notch. I'd say "500 Days of Summer" is a good step in that direction. How about Brokeback Mountain? Okay, so maybe that's not a chick flick, and it was critically-acclaimed and romance was the main element of the story...
Back to the main subject, what Blakley and Thorn seem to be suggesting is that there is still a vast amount of unexplored creative frontiers in the realm of a female's mind. And with the digital revolution, women will be allowed, more than ever before, to freely express the deepest realms of their consciousness, and the romances that lurk within it. To un-cheesify chick flicks with their epic or not so epic tales that may or may not have happy endings. Yes, chick flicks won't exist anymore because they'll be called by their proper name: romance.
So in defense of Valentine's Day and everything related to love, I say there's a lot of room for romance comics to grow! One could learn a thing or two from my favorite book, "Demian", by Hermann Hesse, about the development of a deep relationship that walks the thin line between platonic and romantic love. Now that's something I'd be interested in seeing in comic book form! And with that, I hope everyday had a lovely Valentine's Day~!
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