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Luca's avatar

really interesting article

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Marshall Shaffer's avatar

Wonder how much this has to do with the increasing global audience for films and if romance is often so culturally specific that it's harder to travel.

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Matthew Prince's avatar

Romance has NEVER been hard to travel. Indian movies have shown romance and dancing for 80 years. Chinese and Korean movies and dramas have romance, just look how popular K-Drama on Netflix is. HOLLYWOOD is making this decision based on the new liberal executives and producers who have a social agenda to push. The major studio used to make plenty of romantic comedies & dramas in the 90s and 00s as they knew there was a clear market of 15-50 year old girls and women happy to see them: schoolgirls, young women, mums and aunties. There were lots of attractive young men and women from TV ready to step up and star in the movies.

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Matthew Prince's avatar

My opinion is far more simple and frank. The new generation of stars that Hollywood is marketing to us, the 20 and 30-somethings, are extremely "fluid" in their sexuality, attractiveness and moral standpoints. We have an array of young actors and actresses that insist on being queer, binary and even trans in real life. So how do you cast them in traditional romantic comedies and dramas? The queer/lesbian actresses only want to play queer/lesbian characters in any movie and similar with the men. This is why you don't get convincing love scenes and certainly not sex scenes. You'll never get a movie as silly as American Pie, Austin Powers, Euro Trip, Girl Next Door, John Tucker Must Die, 40 Year Old Virgin, etc. The actresses are not relaxed and comfortable enough to be sexy and silly and the actors are either too serious or have no charisma.

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Leslie Ben Hamilton's avatar

Fascinating! Thank you for the research and sharing your conclusions!

I wonder if this may partly be a symptom of overpopulation, a subconscious survival-of-the-species drive to not overwhelm the planet... reduce romanticizing (hetero) coupling to stem that tide, instead focusing on self, friends and preexisting family. Any sociobiologists on here?

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Matthew Prince's avatar

Leslie ;) Science is not needed to answer this article! You're WAY overthinking things! Read my answer.

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