What happens when style does not seem to match substance, when genre and content are perceived as misaligned? How do we face a generic crisis, a sense—a dread—that a subject exceeds the bounds of the genre that seeks to contain it? Sometimes an attempt is made to wrangle the genre into alignment with the subject by appending the word “dark” to the category (dark comedy, dark romance, dark fantasy). Sometimes people simply pretend that a work is both more grave and more sophisticated than it really is.
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The outrage generated by the attempt to market It Ends With Us as a romantic popcorn flick makes one thing clear: for many, It Ends With Us is not and should not be treated as a rom-com, because the story’s content forecloses that generic possibility. At first glance, this seems reasonable enough. Domestic violence is no laughing matter. Certainly, it is nothing to romanticize. Why would a rom-com ever be about domestic violence? [...] What I am saying is: maybe It Ends With Us is not a rom-com not because it includes domestic violence as its subject matter, but because it is not a rom-com generically.
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That It Ends With Us was a failure says far more about It Ends With Us than it does about the limitations of storytelling, even when it comes to stories about domestic violence. What if we reject the idea that content necessarily forecloses generic possibilities? What if, in skilled hands, what feels like a generic crisis in fact allows for more interesting stories to be told? This is precisely what Jennifer Crusie achieves in her 1999 contemporary romance novel, Crazy for You. Written with the author’s signature wit, Crazy for You is about a woman who takes charge of her life, falls in love with someone she shouldn’t, and, oh yeah, also deals with her “nice guy” ex-boyfriend stalking, intimidating, and eventually nearly killing her. Crazy for You is, in other words, a romantic comedy that is, to a large degree, about domestic violence.
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