The Hollywood Solution

How do you solve a problem like Maria? Well, Rogers and Hammerstein married her off. Even if The Sound Of Music wasn’t based on a true story, they still would have married her off. It seems there are only so many things you can do with a major (single) female protagonist of marriageable age at the end of a feature. And it usually doesn’t include the female in question sitting around saying well I’m glad I’ve still got my friends and my health.

With all the Meg Ryan’s and Julia Roberts’ out there, it appears as though singleness is a condition just waiting to be cured. I mean women don’t sell caper movies. We’re not Clint Eastwood’s and we’ll never be WWI soldiers. But for the kinds of genres we do star in more often, romance is quite often present in some form or another. Actresses such as Angelina Jolie seem to be forging the way for the strong, single woman who is still single at the end of the picture but those movies remain the exception to the rule.

Basically, for writers who wish to avoid the issues of love and matrimony there seem to be two other choices. Death and insanity. Thelma and Louise for example were killed off at the end of their picture but as death is after all somewhat depressing, its not always an appropriate way to wrap things up. With movies such as Fatal Attraction or The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, the solution is to make the woman so completely nuts we really don’t think she deserves a relationship anyway.

So when we go to the cinema for escapism and get involved with a female character, we pretty much expect for her to end up with someone. We are not bothered if she is a witty, butt-kicking heroine in her own right but we like to know the emotional side is taken care of too. And apparently this means a man. Is this what we really believe though or what Tinseltown would have us think? Surely women on their own can be exciting, inspirational and popular? I would also hope that us singles are not all doomed to be portrayed as desperate and neurotic slappers…

On the other hand though, I do quite enjoy my chick flicks and the ability to live vicariously through characters with more social life than I have at the moment. I also like being able to believe that things usually work out in the end and there will be someone to come home to. Don’t we all?