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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
From post-"Bridget" fiction to ABC's frightening "The Bachelor," the wedding porn genre mates emasculated Mr. Rights with soulless, life-size Barbies.
Apr 25, 2002 | "The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy." -- Lionel Trilling, "The Liberal Imagination"
Call it wedding porn. The popular subset of commercial fiction features romance novels about neutered, neurotic professional girls. Instead of ripped bodices and heaving breasts, wedding porn features broken engagements, squirrelly commitment-phobic men and superembarrassing quarrels in really nice restaurants. Following in the footsteps of "Bridget Jones's Diary" -- which transcended the mediocrity of the genre through originality of voice, over-the-top parody and a plot gently lifted from legendary wedding pornographer Jane Austen -- these books throw together a lovably neurotic but ultimately bland female lead, a straight-talkin' "you go girl!" female sidekick, a devilishly handsome, supersmooth "bad for me!" boy, and place them all in a seemingly endless procession of unfathomably zany situations, until our heroine finally finds that wonderful, pure-hearted, dull at first but ultimately supernice fella who we can immediately picture gracefully maneuvering a minivan through the parking lot of Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Already, the genre includes titles like "Otherwise Engaged," "See Jane Date," "Amanda's Wedding," "Animal Husbandry" (the one made into "Someone Like You" starring Ashley Judd) and "Getting Over It," to name just a few. So popular, in fact, is this Wacky Career Girl Finds Love formula that Harlequin has just launched Red Dress Ink, a whole line of wedding porn intended to bring us "stories that reflect the lifestyles of today's urban, single women" that show "life as it is, with a strong touch of humor, hipness, and energy." See also: Zany, sickeningly sweet fun with a big diamond on top.
Reflecting its indisputable ability to march to the leaden beat of mainstream America, ABC offers us TV's version of wedding porn, "The Bachelor," in which a dull but ultimately supernice fella navigates his own neuroticism to choose between 25 fluffy females in order to find his wife. It's "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire" but without the harsh game-show format and the tacky participants. Alex went to Harvard, we're reminded 50 or 60 times per show. Alex is a sweet guy. Alex wants a woman to spend the rest of his life with. Alex has been pre-selected for his ability to live up to the fantasy of kind, pretty, hollowed-out provider.
The real question is, what's his motivation, or theirs? Why do the fluffy girls of "The Bachelor" and the bland heroes of wedding porn long for Egyptian cotton bath towels more than hot sex? Unlike Bridget, the lead character in wedding porn never recklessly indulges her sexual impulses -- no way! Having a normal sexual appetite would make her unlikable. While even recently canceled "Ally McBeal" sweats and fantasizes in her own disturbing Skeletor way, wedding porn takes all the dirtiness out of romance. Each scenario is meant to get our hearts (but not our parts) fluttering. This isn't about sex, it's about shopping. For men. Maybe, just maybe, there's some passing reference to a nice butt, but the comment is made from a great distance, like the appreciative but almost clinical observations of a mother in her mid-60s who considers herself out of the game. Instead, we're supposed to get hot over the fact that Prince Charming has his own posh bachelor pad, that he buys fresh flowers and nice dinners, that he's earnest and doe-eyed. "Sweetness" is the Holy Grail, the ultimate turn-on. Can this man fuck his way out of a paper bag? Maybe not, but he recycles!
We meet our heroine at a low point in her man-seeking life -- not a Dostoevski low, mind you, but a "Darn it, my hair is being so weird today, and why can't Mr. Everything ride in on a white horse already?" low. Her media job is so hectic and nutty, her friends are so hectic and nutty and she's so adorably scattered and sweetly disheveled. She's our own private idle 'ho (as played by Meg Ryan): deliciously flawed, sneezing cutely and wrinkling her nose over cheese (she's lactose-intolerant, get it?), and she's come to make the world safe for uptight, mediocre yuppies like herself! She's spunky, not gloomy. After all, readers don't need to get more depressed than is necessary to set up the elation of finding true love in the final chapter. We don't ask, "Will she throw herself into the river?" but rather, "Is she really gonna have to eat that whole hot fudge brownie sundae all by herself?" Aw, look. She's got hot fudge on her cute little button nose! Poor peanut.
Does she need a swarthy pirate to wipe that fudge away? No, sir. She needs a hand-holder, a chirpy little professional boy who'll tell her that, in this light, her eyes look as blue as the waves that lap the beaches at Club Med Belize.
The wedding porn genre applies the Madonna-Whore complex to men: If he's sultry and charismatic, he's dangerous, not a man you'd want to marry. But if he's soft and harmless and borderline-laughable? Yes! Tag that wildebeest and track him until he's lost his will to run, and his will to live, and is therefore ready to be propped up at assorted couples' brunches and holiday dinners, presented to the world as the slightly deadened but hopelessly devoted provider.
Sure, our female lead always has her madcap career in either magazines, publishing or TV, but it's nothing that can't be forsaken at the drop of a hat for a chance to pursue true love. The career is merely a subplot: Our heroine is already fairly successful, but there's an undercurrent of sentiment that her life will never be complete without a man. Plenty of women go through stages of feeling this way in spite of their best intentions, but there's some Final Resting Place feel to the prize these characters are chasing. "I'm so tired," they tell us. "Tired of my zany job, tired of chasing flat male characters without getting laid." Their real message to each and every man they meet is, "Get me a ring and plant me in your penthouse."
