ABSTRACT
Neoliberalism, along with its attendant economic and social ideas, is of special significance in changing the romantic comedy's politics of emotion and consequently its narrative and formal strategies. In her book Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution, Wendy Brown identifies neoliberalism as 'a governing rationality that disseminates market values and metrics to every sphere of life and construes the human itself exclusively as homo economicus'. 'Bromance', or 'bromcom', has emerged as a sub-genre of romantic comedy and is perhaps the most evident example of recent negotiations within its generic conventions. In her discussion of millennial romantic comedy's modes of production and exhibition, York classifies Mamma Mia!, The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006) and Sex and the City as women's blockbusters, claiming that one of the defining features of such films 'is their millennial theme of validation'. The importance of participating in 'emotional networks' at the expense of romance is also demonstrated in the contemporary sub-genre of 'wedding films'.
