ABSTRACT
Nancy Meyers as a contemporary writer, producer and director occupies a privileged position in Hollywood. Michael Allen in his introductory work Contemporary US Cinema, published in 2003, noted that “[t]he American film industry, even in these liberated days, is overwhelmingly controlled and operated by men.” He described Meyers as one of the few exceptions, “a particularly interesting mainstream woman director … who has scripted many of the more significant women-centered films of the last 20 years.”1 Allen characterized her work as “gentle comedy” explaining that “[t]he gentleness of the comedy, however, does not necessarily mean that these films do not offer pertinent observations about women in contemporary America.”2 While Meyers has been involved with a series of box office successes as a writer and producer, such as Private Benjamin (Howard Zieff, 1980) and Baby Boom (Charles Shyer, 1987) and as writer and director for films such as Parent Trap (1998), or writer, director and producer for films such as The Holiday (2006), her work, unlike that of directors such as Katherine Bigelow and Jane Campion, has been largely neglected by feminist scholars.3 What Women Want (2000), which she produced and directed (and for which she also served as an unacknowledged co-writer4), in 2009 remains the top-grossing romantic comedy directed by a woman.5 Though appreciated by the public, the film was for the most part ignored or condemned by critics and scholars, as is the case for neo-feminist cinema more generally. In this chapter, I will argue that Meyers brings a distinctly neo-feminist perspective to her comedies that not only becomes one of the marks of her style, but also facilitates the marketing of her films within Conglomerate Hollywood. A notable dimension of this neofeminist perspective is her view of heterosexual men, who are portrayed as significantly disadvantaged, even to the point of suffering a disability, over women in the game of love, and her interest in the older, often very successful, woman, who typically stars in her films. A comparison with other contemporary comedies directed at women audi-
ences suggests that within the woman’s film, in particular within hybridized
comedies as the new privileged form of the woman’s film, two disabilities emerge as significant impediments to romance: masculinity and advancing age.6
Heroes who find themselves the protagonist in a “girly film” (such as What Women Want) discover that their gender works against a satisfying conclusion, while the “biological clock” constitutes a primary disability that many a heroine must overcome. If the single girl provides the model for the new romantic heroine, how does this ideal work for a character who seems past the age of marriage, whose potential partners suffer from debilitating forms of masculinity that have hardened with advancing years? The film Something’s Gotta Give, based on Meyers’ own experience as a single woman in her late fifties, which she transformed into a star vehicle for Diane Keaton, engages with this question.7
