In a scene from her most famous
movie, “When Harry Met Sally” (1989), Ephron brought to mainstream,
predominantly female audiences the spectacle of a professional actress (Meg
Ryan), not a porn prop, performing an extended impression of an orgasm in a
crowded delicatessen. It was supposed to be the ultimate put-down of her crass
male companion (Billy Crystal). Was this merely a smart update of the onscreen
battle of the sexes once famously waged by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy?
Or had we become party to something darker? Either way, America laughed, and
Ephron is today eulogized for this unforgettable display.
It was a first, all right, but
maybe not so funny, since it was also a milestone in the pornification of the
American middle class. This has been a long process in which increasingly
voyeuristic audiences watch as increasingly untrammeled moviemakers rob human
sexuality of intimacy and consequence. “When Harry Met Sally” took us over the
top, cauterizing audiences to a new convention of shamelessness – the ideal of
Betty Friedan feminism.
And then what happened? Ever
since, as a Salon.com critic approvingly wrote, “rom-coms have gotten
increasingly raunchy and foulmouthed, often desperately so. But whatever
supposed new twists writers dream up – make the lovers casual-sex partners or
bisexual polyamorists or ex-lovers of each other’s parents – they’re just
spraying Cool Whip on a cake that Ephron baked.”
This must make Ephron the mother
of the transgressive “gross-out” comedy, even if she is more politely celebrated
as the queen of romantic comedy...
I love Diana, but I don't know if I buy her assessment. I'd pin the blame for today's "gross-out" comedy not on the late Ms. Ephron but on the much-later Bluto Blutarsky.
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