Chick Flicks and Weepies-The Mythology of Love in Film

  • Author(s): Marsha Bentley Hale
  • When: 2011-12
  • Where: Source
  • This dissertation focuses on the study of films from the romance genre, both comedy and drama, sometimes referred to as chick flicks and weepies. It attempts to see through to their underlying mythologies of love from a perspective of metaphor, as well as archetypal and depth psychology. It explores the etymology, symbolism, and mythic nature of the terms chick, flicks, and weepies. Varied meanings of love are presented and defined academically, philosophically, mythically, and cinematically. Following this is an overview of the history of chick flicks and weepies in popular culture utilizing the studies of scholars, articles by film critics, and filmmaker commentaries. These chapters provide a platform from which to view this area of film through the relatively new field of comparative mythology, that is, mythology as revealed in the popular culture of cinema. The last six chapters look at films involving Western European legends of romance, films with the watermarks of mythological characters and their love journeys, films featuring wounded healer archetypes, as well as stories of creative individuation touching upon aspects of archetypal and depth psychology. The dissertation looks at the battle between love and honor, the allure of Ariadne's thread, Persephone's draw to the Underworld by Hades, and the powerful magnetism of Aphrodite. This is a voyage to discover personal mythology as revealed within films featuring love relationships—sometimes referred to as labyrinths of love. It is a study of love journeys in cinema, seeing through the surface stories to the underlying myths and archetypes found in chick flicks and weepies.

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