Punch-drunk love : a post-romance romance

Glen R. Fuller

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

    Abstract

    I didn’t know about the online dating site rsvp.com.au until a woman who I was dating at the time showed me her online profile. Apparently ‘everyone does rsvp’. Well, ‘everyone’ except me. (Before things ended I never did ask her why she listed herself as ‘single’ on her profile…) Forming relationships in our era of post-institutional modes of sociality is problematic. Some probably find such ‘romantically’ orientated ‘meet up’ sites to be a more efficient option for sampling what is available. Perhaps others want some loving on the side. In some ways these sites transform romance into the online equivalent of the logistics dock at your local shopping centre. ‘Just-in-time’ relationships rely less on social support structures of traditional institutions such as the family, workplace, and so on, including ‘love’ itself, and more on a hit and miss style of dating, organised like a series of car crashes and perhaps even commodified through an eBay-style online catalogue (see Crawford 83-88). Instead of image-commodities there are image-people and the spectacle of post-romance romance as a debauched demolition derby. Is romance still possible if it is no longer the naïve and fatalistic realisation of complementary souls? Through Paul Thomas Anderson’s third film 'Punch-Drunk Love' I shall problematise the event of love so as to resuscitate the contingencies of post-romance romance.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalM/C: a Journal of Media and Culture
    Publication statusPublished - 2007

    Keywords

    • love
    • man-women relationships
    • motion picture plays
    • postmodernism
    • social psychology
    • violence

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