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ABOUT TIME, THE URBAN VILLAGE, AND DIGITAL DISRUPTIONS OF THE LONDON ROMANTIC COMEDY.

This article examines the disruptions seen between the London romantic comedy's depictions of pre- and post-digital urban space. Focusing on Richard Curtis's About Time (2013) as a pivotal case study, I analyze how the London rom-com has navigated the rapid integration of digital technologies within...

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Published in:Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television no. 92; pp. 4 - 16
Main Author: IDLE, HARRIET
Format: Article
Published: University of Texas Press Fall2023
Subjects:
Romantic comedy films
Disruptive innovations
Curtis, Richard, 1956-
Urban life
Public spaces
Digital technology
Villages
London (England)
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:This article examines the disruptions seen between the London romantic comedy's depictions of pre- and post-digital urban space. Focusing on Richard Curtis's About Time (2013) as a pivotal case study, I analyze how the London rom-com has navigated the rapid integration of digital technologies within urban life since the genre's boom in the 1990s. I argue that the kinds of aesthetic and formal challenges to rom-com conventions seen in About Time in fact preserve the genre's central ideological underpinnings (and expectations of city space) in the face of the potentially unsettling or destructive impacts of digitization.