En undersökning om representationen av romantiska relationer i tre av 2010-talets populäraste romantiska komedier

Sammanfattning: In today's society, most media users are aware that the image of reality that media producers create differs from real life. However, the knowledge about the power that the media holds is forgotten in daily media use. This is due, among other things, to the fact that the image of reality that the media communicates is in many cases more tangible than the actual reality. The media thus has a decisive role in how reality is perceived, and in this case how relationships are perceived. A negative or unrealistic representation of romantic relationships can cause a problem for individuals' perception and attitudes towards their partners, or future partners. In recent years, romantic comedies have slowly become more popular with both men and women. They have started spreading from their conventional and traditional structure to other territories and areas. The genre is characterized by a focus on idealized love. It usually consists of suspense with love being challenged and a happy ending to the story. The plot keeps the audience glued to their seats hoping that love will triumph in the end. This study aims to investigate the representation of relationships in three romantic comedies from the 2010s. Certain expectations of a romantic relationship can be constructed in the films. By scanning the movie database IMDb for the top rated romantic comedies from the 2010s the top three movies were selected, with the three movies being Leap Year (2010), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) and Something Borrowed (2011). By applying a thematic analysis, the representation of the main relationships in the movies will be analyzed. Themes will be selected in relevance to the research question.  The relationships in the movies showed interesting similarities and differences in the way gender roles, initiative and complications were represented. Stuart Hall's theory of representation supports the study´s emphasis on the importance of the topic and explains how stereotyping can be used by producers to promote a specific demeanor.