Romantic love and

‘getting married’
Narratives of the wedding in and out of
cinema texts
Raelene Wilding
School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia

Abstract
In theories of mass popular culture, there remains a continuing assumption
that the dominant messages encoded in media texts impact upon and influ-
ence their audiences. Thus, the question that is usually posed is one regard-
ing the extent to which audiences are aware of and able to resist such
domination by media messages. In this article, I use a comparison of narra-
tives of romantic love in cinema texts and in the conversations of people ‘get-
ting married’ to challenge such assumptions of unidirectional influence. I argue
that both media texts and their audiences are part of a larger cultural logic, one
that is not necessarily more dominating of audiences than of producers of
texts, but which may nevertheless be used to reinforce prior unequal relations
of social organization.
Keywords: cinema texts, mass media, popular culture, romantic love,
weddings

Weddings provided the central theme of many cinematic box office hits in
Australia and around the world during the 1990s. An assumption of this
article is that the popularity of such films as Father of the Bride and
Muriel’s Wedding poses interesting sociological questions about their
impact on couples planning weddings at the end of the same decade. In this
article I ask two questions: first, what messages did these films present to
their audiences about the relationship between ‘romantic love’ and ‘getting
married’? Second, is there evidence that such messages were passively
accepted or actively resisted by couples preparing for their own wedding
days?

Journal of Sociology © 2003 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 39(4): 373–389
[0004–8690(200312)39:4;373–389;038714] www.sagepublications.com
374 Journal of Sociology 39(4)

Such questions go to the heart of a continuing debate about whether

global media and culture industries deny opportunities for those who con-
stitute ‘the masses’ to experience ‘authentic’ emotions and culture. For
some theorists, the very existence of modern information technologies has
resulted in an ordering of social relations that denies alternatives to the
ruling-class hegemony, and ‘technology and technological consciousness
have themselves produced a new phenomenon in the shape of a uniform
and debased “mass culture” which aborts and silences criticism’
(Bottomore in Jenks, 1993: 109). For others, the media are instead viewed
as vehicles for ‘ “reinforcing” prior dispositions, not cultivating “escapism”
or passivity, but capable of satisfying a great diversity of “uses and gratifi-
cations”; not instruments of a levelling of culture, but of its democratiza-
tion’ (Morley, 1995: 299).
In supporting the latter argument, many important studies have exam-
ined the ways in which people use media in social contexts (e.g. Ang, 1985;
Hermes, 1995; Morley, 1986). These studies have enabled greater aware-
ness of the complexities of relationships with and roles of media in every-
day lives, and have pointed to the existence of ‘mass culture as a “contested
terrain” … a site where producers and receivers of cultural commodities
engage from different positions and with unequal resources in a multi-
faceted struggle over meaning’ (Traube, 1992: 4; see also Hall, 1980).
However, the assertions of ‘resistance’ that usually accompany such
accounts have been criticized for presuming activity where there is none to
be found, and for identifying resistance where in fact all that can be seen is
temporary avoidance that nevertheless fails to challenge the structures of
inequality that continue to dominate (e.g. Seaman, 1992).
At issue here is the conceptualization of ‘domination’ or ‘influence’ on
the one hand, and ‘resistance’ on the other. Yet on both sides of the debate,
there is a continuing assumption that media texts – at least potentially –
have a direct effect on their audiences, and that audiences have direct rela-
tionships with those texts. I intend to propose an alternative means of
understanding the audience–text relationship. Campbell (1987: 2) has sug-
gested that analyses of advertising have proved unable to move beyond a
direct causation model in which it is assumed that ‘ “romantic” beliefs,
aspirations and attitudes are put to work in the interests of a “consumer
society” ’. While Campbell (1987: 2) does not seek to deny that advertisers
make use of romantic images and concepts to promote the consumption of
particular products, he argues that ‘the reverse relationship should also be
taken seriously, with the “romantic” ingredient in culture regarded as hav-
ing had a crucial part to play in the development of modern consumerism
itself’. Assuming that Campbell (1987: 7) is correct in identifying phenom-
ena such as ‘fashion, romantic love, taste and the reading of fiction’ as
implicated in the romantic ingredient of culture that has enabled con-
sumerism, is it possible to assert that this cultural ingredient is common to
 Wilding: Romantic love and ‘getting married’ 375

both texts and their audiences? In other words, rather than assuming that
media texts influence their audiences, or that audiences resist the messages
of media texts, is it possible to consider the case that both audiences and
texts are subject to the influence of a cultural logic of the ‘romantic’?
Studies that examine the ways in which people use media in social con-
texts tend to rely on research participants who reveal or document their
everyday practices of media consumption. It is my contention that this
methodological approach privileges the assumption that audiences do in
fact have direct and conscious relationships with the media products and
messages they consume. In order to interrogate such assumptions, I have
designed a research methodology that examines a social context – the white
wedding – in which the use of media texts is apparently widespread, and yet
in which media texts might also be considered irrelevant to the conduct of
the event. By developing a methodology that enables an exploration of the
presence or absence of parallel messages within media discourses and every-
day life, I aim to question whether a cultural logic of the ‘romantic’ might
be simultaneously influencing both media texts and the everyday lives of
media audiences.

The study
This article is based on research conducted between 1997 and 2001, which
examined the white wedding in Perth, Western Australia from the various
perspectives of wedding magazine producers, wedding industry employees
and business owners, popular magazine and cinema representations, and
couples involved in planning their own weddings.1 In this article, I briefly
report some of the findings of two elements of that research: a textual anal-
ysis of popular feature films and the findings that emerged from a series of
interviews with people getting married.2
The four films I discuss briefly below – Father of the Bride (USA, 1991),
Muriel’s Wedding (Australia, 1994), Four Weddings and a Funeral (UK,
1994) and The Wedding Singer (USA, 1998) – have been subjected to tex-
tual analysis with the assumption that key narrative themes about the rela-
tionship between romantic love and weddings are being represented in each
film. I focus explicitly on the points of commonality that exist in the narra-
tive structure of each of these films, with only minor attention to the points
of innovation in any particular plot. In this way, I aim to outline some of
the dominant themes in the representations of weddings in cinema texts.
Interviews and participant observation were conducted with men and
women from 16 couples marrying for the first time, exploring their per-
spectives on preparing for and having a wedding. A semi-structured inter-
view schedule ensured that a common set of themes and topics were
explored with all interviewees so that, for example, everyone answered
questions about meeting their partner and deciding to get married. In most
376 Journal of Sociology 39(4)

interviews, participants were asked to describe their current experiences of

wedding planning and, in the process, to explore wedding-related issues
that they deemed explicitly relevant to their experiences. Each interview
was at least an hour long, and many were several hours. The interview
series usually commenced shortly after the engagement announcement and
continued at intervals until a final post-wedding interview, a period of
involvement that ranged from six months to two years. Interestingly, most
interviewees replicated a common pattern of interests and concerns
throughout the planning of their wedding, indicating a high level of simi-
larity in the ways in which wedding planning is experienced.
The participants were heterosexual men and women aged between 19
and 35, many of whom cohabited prior to their engagement and wedding,
but none of whom had children together.3 While interviews were usually
conducted with couples together, in many cases I also interviewed the men
and women separately, which revealed many interesting points of difference
and similarity in the gendered discourses of weddings. Rather than attempt
to explore those complex differences here, I will instead focus on the nar-
ratives of the female interviewees as the supposedly more ‘natural’ partici-
pants in narratives of romantic love (Holland and Eisenhart, 1990).

Romantic love and ‘getting married’: cinema plots

Much of the social science literature about the wedding identifies it as a rite
of passage in which the marrying couple transform their social status from
juvenile to adult (e.g. Hendry, 1981; Kendall, 1996). Thus, Baker (1990:
45) writes that, in spite of changing social norms in Western societies about
reproductive relationships and long-term heterosexual partnerships, ‘a wed-
ding is still an adult rite of passage or an indication of adult status, even
when the couple is already living together’ (see also Barker, 1978: 57). Such
transformation in social status can clearly be identified in film plots of the
1990s. In Father of the Bride, the wedding day requires George, the father
of the bride, to acknowledge that his daughter Annie is no longer his ‘little
girl’, but instead a woman ready to begin her own life. In The Wedding
Singer, the wedding of the central characters, Robbie and Julia, signifies
their transformation into emotionally and economically mature adults. In
Muriel’s Wedding, the central character Muriel becomes a desirable and
confident woman only after her wedding day, a social status that persists in
spite of her later decision to end the marriage.
However, thanks to the polysemic nature of all texts (Fiske, 1986), an
alternative interpretation is available. In popular cinema plots, it is not nec-
essarily the wedding that ensures the transformation from dependent juve-
nile to successful adult. Indeed, even more important than the wedding day
appears to be the achievement of a state of ‘true’ romantic love. Thus, in
Four Weddings and a Funeral the story ends when the central characters,
 Wilding: Romantic love and ‘getting married’ 377

Charles and Carrie, declare their love to each other on a London street in
the rain, and solemnly promise to never marry. Their expression of ‘true
love’ is not celebrated by a formal wedding, but is instead modelled on that
of two male friends identified earlier in the film as being ‘to all intents and
purposes’ married, by virtue of their loving commitment to each other. The
heterosexual union of the wedding (Ingraham, 1999) is ignored in this
instance in favour of a pan-sexual celebration of ‘true romantic love’.
But what is ‘true’ romantic love? Love is generally understood to be
experienced as an internal emotion, so how can audiences know when it has
been achieved? While defining the emotion is almost impossible (Goode,
1959), romantic love has been usefully described as ‘any intense attraction
involving the idealization of the other within an erotic context … [which]
carries with it the desire for intimacy and the pleasurable expectation of
enduring for some unknown time into the future’ (Jankowiak, 1995: 4).
The intense attraction is signified in films by an intense gaze between the
couple, often enhanced by close-ups. A kiss or other intimate physical con-
tact confirms the meaning of the gaze, and in some instances leads to more
explicit sexual contact. Yet true romantic love is distinguished from mere
sexual attraction or ‘lust’ by a distinctive narrative theme: true romantic
love is always the culmination of a difficult journey, and must be ‘earned’
and ‘proved’, usually by enduring the pain of actual or potential separation
(Collins and Gregor, 1995: 75). Thus, in Four Weddings and a Funeral,
Carrie and Charles immediately acknowledge their mutual sexual attrac-
tion, but it is only after significant periods of separation that they believe
their feelings represent ‘true’ romantic love. Similarly, in The Wedding
Singer and Father of the Bride, a wedding for the central characters is only
possible after periods of separation serve to reinforce the truth of the
romantic love. In Muriel’s Wedding the rule is further proved: Muriel has
her wedding without overcoming any obstacles or separation, and soon
ends the resulting marriage on the basis of the absence of true romantic
love.
A strong message in these films is that the wedding is not the only means
of ensuring transformation or even necessarily the most desirable. Instead,
romantic love is clearly identified as a higher purpose or object than the
wedding. This is consistent with Lindholm’s (1995) argument that roman-
tic love has two primary characteristics: first, the idealization of the other,
who is the object of love, and, second, the achieving of ‘transcendence’ and
thereby a ‘higher level of being’ (Lindholm, 1995: 58). Such achievement of
a transcendent emotional state is also the objective of Campbell’s (1987:
77) romantics who, in the true spirit of romantic culture, ‘employ their
imaginative and creative powers to construct mental images which they
consume for the intrinsic pleasure they provide’.
In the narratives of the films, the wedding is insufficient and even unnec-
essary to enter into a state of transcendence that represents a ‘higher level
378 Journal of Sociology 39(4)

of being’. Rather, the object is to identify true romantic love – the emotional
state that brings the desired pleasure of the modern hedonist, in Campbell’s
terms. The idealization of the other is demonstrated in the film plots by the
willingness of the lovers to endure separation in order to achieve union.
Indeed, the period of separation is a key symbol that the successful roman-
tic is capable of constructing their romantic object as an ‘idea’ without
physical or sexual contact, thus fulfilling the requirement of true love as a
source of emotional pleasure rather than of sensual pleasure.
While the wedding is unnecessary for the transcendent state of true
romantic love, it has emerged in the cinema texts as an easy signifier that true
romantic love has been achieved and is being publicly acknowledged. Indeed,
the wedding may be seen as a form of ‘reward’ for the final discovery of truly
transcendent romantic love.4 Correspondingly, romantic love is never prob-
lematized in these films as the basis of a marriage, in spite of the negative
social and political consequences sometimes associated with romantic love –
particularly for women (Holland and Eisenhart, 1990: 51–5).

Romantic love and ‘getting married’: couple

narratives
The emphasis on true romantic love as an assumed precondition for a wed-
ding and for marriage was evident in fieldwork interviews, during which
couples narrated their experiences of ‘getting married’. The first question I
asked was usually about the sequence of events leading to their decision to
have a wedding. Interestingly, in every case the answer provided was the
story about ‘falling in love’ – in spite of the fact that ‘falling in love’ was
often temporally very distant from the decision to have a wedding. Even
those couples who had been living together for several years, and thus may
be in a position to select very different starting points for the narration of
their decision to marry, nevertheless used the ‘falling in love’ narrative as
some sort of ‘natural’ or required starting point.
There is some variation in the narratives of falling in love that I was told.
No doubt these variations reinforce the sense of uniqueness that each cou-
ple attributes to their particular experience of romantic love (Collins and
Gregor, 1995). However, there are also significant themes in common. One
of these themes is the sudden realization of love, confirming the salience of
‘the popular image of Cupid blindly striking people with the arbitrary
arrows of love’ (Illouz, 1997: 208). Diane5 described her experience of the
‘surprising’ discovery of love in the following way:
I was trying to set him up with one of my friends, but then later I just had a weird
feeling that we would get married one day.… we knew each other for about nine
months, and then just one day it all changed, it suddenly became different and
we were seeing each other every day.… then, yeah, we just knew.
 Wilding: Romantic love and ‘getting married’ 379

Diane emphasizes the fact that she was not seeking love, and had no expec-
tations of falling in love with this man. This latter point is supported by her
claim that she was ‘trying to set him up’ with another woman. However,
Cupid’s arrow struck arbitrarily when ‘one day it all changed’. In contra-
diction to her initial plans of match-making, love emerged in an unplanned
manner, striking both Diane and Jason simultaneously with a ‘heightening
of emotions’ (Illouz, 1997: 118). The strength and significance of this new
emotional attachment were so powerful that it did not require discussion or
verbal confirmation. Rather, ‘yeah, we just knew’, the shared intimate
knowledge perhaps reflecting the ideal of romantic love as the fusing of two
individuals into a single, united entity (Collins and Gregor, 1995;
Lindholm, 1995).
Tania’s description of ‘discovering’ romantic love is remarkably similar:
… we were both friends with this girl, and we all three of us started going out
together on a regular basis … and then things just started happening … we both
knew we liked each other, but neither of us wanted to take the first move … then
I took control and we moved in together pretty much straight away. We just
knew it was right.

The lack of planning, the notion that ‘things just started happening’, and the
shared knowledge of attraction are similar to Diane’s account, reflecting the
arbitrary striking of Cupid’s arrow. However, in Tania’s account there is an
additional factor: the sense of having to take control of the situation. In this
narrative, the tangible risk of rejection that persists in spite of the fact that
‘we both knew we liked each other’ initially prevents either Tania or Robert
from ‘taking the first move’. Tania describes the way she ‘took control’ of
the situation, after which their relationship accelerated at a swift pace: ‘we
moved in together pretty much straight away’. The initial refusal to make
‘the first move’, in association with the swift progression of the relationship
after that move is taken, serves to emphasize the dangers of romantic love
(Jankowiak and Allen, 1995), the presence of personal and social threat
possibly simultaneously serving to authenticate that love as true.
Both Diane and Tania’s accounts provide a narrative in which they
appear to live ‘happily ever after’ and get married some time after love has
been ‘discovered’. The presence of ‘true’ romantic love is taken for
granted, and is supported by claims of heightened emotional states and
irresistible forces. Other narratives more closely replicated the ‘difficult
journey’ of romantic love that characterizes the film plots discussed above.
In some cases, the misunderstandings and separations appear as essential
features of the love narrative. Alice and John, for example, had been in a
relationship for several years when an argument resulted in them separat-
ing for several months. Alice described a moment towards the end of this
period of time when John made it clear that he wanted to resume their rela-
tionship:
380 Journal of Sociology 39(4)

It took me a while to work out if I still liked him, if I still had feelings for him,
because he had really hurt me.… But it didn’t take long for all of those old feel-
ings to come flooding back, and that’s when I realized I wanted to marry him. It
wasn’t a question of weighing up the advantages and the disadvantages, it was
just that, I had to look inside at my feelings.… It was only when I knew I could
feel those things for him again that I knew I wanted to be with him, and get
married.

Alice makes it clear in this description that there is no ‘decision’ to love.

Rather, as was the case with Diane above, the emotional state that indicates
‘true’ romantic love must be one that is irresistible and uncontrollable. At
other points, Alice discussed a number of factors that provide support for
a less spontaneous, more carefully reasoned decision to marry – including
concerns about future career paths, the belief that partners are more diffi-
cult to find as people get older, and the desire to have children in the near
future. However, Alice did not privilege these more ‘practical’ elements in
her narrative of love. Rather, she emphasized the presence of transcendent
emotions, presumably in order to support and authenticate her claim for
experiencing ‘true’ romantic love (Lindholm, 1995).
While my initial question was intended to elicit the narrative of ‘getting
married’, it was most often answered with a description of ‘falling in love’.
In order to establish the facts behind the decision to have a wedding, it was
usually necessary to repeat the question. Interestingly, when the discussion
shifted from narratives of ‘falling in love’ to narratives of ‘getting married’,
there was a simultaneous tendency for a shift from a description of the tran-
scendent and the apparently irrational to a description of more pragmatic
concerns. In significant contrast to the emphasis on spontaneity central to
‘falling in love’, ‘getting married’ was more often described as a decision
taken in response to practical strategies for negotiating emotional, social,
economic and other pressures. For example, in one instance a relative had
been encouraging the couple to marry for several years, but it was the fact
of the relative’s sudden illness – and the potential that he might not survive
to see their long-postponed wedding – that prompted them to immediately
set a wedding date. Charlotte described being engaged to Liam for three
years before deciding to marry:
We had everyone going ‘So are you married yet?’, or like, ‘Have you set the date
yet?’, for three years, but it was also, with family being all over the place, and a
lot of them were coming here for their holidays anyway, it seemed like a good
time to do it, to get it done.

This quote demonstrates the attention to practical considerations in the

decision to marry and have a wedding. One of the factors restricting the
ability of this couple to have the wedding they desired, with large numbers
of family members in attendance, was the fact that their family was ‘all over
the place’, in other cities, states and countries. A family reunion at
 Wilding: Romantic love and ‘getting married’ 381

Christmas time, when many of these family members were already planning
to visit Perth, provided the final motivation to set a date for the wedding
and, as Liam explained, ‘This way we get to have the small wedding and
know that they were going to be here anyway, so it takes the pressure off a
bit.’ Mary and Mark, on the other hand, timed their wedding to fit in with
broader life plans. They were intending to move interstate in order to pur-
sue their careers, and decided to marry before they moved to fulfil two pur-
poses: first, they would be able to provide their families with some happy
news to offset the disappointment at the couple’s decision to move; and,
second, it would prevent them from having to organize a wedding from a
long distance should they decide to marry at a later date – there was no
question that the wedding would have to be held close to their families
when it did occur.
For all of the couples, the narratives of the beginning of the romantic
relationship described unplanned, spontaneous and uncontrollable pro-
cesses, reflecting the transcendent states aspired to by romantics. Yet the
narratives describing the starting point of the wedding planning reflected a
much great emphasis on pragmatic concerns and the sorts of rational deci-
sion-making processes that are the antithesis of romantic cultural dis-
courses. While romantic love is most often constructed as intrinsically
‘natural’ (Holland, 1992: 62), and as an irrational, uncontrolled, emotional
force that occurs within, the wedding, on the other hand, appears to be per-
ceived as a social and cultural event that is planned in relation to a range of
practical considerations. Important factors taken into account included the
anticipated ability of family members to attend, financial constraints and
life plans in relation to careers, having children and the health of key fam-
ily members (see also Charsley, 1991: 182–3; Currie, 1993: 407).6

Romantic love: culture industry imperative or

authentic cultural expression?
In the films, there is a clear privileging of romantic love as a transcendent
emotional experience necessary for a wedding. The central, heroic charac-
ters of the films inevitably achieved this transcendent state, albeit often after
difficulties and separation, and enduring through this served to further sup-
port their claim for ‘true’ romantic love. In the narratives of the couples,
there is a parallel emphasis on true romantic love as the only assumed legit-
imate basis of a wedding. In all cases, the narrative of ‘falling in love’ was
identified as a self-evident starting point for a description of the process of
‘getting married’, regardless of whether the decision to have a wedding was
made weeks or years after the realization of romantic love. In the cinema
narratives, the transcendent experience of true romantic love is usually
rewarded immediately with a wedding day in which the community sur-
rounding the couple celebrate a fitting culmination to a successful story. In
382 Journal of Sociology 39(4)

the couples’ descriptions of ‘getting married’, the initial emphasis on the

description of ‘falling in love’ serves to collapse what is frequently a signif-
icant temporal distance between the discovery of love and the wedding day.
One means of understanding this strong parallel would be to agree with
the pessimistic stance taken by many theorists of popular culture, and argue
that audiences are ‘duped’ into accepting romantic love as desirable. As sug-
gested above, a feminist argument might point to the ways in which roman-
tic love is highly disadvantageous to women, in spite of being strongly
associated with the feminine. It could be argued that the culture industry
has a particular interest in maintaining the subordination of women as a
group by ensuring that they participate in their own oppression by suc-
cumbing to the ‘pleasures’ of romantic love. It could also be argued that the
culture industry manipulates the emotions of female audiences to ensure
that the interests of the powerful are maintained, and that the ‘masses’
actively refuse to recognize or critique their own relative powerlessness.
While the mass culture critiques provide compelling arguments, they are
also flawed. For example, the implicit assumptions of a singular, all-
powerful ‘culture industry’ and of a homogeneous, powerless ‘mass’ ignore
the full complexity of contemporary social and cultural life. Such assump-
tions are rarely supported by empirical investigations, and so there is a dan-
ger of the theorist reproducing their assumptions regarding which social
groups are ‘superior’ and ‘active’ in culture and which are ‘inferior’ and
passive’.7 Indeed, some see the critical theories of mass culture as mere
reflections of the theorists’ own elitist distaste for the preferences of the
non-elites, rather than an objective analysis of the contemporary condition
(see Strinati, 1995: 38–42). Scholars such as Stuart Hall (e.g. 1980) have
been influential in addressing such assumptions, by pointing to the ways in
which the economically and politically subordinate are in fact active con-
tributors in the making of history and society, rather than mere subjects of
the will of the dominant.
An alternative theoretical approach suggests that the mass media have
little or no impact upon their audiences. While dominant messages may be
encoded within texts, greater attention is given to the polysemic nature of
those texts, and the opportunities that viewing contexts provide for alter-
native interpretations and even resistant interpretations (e.g. Hobson,
1980). By providing evidence of the processes and contexts of reception and
interpretation, reception theorists offer a counterpoint to the mass culture
theorists’ focus on production by placing a focus instead on the moment of
consumption of popular culture (e.g. Ang, 1985; Morley, 1986). Reception
theorists are credited with restoring the potential for agency among con-
sumers of media and consumer products. However, such resistance is
always subject to a larger context in which continued oppression is secured,
sometimes through the very acts of resistance. For example, Radway’s
(1984) classic examination of romance novels points to the ways in which
 Wilding: Romantic love and ‘getting married’ 383

women continue to participate in reproducing a patriarchal system even as

they seek opportunities to escape from its demands on their time and ener-
gies.
Theorists who focus on reception and agency offer compelling accounts
of active relationships with mass-produced texts. But they fail to answer the
question of why the narratives of romantic love and weddings provided in
interviews so consistently replicate the dominant narrative themes of the
films examined above. Does this strong replication of themes indicate that
a mass culture critique is the more appropriate explanation? If so, how
should we deal with the critiques of that approach? At the basis of these
questions is a central theoretical problem: ‘How do we explain the force of
culture (as both symbols and meanings) while acknowledging that culture
(in whatever concrete form it takes) does not make anyone do anything?’
(Strauss and Quinn, 1997: 20).
The failure of cinema texts to determine audience experiences is evident
in that a significant element of the marrying experience that does not appear
in those texts, and yet forms an important feature of the narratives of the
couples, is the process of actively deciding to have a wedding. In the cine-
matic narratives, the decision to have a wedding usually emerges ‘naturally’
from the declaration of romantic love. The model of the cinematic narra-
tives is one in which there is either a whirlwind rush or a neat jump from
discovery of romantic love to wedding proposal to wedding day. This nar-
rative has no correspondence with any of the interviewees’ experiences.
Instead, the path from discovery of love to the wedding was a lengthy pro-
cess involving a series of decisions. In many cases, it was the pressure from
other relatives that encouraged the couple to make the transition from love
to marriage. Further, the period of time between deciding to have a wedding
and the wedding itself is most often a year or more in length, and always
involves a great deal of preparation and work.
There is an interesting dynamic here, in which it is the irrational and the
romantic, the realm of the imaginary, which is represented in the cinema
narratives. The practicalities and emotional angst and pleasures of planning
a wedding, including selecting a date and location, maintaining a budget,
and constructing a desirable wedding style, are absent from the cinema
texts. However, they cannot be eliminated from the experiences of the cou-
ples. While the realm of the imaginary is an important set of experiences for
all of the couples, it was not the only means of conceptualizing their wed-
ding day or even of experiencing their love relationship.
What is at issue here is identifying a means of accepting that media prod-
ucts may reinforce particular cultural norms at the expense of others – there
is evidence that films, television programmes, magazines and advertising
texts are sources of inspiration and prescription for wedding planning (e.g.
Currie, 1993) – but that not all social and cultural experiences will neces-
sarily be determined or even addressed by the narratives and messages of
384 Journal of Sociology 39(4)

media products. Elizabeth Traube (1992) writes of how many past analyses
of films tend to use psychoanalytic theory to focus on the way in which
texts construct spectator positions, such as that of the male gaze (e.g.
Mulvey, 1975). Traube (1992: 2) aims to complement this approach to
analysing cinema texts by attending to the ‘sociohistorical moment in which
audiences appeared to be receptive to its ideological appeal’. Without dis-
missing psychoanalysis as a mode of interpreting films, Traube aims to con-
nect these analyses to an awareness of the broader social contexts within
which a film is received as popular. This approach results in important anal-
yses of the connections between cinema narratives and broader social and
political debates in 1980s USA. However, there are few opportunities in
such an analysis for considering how the films might contribute to the ways
in which individuals use the messages of these films in their everyday lives.
The link between cinematic texts and audience members remains unclear.
Jackie Stacey (1994) aims to address this gap in film analysis by consid-
ering the ways in which members of cinema audiences relate to the stars of
cinema. She theorizes audiences that are actively engaged in the texts they
view. Although Stacey (1994: 47) is careful not to equate activity of the
audience with a notion of resistance, she does indicate some of the ways in
which the films that people watch might contribute to their social lives,
their sense of self and their consumer desires. Thus, for example, she
describes the ways in which young women might collectively ‘play’ at being
movie stars and the ways in which women might aim to emulate aspects of
their ‘favourite’ movie stars. Stacey’s approach is useful, but is restricted to
an account of the impact of particular people – the stars – on the subjectiv-
ities of the audiences. Alternatively, I am concerned with the correspon-
dence between the emotional states represented in the cinema texts and
those described in the interviews, asking what significance these narratives
might have for people outside the cinema. While this extended meaning and
influence of popular texts are frequently implied in cultural studies accounts,
they are not often explored with empirical evidence. One of the main rea-
sons for this absence, I would suggest, lies in the difficulty of moving beyond
what Strauss and Quinn (1997: 23; see also Strauss, 1992, 1997) call a ‘fax’
model of culture. That is, if the symbols and narratives of the film do not
determine audience readings of the film and are not fully internalized by
viewers, then how do these texts have any impact at all on viewers’ social
and cultural lives beyond the moment of experiencing the text?
Strauss and Quinn (1997) offer a means of addressing this problem.8
They suggest that ‘meanings are based on cultural schemas, schemas that
have come to be shared among people who have had similar socially medi-
ated experiences’ (Strauss and Quinn, 1997: 48).9 As the act of viewing a
film is one form of ‘socially mediated experience’, it can be suggested that
cinema texts contribute to cultural schemas. In this approach, cultural
schemas, or cultural models, are not rigid patterns that determine how
 Wilding: Romantic love and ‘getting married’ 385

people respond to a particular situation or how they understand a particu-

lar cultural text. Rather, through connectionist theory, schemas are under-
stood as associative networks which are strengthened with repetition and
use, and which serve to enable social interaction to occur without constant
recourse to conscious reflection on the part of the social actor. Thus, it can
be expected that the repetition of similar narrative structures or themes in
films may assist in the construction or reinforcement of particular schemas
applicable to understandings of love, romance and weddings.
The learning of schemas is conceptualized as a continuing process that
relies on repeated experiences of associated concepts and emotions, rather
than the learning of explicitly stated rules. In this respect, schemas resem-
ble Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (Strauss and Quinn, 1997: 53). Further,
these sets of associations are not limited to language or linguistic codes. As
Strauss and Quinn (1997: 53) write:
Language is not privileged in this formulation. ‘Embodied’ ideas can be repre-
sented as well as (and perhaps even more readily than) highly abstract ones. All
kinds of experiences, including those provided by texts and other symbolic mate-
rial, can be represented in a connectionist model.

Thus the association of romantic love and the wedding in cinema texts may
contribute to an association of these ideas and emotions for audience mem-
bers. However, similar symbols, emotions and narratives may recur else-
where in different combinations. Thus, no one set of associations is
guaranteed to be determining in its effects on audiences. The concepts of
cultural schemas and cultural models thus enable a means of accepting that
cinema texts can actively contribute to people’s understandings of social
situations, without asserting that texts determine their understandings
and/or behaviours. Rather, along with other experiences from other con-
texts, representations in cinema texts contribute to the varied sets of asso-
ciations that people apply to, and derive from, their everyday lives and
practices. Thus, for the level of correspondence between romantic love and
the wedding to be consistent, it is to be expected that many other sources
of cultural knowledge must also reinforce this set of associations. It is in this
sense that Campbell’s (1987) notion of a romantic ingredient in consumer
culture could be posited as one of the highly salient cultural themes of con-
temporary life which is repeated in multiple contexts, thus ensuring its cen-
trality in social and cultural life.

Conclusion
There is a high correspondence between the romantic love narratives of
four popular films of the 1990s and the ways in which interviewees talked
about their experiences of romantic love. In particular, the interviewees
privileged stories of romantic love in describing how they decided to have
386 Journal of Sociology 39(4)

a wedding day. However, when discussing the issue of ‘when’ they decided
to have a wedding day, the interviewees described narratives that did not
exist within the realm of the cinema texts. This reflects the ability of social
actors to use schemas learned in one domain of everyday life and apply
them to others (see Quinn, 1987). However, I do not want to assert a play-
ful and powerful ability to imagine a range of wedding narratives that is
without limit. Rather, the repetition of particular schemas in multiple con-
texts tends to ensure their reproduction. The particular cultural theme that
I suggest informs the narratives of both the films and the interviewees is
captured by Campbell’s (1987) ‘romantic ingredient’.
Such a cultural theme will impact differentially on the life chances of
people differently situated within the capitalist social order, as cultural
models and schemas will be differentially formed in relation to particular
experiences of social structures. However, I aim to argue against an auto-
matic discussion of such power relations as the starting point in conceptu-
alizing the role of popular culture in everyday life. Rather, my argument is
that a closer examination of the messages and practices that comprise the
romantic in contemporary culture might provide a more useful empirical
starting point for understanding the variable ways in which this particular
cultural theme operates in social contexts. In the best comparative anthro-
pology and sociology, such cultural relativism is applied consistently to the
study of other cultures, in order to ensure that understanding is acquired
before judgement. It is just such a position of cultural relativism that I am
suggesting is necessary if we are to arrive at a better understanding of pop-
ular culture as a realm of society and culture.

Notes
1 This research was conducted in the Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology,
School of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia with
the assistance of an Australian Postgraduate Award. I am particularly indebted
to Associate Professor Michael Pinches for his excellent supervision of this
research, and for his ever-useful advice regarding the theoretical perspectives and
analyses I have adopted.
2 Unfortunately, it is impossible in this short article to do justice to the rich mate-
rial that emerged from both the analysis of the films and the interview tran-
scripts. For further details of these analyses, see Wilding (2002).
3 In two cases, the bride had a child from a previous unmarried relationship.
4 Holland (1992) writes that young women are aware of romance as a field requir-
ing expertise, nevertheless they continue to talk of romantic love as ‘happening’
to them, hence the notion of ‘discovery’ in this context.
5 All interviewees quoted in this article have been allocated pseudonyms to pre-
serve their anonymity.
6 I do not mean to suggest that the privileging of the romantic completely disap-
pears from the point of deciding to have a wedding. Indeed, I would suggest that
the practices and processes of consumption associated with wedding planning
provide clear instances of Campbell’s (1987) assertion of the prevalence of
 Wilding: Romantic love and ‘getting married’ 387

romantic culture in consumer society (see Wilding, 2002). Rather, my intention

in this article is to point to two different narrative styles regarding the com-
mencement of romantic love and the commencement of wedding planning.
7 My own preference for empirical evidence of arguments identifies this as a flaw
in the reasoning of the mass culture critique. However, it should be noted that
many perceive empirical investigations as unequal to the task of analysing the
culture industries (e.g. Adorno, 1991).
8 I am grateful to Victoria Burbank for suggesting this line of inquiry and analysis.
9 This theoretical approach could be identified as one among many recent theo-
retical approaches that have adopted and developed some of the founding prin-
ciples of symbolic interactionism, often ‘without full – perhaps without any –
sense of the debt’ (Stryker, 1987: 87; see also Fine, 1993). However, the connec-
tionist theory as proposed by Strauss and Quinn (1997), while addressing many
of the same conceptual issues as symbolic interactionism, provides an innovative
approach to resolving the dilemma of understanding the relationship between
mental states and social structures, in particular by paying specific attention to
theorizing the cognitive processes that are involved in learning and reproducing
cultural models and social structures.

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Wilding, R. (2002) ‘Fairy-tales for Sale: An Anthropological Perspective on the

White Wedding in Perth, Western Australia’, PhD thesis. Anthropology and
Sociology, University of Western Australia, Perth.

Biographical note
Raelene Wilding is Associate Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology,
Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western
Australia. Her PhD was recently awarded for her thesis, ‘Fairy-tales for
Sale: An Anthropological Perspective on the Wedding Industry in Perth,
Western Australia’. In addition to her research on issues of consumption,
production and media in relation to the wedding industry, Wilding has been
involved in researching Irish and New Zealand migration as part of an
investigation of Transnational Caregiving and Transnational Families con-
ducted by Associate Professor Loretta Baldassar, UWA, and Emeritus
Professor Cora Baldock, Murdoch University. Address: Discipline of
Anthropology and Sociology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling
Highway, Crawley WA 6009, Australia. [email: rae@cyllene.uwa.edu.au]