Cinderella is in some sense the stereotypical romance plot; girl has problems; girl finds right guy; problems disappear. Simple enough — and, when you look a little more closely, not at all what the romance genre tends to be about. On the contrary, a great deal of romance is not focused on men saving women (as in male genre literature), but rather on women saving men.
Pretty Woman is a case in point; though it claims at one point to be a repetition of "Cinder-fucking-rella," the movie is much more interested in Richard Gere's apotheosis than in Julia Roberts'. All Roberts needs, after all, is money; Gere, on the other hand, has to undergo a personal transformation. He's a shallow, emotionally inaccessible asshole redeemed by love. You can't put a pricetag on that, right?
The romance genre, is not, in other words, a fantasy of female disempowerment, but of female empowerment. Which isn't to say that it's necessarily empowering. In fact, the insistence that women can save men from themselves is, overall, fairly depressing. Why on earth would you want to save Richard Gere in the first place? I mean, fuck him…and no, adamantly not literally.
And yet, the romance genre can't get enough of him and his ilk. From Jane Eyre and the moody, violent Rochester to Maggie Gyllenhaal and the utterly emotionally inaccessible James Spader in the film
Secretary, the excitement of romance is all wrapped up in the magical power of masochism. Yes, this guy is an abusive shithead…but that very abuse makes the relationship all the more rewarding when I tame him through the power of my redeeming love! No pain, no gain…or, to paraphrase another fairytale, no magic kiss without the frog.
At first, Ai Yazawa's high school, high fashion romance "Paradise Kiss" seems to be working faithfully from the frog prince model. The male love interest, George, is a precocious clothing designer whose heart appears to be divided about equally between his love of couture and his admiration of his own eccentricities. The protagonist, Yukari, agrees to model his clothes for his senior contest, and then falls in love with him…letting herself in for a bucketful of pain and humiliation. On their first date, George tells her she "lacks initiative" and sends her home by herself on the train. He also appears to have a number of other lovers, of both genders…or at least, likes to insinuate that he does, which isn't much less hurtful. And, of course, he likes S&M play (though this is treated much less explicitly than in
Secretary.)
Over the course of the manga's five volumes, we learn that George's mother was not married to his father; instead she was, and remains, his father's kept woman. Her dependence, combined with her lack of affection and her general weakness, seems to be at the root of much of George's emotional remoteness. If a woman wants him, or needs him, he sees her as weak, and wants to hurt her.
So the normal path here would be for Yukari to love George despite the abuse, cling to him through thick and thin, prove her devotion, heal his wounds, and... tada! True love forever!
But that's not how Yazawa plays it. Oh, Yukari does try to prove her devotion. Because George wants an independent woman, she attempts to sort her life out, standing up to her controlling mother, giving up the schoolwork she hates, and pursuing a career as a model. With the love and support of George's schoolmates, she does succeed in making herself happier and more self-confident. But she doesn't manage to alter George, who, at the end of the book, as at the beginning, is unable to fully respect anyone who claims to love or need him. His closest emotional relationship, as it turns out, is not with Yukari, but with a classmate and rival named Kaori, who loves him, but won't tell him or sleep with him. Yukari is, quite naturally, jealous of Kaori, and that jealousy sparks the fight which causes the Yukari/George romance to unwind once and for all.
So no happy ending. Except that there sort of is. George and Yukari don't marry...but the truth is that, in real life, not marrying is often a positive outcome. Though we're supposed to believe in
Secretary that Gyllenhaall and Spader go on to years of devoted joy, the truth is it's impossible to see them doing anything but making each other miserable after the first six months or so. Ditto for Jane and Rochester, or for Gere and Roberts in
Pretty Woman. Marrying a creep doesn't end in wedded bliss; it ends in being married to a creep.
Yazawa likes both her protagonists too much to subject them to that. Both of them are, after all, only 18. George is certainly a jerk, but a lot of people are jerks when they're that young. Yukari herself, truth be told, is not someone you'd want to pledge your troth too — she's scattered, ridiculously volatile, and (as George remorselessly points out on a number of occasions) quite selfish. It's not that either of them are at all irredeemable. Both can be sweet and thoughtful.
In one of my favorite scenes in the book, Yukari bitterly chastises herself for being obsessed with winning, just like her mother. George responds that he wishes he could be similarly goal-oriented; he can't bring himself to make clothes that will sell. Both are trying hard to be better people, to understand themselves, to grow up, and to love. It's just hard, and they're not quite there yet. They can change; they just can't change each other right now. Sometimes, as Yukari says, "Nothing can be done." You can't save anybody with your love, or make time stop and turn into happily ever after. That's a bitter realization, perhaps. But it's also freeing.
Noah Berlatsky writes regularly for The Comics Journal, The Chicago Reader, and his own blog, The Hooded Utilitarian. He's also an artist of sorts.
A Pundit in Every Panopticon is ©2008 Noah Berlatsky
