Dream on: Why romcoms need to bring back the making-it-big-in-NYC trope

Bring back the frothy, shiny NYC romcoms where anything was possible. In a world going mad, that dream is all we have

Pick your fighter: Andy Sachs from The Devil Wears Prada, clipping across Fifth Avenue in Chanel boots while she picks up Miranda Priestly’s Starbucks order in The Devil Wears Prada (2006); Jenna Rink, glamourous fashion editor, doing a photo shoot in Central Park in 13 Going on 30 (2004); Rebecca, crushing it at a Manhattan sample sale in Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009); or even Princess Gisele, banished from her cartoon world, but somehow ending up in a live-action Upper West Side apartment in Enchanted (2007).

Andy Sachs, from the 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada, made the hustle seem aspirational.

It doesn’t matter who you choose. They’re all the same fantasy: Young White woman, making it alone in New York City, and ultimately living a dream, blessed by Sex And The City (1998-2004). There’s main-character drama, phenomenal outfits, killer lines, cute guys who are merely part of the backdrop. NYC itself seems unshakeably optimistic in the first decade of the new millennium. No wonder we’re still stuck on the trope, despite the real-world headlines about rats, rapes and people defecating on the Subway.

Just My Luck has Lindsay Lohan playing the most fortunate woman in the world. Of course it’s in NYC.

The fantasy largely shows up in romcoms – but the dream, really, is all-round success. You can bump into an eligible, kind, hot man on the way to Broadway, sure. But you can also be the unpopular nerd back home and still land a glamorous job in downtown Manhattan in your first week away from home. That means you can afford designer jeans and rent a cute little loft in the West Village. You can party all night in Tribeca and miraculously pick up a bagel and hail a cab to work from there by morning. You have family – a stable old mum and dad in a roomier home in the Midwest. But you, gorgeous, determined you, can even make urban loneliness seem like the jackpot. The bodega cat is your friend.

Watch How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days (2003) again and marvel over how impossibly easy it must be to be a fashion-magazine writer in that fantasy world. Andie (Kate Hudson) has literally a whole month to write a single article – about whether she can make a guy lose feelings for her. Spoiler alert: They end up falling for each other. Or stream 27 Dresses and watch Jane spend her weekends being a bridesmaid 27 times over – she just loves weddings that much and has a job that lets her take taxis across town in evening traffic. Just My Luck (2006) has Lindsay Lohan, playing the most fortunate woman in the world. Where else does that play out but in shabby-chic NYC?

In Set It Up, two overworked assistants bond over their job stress.

Later films and shows have tried to tarnish the dream a bit. Ugly Betty (2006-2010) was determined to make the Big Apple seem tougher on mousy unattractive women. It failed. HBO’s drama Girls (2012-2017) went in a whole other direction – a post-Recession USA, where Millennials grapple with job losses, parental disappointment, wretched rental agreements, their own entitlement and Adam-Driver-shaped boyfriends struggling to redefine masculinity. It worked, but only for a little while. By the Netflix era, the dream was back. Set It Up (2018) has two harrowed personal assistants who plot to have their bosses date each other so they can get some time off work. Evening walks by Brooklyn Bridge, pizza on the fire-escape balcony, the race to keep your job. Such comfortable bliss!

In the romcom universe, NYC is our Far, Far, Away. Sutton, in The Bold Type (2017 – 2021), negotiates for better pay, and struggles to pay rent and buy enough meals to survive. No one seems to be happy in that universe. Why ruin the dream? It was all we had!

From HT Brunch, November 30, 2024

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