![]() The appreciation of such characters stems from their rich, stimulating “psychology,” which quietly coexists with their fictional nature, and thus with their belonging to the other-worldly, diegetic space-time of the narrative ( Eder, 2010). The history of cinema is replete with examples of romantic comedies that have fascinated several generations of viewers not because of their factual accuracy and reliability, but due to the “credibility” and interest of their characters for audiences from the most diverse social, economic, and cultural backgrounds ( Currie, 1998). Moreover, fictional narratives’ violation of norms of likelihood may have an important evolutionary value of stimulus to creativity and imagination ( Subbotsky, 2015). Even if characters are patently imaginary, the historical and social context is inaccurately or incorrectly reconstructed, or even nature’s laws are put into question by magical powers, this need not jeopardize the fiction’s capacity to provide the audience with valuable insight into the actual interaction between sexes ( Nettle, 2005), or into the relational grammar of couple relationships ( Grodal, 2009). ![]() For a romantic comedy to contribute to the cognition of the mating process, what matters is not the realism of the representation of characters or situations, but the consistency of, and the insight into, the intertwined sequence of events and inner states that leads, or fails to lead, to the creation of a couple. Moreover, not all of them provide equally convincing accounts of the dynamic process leading to the successful or failed emergence of the heterosexual couple ( Lucchi Basili & Sacco, 2017). However, it is equally true that not all fictional narratives share the same hedonic versus eudemonic valence ( Oliver & Hartmann, 2010), elicit the same levels and forms of appreciation, and maintain the same cultural relevance through time ( Oliver, Ash, Woolley, Shade, & Kim, 2014). It is generally true that romantic comedies do not provide a realistic picture of man–woman relationships, and that such representation may be potentially misleading for an inexperienced audience ( Shapiro & Kroeger, 1991). Such diffidence is not fully justified, however. Romantic stories are often associated to a reiteration of patriarchal stereotypes of dominance and female submission ( Radway, 1991), and their dismissal has possibly favored a “cooling down” of the frequency of terms relating to inner emotional states within 20th century literature ( Acerbi, Lampos, Garnett, & Bentley, 2013). The awareness of this potential risk has sparked social attitudes of detachment and skepticism as to the experiential value of romantic fiction ( Dowd & Pallotta, 2000). This is especially true for romantic fiction, where the temptation to lure the audience into escapist fantasies built around unrealistic situations and characters, that merely accommodate their wishful (romantic) thinking, is strong ( Johnson & Holmes, 2009), and may have negative effects in real-life ( Galloway, Engstrom, & Emmers-Sommer, 2015). The pursuit of the balance between hedonic (aimed at the search for pleasure) and eudemonic (aimed at the search for knowledge and human development) elements is one of the most critical, delicate aspects of the subtle art of fictional narration ( Oliver & Raney, 2011). Our research makes a case for a renewed interest toward romantic fictional comedies as an interesting source of insight into real mating-related interactions, provided that such narratives are socially validated in terms of audience response and intergenerational transmission. ![]() In view of this, the fact that the long-term couple is not formed at the end of the story neither jeopardizes its social cognition valence, nor the audience’s need and expectation of an emotional climax, as what makes the difference in terms of social cognition is not the story outcome, but the process that leads to it. We look at romantic fictional narratives as possible simulations with a social cognition valence, and show that, in the case study under exam, the actual structure of the interaction between the two main characters reflects the basic steps of a successful mating process. This article explores the structure of the male–female interaction in the human mating process from the perspective of the so-called Tie-Up Theory, applying it to the analysis of a cinematic fictional narrative, namely the Shakespeare in love movie. ![]()
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