Hello hello! Saturday is here and this month is just flying by! Today we have Jayne Denker – a first time ALBTALBS guest! We’ve chatted on twitter about TV and such, and that inspired her to write a post about that topic! … Kinda š So without further ado … Jayne!
Chick Lit: You Cannot Kill It (But Why Would You Want To?)
Iām a ācontemporary romanceā writer, but whenever I can get away with it, I write chick lit. Not out in the open, though, because the official party line is chick lit is dead. Stone cold. Six feet under and pushing up daisies. Nobody wants to read stories about young or young-thinking, strong women making their way in the world!
Yeah, all right. *wink*
Oh, the entertainment industry did believe it drove a stake through chick litās heart a while back. Well, first they created the monster by encouraging it to flourish in the ā90s, in the wake of Bridget Jonesās Diary. Then came the dark days, when the entertainment industry (yes, book publishing, but mostly Iām looking at you, Hollywood) threw gobs of money at anything remotely resembling chick lit. Even the bad stuff.
And lo, the dark days spread and overwhelmed the earth.
Horrified at what a Frankenstein monster chick lit had become, the publishing world and Hollywood rose up against it and killed off their own creation. Never again, they said, shall the beast that is chick lit be allowed to propagate. Yea, those who speak its name shall be put to death.
And so the edict stands. The foul term āc***k l*tā is no longer uttered. No, really. Try itāI dare you. Youāll see. Youāll end up with the business end of a stiletto in your temple.
However, as with all good sagas, forbidding something doesnāt mean you can kill it off entirely. Come on, we all know that chick lit is about as unstoppable as a zombie thatās scented freshly-exposed brain matter. Better yet, letās call it the hydra genre of literatureāchop off its head, and it grows two more. Ooh! Ooh! How about the Obi-Wan Kenobi genre? Strike it down, and it becomes more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Yeah, thatās it: Chick lit is the Zombie-Hydra-Obi-Wan-Kenobi genre. You just canāt kill it, Itās not hiding in a dark cave, Gollum-like, either. (Why yes, I am the equivalent of a pop-culture-reference oil spill. Proudly mixing memes since 1978.) That so-called forbidden chick lit is actually all around us. Right now. And you probably donāt even know it!
Because the publishing industry still considers chick lit The Genre That Shall Not Be Named, now we call it āromantic comedy.ā Kind of like how Blackwater gets a new name every couple of years, in the hopes that everyone forgets what it was responsible for back in the Aughts. It works, too. Who doesnāt like romantic comedies, right? Sometimes itās called womenās fiction, although I always think of WF as a bit more serious overall. Could just be me, though.
Chick flicks are still verboten, and with good reason. Wow, there were some real stinkers at the end there, werenāt there? Phew, the memories are still polluting the joint! But the genre is still in Hollywood, and not lurking in dark alleys off Sunset, either. Nope, āvisual chick litā is operating right out in the open. What, you go to the multiplex in search of a decent romcom, only to end up drowning in the glut of superhero flicks? Youāre right. So think smaller.
Iām talking TV, people. Itās all over the small screen. And itās popular! A young (or, hey, not so youngāthe genre is nothing if not elastic), single woman struggling with the challenges of getting her career rolling, navigating the social scene, hanging with her besties, trying to find a guy whoās not a total cretin? Oh, itās there, baby.
Itās always been there, really. I could go into the history of young-female-centric TV shows down through the ages (Iām old enough to remember That Girl and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, although *koff* I was a mere zygote at the time), but if I got that thorough, Iād end up writing a thesisāor a bookāinstead of a blog post. Aināt nobody got time for thatāwait. Come to think of it…dibs on the history of chick lit! Called it!
TVās recent history has been filled with chick-lit-type shows. I donāt care that Lorelai Gilmore had a teen daughter; thereās chick lit at the bottom of that Lukeās Diner coffee cup. Ally McBeal? 30 Rock? Durr. And those four women in New York…what was that show called, again? (I keed, I keed.)
Best of all, thereās been a huge resurgence of chick lit on TV, like, right now. The Mindy Project. Hart of Dixie. New Girl. Girls. 2 Broke Girls. Young & Hungry. Iād even throw in The Mysteries of Laura, although itās mainly a detective procedural. And Parks and Recreation, even though itās an ensemble comedy, because Amy Poehler.
Then thereās the queen mother of all current chick-lit-on-TV: Jane the Virgin. Have you seen it? (If you havenāt, thereās the door. Go forth and do not return until youāve caught up with all the eps. Most of them are on The CW site and Hulu. I donāt care how you get themājust go! Go now!) Sure, the premise put people offāa young woman, who was āsaving herselfā till her wedding to her detective fiancĆ©, is accidentally artificially inseminated and is now carrying the baby of a guy she had a crush on five years beforeābut it works. Seriously. Not kidding. Itās crazy-funny (if you donāt laugh out loud at Janeās goofy estranged father, somebodyād better check your pulse) and it also has heart. You find yourself pulling for Jane as she tries to figure out who she is and where sheās going in life. Best of all, she wants to be a romance writer!
Of course, not every chick lit-flavored show escaped the wildly swinging Cancellation Axe of Doom. RIP A to Z, Carrie Diaries, and Selfie. (*Sob!* Selfie!) But thanks to the hydra effect (ooh, thatād make a great titleādibs on that too), weāre getting more soon, including The Girlfriendsā Guide to Divorce, Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, and Younger. Iām sure there are more; itās just difficult to keep up with the onslaught.
Onslaught is good. It means that no matter what you call it, quality entertainment featuring laughs, good plots, and clever women is always in style.
About the Author: Jayne Denker divides her time between working hard to bring the funny in her romantic comedies and raising a young son who’s way too clever for his own good. She has published four rom coms with Kensington (and another is on the way). Jayne lives in a small village in western New York that is in no way, shape, or form related to the small village in her Marsden novels Down on Love and Picture This. When she’s not hard at work on another novel, the social media addict can usually be found frittering away startling amounts of time on Facebook (Jayne Denker Author) and Twitter (@JDenkerAuthor). Sheād like to say she updates her website, quite often, but most of the time when it crosses her mind, she shouts āCanāt you see Iām writing?!ā and puts it off till another day. But you can find links to all my books there.
Hey, One of My Books Is on Sale:
I got away with writing pure chick lit once. Itās a Hollywood-set romcom called Unscripted, and itās on sale for 99 cents for the entire month of December. Hereās the info:
One of Hollywoodās hardest working women is about to discover there’s a lot more drama behind the camera than in front of it…
Faith āFreakināā Sinclair probably shouldnāt have called her boss a pervā¦or grabbed his āprivates.ā But as creator of the hit dramedy Modern Women, sheād had enough of his sexist insults. Now sheās untouchable in the industryānot in a good way. The only way to redeem herself is to convince Alex, the wildly popular, wildly demanding former star of her show, to come back. But thereās one obstacle in her wayāone very handsome, broad-shouldered obstacleā¦
Professor Mason Mitchell is head of the theater department where Alex is studying ārealā acting. The only way heāll let Faith anywhere near Alex is if she agrees to co-teach a class. Itās an offer she canāt refuseāand as it turns out, the professor just might end up teaching Faith that thereās more to life than workāand that real-life love scenes are way more fun than fake onesā¦.
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What do you think? About chick lit? Or “chick lit”? Or any of those shows on TV? š