Júlia Éva Havas:
Hungarian romantic comedies in the years 2000

The essay strives to present the modes of character depiction in contemporary Hungarian romantic comedies from the perspective of gender roles in society. Because in terms of the style and narrative of the genre, the Hungarian trend has been to follow the unfolding American tradition, it seems natural to provide a comparative analysis, that is to say, comparatively to examine what sorts of female and male images are suggested within the romantic comedy genre in each of the two cultures.
As with all popular genres, the defining characteristics of romantic comedy are shaped in accordance with the expectations of a primary target group. And because the genre works primarily as a popular reflection of changes in gender roles, through the examination of the corpus, one can draw conclusions about the defining conventions within a certain culture with respect to gender roles. The thesis of the essay is that the striking opposition between the depiction of men and women in the films of the two countries is due to the following underlying difference: the traditional target audience of Hollywood productions are women, whereas Hungarian films are primarily intended for men, that is to say, the adaptation of the romantic comedy genre to Hungarian culture involves, first and foremost, a gender-based change in the choice of target group. As a result, most films center around a male protagonist, and among the archetypal characters, we find the Womanizer who operates as the ideal ego, while in the case of female characters, we find the Mother and Whore archetypes, which have, by and large been deemed obsolete in Hollywood. There are two films that feature a female protagonist (these films therefore constitute a numerical minority), Just Sex and Nothing Else, and Stop Mom Theresa,  and they achieve the same effect through somewhat more covert means, via plot development and stylistic solutions.