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Erin Klingsberg Jennifer
Vandever
Screwball Comedy April 17th, 2012
The Mike and Tracy Redux
It may seem strange to see The Philadelphia Story, one of AFI’s top 100 films
and screenplays, being paired with the likes of Gossip Girl, the once hot CW teen
soap that has since lost its steam and its stamina. Though for the purposes of this
paper, the two will be found being compared more than contrasted because in the
twilight of its life, Gossip Girl has found its saving grace in the pairing of Dan and
Blair—in essence a modern form and reinterpretation of Tracy and Mike from The
Philadelphia Story. Of course, there is much more material to sift through over the
course of five seasons of television versus a two-hour movie, though the formula is
the same. Blair is an intelligent, independent and often shrewd Upper East Side
society girl. Dan is from Brooklyn and attends their elitist private school on
scholarship. He is also a writer and has occasionally moonlighted as a reporter
throughout the series. They instantly despise each other, and their rivalry peaks in
season two over academics, getting into Yale and their being the only real threats to
each other intellectually. And while Blair’s relationship with Chuck (the Gossip Girl
equivalent of Dexter, though not nearly as winsome) crumbles, Dan begins to see
her vulnerability and humanity. By season four, they strike up an unlikely
friendship, based on shared interests, intellectual discussion, and their modern
screwball dynamic takes off. It is no mistake that both Tracy and Mike and Dan and
Blair’s scenes are the most endearing to watch, as they embody the best qualities
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that the screwball genre has to offer. And yet, in The Philadelphia Story, and
presumably in Gossip Girl, these relationships are temporary as they give way to the
sometimes darker underbelly of screwball: that despite new discoveries, the
comedy of remarriage remains a steadfast law in the classical form of the genre,
even if the message conveyed is less than desirable. However, through the study of
both Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair, this paper will show how both couples
embody what is best and quintessential about the screwball genre, and conclude
that, no matter the era or the medium, talking together, being together, and playing
together as equals is more representative of the genre (and perhaps of love) than
the steadfast law of remarriage.
It is not in the direct interest of this paper to analyze the full content of The
Philadelphia Story and Gossip Girl, that is, the other couples in competition with the
two being studied. However, it is necessary to draw on the relationships involving
Dexter and Chuck in order to convey that they are not the best representatives of
the screwball romance. The Philadelphia Story is not only a wonderful script and
film, but is also inherently intertwined with the politics of Katharine Hepburn’s
career at the time. The movie is widely known to have served as a cunning public
relations move in order to repair her image with the public and as an result, her arc
is spent having her character torn down by those around her until she realizes her
own faults, apologizes, and then remarries Dexter, telling her father triumphantly
when he asks how she feels, “Like a human. Like a human being.” Tracy’s fault is that
she—being fiercely independent, opinionated and smart—is also judgmental,
unforgiving and proud. But while everyone around her tears down her character
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and criticizes her, it is not Dexter that helps her in her transformation, but Mike. In
James Harvey’s book, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood, he compares Tracy’s issues
with Katharine’s at the time:
Tracy, too, is having problems with her audiences: misunderstandings and misfired performances, walkouts (her ex-husband) and bad notices (her
mother and little sister, her father and that same ex-husband)—all of which begins to reverse when she gets a rave from one of her most determined critics. “There’s a magnificence in you, Tracy,” says Connor the reporter… (408).
But Harvey touches on something in this statement that he does not choose to
expand upon; that it is Mike and not Dexter that notices, cultivates, and celebrates
Tracy’s humanity, which was always there but needed to be found. And while Dexter
does good throughout without requiring recognition, he remains almost an
omniscient and passive presence, only active when criticizing Tracy and later loving
her. His character is by no means unlikable, but he does end up winning the “new”
Tracy that Mike was able to awaken and all the while never apologizes for his own
faults, of which he has many.
While the relationship between Tracy and Dexter is unequal in The
Philadelphia Story, the same goes for Blair and Chuck in Gossip Girl, though this
couple often strays far from the genre and relies on melodrama and angst. They are
by no means a screwball couple, but Blair’s personal character arc and their
inequality as a couple still draw apt comparisons to Tracy and Dexter and pave the
way for the positive influence that her relationship with Dan has on them both,
much like Mike and Tracy’s relationship. David Denby stresses equality in his New
Yorker article entitled, “A Fine Romance”:
The best directors of romantic comedy in the nineteen-thirties and forties […] knew that the story would be not only funnier but much more romantic if
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the fight was waged between equals. The man and woman may not enjoy parity of social standing or money, but they are equals in spirit, will and body (3).
Where Tracy and Dexter’s problems stemmed from his drinking and her cold
judgment, Blair and Chuck’s relationship (though the power was unbalanced and
always in Chuck’s hands from season two on), truly disintegrated in season three
when he chose to save his hotel by trading Blair to his uncle for sex. Fortunately,
Blair had the wherewithal to leave him, but Chuck spent the remaining episodes of
the season daring her to be with him and refusing to apologize. The issue became
Blair’s problem and her responsibility to overcome. And while Blair was less
chastised than Tracy was, she still deals with a similar problem. Blair, whilst having
a princess fantasy and complex that almost comes true (she marries a prince, Louis
of Monaco, very much a “to hardly know him is to know him well” kind of man
similar to George)—she also believes she has a darkness within her. She has often
been punished for her ability to be conniving, mean, even cruel, and she begins to
believe it herself. And, like Mike, Dan is the one that is able to see and later help to
rediscover the lost Blair.
How the two couples reach this ultimate conclusion of self-discovery and
awakening is where the classic screwball elements come in to play because not only
do Tracy and Blair have preconceived notions of themselves and others, but Mike
and Dan do as well. Before either man knows each woman well enough, they break
her down rather viciously. Mike, upon asking about Tracy’s leading characteristics
and receiving an unsatisfying response from Dexter, decides to fill in blanks, “I can
fill them in right now: the rich, rapacious, American female. There's no other
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country where she exists.” Similarly, in the first episodes of the series, Dan breaks
down Blair to his dad, “Blair Waldorf, who is basically everything I hate about the
Upper East Side distilled into one ninety-five pound, doe-eyed, bon mot tossing
package of girly evil.”i Not to be outdone, the women match the two men’s
stereotyping with their own pertinent deconstructions of the male characters. Tracy
turns Mike’s criticisms of upper class snobbery around on him, telling him, “You’re
the worst kind there is, an intellectual snob.” Meanwhile, when Gossip Girl labels
Dan as the ultimate insider in the season two finale, he is quick to scoff at it, and
Blair is the one to call him out on his own hypocrisy. “You pretend not to be like us,
but you are. To the bone.”ii Both Tracy and Blair are right, and it is partly their ability
to be so intuitive and perceptive that draws the men in and begins to change not
only their ideas but their very ideology. But to a greater extent, this is achieved
through the time they spend together.
In his book, Pursuit of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage,
Stanley Cavell explains that, “Talking together is for us the pair’s essential way of
being together, a pair for whom, to repeat, being together is more important than
whatever it is they do together” (146). The bonds that form in the screwball
romance are always based on whatever it is the couple does together that is short of
sex. Whether it be walking and talking, chasing a leopard, competing at an
internship or debating various topics, these are the moments that build the
relationship. This happens quickly in The Philadelphia Story, once Tracy reads
Mike’s book and finds there is more to him than meets the eye. Tracy digs deep into
Mike’s soul, which he hides beneath a hard and sarcastic exterior, and finds she can
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relate. Similarly, Mike is very visibly in awe at her depth and acuity. They spend a
good while walking back to her estate and simply talking, debating and discussing
life, class, money, writing and more. It is a simple, understated scene (especially
compared to what comes later), but it is the foundation of their relationship.
Similarly, though over the course of several episodes, Dan and Blair find themselves
alone in the city over winter break and planning to see the same documentaryiii. This
sparks the realization that their rivalry over the years had been stemmed from their
likenesses. So they begin to see movies together, have coffee in the mornings in
order to debate what museum they might visit next and what qualifies a film as art
or esoteric. In an attempt to explain her newfound connection to her best friend and
Dan’s ex, Serena, Blair says, “We did things like visit the Dia and debate Chabrol
versus Rohmer. Things that we could never do with you.”iv For both pairings, they
delight in talking. Even in debate or argument their words are fast, quick, clever and
laced with wit so that it is still enjoyable. This is especially noticeable after Mike has
unleashed a fiery speech about Tracy’s magnificence that brings her to tears when
he embraces her and she says, “Shut up, shut up. Oh, Mike. Keep talking, keep
talking. Talk, will you?” Their love affair is conducted in words, a staple in classic
screwball comedies when the Production Code was in full effect. But the same
happens with Dan and Blair, proving that there is still a place in today’s society for a
relationship to form over words and conversation before sex is ever part of the
equation.
Though stimulating conversation is key, it is not all that is required to define
a screwball couple. To ignore the element of remarriage required in the genre is to
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try and belittle its importance. It would be a disservice to half argue the legitimacy
that Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair are the representation of the screwball ideal
and not tackle remarriage. It is true that Tracy and Dexter and Chuck and Blair grew
up together, and have been together romantically in the past. They cannot let each
other go, no matter how hard they try. The inability to disentangle from one
another’s lives is certainly a screwball trope. However, there exist more abstract
elements of remarriage in films whose couple has never met before, such as
Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night, The Lady Eve and more. In such films, the
couple often feigns being in a relationship, plays at being married or acts as if they
are a couple before having broached romance. In The Philadelphia Story this occurs
most prominently when Tracy and Mike get drunk and spend the night before her
wedding playing, joking, laughing, swimming and even sometimes loving. It is a
childlike fantasy world akin to Bringing Up Baby or the infamous “Connecticut” and
it acts to create the childhood they never had together. While Tracy and Dexter may
have grown up together, Tracy and Mike recreate this for themselves. “It is as
though their summer night were spent not in falling in love at first or second sight,
but in becoming childhood sweethearts, inventing for themselves a shared, lost past,
to which they can wish to remain faithful” (Cavell 127). Cavell writes this about
Bringing Up Baby, but the notion is certainly applicable here as well, and perhaps to
Dan and Blair too. Though they have no sequence like this, which is perhaps unique
to the days of classical screwball, their multi-episode arc in season four achieved a
similar result. Once they have forged this connection, they both remain faithful to it
—in the face of adversity, criticism and naysayers, they defend each other to
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outsiders at all costs, reserving the right to criticize and tease only one another.
When Chuck attempts to humiliate Dan after finding out about an ill-fated kiss
between Blair and Dan, Blair immediately and fiercely protects Dan, as if honoring a
long standing pact made long ago, though it has only been forged recently.v
The true examples of remarriage in The Philadelphia Story and Gossip Girl are
to be found in other characters’ perceptions of the Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair
relationship. Tracy and Mike’s drunken exploits lead to anxiety and suspicion the
next morning as everyone—including Tracy herself—begins to believe that Mike
and Tracy slept together. After a drunken swim, and caught in a compromising state
of undress (robes!), the image seeds within the mind of her fiancé, George, and more
amusingly so in Dexter’s (though it is never sure what Dexter believes to be true or
not). Even Tracy’s naïve little sister assumes the worst, as all had witnessed not only
the tableau displayed before them in the backyard as Mike carried Tracy into the
house, but also the affection with which she addressed him. “Hello, Mike,” she says
in a high-pitched, childish voice after addressing her other two suitors stoically. But
though they shared some passionate kisses, Mike did not take advantage of Tracy
and accusations of their affair were unfounded. This mistaken affair plot is taken
even further by the Gossip Girl writers, who have teased the legitimacy of Dan and
Blair so often that it was clear they were playing with this specific screwball trope.
First, they keep their friendship a secret and draw the suspicion of close friends and
family, and upon realizing they have done this, decide to kiss and make sure they
have not been hiding more.vi The kiss is a fluke, as Dan develops unreciprocated
feelings for Blair—but she even devises a scheme in which they are to stage a kiss
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and pretend to be “madly in love” in order to divert the suspicions of her new beau’s
royal advisor. During this episode Serena accuses them of having an affair, and later
in season five, when Blair is engaged to the Prince, they are accused again by Serena,
Chuck and the Prince.vii
The remarriage motifs do not end there, however; as Dan and Blair’s season
five arc has been peppered with subversive clues that theirs is the real marriage
storyline instead of her conventional and actual marriage to the Prince. Dan is the
first to find out that she is pregnant, the first one to see her in her wedding dress, he
writes her fiancés vows for him, and he is the person who helps her escape from her
own wedding in the “Just Married” car. They look like bride and groom at the airport
where she attempts to flee, and bicker like a married couple too. “They give credit to
people from Brooklyn, right?” she snipes as he pulls out his wallet, and she takes off
cheerily in search of less conspicuous clothes. Later, unable to get her a flight, they
end up hiding out at an airport hotel—a play on what should have been the wedding
night and beginning of the honeymoon—and they argue, complete with slamming
bathroom doors and waving, opened beer bottles.viii This arc is quite fitting, because
the next episode gives birth to the start of their true romantic relationship—but
only after a year of playing out a relationship full circle, from initial friendship to the
honeymoon suite.
As it stands, Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair have been established as
worthy of the screwball couple label, but Tracy and Mike were not the endgame pair
of The Philadelphia Story, while Dan and Blair’s fate remains to be seen. The comedy
of remarriage is not only about the behavior or the scenarios at play between the
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man and woman in question, but also about the self-discovery that must occur in
order to be prepared for their remarriage. This self-discovery, or even rediscovery is
pivotal in films like The Awful Truth and His Girl Friday and is present in The
Philadelphia Story as well. Dexter has taken the time to stop drinking, and patiently
waits for Tracy’s awakening. When it occurs, they can remarry and be together
again, but better. It certainly works with the genre conventions, but then again, so
does the Tracy and Mike relationship. After all, as stated before, Mike is the one who
facilitates Tracy’s self-revelation. She has been put down, criticized and chastised,
but it is not until Mike tells her what he sees in her that she can begin to tap into it.
The exchange is exhilarating, partly due to James Stewart’s wonderful delivery, but
also because his words are true and she had yet to hear them from anyone before.
Mike: You're wonderful. There's a magnificence in you, Tracy. A magnificence that comes out of your eyes and your voice...in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you...hearth fires and holocausts!Tracy: I don't seem to you made of bronze?Mike: No. You're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy...full of life and warmth and delight.
So while Tracy has spent most of the film being reprimanded by the men in her life,
Mike is the only one who revels in her. He does not want to tame her, change her or
worship her from afar. It is a triumphant moment in the film, because not only does
he incite Tracy’s self-discovery, but he does so because he has arrived at his own. At
first a classist, arrogant, judgmental cynic, Mike is humbled, and in fact freed of his
prejudices—by champagne and by love. Tracy has shattered almost every
preconceived notion he had about people and opened him up to greater
possibilities. Through conversation, through common interests, through playing and
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the liberating effects of alcohol and an enchanted night in the backyard, Tracy and
Mike were able to let go of those aspects of their personalities that had been holding
them back and found that liberation in each other. So while Tracy and Dexter’s
changed perspectives are fitting, they are nowhere near as powerful or romantic as
Tracy and Mike’s journey of self-discovery together. As Cavell explains of the choice
between the two leading men, “One of them is chosen by the genre, as it were, as the
more perfectly fit” (135). He claims that a shared past always wins out in the end, a
law of happiness in the comedy of remarriage. But perhaps if the film had not been
aimed at manipulating Katharine Hepburn’s image to the public, the outcome would
have been different. Denby writes about one kind of screwball couple that fits Tracy
and Mike perfectly:
The man is serious about his work (and no one says he shouldn’t be), but he’s confused about women, and his confusion has neutered him. He thinks he wants a conventional marriage with a compliant wife, but what he really wants is to be overwhelmed by the female life force (3).
This type is similar to the relationship in Bringing Up Baby, which at the time
brought Hepburn’s career to a dismal low point, ensuring that in no future roles
could her love interest be overwhelmed by her life force, but rather, that her life
force needed to be tamed. Thus Tracy could never have ended up with Mike, who
allowed himself to be so enamored of her. It is a sad testament to the times and the
beginning of a trend as the genre barreled into the forties, that the screwball
heroine’s tremendous spirit had to be contained.
Is it now, then, up to Dan and Blair to carry the torch in a new era and
perhaps become a testament to the success of a Tracy and Mike kind of romance?
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They have their own societal struggle to overcome, the Chuck and Blair cycle, a
relationship, which at its core boasts the idea of “one true love” above all else; above
equality, right and wrong, happiness, shared interests and stimulating conversation.
And even as much as the show tries to tout that Chuck has gone through a self-
transformation like Dexter, there is no real indication that he has. He continues to
philander, drink, and scheme, though unlike Dexter, he did apologize to Blair
eventually. Nevertheless, wherever Chuck’s personal journey may be headed, Tracy
and Dexter reached moments of clarity and transformation, but they did not do so
together, and Chuck and Blair seem destined to be on the same path. Dan and Blair,
on the other hand, have had a trajectory very similar to Tracy and Mike’s. Dan, once
a pillar of judgment with nothing but disdain for Blair and everything she stood for,
changed for the better once he began to fall in love with her. In his vows (which
were never spoken on the show, but written and readable), Dan writes, “You have
taught me how to live, how to enjoy everything the world has to offer. You have
brought out this side of me I never thought existed. Before you, I did not truly know
how to live. I was expected to be a certain kind of person. But the truth is, that
person was someone I didn’t actually like that much…” He has had a softening of
spirit, and a change of heart, and because he falls in love with Blair first—as Mike
does with Tracy—he, too, is there to help Blair rediscover herself. Though Dan
began to do so before meaning to. In season three, when Blair was struggling with
her relationship with Chuck she said to Dan, “Who could love me after what I’ve
become?” and it clearly put him on edge. Dan, who at this point had no interest or
investment in her happiness, later took it upon himself to tell her, “Just to be clear. I
12
do think you deserve to be with someone who makes you happy.”ix Blair,
consistently mired by what she believes to be something dark and wicked inside of
her, tends to put herself down, and is often met with little to no resistance. And
though as of yet, Dan has made no speech as epic and astounding as Mike’s, his
acceptance and adoration for all facets of her character has been clearly shown.
When Blair admits to him that she had been in denial about her feelings for him, she
claims that her unique skill for doing so is awful. Dan replies, “It’s you. It couldn’t be
awful.”x Finally, just as Tracy’s “Goddess” label follows her and haunts her, so does
Blair’s “Princess” label. Though, unlike Tracy, it was always something she desired
to be. Blair’s journey of self-discovery during the second half of season five (and
consequently, with Dan), has been aimed towards giving up the fantasy and
embracing herself as a person…perhaps a human being. And Dan does not chide her
for somewhat childishly mourning her lost title. Instead, he brings her to the MET
steps, hands her a tiara from a costume shop and lets her feel like a princess one last
time. It is no gallant speech like Mike’s to Tracy, but it elicits the same reaction. They
have arrived on the steps of the MET, where five years ago she was cruel to him and
he snide to her, changed for good and for the better and having arrived at this place
together.xi
Dan and Blair do not just unravel and expand upon the Tracy and Mike
relationship had they been allotted more time as a television show allows, but they
prove that a Tracy and Mike relationship can indeed exist, flourish, and perhaps
even triumph in today’s media market. Screwball, at its very best, is a proponent for
equality, happiness, mutual self-discovery and freedom. In today’s society, when
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passive, unequal and unhealthy relationships like those from The Twilight Saga, sell
misery and co-dependence as the course of great love to impressionable young girls,
or the romantic comedy formula depicts a glorified slacker man and an uptight
woman who needs to let loose, the hope is that the old values of the screwball
romance can still have a place. Denby’s article is a great nostalgia piece for the old
world screwball couple. He writes of these films:
The screwball movies, at their peak, defined certain ideal qualities of insouciance, a fineness of romantic temper in which men and women could be aggressive but not coarse, angry but not rancorous, silly but not shamed, melancholy but not ravaged. It was the temper of American happiness (4).
But this romantic temper is not entirely dead, as the writers of Gossip Girl have
resurrected it in the Dan and Blair romance. And while their happy ending is
uncertain as of now, they are currently enjoying their Nick and Nora time as a
couple, proving that the values, characters, and their dynamics of old Hollywood
classics are not just a relic of a past, and that they are relevant and have a place in
media today. And perhaps they can bring back to the present the temper of
American happiness that Denby so wistfully recalls from the past.
Works Cited
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. Print.
Denby, David. "A Fine Romance: The new comedy of the sexes." The New Yorker 23 July 2007: 1-6. www.newyorker.com. Web. 4 Sept. 2007.
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Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print.
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i 1x04 “Bad News Blair” 20:00-21:25ii 2x25 “The Goodbye Gossip Girl” 23:00-23:50iii 4x11 “The Townie” 40:00-41:13iv 4x19 “Pretty in Pink” v 4x18 “The Kids Stay in the Picture” 8:45-11:00vi 4x17 “Empire of the Son” vii 4x19 “Pretty in Pink”, 5x11 “The End of the Affair” [1] [2] [3]viii 5x14 “The Backup Dan” [1] [2] [3] [4]ix 3x18 “The Unblairable Lightness of Being” 22:20-23:24 & 38:30-38:54x 5x16 “Cross Rhodes” 5:45-6:25xi 5x19 “It Girl, Interrupted”