My sister was watching a movie on her laptop today, and when I asked her what she was watching, she said: "Crossing Delancey: It's a movie about a woman meeting someone nice through a matchmaker. But there's a real jerk guy in it, so of course she likes the jerk. But by the end she realizes her mistake and marries the nice guy." Well, this is often the type of thing that happens in a romantic comedy, right? And if this message resonates with people, they might marry nice people instead of jerks, which could threaten a key career demographic in this already sagging economy: divorce lawyers.
Well, recognizing this threat from Hollywood on this fine upstanding pillar of our society, I felt I simply had to help. And remembering how other groups protest, picket, boycott, etc., other movies, like religious Christians did with The Last Temptation of Christ, and like animal rights people do with movies using trained animals, it dawned on me that perhaps the divorce lawyers lobby could protest rom-coms that send this dangerous message of not marrying abusive, manipulative jerks that threatens their livelihood. And then perhaps they could lobby Congress, claiming these films will harm the economy. But they needn't push for an outright ban, either: after all, movies employ lots of people too; what they ought to do is insist that Hollywood merely tack an unhappy ending onto every romantic comedy's previously happy ending showing the married couple a few years down the road fighting and getting divorced, proving that no matter who you marry, it will all go wrong someday. Then, naturally, they would have to tack on a public service announcement for the divorce lawyers association, showing how helpful they can be in such a situation.
In fact, maybe the divorce lawyers association could start their own movie studio, producing rom-coms of their own! (After all, they earn a lot of money as divorce lawyers. And what else should one do with obscene amounts of money than use it to make even more money? Plus, they could force popular actors and directors make movies for them as part of their fee when these stars get divorced.) And in these romantic comedies, everyone marries the wrong person, becomes completely miserable, pines away for someone nicer they rejected but should have married, leading to a new version of the rom-com happy ending: a divorce that makes everyone feel liberated and alive again! And then after the credits roll, we see a new wedding scene of the currently happy couple, and as it fades to black at the very end, we hear horror movie-style music filled with a dark foreboding...
