Love Across the Atlantic : US-UK Romance in Popular Culture

"Winston Churchill famously described the political alliance between the US and UK as a 'special relationship', but throughout the cultural history of these two countries there have existed transatlantic 'special relationships' of another kind - affairs between British and American citizens who have fallen in love, with one another but often too with the idea(l) of that other place across the ocean. From romantic novelist Elinor Glyn in the 1920s to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle today, this collection examines some of the history, contemporary manifestations and enduring appeal of US-UK romance across popular culture. Looking at both historical and contemporary case-studies, drawn from across film, television, music, literature, news and politics, this is a timely intervention into the popular romantic discourse of US-UK relations, at a critical and transitional moment in the ongoing viability of the special relationship."-- Provided by publisher List of Figures 8 Acknowledgements 9 The Contributors 13 Introduction: Still Crazy After All These Years? The ‘Special Relationship’ in Popular Culture 18 Part One ‘[Not] Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy . . . ’: Feminism, Women and Transatlantic Romance 34 1 Atlantic Liners, It Girls and Old Europe in Elinor Glyn’s Romantic Adventures 36 2 ‘World Turned Upside Down’: The Role of Revolutions in Maya Rodale’s Regency-set Romances 55 3 Bridget Jones’s Special Relationship: No Filth, Please, We’re Brexiteers 70 4 Sharon Horgan, Postfeminism and the Transatlantic Psycho-politics of ‘Woemantic’ Comedy 86 Part Two Love Beyond Borders: The Global City, Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Space 106 5 ‘British People Are Awful’: Gentrification, Queerness and Race in the US–UK Romances of Looking and You’re the Worst 108 6 Catastrophe: Transatlantic Love in East London 123 7 On the Fragility of Love Across the Atlantic: Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Romance in Drake Doremus’s Like Crazy (2011) 138 8 The Mise-en-scène of Romance and Transatlantic Desire: Genre, Space and Place in Nancy Meyers’s The Parent Trap and Holiday 155 Part Three Two Lovers Divided by a Common Language: ‘Britishness’, ‘Americanness’ and Identity 174 9 ‘American, a Slut and Out of Your League’: Working Title’s Equivocal Relationship with Americanness 176 10 ‘It’s the American Dream’: British Audiences and the Contemporary Hollywood Romcom 193 11 Business-like Lords and Gentlemanly Businessmen: The Romance Hero in Lisa Kleypas’s Wallflowers Series 211 12 Imagine: The Beatles, John Lennon and Love Across Borders 226 Part Four Political Coupledom: Flirting with the Special Relationship 242 13 ‘Political Soulmates’: The ‘Special Relationship’ of Reagan and Thatcher and the Powerful Chemistry of Celebrity Coupledom 244 14 ‘I Will Be with You, Whatever’: Bush and Blair’s Baghdadi Bromance 260 15 Holding Hands as the Ship Sinks: Trump and May’s Special Relationship 275 16 ‘Prince Harry has gone over to the dark side’: Race, Royalty and US–UK Romance in Brexit Britain 292 Index 308 From romantic novelist Elinor Glyn in the 1920s to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle today, this collection examines some of the BG, contemporary manifestations and enduring appeal of US-UK romance across popular culture