Comedy of remarriage

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The comedy of remarriage is a subgenre of American cinematic comedy from the 1930's and 1940's. At the time, the Production Code (aka Hays Code) banned any explicit references to or attempts to justify adultery and illicit sex. The comedy of remarriage enabled filmmakers to evade this provision of the Code. The protagonists divorced, flirted with strangers without risking the wrath of censorship, and then got back together.

The genre was given its name by the philosopher Staney Cavell, in a series of academic articles that later became a book, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cavell argues that the genre represented Hollywood's crowning achievement, and that beneath all the slapstick and innuendo is a serious effort to create a new basis for marriage in mutual love-- religious and economic necessity no longer applying for much of the American middle class.

More recently, film critics A.O. Scott and David Edelstein both argued that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a 21-century example of the genre.