Though our screens are the inescapable way in which we experience stories today, nearly all of the conflicts on screen pre-date the screen itself. Take, for example, one of Northrop Frye’s four archetypal narrative structures in Anatomy of Criticism: the marriage plot. Frye writes that “The literary mode of romance deals with the marvelous and the uncommon, and, under its influence, events turn into symbols and characters into types.” He identifies the marriage plot as a recurring motif in narratives that typically involve a quest for love, union, and resolution.
People like romance. It’s fun to watch the formation of a bond, the chemistry, and the highly dramatic path toward commitment. But while many of the marriage plots focus on the moments of young love, of the early days leading up to the marriage itself, there’s another tradition in contemporary marriage plots that we’re focusing on today: the mom-and-dad-are-fighting plot.
If the classic marriage plots revel in the bliss of two people getting to know each others, the mom and dad are fighting plots dwell on two people who perhaps know each other too well. You can find variations of this plot all over the past half century of cinema from Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage to Sam Mendes’s Revolutionary Road to Tamara Jenkins’s Private Life to Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, to Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and many in between. But it’s nearly impossible to look at contemporary marriage plots, particularly in American media, and not see the shadow of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
In today’s show, we hear from Philip Gefter about his new book Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and then director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Dennis Lim discusses the enduring appeal of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy—in particular the way Before Midnight does and does not adhere to the tradition of Woolf. You can read Lim’s Criterion essay on the trilogy, “Time Regained,” here.
Keep the conversation going. Follow The Entertainment on Facebook, Instagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth. Today’s show featured music and clips from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Before Midnight, Marriage Story, The Princess Bride, Pride and Prejudice, and Closer.
12. The Mom-and-Dad-Are-Fighting Plot