The comedy of remarriage is a subgenre of American
comedy films of the 1930s and 1940s. At the time, the
Production Code, also known as the
Hays Code, banned any explicit references to or attempts to justify
adultery and illicit sex. The
comedy of
remarriage with the same spouse enabled filmmakers to evade this provision of the Code. The protagonists
divorced, flirted, or even had relationships, with strangers without risking the wrath of
censorship, and then got back together.
The
genre was given its name by the philosopher
Stanley Cavell[1]
in a series of academic articles that later became a 1981 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 centered on mutual love – religious and economic necessity no longer applying for much of the
American middle class.
In response to Cavell's article, scholar David R. Shumway claims it is possible "to make too much of the remarriage 'genre'". He points out that "only two of Cavell's seven comedies deal with characters who we actually see interacting as husband and wife for any length of time" and points out that all seven films fit into the
screwball comedy genre.[2]