Erin Klingsberg Jennifer

Vandever

Screwball Comedy April 17th, 2012

The Mike and Tracy Redux

It may seem strange to see The Philadelphia Story, one of AFI’s top 100 films

and screenplays, being paired with the likes of Gossip Girl, the once hot CW teen

soap that has since lost its steam and its stamina. Though for the purposes of this

paper, the two will be found being compared more than contrasted because in the

twilight of its life, Gossip Girl has found its saving grace in the pairing of Dan and

Blair—in essence a modern form and reinterpretation of Tracy and Mike from The

Philadelphia Story. Of course, there is much more material to sift through over the

course of five seasons of television versus a two-hour movie, though the formula is

the same. Blair is an intelligent, independent and often shrewd Upper East Side

society girl. Dan is from Brooklyn and attends their elitist private school on

scholarship. He is also a writer and has occasionally moonlighted as a reporter

throughout the series. They instantly despise each other, and their rivalry peaks in

season two over academics, getting into Yale and their being the only real threats to

each other intellectually. And while Blair’s relationship with Chuck (the Gossip Girl

equivalent of Dexter, though not nearly as winsome) crumbles, Dan begins to see

her vulnerability and humanity. By season four, they strike up an unlikely

friendship, based on shared interests, intellectual discussion, and their modern

screwball dynamic takes off. It is no mistake that both Tracy and Mike and Dan and

Blair’s scenes are the most endearing to watch, as they embody the best qualities

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that the screwball genre has to offer. And yet, in The Philadelphia Story, and

presumably in Gossip Girl, these relationships are temporary as they give way to the

sometimes darker underbelly of screwball: that despite new discoveries, the

comedy of remarriage remains a steadfast law in the classical form of the genre,

even if the message conveyed is less than desirable. However, through the study of

both Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair, this paper will show how both couples

embody what is best and quintessential about the screwball genre, and conclude

that, no matter the era or the medium, talking together, being together, and playing

together as equals is more representative of the genre (and perhaps of love) than

the steadfast law of remarriage.

It is not in the direct interest of this paper to analyze the full content of The

Philadelphia Story and Gossip Girl, that is, the other couples in competition with the

two being studied. However, it is necessary to draw on the relationships involving

Dexter and Chuck in order to convey that they are not the best representatives of

the screwball romance. The Philadelphia Story is not only a wonderful script and

film, but is also inherently intertwined with the politics of Katharine Hepburn’s

career at the time. The movie is widely known to have served as a cunning public

relations move in order to repair her image with the public and as an result, her arc

is spent having her character torn down by those around her until she realizes her

own faults, apologizes, and then remarries Dexter, telling her father triumphantly

when he asks how she feels, “Like a human. Like a human being.” Tracy’s fault is that

she—being fiercely independent, opinionated and smart—is also judgmental,

unforgiving and proud. But while everyone around her tears down her character

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and criticizes her, it is not Dexter that helps her in her transformation, but Mike. In

James Harvey’s book, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood, he compares Tracy’s issues

with Katharine’s at the time:

Tracy, too, is having problems with her audiences: misunderstandings and misfired performances, walkouts (her ex-husband) and bad notices (her

mother and little sister, her father and that same ex-husband)—all of which begins to reverse when she gets a rave from one of her most determined critics. “There’s a magnificence in you, Tracy,” says Connor the reporter… (408).

But Harvey touches on something in this statement that he does not choose to

expand upon; that it is Mike and not Dexter that notices, cultivates, and celebrates

Tracy’s humanity, which was always there but needed to be found. And while Dexter

does good throughout without requiring recognition, he remains almost an

omniscient and passive presence, only active when criticizing Tracy and later loving

her. His character is by no means unlikable, but he does end up winning the “new”

Tracy that Mike was able to awaken and all the while never apologizes for his own

faults, of which he has many.

While the relationship between Tracy and Dexter is unequal in The

Philadelphia Story, the same goes for Blair and Chuck in Gossip Girl, though this

couple often strays far from the genre and relies on melodrama and angst. They are

by no means a screwball couple, but Blair’s personal character arc and their

inequality as a couple still draw apt comparisons to Tracy and Dexter and pave the

way for the positive influence that her relationship with Dan has on them both,

much like Mike and Tracy’s relationship. David Denby stresses equality in his New

Yorker article entitled, “A Fine Romance”:

The best directors of romantic comedy in the nineteen-thirties and forties […] knew that the story would be not only funnier but much more romantic if

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the fight was waged between equals. The man and woman may not enjoy parity of social standing or money, but they are equals in spirit, will and body (3).

Where Tracy and Dexter’s problems stemmed from his drinking and her cold

judgment, Blair and Chuck’s relationship (though the power was unbalanced and

always in Chuck’s hands from season two on), truly disintegrated in season three

when he chose to save his hotel by trading Blair to his uncle for sex. Fortunately,

Blair had the wherewithal to leave him, but Chuck spent the remaining episodes of

the season daring her to be with him and refusing to apologize. The issue became

Blair’s problem and her responsibility to overcome. And while Blair was less

chastised than Tracy was, she still deals with a similar problem. Blair, whilst having

a princess fantasy and complex that almost comes true (she marries a prince, Louis

of Monaco, very much a “to hardly know him is to know him well” kind of man

similar to George)—she also believes she has a darkness within her. She has often

been punished for her ability to be conniving, mean, even cruel, and she begins to

believe it herself. And, like Mike, Dan is the one that is able to see and later help to

rediscover the lost Blair.

How the two couples reach this ultimate conclusion of self-discovery and

awakening is where the classic screwball elements come in to play because not only

do Tracy and Blair have preconceived notions of themselves and others, but Mike

and Dan do as well. Before either man knows each woman well enough, they break

her down rather viciously. Mike, upon asking about Tracy’s leading characteristics

and receiving an unsatisfying response from Dexter, decides to fill in blanks, “I can

fill them in right now: the rich, rapacious, American female. There's no other

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country where she exists.” Similarly, in the first episodes of the series, Dan breaks

down Blair to his dad, “Blair Waldorf, who is basically everything I hate about the

Upper East Side distilled into one ninety-five pound, doe-eyed, bon mot tossing

package of girly evil.”i Not to be outdone, the women match the two men’s

stereotyping with their own pertinent deconstructions of the male characters. Tracy

turns Mike’s criticisms of upper class snobbery around on him, telling him, “You’re

the worst kind there is, an intellectual snob.” Meanwhile, when Gossip Girl labels

Dan as the ultimate insider in the season two finale, he is quick to scoff at it, and

Blair is the one to call him out on his own hypocrisy. “You pretend not to be like us,

but you are. To the bone.”ii Both Tracy and Blair are right, and it is partly their ability

to be so intuitive and perceptive that draws the men in and begins to change not

only their ideas but their very ideology. But to a greater extent, this is achieved

through the time they spend together.

In his book, Pursuit of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage,

Stanley Cavell explains that, “Talking together is for us the pair’s essential way of

being together, a pair for whom, to repeat, being together is more important than

whatever it is they do together” (146). The bonds that form in the screwball

romance are always based on whatever it is the couple does together that is short of

sex. Whether it be walking and talking, chasing a leopard, competing at an

internship or debating various topics, these are the moments that build the

relationship. This happens quickly in The Philadelphia Story, once Tracy reads

Mike’s book and finds there is more to him than meets the eye. Tracy digs deep into

Mike’s soul, which he hides beneath a hard and sarcastic exterior, and finds she can

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relate. Similarly, Mike is very visibly in awe at her depth and acuity. They spend a

good while walking back to her estate and simply talking, debating and discussing

life, class, money, writing and more. It is a simple, understated scene (especially

compared to what comes later), but it is the foundation of their relationship.

Similarly, though over the course of several episodes, Dan and Blair find themselves

alone in the city over winter break and planning to see the same documentaryiii. This

sparks the realization that their rivalry over the years had been stemmed from their

likenesses. So they begin to see movies together, have coffee in the mornings in

order to debate what museum they might visit next and what qualifies a film as art

or esoteric. In an attempt to explain her newfound connection to her best friend and

Dan’s ex, Serena, Blair says, “We did things like visit the Dia and debate Chabrol

versus Rohmer. Things that we could never do with you.”iv For both pairings, they

delight in talking. Even in debate or argument their words are fast, quick, clever and

laced with wit so that it is still enjoyable. This is especially noticeable after Mike has

unleashed a fiery speech about Tracy’s magnificence that brings her to tears when

he embraces her and she says, “Shut up, shut up. Oh, Mike. Keep talking, keep

talking. Talk, will you?” Their love affair is conducted in words, a staple in classic

screwball comedies when the Production Code was in full effect. But the same

happens with Dan and Blair, proving that there is still a place in today’s society for a

relationship to form over words and conversation before sex is ever part of the

equation.

Though stimulating conversation is key, it is not all that is required to define

a screwball couple. To ignore the element of remarriage required in the genre is to

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try and belittle its importance. It would be a disservice to half argue the legitimacy

that Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair are the representation of the screwball ideal

and not tackle remarriage. It is true that Tracy and Dexter and Chuck and Blair grew

up together, and have been together romantically in the past. They cannot let each

other go, no matter how hard they try. The inability to disentangle from one

another’s lives is certainly a screwball trope. However, there exist more abstract

elements of remarriage in films whose couple has never met before, such as

Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night, The Lady Eve and more. In such films, the

couple often feigns being in a relationship, plays at being married or acts as if they

are a couple before having broached romance. In The Philadelphia Story this occurs

most prominently when Tracy and Mike get drunk and spend the night before her

wedding playing, joking, laughing, swimming and even sometimes loving. It is a

childlike fantasy world akin to Bringing Up Baby or the infamous “Connecticut” and

it acts to create the childhood they never had together. While Tracy and Dexter may

have grown up together, Tracy and Mike recreate this for themselves. “It is as

though their summer night were spent not in falling in love at first or second sight,

but in becoming childhood sweethearts, inventing for themselves a shared, lost past,

to which they can wish to remain faithful” (Cavell 127). Cavell writes this about

Bringing Up Baby, but the notion is certainly applicable here as well, and perhaps to

Dan and Blair too. Though they have no sequence like this, which is perhaps unique

to the days of classical screwball, their multi-episode arc in season four achieved a

similar result. Once they have forged this connection, they both remain faithful to it

—in the face of adversity, criticism and naysayers, they defend each other to

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outsiders at all costs, reserving the right to criticize and tease only one another.

When Chuck attempts to humiliate Dan after finding out about an ill-fated kiss

between Blair and Dan, Blair immediately and fiercely protects Dan, as if honoring a

long standing pact made long ago, though it has only been forged recently.v

The true examples of remarriage in The Philadelphia Story and Gossip Girl are

to be found in other characters’ perceptions of the Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair

relationship. Tracy and Mike’s drunken exploits lead to anxiety and suspicion the

next morning as everyone—including Tracy herself—begins to believe that Mike

and Tracy slept together. After a drunken swim, and caught in a compromising state

of undress (robes!), the image seeds within the mind of her fiancé, George, and more

amusingly so in Dexter’s (though it is never sure what Dexter believes to be true or

not). Even Tracy’s naïve little sister assumes the worst, as all had witnessed not only

the tableau displayed before them in the backyard as Mike carried Tracy into the

house, but also the affection with which she addressed him. “Hello, Mike,” she says

in a high-pitched, childish voice after addressing her other two suitors stoically. But

though they shared some passionate kisses, Mike did not take advantage of Tracy

and accusations of their affair were unfounded. This mistaken affair plot is taken

even further by the Gossip Girl writers, who have teased the legitimacy of Dan and

Blair so often that it was clear they were playing with this specific screwball trope.

First, they keep their friendship a secret and draw the suspicion of close friends and

family, and upon realizing they have done this, decide to kiss and make sure they

have not been hiding more.vi The kiss is a fluke, as Dan develops unreciprocated

feelings for Blair—but she even devises a scheme in which they are to stage a kiss

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and pretend to be “madly in love” in order to divert the suspicions of her new beau’s

royal advisor. During this episode Serena accuses them of having an affair, and later

in season five, when Blair is engaged to the Prince, they are accused again by Serena,

Chuck and the Prince.vii

The remarriage motifs do not end there, however; as Dan and Blair’s season

five arc has been peppered with subversive clues that theirs is the real marriage

storyline instead of her conventional and actual marriage to the Prince. Dan is the

first to find out that she is pregnant, the first one to see her in her wedding dress, he

writes her fiancés vows for him, and he is the person who helps her escape from her

own wedding in the “Just Married” car. They look like bride and groom at the airport

where she attempts to flee, and bicker like a married couple too. “They give credit to

people from Brooklyn, right?” she snipes as he pulls out his wallet, and she takes off

cheerily in search of less conspicuous clothes. Later, unable to get her a flight, they

end up hiding out at an airport hotel—a play on what should have been the wedding

night and beginning of the honeymoon—and they argue, complete with slamming

bathroom doors and waving, opened beer bottles.viii This arc is quite fitting, because

the next episode gives birth to the start of their true romantic relationship—but

only after a year of playing out a relationship full circle, from initial friendship to the

honeymoon suite.

As it stands, Tracy and Mike and Dan and Blair have been established as

worthy of the screwball couple label, but Tracy and Mike were not the endgame pair

of The Philadelphia Story, while Dan and Blair’s fate remains to be seen. The comedy

of remarriage is not only about the behavior or the scenarios at play between the

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man and woman in question, but also about the self-discovery that must occur in

order to be prepared for their remarriage. This self-discovery, or even rediscovery is

pivotal in films like The Awful Truth and His Girl Friday and is present in The

Philadelphia Story as well. Dexter has taken the time to stop drinking, and patiently

waits for Tracy’s awakening. When it occurs, they can remarry and be together

again, but better. It certainly works with the genre conventions, but then again, so

does the Tracy and Mike relationship. After all, as stated before, Mike is the one who

facilitates Tracy’s self-revelation. She has been put down, criticized and chastised,

but it is not until Mike tells her what he sees in her that she can begin to tap into it.

The exchange is exhilarating, partly due to James Stewart’s wonderful delivery, but

also because his words are true and she had yet to hear them from anyone before.

Mike: You're wonderful. There's a magnificence in you, Tracy. A magnificence that comes out of your eyes and your voice...in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you...hearth fires and holocausts!Tracy: I don't seem to you made of bronze?Mike: No. You're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy...full of life and warmth and delight.

So while Tracy has spent most of the film being reprimanded by the men in her life,

Mike is the only one who revels in her. He does not want to tame her, change her or

worship her from afar. It is a triumphant moment in the film, because not only does

he incite Tracy’s self-discovery, but he does so because he has arrived at his own. At

first a classist, arrogant, judgmental cynic, Mike is humbled, and in fact freed of his

prejudices—by champagne and by love. Tracy has shattered almost every

preconceived notion he had about people and opened him up to greater

possibilities. Through conversation, through common interests, through playing and

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the liberating effects of alcohol and an enchanted night in the backyard, Tracy and

Mike were able to let go of those aspects of their personalities that had been holding

them back and found that liberation in each other. So while Tracy and Dexter’s

changed perspectives are fitting, they are nowhere near as powerful or romantic as

Tracy and Mike’s journey of self-discovery together. As Cavell explains of the choice

between the two leading men, “One of them is chosen by the genre, as it were, as the

more perfectly fit” (135). He claims that a shared past always wins out in the end, a

law of happiness in the comedy of remarriage. But perhaps if the film had not been

aimed at manipulating Katharine Hepburn’s image to the public, the outcome would

have been different. Denby writes about one kind of screwball couple that fits Tracy

and Mike perfectly:

The man is serious about his work (and no one says he shouldn’t be), but he’s confused about women, and his confusion has neutered him. He thinks he wants a conventional marriage with a compliant wife, but what he really wants is to be overwhelmed by the female life force (3).

This type is similar to the relationship in Bringing Up Baby, which at the time

brought Hepburn’s career to a dismal low point, ensuring that in no future roles

could her love interest be overwhelmed by her life force, but rather, that her life

force needed to be tamed. Thus Tracy could never have ended up with Mike, who

allowed himself to be so enamored of her. It is a sad testament to the times and the

beginning of a trend as the genre barreled into the forties, that the screwball

heroine’s tremendous spirit had to be contained.

Is it now, then, up to Dan and Blair to carry the torch in a new era and

perhaps become a testament to the success of a Tracy and Mike kind of romance?

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They have their own societal struggle to overcome, the Chuck and Blair cycle, a

relationship, which at its core boasts the idea of “one true love” above all else; above

equality, right and wrong, happiness, shared interests and stimulating conversation.

And even as much as the show tries to tout that Chuck has gone through a self-

transformation like Dexter, there is no real indication that he has. He continues to

philander, drink, and scheme, though unlike Dexter, he did apologize to Blair

eventually. Nevertheless, wherever Chuck’s personal journey may be headed, Tracy

and Dexter reached moments of clarity and transformation, but they did not do so

together, and Chuck and Blair seem destined to be on the same path. Dan and Blair,

on the other hand, have had a trajectory very similar to Tracy and Mike’s. Dan, once

a pillar of judgment with nothing but disdain for Blair and everything she stood for,

changed for the better once he began to fall in love with her. In his vows (which

were never spoken on the show, but written and readable), Dan writes, “You have

taught me how to live, how to enjoy everything the world has to offer. You have

brought out this side of me I never thought existed. Before you, I did not truly know

how to live. I was expected to be a certain kind of person. But the truth is, that

person was someone I didn’t actually like that much…” He has had a softening of

spirit, and a change of heart, and because he falls in love with Blair first—as Mike

does with Tracy—he, too, is there to help Blair rediscover herself. Though Dan

began to do so before meaning to. In season three, when Blair was struggling with

her relationship with Chuck she said to Dan, “Who could love me after what I’ve

become?” and it clearly put him on edge. Dan, who at this point had no interest or

investment in her happiness, later took it upon himself to tell her, “Just to be clear. I

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do think you deserve to be with someone who makes you happy.”ix Blair,

consistently mired by what she believes to be something dark and wicked inside of

her, tends to put herself down, and is often met with little to no resistance. And

though as of yet, Dan has made no speech as epic and astounding as Mike’s, his

acceptance and adoration for all facets of her character has been clearly shown.

When Blair admits to him that she had been in denial about her feelings for him, she

claims that her unique skill for doing so is awful. Dan replies, “It’s you. It couldn’t be

awful.”x Finally, just as Tracy’s “Goddess” label follows her and haunts her, so does

Blair’s “Princess” label. Though, unlike Tracy, it was always something she desired

to be. Blair’s journey of self-discovery during the second half of season five (and

consequently, with Dan), has been aimed towards giving up the fantasy and

embracing herself as a person…perhaps a human being. And Dan does not chide her

for somewhat childishly mourning her lost title. Instead, he brings her to the MET

steps, hands her a tiara from a costume shop and lets her feel like a princess one last

time. It is no gallant speech like Mike’s to Tracy, but it elicits the same reaction. They

have arrived on the steps of the MET, where five years ago she was cruel to him and

he snide to her, changed for good and for the better and having arrived at this place

together.xi

Dan and Blair do not just unravel and expand upon the Tracy and Mike

relationship had they been allotted more time as a television show allows, but they

prove that a Tracy and Mike relationship can indeed exist, flourish, and perhaps

even triumph in today’s media market. Screwball, at its very best, is a proponent for

equality, happiness, mutual self-discovery and freedom. In today’s society, when

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passive, unequal and unhealthy relationships like those from The Twilight Saga, sell

misery and co-dependence as the course of great love to impressionable young girls,

or the romantic comedy formula depicts a glorified slacker man and an uptight

woman who needs to let loose, the hope is that the old values of the screwball

romance can still have a place. Denby’s article is a great nostalgia piece for the old

world screwball couple. He writes of these films:

The screwball movies, at their peak, defined certain ideal qualities of insouciance, a fineness of romantic temper in which men and women could be aggressive but not coarse, angry but not rancorous, silly but not shamed, melancholy but not ravaged. It was the temper of American happiness (4).

But this romantic temper is not entirely dead, as the writers of Gossip Girl have

resurrected it in the Dan and Blair romance. And while their happy ending is

uncertain as of now, they are currently enjoying their Nick and Nora time as a

couple, proving that the values, characters, and their dynamics of old Hollywood

classics are not just a relic of a past, and that they are relevant and have a place in

media today. And perhaps they can bring back to the present the temper of

American happiness that Denby so wistfully recalls from the past.

Works Cited

Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. Print.

Denby, David. "A Fine Romance: The new comedy of the sexes." The New Yorker 23 July 2007: 1-6. www.newyorker.com. Web. 4 Sept. 2007.

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Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print.

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i 1x04 “Bad News Blair” 20:00-21:25ii 2x25 “The Goodbye Gossip Girl” 23:00-23:50iii 4x11 “The Townie” 40:00-41:13iv 4x19 “Pretty in Pink” v 4x18 “The Kids Stay in the Picture” 8:45-11:00vi 4x17 “Empire of the Son” vii 4x19 “Pretty in Pink”, 5x11 “The End of the Affair” [1] [2] [3]viii 5x14 “The Backup Dan” [1] [2] [3] [4]ix 3x18 “The Unblairable Lightness of Being” 22:20-23:24 & 38:30-38:54x 5x16 “Cross Rhodes” 5:45-6:25xi 5x19 “It Girl, Interrupted”