The Political Conservatism of "The Idea of You"

Social Class in The Idea of You 

By now, most of us have heard of the movie The Idea of You, and many of us have seen it. It is a charming and enjoyable romantic comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine. Hathaway’s character Solène Marchand is a 40-year-old woman who meets Hayes Campbell, the 24-year-old lead singer of a successful boy-band. The two fall in love, and as in any rom-com, the course of love does not run smoothly. In this case, the difficulties center around the fact that Solène is 16 years older than Hayes.

A good deal has been written about the movie, but nothing that I have seen deals with the way that it supports and justifies our class structure. In romantic fiction, the protagonists almost always belong to the upper classes. Tristan and Isolde belong to the nobility, and Romeo and Juliet come from wealthy, merchant families. All of Jane Austen’s heroines belong to England’s landed gentry. The woman in a romance may be poor, but in that case, she must marry a prince as in Cinderella or Pretty Woman.

The Social Classes of Hayes and Solène

The Idea of You fits right into this tradition. Solène belongs to the patrimonial middle class, which is our equivalent of Austen's landed gentry who are well off but not extremely rich. The indicators of Solène's social class are clear. She dresses expensively but not ostentatiously so. She owns a house in Silver Lake in Los Angeles. It is not a wealthy neighborhood like Beverly Hills or Bel Aire, but the current median sale price of houses in Silver Lake is approximately $1.4 million. She owns and operates an art gallery, and she is the divorced wife of a successful attorney. Their daughter Izzy is a junior at Campbell Hall, a private school where the annual tuition is more than $40,000. When Hayes invites Solène to spend a weekend with him in New York, the cost of the trip is not an issue. She buys a ticket and goes, but she flies economy class. So, she belongs to the patrimonial middle class rather than the upper class.

Hayes, on the other hand, is very rich and definitely in the upper class. He is the equivalent of Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman or Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. When he visits Solène’s gallery, he buys her entire stock without asking the price of anything. When they go to Europe, they go in his band’s private jet. He has a driver who also acts as a bodyguard. 

Cultural Ideals Support Our Class Structure

How does this setup support our class structure? It does so by presenting its characters as cultural ideals. Hayes is presented as an ideal young man of his class. He is handsome. He is rich but not with inherited money. (The contemporary U.S. is not Austen’s England.) He is strong, muscular, graceful and athletic. He is clever, sociable and charming. He is strong-willed and talented. He writes original songs and plays two musical instruments. He is honest and open.  He is even a good dancer. So, we understand right away why he sweeps Solène off her feet.

She is presented as an ideal woman of her class. She is beautiful, and her clothes showcase her beauty in a way that expresses softness and approachableness rather than hardness or sexiness. She is soft-spoken and polite, but she is not afraid to say what she thinks. She moves gracefully and smiles easily.  She is devoted to her daughter. She is strong and independent, but she easily gives up her plan to go camping to take her daughter and her friends to a music festival at Coachella.  She runs an art gallery, which supports female artists, and she has a devoted circle of female friends. She lives in a craftsman-style house, which looks and feels like a real home. She even makes great sandwiches. So, we understand right away why she captivates Hayes.

Characters like Solène and Hayes are not just individuals. They are ideals, and they function as ideal representatives of their social classes. By doing so, they make their classes and their society attractive and admirable. We can see this in Georgette Heyer's regency romances. When we read them, we love and admire the elegance and refinement of the people that the novels portray and by extension the society that can produce such people. In the same way, Solène and Hayes make their social classes and their society admirable. 

We see its beauty, and we do not see the social inequities that lie behind the facade that Solène and Hayes present. We feel that the society that they represent is good. We like and approve of it wholeheartedly because we are captivated by the two characters. That feeling of admiration and approval is profoundly conservative. It leads us away from any criticism of our society because Solène and Hayes appear to live in our world, and they mask its injustices. We cannot not leave a showing of The Idea of You ready to go out and challenge our world's inequities.

Enjoy The Fantasy and Return to Our World

That is well and good, as far as it goes. The Idea of You is a charming movie. It is a pleasure to watch, and Anne Hathaway gives us a virtuoso performance as Solène. We should enjoy the movie for what it is. (I certainly did.) We do not need to be always in a politically radical mood, but we should remember that Hayes and Solène live in a fantasy world that has been created to give us pleasure. It is not really our world however much it may resemble our world superficially. In our world, there are real injustices. In our world, people go hungry. In our world, people die in unnecessary wars. Our world is not filled with beautiful people leading beautiful lives in beautiful settings. So, while we may enjoy the fantasy, we should not allow it to lull us into believing that its world is our world, and we should continue to fight to make our world a better place.