The decline of the romantic comedy began around the era when people began referring to these movies as “ rom coms ,” a term drawn from the hokey industry slang used in olden times by trade publications. Romantic comedies have always existed almost solely for pleasure’s sake—that’s what’s great about them. But they don’t deserve the degrading slangy shorthand they’ve been slapped with, which feels like marketing terminology that we’ve openly welcomed into our everyday language. Movies are