Illouz, Eva. Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation . Polity Press, 2012. [Theoretical framework on capitalism and intimacy]
Edward Zwick’s 2010 romantic comedy-drama Love & Other Drugs arrives packaged as a conventional genre film—a handsome pharmaceutical salesman (Jake Gyllenhaal) meets a free-spirited artist with early-onset Parkinson’s disease (Anne Hathaway), leading to the classic “player falls in love” arc. However, beneath its glossy surface lies a trenchant critique of American consumer culture, the medical-industrial complex, and the very nature of intimacy in a late-capitalist society. This paper argues that the film uses its titular “drugs” as a central metaphor to explore how commodification, performance, and neurochemistry shape—and ultimately threaten—human connection. By analyzing the film’s treatment of pharmaceuticals as both literal products and emotional stand-ins, this paper contends that Love & Other Drugs presents a paradoxical thesis: in a world where even dopamine and oxytocin can be marketed, authentic love becomes the only remaining uncommodifiable, yet most desperately sought-after, remedy. love & other drugs film
Dumit, Joseph. Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health . Duke University Press, 2012. [Context on pharmaceutical marketing and patienthood] Illouz, Eva
The film’s title operates on multiple levels. Literally, it refers to Viagra, the drug that turns Jamie’s career around. Metaphorically, it suggests that love itself is a neurochemical phenomenon—dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin—no different, in principle, from the compounds Pfizer synthesizes. Yet the film resists a purely reductionist view. When Jamie finally commits to Maggie after a crisis of fear (watching a Parkinson’s support group video), his transformation is not signaled by a pill but by an act of irrational, economically illogical sacrifice: he turns down a lucrative job transfer to Chicago to stay with her. By analyzing the film’s treatment of pharmaceuticals as