Whether you’re singing, dancing, or making out with Spiderman, there’s something different about doing things in the rain. In an excerpt from her book Rain: A Cultural and National History published at Salon, Cynthia Barnett analyzes rain as a narrative device:
Rain is such a compelling literary and cinematic trope that it’s easily and often overdeployed, as many critics have mirthfully pointed out. Rain can be avant-garde in a Beckett play and embarrassingly melodramatic in a romance novel—or when the rain machine gushes a bit too obviously in film.