Genre in "Me, Myself and I"

Genre in "Me, Myself and I"

Further research regarding  representation of disability and genre.

AB
21/01/13

                                           Genre in “Me, Myself and I”

 

Genre is a vital part in any production, whether if it’s for songs, books or films. A fundamental rule about genre (mainly speaking in films) whether it’s horror, drama or comedy etc. Is that there are things that are repeated which are alike to similar movies of the same kind but they also have their difference to make them stand out and be an individual. The repetition brings comfort to the audience and is often what dictates what genre the film may be as it can be compared to other films which it’s alike to. This doesn’t mean that genres are fixed, that they have a strict framework to work in. No, they have to adapt with time or they won’t sell.

Our film “Me, Myself and I”, doesn’t belong to a strict genre. We’ve purposely done this to expand are target audience and marketing. Our film can be put under comedy, drama, coming of age, romantic comedy etc. Part of the reason why this is because, our film is tackling the serious issue of DID. It’s not a material which can just be thrown into comedy. We want to illustrate how serious it is but also do it in a way where it won’t cause uneasiness to the audience; the material must be handled with care throughout the film as the last thing we want is to be accused of insensitivity. We inserted comedic aspect in the film to make the process of addressing the issue less daunting for the audience. Ideologically, the genres should offer some reassurance for the audience. As by labelling them which the following genres, it will give them some rough indication of what the film will be like. If we solely label the film as drama and the audience are given no indication that the film contains some comedic element, it can cause confusion, discomfort and possibly offend viewers. 

Different genres also attract different people. Our film’s really directed more at the female audience than the male. This is as the chosen genres for this film will naturally attract the effeminate side of the audience. So to be precise, our target audience are female, adolescents and over. 

To avoid being accused of insensitivity towards the mental disability, we’ve watched a few clips in which disability is represented. This is to also try to convey an accurate interpretation of those who suffer from DID. A film which really helped us get our grounding is the movie “Inside I’m Dancing” though it’s quite different in terms of the focus from our film since it’s about two physically disabled men, it still made us to try to make us handle the characterisation of May as close to reality as possible. Another character which we’ve studied is Becky Jackson from the American comedy “Glee”. Becky like Rory O’Shea suffers from a disability, but she has Down’s syndrome. What we’ve noticed after studying the characters is that all of them longed to be treated equally, to have the same rights as others despite their disability. This will definitely be a trait which we hall adapt in our film.