Media magazine article supercurricular

 Chick Flick or Guy com?

I read this news article about the typical conventions of rom com films, using the examples of Pretty woman and Knocked Up, and how this genre stereotypically or countertypically represents both males and females. I thought that it was interesting how although being released not too many years apart, pretty woman in 1990 and knocked up in 2007, the representations of gender are quite different. Pretty woman, being an older film than Knocked up, follows more stereotypical representations of gender, as a woman from a lower social class being married and ‘rescued’ by a man from a higher social class, and they fall in love, living happily ever after. The transformation of a woman is also involved in this narrative displayed in Pretty Woman, as she goes from being an ‘Ugly Duckling to a Swan’. I thought that this concept mentioned in this article was particularly interesting, because it is a feature that can be found in most films of this genre, and is quite rare for the main female character to be very head strong, and is instead often rescued by the man, and plays the damsel in distress for the rest of the film before her rescue. Also, another typical feature of chick flick /rom com films are that right before the end of the film, the man comes back to declare his love for the woman, before she was going to leave the country. This is reflected in the narrative of Pretty Woman, as Edward’s character comes back to declare his love for Vivian at the end of the film.

Films such as Hooked Up follow a slightly different narrative, and slightly more countertypical representations of both men and women. In this film, the man is represented as a more clueless ‘loser’ character who is unwilling to grow up, and is free of adult responsibilities, until he ‘gets the girl’ at the end of the film. This article shows the differences between both chick flicks and guy coms, and how each of them represent gender differently and how they use the 2 genders differently to form their narrative. 

However, Pretty Woman and Knocked Up have some things in common, even though their genres are slightly different. For example, both film genres include the comedy element into their narrative. The article uses the examples of visual and verbal gags, or comedic situations and misunderstandings, and suggests how the comedy aspect of these kinds of films is a key sub genre within the film. I think that the sub genre of comedy in chick flicks and guy coms are a key part of the film, and it’s interesting how both genres can involve comedy, but used in various ways, dependent on the specific genre, highlighting the contextual differences. 

Overall, I’m going to use the information shown in this article with my studies, as I believe it is going to help me understand the more subtle differences between genres of film, and it will therefore be useful and help me analyse film better in my A Level. The ideas presented about how both genres can feature the same thing but show it in slightly different ways will be useful for me to learn in more detail and depth about how film producers make subtle differences in ways that can entirely change the representation of a character that the audience interpret by watching the film. This article was very helpful for me to read as supercurricular, and I will use its ideas to help me discover more about film producing in the media industry.