Research
Working Essay title
Romantic comedy in TV & Film
Research into Romantic Comedy
Audience
The main target audience for romcoms is women because they "get in touch with women's emotions". Women feel more able to relate to scenes shown such as falling in love, fighting for love or losing someone you love, because stereotypically, women dream of falling in love with a man who will "sweep her off her feet". Also, they are more likely to enjoy watching "unrealistic relationships" (Tolhurst, 2017).There are two types of female audiences for a romcoms:-
- Women aged 12-25 = This age bracket would be attracted to teen romcoms because the characters are a similar age so they are easily relatable because the characters have similar lifestyles, social classes and stereotypes as the audience. An example of this case would be the film, To All The Boys I've Loved Before because teenage girls would be able to relate to the character of Lara-Jean, who has secret crushes on a few different boys.
- Women aged 30-45 = This age bracket would be attracted to other romcoms because they include more mature and complex storylines and may include bad language, sex references and sex scenes. Additionally, the themes and characters of a similar age may appeal to older women because they are easily relatable. An example of this case would be the film Love Actually, which is a film that portrays romance in adult ways with sex scenes and mature topics such as infidelity
In my essay, I plan to use this source to discuss the target audience for romantic comedy and what this audience enjoys about the romantic comedy. Additionally, I plan to use this information to discuss the two different age groups of the audience.
Romcoms can make their audience quite delusional by creating false concepts of love, relationships and marriage and that they don't represent "real" relationships, which can be "really boring" and include "emptying the bins, paying the bills and talking about the kids". A typical example of this would be that romcoms exaggerate how far a man will go to win a woman's affection (Surrey, 2016), for example, the plotline of Notting Hill follows how a man tries to win the heart of a movie star who visits his book shop. However, romcoms can also have a positive effect on their audience psychologically because according to psychologists at the University of Buffalo, watching romcoms frequently can "make us better people" and increase our sensitivity towards "moral intuitions" such as care, fairness, loyalty and respect for authority (Borreli, 2016).
In my essay, I plan to use the information I've gathered from both these sources to contrast the positive and negative effects that watching a romantic comedy can have on their audience.
British romcoms such as Notting Hill & Love Actually were big hits with a worldwide audience, with the global take of Love Actually being £158,000,000 and £282,000,000 for Notting Hill (Lee, 2015). However, in recent times, the audience for romcoms has diminished because Richard Curtis' 2013 romcom About Time only made £62,000,000 worldwide [11] and American romcoms such as The Big Sick only made £43,000,000 worldwide [12]. The US editor of Screen Daily, Jeremy Kay, told The Guardian that he believes that films such as Notting Hill and Love Actually were successful because they were "by and large, made well" and they featured Hugh Grant, who he branded as a "bona fide superstar". Furthermore in the article, the writer believes Hugh Grant "abandoned" the British romcom and left a big hole in his wake (Lee, 2015).
In my essay, I plan to use the information I've gathered from these sources to analyse how the box office figures for romantic comedy films have changed over the past 25 years.
In my essay, I plan to use the information I've gathered from both these sources to contrast the positive and negative effects that watching a romantic comedy can have on their audience.
British romcoms such as Notting Hill & Love Actually were big hits with a worldwide audience, with the global take of Love Actually being £158,000,000 and £282,000,000 for Notting Hill (Lee, 2015). However, in recent times, the audience for romcoms has diminished because Richard Curtis' 2013 romcom About Time only made £62,000,000 worldwide [11] and American romcoms such as The Big Sick only made £43,000,000 worldwide [12]. The US editor of Screen Daily, Jeremy Kay, told The Guardian that he believes that films such as Notting Hill and Love Actually were successful because they were "by and large, made well" and they featured Hugh Grant, who he branded as a "bona fide superstar". Furthermore in the article, the writer believes Hugh Grant "abandoned" the British romcom and left a big hole in his wake (Lee, 2015).
In my essay, I plan to use the information I've gathered from these sources to analyse how the box office figures for romantic comedy films have changed over the past 25 years.
Auteur
Richard Curtis
Richard Curtis is considered an auteur of romantic comedy because in each of the romcoms he has written, including Love Actually and Notting Hill, he re-uses similar actors for similar types of roles in his films. An example of this would be Hugh Grant, who plays a man who is trying to win a woman's heart in both Notting Hill and Love Actually. Additionally, he conveys a particular style in his films where a single man falls in love with a woman who is completely different to him, the couple face various challenges throughout the film and then they finally get together at the end of the film.
In my essay, I plan to use the information I have gathered about the plotline and the casting in both these films to justify my reasoning for Richard Curtis being an auteur for romantic comedy.
In my essay, I plan to use the information I have gathered about the plotline and the casting in both these films to justify my reasoning for Richard Curtis being an auteur for romantic comedy.
Narrative
The central narrative of a romcom revolves around a character's "quest for love" (McDonald, 2007). In a BBC documentary, Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, Kermode states that most romcoms follow a similar simple narrative of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again, the end" and that this narrative can often "make you laugh and make you cry". Additionally, he states that one key element of a romcom is the "meet-cute". The "meet-cute" is where two key characters are introduced in a romcom and then they are set up for "a series of mishaps which see them fall in and out of love".
In my essay, I plan to use the information I have gathered from watching this TV documentary to outline the elements of a romantic comedy feature, such as the meet-cute.
In my essay, I plan to use the information I have gathered from watching this TV documentary to outline the elements of a romantic comedy feature, such as the meet-cute.
Genre
Romcoms are traditionally a film or play with a light-hearted story revolving around the concept of a romantic relationship and that love is an emotion that can bypass all obstacles in life (Kowenstrot, 2012). However, romcoms can also take the form of a TV show, for example, part of the plot of the BBC comedy, Gavin & Stacey is similar to the theory of the "meet-cute", where its revolves around the key moments of the relationship between the characters of Gavin & Stacey where they meet and then after a period of time, they get engaged and married. However, unlike traditional romcoms, the audience are able to easily relate to Gavin & Stacey because they represent a real-life relationship in the early stages, where they're buying a flat, looking for jobs and trying for a baby.
In my essay, I plan to use the information I have gathered from this source to define the romantic comedy in a simple form.
In my essay, I plan to use the information I have gathered from this source to define the romantic comedy in a simple form.
Comments
Post a Comment