You guys were introduced to Project 3. You will be researching, analyzing, and observing a genre of writing that is unfamiliar to you and then creating your own example of the genre. You observations will be recorded in reading/viewing journals. We will discuss these in more detail in a later class. (See Class Documents Project 3 Assignment Sheet and Possible Genres.) Everyone picked the genre they wanted to use for the project, and you have to bring in 2 to 3 examples of that genre to class on Wednesday.
Analysis of the Teen Vampire Genre
We went over your notes from last class on the two clips we watched and analyzed different aspects of the teen vampire genre. We agreed that the audience for both pieces were women, mainly teenagers but some older women too, although we felt that The Vampire Diaries might be targeting teenage boys too because of the violence and the use of very attractive actresses. Both pieces appeal to their target audience by using teenagers as the main characters, by casting attractive male leads, by making the romance the dominant part of the plot, and by creating a very ideal romance (love at first sight, destined lovers, etc.) We decided that the purpose of each piece is to entertain the audience by making them fall in love with and root for the main couple and to also thrill and scare the audience a bit with the supernatural angles. They do this by making the couple an attractive couple with all the odds against them and they scare and thrill us by putting the characters in dangerous and potentially violent situations. Even the dark lighting and use of fog in both pieces helps put audiences on edge. We realized that because Twilight is a movie it had a longer time to get the story started, but it also could only focus on a few characters. The Vampire Diaries is a TV show so it has to achieve the same purpose of Twilight in a shorter amount of time but it also has the chance to develop more characters since they have weekly episodes. Our Top 10 List of things needed for the Teen Vampire Romance Genre are
- Attractive male lead
- A romance
- A high school setting
- Someone in the main couple is not a vampire
- A human competitor (someone who is not a vampire competing for the human character's love)
- Vegetarian vampires-the vampire involved in the couple usually doesn't drink human blood
- A villian who is usually a vampire that does drink human blood
- The human character (almost always a female) has something in their past or background that has forced them to grow up faster than other girls their age. They appear more mature than their friends.
- Almost always set in a small town.
- Dramatic storyline. Nothing is subtle. Everything is life or death.
The same questions you asked yourself about the two clips we watched are the sorts of questions you are going to ask when you are doing your reading journals. How does the examples you look at appeal to its audience? How does it achieve its purpose? What similarities do you see from one example to the next and why do you think those similarities exist?
Homework
- Final Draft of Project 2 via email-micealaya.moses@gmail.com (Due Tues Nov 13 by 9am) Please Make Sure You Attach Your Works Cited Page
- Bring in 2 to 3 examples of your genre to class (print examples please) (Due Wed Nov 14)
