YouTube link: Secrets of the Old Melbourne Gail
For the final week of assignment two, our focus was genre hybridisation. This meant creating a sketch within a genre (drama, horror, thriller, action, etc.) and introducing elements of comedy (incongruity, relief, etc.) in order to produce a new genre. As according to John Mundy and Glyn White, ‘comedy has been particularly adept at exploiting the potential of crossing borders between and within genres, in creating hybrid forms which combine comedy with other dramatic or generic elements’ (2012:132). Essentially, comedy as a mode or form is very versatile and is seen within many other genres. For instance, elements of comedy in horror (horror-comedy) acts to dehumanise and detract from the realism that may be found (Wells 2000). Overall, the intention of the sketch this week was to integrate comedy into an already established genre. Our group chose to do a documentary style comedy. Our group also grew as the week went due to outside variables but was still able to work efficiently. Documentary was the main case study for genre hybridisation in class and we watched a part of American Movie (1999) to exhibit a hybridisation. The goal in creating a hybridisation was to create a documentary about the “Secrets of the Old Melbourne Gail”. It was essentially a true crime/thriller documentary which relied on its arrogant (and uninformed) host and editing to infuse comedy. This rode a fine line between hybridisation and parody however, we weren’t actually mocking documentary as a genre but becoming one with it in a way. Our caricatures of documentarians were arrogant and ignorant, seeking to find “secrets” (truths) where there were no secrets to be found; think Ancient Aliens (2009-) which take their seek-age of the truth very seriously but ultimately spread disinformation. We made up conspiracies about “bodies being buried” in seemingly random places within the grounds and with the use of editing was able to show how our characters are simply out to make a buck and spin a narrative. There is a sense of self-awareness to the final product though I think this allows the documentary to seem more “produced” or simulated in a way like how YouTubers tend to overreact and dramatise things to create content. I do think while we rode the line between parody and hybridisation, we were able to combine dramatic and generic elements of drama (with talking heads, montage, etc.) with elements of comedy (incongruity, absurdity, framing, etc.) as per Mundy and White’s reading.
Mundy, J. & White, G. (2012), “Comedy and Genre Boundaries.” in Laughing Matters: Understanding Film, Television and Radio Comedy, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 130–148.
Wells P (2000) The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch, Wallflower, London.