Casandra Phillips

Writing 2
WP1 Final Draft
03/17/2016
What Catches Your Eye On A Movie Case?
Genre: Movie Descriptions
Topic: Comedy Movies
Examples: Warner Bros, Netflix and IMDB

Movies can either make your day or break your day. I think that it is a very frustrating
moment when your expectations of a movie are not necessarily accurate after watching the film
and you become disappointed with it. This happens because we focus so much on the visual of
the movie description that we do not pay attention to the actual text description. I decided to
focus on movie descriptions for this writing so I can learn more about why we focus on the
visual aspect (front cover of the DVD) versus the written description. I also want to see the
differences and similarities in descriptions throughout different sources. I am going to focus on
comedy movies and use Warner Bros cassette cases, Netflix, and a website named IMBD to look
at comedy movie descriptions and see how they are structured to be. I will look into rhetorical
features like: audience, tone, purpose, style and conventions of the paper to see how they all
build a description together very differently to appeal to a certain audience each. I will focus on
the comical movie descriptions for; The Hangover Part II, White Chicks, and Scary Movie to
show readers the similarities and difference of each genre depending on the examples.
While snooping around and reading various descriptions on comedy movies I realized
that they all seem to appeal to the same audience. Kerry Dirk responds to this in his article

Navigating Genres, when he says, I think the success lies in the fact that the writers of these
headlines are rhetorically aware of whom these headlines are directed toward (23, Kerry Dirk).
So the success of the paper, video, etc. depends on the audience it is directed towards. This is
proven correct in all the descriptions I read of comedy movies.
When reading each one of these descriptions the tone was very smooth, short, and right to
the point. In the description for The Hangover Part II, the description ends with, What happens
in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens in Bangkok can't even be imagined(Warner
Bros). With this short description we already know that is going to be some kind of a wild
movie with a lot of funny action because that is what happens in Vegas, and as it seems to be
stated, it is more than just Vegas. They did not try to sugar coat the whole film or make it seem
like an amazing story. They literally wrote exactly what it was about and that is it. According to
Laura Bolin Carroll in her article, Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis, she states this as being a
rhetorical message [which] always occurs in a specific situation or context (40, Laura Bolin
Carroll). All of these description writers have one job to deliver and that is what they do directly
without beating around the bush to describe what the movie is about.
She then goes on to explain that Rhetors make all sorts of choices based on their
audience (41, Laura Bolin Carroll). This ties back into how the tone is being presented to a
specific audience. For most comedy films, the tone carries a very masculine structure for the
description. I also noticed the tone had a lot to do with the whole purpose of the movie. For
example if the tone came off as passive aggressive or sarcastic, that was basically how the humor
of the movie was presented. The humor was based on characters being sarcastic and passive
aggressive the entire time which made it clear when you read what Netflix or IDMB had to say
about the movie or what you were able to read on the back of the Warner Bros case, of a film.

Also, if the purpose of the movie is supposed to be more of a stupid joke type of film that is
exactly the tone that will come across the description and what will be presented in the film.
All movie descriptions had this sense of appealing to 1) the younger, teen crowd audience
and then appealing to 2) the more male, masculine audience versus females. They do this very
clearly with the tone of the description which has a lot to do with the diction they choose to use. I
noted the differences as I dissected everything I could find from the movie descriptions for The
Hangover Part II, White Chicks, and Scary Movie. The Hangover Part II had a more masculine
tone to the description of the movie, by using words like his bride or farce/ buddy film or
mayhem of Dougs bachelor party to describe what the movie was going to be about. Certain
words and phrases like buddy film were presented on the back cover in bold black made it
seem like it was a movie you just watched with your friends for a guys night out or something,
not a movie you would sit and watch with your girlfriend or family.
While that is what I noticed with that film, White Chicks and Scary Movie had a more
funny, reality, tone to it because that is how the movies will be. When looking into the Netflix
description of White Chicks I saw that they used words like empty-headed socialites and
goofy to show off the certain conventions used to produce this type of comical genre. Another
example is when I looked at IMDBs description for Scary Movie and I noticed that it had a
similar tone but different word usage as White Chicks to attract a younger, teen crowd to the
movie. They used words like accidently killed or dumb teenagers to show the simplicity of
the film for the younger crowd.
Besides the difference in tone they all seem to have a certain style to the description that
is very similar. A few conventions that I noticed that were always presented were; the font (print)
of the text, how they use very simple words (not very complex), and all the text was in black or

white in order for them to stand out anywhere, all the descriptions were really short, and they
were all straight to the point. This goes back to the point of them appealing to similar audiences
and being very simple in the description.
When I first started writing this paper, I had to determine what this essay might look
like (18. Kerry Dirk) and how I was going to depict each description I read. I felt like it was a
very difficult subject to go on because there was not a lot of text base evidence to go off of but I
was wrong. Some of the surface-level features I saw that were in common with all the
descriptions I read were bold letters, short 2-3 sentences, and parenthesis around really famous
actors. The back of the cover also had some sort of dramatic, sarcastic, funny picture of the
actors in the movie which proved evidence for the genre to be comical.
Again, a few similar techniques I noticed that these writers used in these pieces were bold
black and white letters, short and quick sentences, comical/ sarcastic images, the pinpointing of
famous actors in the movie, and straight-forward descriptions. A few features I noticed that were
dissimilar between the descriptions was the tone and the placement of the description. I think that
the tone obviously was dependent on what kind of humor the movie was going to take like I
mentioned earlier and the placement of the text just dependent on what source we were looking
at. When I looked at the Warner Bros film box I looked at the movie The Hangover part II since
that was the only physical DVD case I had and noticed this was the only description that was put
on the back. So for an actual physical case the movies description will always be on the back
and it will usually be right on top or right smack on the center for everyone to read once they
actually pick up the movie. On the other hand, I logged onto my Netflix account and realized
they have this technique of actually having you click on the link of the movie before reading a
description. This was very similar to the IDMB website where it shows us the movies and then

makes us click the actual link to show you the cover and then the description right next to it. I
found this very clever because all though they all have different placement, they are all kind of
sending the same message by doing the same thing. They make the audience physically pick up
the DVD and flip it around or click the movie or link to see the description. They do this to catch
the readers eyes with the rest of the images on the front cover of the movie in hope that this can
persuade the readers to get more indulged into the movie and continue on to read the description
and see what it is about. I think the reason these descriptions were structured similarly are
because they are of the same genre. Warner Bros, Netflix and IDMB were all describing comedy
movies to indulge and persuade the audience in watching them. With that, I also think that these
descriptions were structured differently at the same time because they were each describing a
different movie and they wanted their individuality to showcase in the description.
I think people should definitely learn about genres and why they exist because it is what
connects with the audience whether the following reading, film, etc. is interesting to them. I
think the importance of genre is beyond just knowledge of genres [as] limited to types of books,
whether mystery, horror, action, etc.(18, Kerry Dirk). I think genre is most important for the
audience that it is trying to attend to. Certain genres will not please or entertain a certain
audience so it will not catch the readers attention which will deny any type of interest in the
genre. On the other hand, if the genre actually amuses the reader or whoever the audience is, it
will lead them to spark interest in the following piece.
By looking into movie descriptions as a genre and focusing on comedy movies I was able
to analyze and depict what this genre was really about. I noted how it was structured and what
kind of conventions it would need to satisfy the certain genre it was attending to. I pointed out

text, color, structure of the words, background pictures, tone and purpose to identify what
conventions are needed to comply.

Work Cited
Carroll, Laura Bolin. Backpacks vs. Briefcase: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis. 2010. Pgs.
37-50.
Dirk, Kerry. Navigating Genres. 2010. Pgs. 17-30.
IDMB. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175142/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Netflix. http://www.netflix.com/search/white%20ch?jbv=60034587&jbp=0&jbr=0