Keyllie's AICE Media Blog: Comedy/Coming-of-Age Cont.

Hey guys. I'm back today to add onto the research for the coming-of-age film.

Coming of age movies can cover many topics that are presently affecting teens and young adults in the real world. One example of this could be the film Real Women Have Curves.

I first watched this movie in my AP Spanish Language class, and I found it to be extremely interesting. It is based on a teenager, Ana, who belongs to a Mexican-American family who are very stereotypical and degrading towards her in a very hypocritical way. She clashes with them in many instances, but mainly in following her education dreams as she wants to pursue a career, but her family's cultural traditions do not allow for this. In most Hispanic households, the young woman will go to school for a while, sometimes they won't even graduate high school, and the they will go one to being housewives. Ana did not want this lifestyle though, so she goes through many obstacles to realize what she wants.

Some techniques I found to write a coming-of-age script are:

Catching the "Lingo"

using teenagers' mannerisms and lingo is highly important if you are creating a coming-of-age movie because the target audience is mainly teenagers, and having them watch and realize the way that they are in real life is captivating to them, in most cases.

Characters

Something that truly sticks with this genre is the characters. There are always stereotypical characters, and it is not seen as repetitive in the industry just because they are necessary.
Some examples are "the popular jock", "the weird STEM kid", "the popular mean girl", "the pretty-but-weird girl", etc.
These stereotypes are not necessary, but they make a huge contribution to the development of the plot and the meaning behind the genre.