'THIS IS ME' - Alex

'This Is Me' (Sam Arthur, 2006) is a satirical piece that mocks American Celebrity culture - specifically pieces such as MTV Cribs and their overzealous lifestyles. "This is me" is their parody is "Hey MTV and welcome to my crib". In true MTV style, this short narrative is told is documentary style - including a mix of non-diegetic narration over the top of footage. The footage itself spans over a long period of time and shows how he got in his particular state of being in hospital; so is filmed as a circular narrative. This could be interpreted as part of Neale's theory of Repetition and Variation - although the short closely follows MTV Cribs's format, the variation is in the flashback scenes and fast pace editing. This theory also works in close-conjunction with Buckingham's theory that genres changes overtime; again, much like MTV Cribs - the documentary style and flash editing has been done before. But changing the context to an overweight male in northern England sounds a lot more interesting than other A-list celebrity home tour.

Altman once suggested his theory of semantic and syntactic codes. Syntactic codes are just typical convections of narrative structure/theme that we expect. One syntactic code is the overzealous lifestyle of British northerner who likes to go on holiday - this stereotype shows an overweight man loving the sun, arguing with his equally as tanned wife in a supposedly 'well off lifestyle' that to others looks fairly run down. The semantic story suggests that no matter how happy you are in life, anything can put you down.

The irony in this short, and what makes it satirical was that it was a tiny plastic airplane flying out of the sky was what hurt him after he discloses that he lives on Heathrow flight-path. The main character even suggests that it's amazing place to live, describing it as 'West London's best kept garden suburb". The plastic plane even  makes a return for the final scene with a rather dark message that could either be interpreted as the end of the film, or, the end of the man's life. The man does seem to take a rather hollow breath just before the film cuts to credits.