1. Case Study: My Mad Fat
Diary
Directed By Tim Kirby

2. Characters:
Chloe
Rae (Rachel)
Izzy
Archie Chop
Finn
Rachel’s Mum

3. My Mad Fat Diary…?
 Directed by Tim Kirby.
 Based around a 16 year old girl named Rachel Earl (Rae) who has just come
out of a mental ward where she stayed for four months. It isn’t mad 100% clear
why she was in the mental ward in the first episode, however she mentions a lot
about bingeing and being on a path of self destruction.
 Set in Lincolnshire in 1996.
 Rae has been given a diary to write in and then she goes to her weekly therapy
sessions where she talks about how her life outside the mental ward is going.
 The first episode reveals that her mother is a little irresponsible, dating an illegal
immigrant and not really paying attention to her daughter in the process.
 Rae becomes friends with a group of sixth formers that her old best friend
Chloe has got herself in with.
 There is a voice over that Rae is doing to help narrate the scene and it allows
the audience to know what she is thinking.
 Rae’s diary entries represents David Gauntlett

4. About the director…
 Born November 13th 1970
 He is an English film, television and commercials director.
He directed both spoof science parody series Look Around
You and the BBC 2 show Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
 He directed ‘Look Around You’ which won a golden globe.

5. David Gaunlett…
 Rae’s diary entries represents David Gauntlett and how you
can use a media form to help discover your own identity. So
Rae writes in her diary which makes it personalised to her.
 The diary entries are shown through Rae’s eyes and she
narrates them as they are shown to the audience.

6. Key scene 1: In the pub and chip
shop
 Rae is meeting the new group Chloe has been hanging out with.
 in the scene, the boys are having banter with eachother.
 The pub scene demonstrates kids having fun and mucking around.
 Once they go into the chip shop, there is slow pace editing during the food fight that Chloe,
Izzy, Chop, Archie and Finn have. Rae is watching from the side-lines and she begins to
describe each one of the group members. She finally gets to Archie and describes him as a
‘half geek, half rock god’. This demonstrates that she is interested in Archie, and that it
could also suggest that a teenagers brain works in flirt mood and all that they think about
when they like someone, is how much they want them.
 They get kicked out of the chip shop by a small bald man who obviously owns the shop, he
shouts at them as they leave but they are laughing at eachother and having fun, not
reacting to the man or causing a scene, which demonstrates that teenagers just want to
have a bit of fun.
 The scene creates a sense of Adorno’s theory about how the world is made to pass through
a filter of the culture industry however the scene doesn’t create any massive amounts of
moral panic for the audience, because the teenagers are being shown in a very innocent
light that made the adult audience could even relate to.