2. Aims/Objectives
• To introduce the concept of genre theory and key
genre theorists.
• To have a basic understanding of how to categorise
evaluate your coursework against genre theory.
3. What Is Genre?
• ‘Genre’ is a critical tool that helps us study texts and
audience responses to texts by dividing them into
categories based on common elements.
• Daniel Chandler (2001) argues that the word genre
comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for
'kind' or 'class'. The term is widely used in rhetoric,
literary theory, media theory to refer to a distinctive
type of ‘text’.
4. • All genres have sub genres (genre within a genre).
• This means that they are divided up into more
specific categories that allow audiences to identify
them specifically by their familiar and what become
recognisable characteristics (Barry Keith Grant,
1995)
• However, Steve Neale (1995) stresses that “genres
are not ‘systems’ they are processes of
systematization” – i.e. They are dynamic and evolve
over time.
5. Generic Characteristics across all texts share similar
elements of the below depending on the medium...
•Typical Mise-en-scène/Visual style (iconography, props,
set design, lighting, temporal and geographic location,
costume, shot types, camera angles, special effects).
•Typical types of Narrative (plots, historical setting, set
pieces).
•Generic Types, i.e. typical characters (do typical
male/female roles exist, archetypes?).
6. • Typical studios/production companies.
• Typical Personnel (directors, producers, actors, stars,
auteurs etc.).
• Typical Sound Design (sound design, dialogue,
music, sound effects).
• Typical Editing Style.
• KEY: Important elements, less important elements,
elements of minimal importance.
7.
8. • Jason Mittell (2001) argues that genres are cultural
categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts
and operate within industry, audience, and cultural
practices as well.
• In short, industries use genre to sell products to
audiences. Media producers use familiar codes and
conventions that very often make cultural references
to their audience knowledge of society, other texts.
• Genre also allows audiences to make choices about
what products they want to consume through
acceptance in order to fulfil a particular pleasure.
9. Pleasure of genre for audiences
Theorist Rick Altman (1999) argues that genre
offers audiences ‘a set of pleasures’.
• Emotional Pleasures: The emotional pleasures offered to audiences
of genre films are particularly significant when they generate a strong
audience response.
• Visceral Pleasures: Visceral pleasures (‘visceral’ refers to internal
organs) are ‘gut’ responses and are defined by how the film’s stylistic
construction elicits a physical effect upon its audience. This can be a
feeling of revulsion, kinetic speed, or a ‘roller coaster ride’.
• Intellectual Puzzles: Certain film genres such as the thriller or the
‘whodunit’ offer the pleasure in trying to unravel a mystery or a puzzle.
Pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and forecasting the end or
the being surprised by the unexpected.
10. The Strengths Of Genre Theory
• The main strength of genre theory is that everybody
uses it and understands it – media experts use it to
study media texts, the media industry uses it to develop
and market texts and audiences use it to decide what
texts to consume.
• The potential for the same concept to be understood by
producers, audiences and scholars makes genre a
useful critical tool. Its accessibility as a concept also
means that it can be applied across a wide range of
texts.
11. Short Film- medium not genre?
• The medium of short film does not have a specific
genre (see notes on conventions of short film).
• However the things that separate short films from
feature films are that they often have single strand
narratives and/or focus on few characters.
• They can be very often anti-narrative/surrealist.
• Short films can be ambiguous, open meaning (Eco,
1981) and often experimental.
12. Genre Development and Transformation
• Over the years genres develop and change as the
wider society that produce them also changes, a
process that is known as generic transformation.
• Christian Metz in his book Language and Cinema
(1974) argued that genres go through a typical cycle
of changes during their lifetime.
• Experimental Stage
• Classic Stage
• Parody Stage
• Deconstruction Stage
13. Music video –medium with many sub-genres /
postmodern styles?
Music video is a medium intended to appeal directly to youth
subcultures by reinforcing generic elements of musical
genres.
•They are called pop-promos as they are used to promote a
band or artist.
•Music videos are postmodern texts whose main purpose is
to promote a star persona (Dyer, 1975).
•They don’t have to be literal representations of the song or
lyrics.
14. In terms of genre, there are narrative and performance and
some that combine both.
Both performance and narrative based videos are very
often purely intertextual
•Blink 182 ‘Say it ain’t So’
•Weezer ‘Buddy Holly’.
They often pastiche/parody films or offer commentary on
social events. Green Day’s Basket Case (1996)
pastiches One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).
15. Others include themes which may fit around the lyrics of the
song or society (particularly if the band are well known
activists known for supporting a cause).
• This is a medium known for being experimental and
controversial (see conventions).
• The generic conventions stay the same but the style (the
look of something) changes between music genres.
17. Horror films, for example, are basically just modern fairy tales and often
act as morality plays in which people who break society’s rules are
punished.
Fear of the unknown – the monster is the ‘monstrous other’ i.e. anything
that is scary because it is foreign or different.
Sex = death – in horror movies, especially Slasher movies, sex is
immoral and must be punished, werewolf movies can be seen as a
metaphor for puberty, vampires can be as metaphors for sexually
transmitted diseases or rape etc.
The breakdown of society – post-apocalyptic movies are about our fear
(or secret desire for) of the breakdown of society. The collapse of
civilisation results in human kind reverting to their animal instincts.
18. Some short films can also be social realist texts, and so through their
discourse they share some conventional themes of horror/scare texts in
general such as:
The duality of man/ personal journey – the conflict between man’s
civilised side and his savage, primal instincts, e.g. Jeykll and Hyde,
Werewolf movies, the Hulk, etc.
Segregation and alienation – two opposing cultures or beings going
through a struggle to survive . As there are no standard themes of short
movies, depending on their audience they offer their own
themes.
19. Some music videos have themes for a more
youthful audience such as....
•Teen angst
•Rebellion - Conformity verses non-conformity;
•Romance;
•Sex/losing your virginity
•Nostalgia – for the innocence of youth
•Nihilism – the belief that there is no future;
•Coming of age rituals (e.g. the prom, falling in love,
losing your virginity etc.);
•Tribalism: Popularity verses unpopularity, e.g.cliques;
•Bullying
20. Juvenile Delinquency: Moral panics and the teenager as a
folk devil;
The currency of ‘cool’;
Hedonism – living purely for pleasure;
Friendship.
Other themes in music videos:
War
Crime
Poverty
Capitalism
Racism
21. Genres are not fixed. They constantly change and
evolve over time – your coursework articles, as we have
discussed, are postmodern pieces.
David Buckingham (1993) argues that 'genre is not...
Simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant
process of negotiation and change’.
22. As postmodern theorist Jacques Derrida reminds us, "the
law of the law of genre . . . is precisely a principle of
contamination, a law of impurity".
For example, short films and music videos are in the
process of genre cross-over.
Some narrative videos borrow from the conventions of short
films and in fact are short films.
Arctic Monkey’s music videos ‘Scummy Man’.
Portishead’s ‘To Kill a Dead Man’ is essentially a short
film noir (1940s detective movie...).
