2. Born 9th January 1958
British philosopher and specialist in the
philosophy of language
Has written extensively about meaning,
information, interpretation, and communication
Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the
city university of New York
Has previously held positions at Princeton
University, University of California, Berkeley,
and Rutgers University.
3. He said that film and it’s genre is defined by two things:
How much is conforms to its genre’s individual
conventions and stereotypes- a film must match the
genre’s conventions to be identified as part of that
genre.
How much a film subverts the genre’s conventions and
stereotypes - the film must subvert convention enough
to be considered unique and not just a clone of an
existing film.
He said that Hollywood performs two functions:
To guarantee pleasure and meaning for the audience.
To offset financial risks of film production by providing
collateral against innovation and difference.
4. “It is in a constant process of negotiation and
change”
“Genres are instances of repetition and
difference”
“Difference is absolutely essential to the
economy of genre”
5. Popular cinema relies on audiences finding pleasure in
difference and repetition e.g recognition of familiar
elements
Genre is constituted by specific systems of
expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring
with them to the cinema and which interact with the
films themselves during the course of the viewing
process
To the film’s production team (producer, director etc)
genre provides a template
To the film’s distributors genre provides assumptions
about which audiences they should be marketing to
To the film’s audience genre identifies a liked of disliked
formula and provides certain rules of engagement in
terms of anticipation of enjoyment
