2. What is Genre?
Genre is a way of categorising a particular media text according to its
content and style. Genres help audiences to understand and recognise
a specific style of media text to identify whether or not it is something
they enjoy. Different stereotypes fit different genres that make it
easier to classify different styles into various genres; for example if a
film is about people falling in love it is usually a rom-com, if it is just a
funny film it is a comedy, if it is scary and jumpy it is a thriller or a
horror. Media texts including film, music and literature will each have
their own genre in which they fall into and by understanding the
common features within it the genre ca be found. These media texts
are given a specific genre in order to attract a specific target audience.
There are many different genres including: comedy, crime, animation,
sci-fi, romance, horror, thriller, documentaries and many more.
For example in a horror film, the audience will expect to find a weaker
character and a significantly stronger one, weapons, suspense,
dramatic music, blood, a villain or supernatural monster and many
deaths.
3. Genre Theorists
Jonathan Culler (1978) – Believes that generic conventions exist in order to establish a contract
between the creator and reader to make certain expectations operative, allowing compliance and
deviation from the accepted modes of intelligibility. Acts of communication are rendered
intelligible only within the context of a shared conventional framework of expression.
Tom Ryall (1998) – argues that genre provides a framework structure in the shape of different
patterns/forms/styles that act as a form of supervision over the work of production film and to
allow the audience to read the structure.
John Hartley – Argued that genres are agents of ideological closure; they limit the meaning
potential of a given text.
Andrew Tudor – Tudor’s theory implies that genre is only what we collectively believe it to be. He
says that a genre defines a moral and social world.
Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress – Both argue that genres are typical forms of texts that link
kinds of producer, consumer, topic, medium, manner and occasion. He believes that they control
the behaviour of the producers of such texts and the expectations of potential customers.
Steve Neall – Suggests that Hollywoods generic regime performs two inter-related functions. 1)
to guarantee meanings and pleasures to the viewer. 2) to offset the considerable economic risks
of industrial film production by providing cognitive collateral against innovation and difference.
Daniel Chandler – Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they
constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or to form
structures and styles that are shared by the text which is regarded as belonging to them.
4. Genre Theories in Horror
Chandlers theory can be linked to the horror genre because
horror movies are made up of many common elements including
an isolated setting, dark lighting and a villain.
Also, Tom Ryall’s theory can be related to the horror genre as he
argues that each media text has its own framework structure
which can therefore be applied to horror as there are certain
conventions that make up the final piece and on their own would
not resemble a genre of horror. The basic structure for most
horror films is that the oblivious victim is usually faced by the
dangerous killer who commonly kills everyone else leaving just
the two of them whilst the victim tries to kill the killer but we are
usually left on a tense cliff-hanger as to whether the killer is
really dead.
