2. What is genre?
• Genre are categorises- it is a critical tool that help us
study texts and audience responses by texts dividing
them into categories based on common elements.
• Genres are not fixed they constantly change and evolve
over time
David Chandler-2001
• Argues that the word genre comes from work or class.
Barry Keith Grant-1995
• Says you recognises genres because you become familiar with
them.
David Buckingham-1993
• Argues that genre is not simply given by the culture.
3. Jason Mittel-2002
• Argues that genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of
media texts and operate within industry, audience and cultural practices
as well.
• Industries use genres 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 particular pleasure.
Genre Audience
Text
Institution
4. Rick Altman-1999
• Argues that genre offers audiences a ‘set of pleasures’
• Emotional pleasures- the emotional pleasures offered
to audiences of genre films are particular significance
when they generate a strong audience response.
• Visual pleasures- physical feeling ‘gut responses’ are
defined by how the films stylistic construction.
• 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
5. The strengths of genre theory
• The main strength of genre theory is that
everybody uses it and under 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 we want to consume
• Potential for the same concept to be understood
by producers, audiences and students make
genre a useful critical tool. Its accessibility as a
concept also means that it can be applied across
a wide range of texts.
6. Music videos
• Music videos 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
Dyer-1975
• Music videos are postmodern text whose main
purpose is to promote a star persona.
• They don’t have to be literal representations of
the song or lyrics.
