The document discusses various film genres and subgenres related to comedy, including the key conventions and examples. It covers the main comedy genre established in the early 1900s-1920s using silent physical humor. Subgenres discussed include action comedy, comedy horror, fantasy comedy, black comedy, sci-fi comedy, romantic comedy, disaster films, film noir, and melodrama. Each subgenre blends comedy with other genres and explores different tones and storytelling approaches.

1. Genre Exploration Task

2. Genre- Comedy
• The purpose of Comedy is to amuse or make the audience laugh.
• The general conventions of the Comedy Genre are there is always a main character
that something unfortunate happens to.
• The comedy genre was established 1900’s-1920’s. The genre emerged because
silent films were ideal around the nineteenth century. Slapstick violence was one
of the earliest forms of Comedy as it revolved around a practical joke or physical
‘mishap’.
An example of classical film to represent the genre around the 19th century.

3. Subgenres- Action Comedy
• Action Comedy; this sub-genre combines action with humour. Action-Comedy
relies on the characters to bring out the humour, while the scenes containing
action tend to be less intense than the conventional action movie.
-Examples of Action Comedy:
These type of films are
often buddy films, with
mismatched partners,
which makes mishaps &
things which happen in the
movie, comical.

4. Subgenres- Comedy Horror
• Comedy horror is a type of horror film. The typically dark themes within the film
are combined with humorous tones. These films use goofy horror clichés.
• Horror-Comedy combines comedy with traditional horror movie themes and
characters. They can cross over into the Black Comedy sub-genre. Horror-
Comedy films aim to scare the audience, but also provide comical things that
allow the audience to laugh at their fear.
-Examples of Comedy Horror; Scream, Young Frankenstein, Little Shop of
Horrors, Haunted Mansion and Scary Movie. Another style of comedy horror can
also rely on over the top violence and gore such as in Dead Alive (1992), Evil Dead
(1981), and Club Dread - such films are sometimes known as splatstick.

5. Subgenres- Fantasy Comedy
• Fantasy comedy films are types of films that uses magic, supernatural and
or mythological figures for comical purposes. Most fantasy comedy
includes an element of parody, or satire, changing the fantasy
conventions, such as the hero becoming a cowardly fool, the princess
being a ‘klutz’.

6. Subgenres- Black Comedy
• Much like comedy-horror, black comedy, or dark comedy, is a type of comedy
film that often uses cruelty as the source of humour. Most black comedies
involve crime or other intense moments like average school/workplace bullying.
• Its a sub-genre of both Comedy and Satire. They often explore concepts and
topics that are considered taboo. Black Comedy takes topics and situations that
are commonly held as serious and explores them in a comical way. Because of
this approach, Black Comedies often cause the audience to laugh and feel
uncomfortable at the same time.
-Examples of Black Comedy films are; Dr. Strangelove, Ruthless people, and The
Cable Guy .

7. Subgenres- Sci-fi Comedy
• Sci-fi comedy films, like most hybrid genre of comedy use the elements of
science fiction films to over the top extremes and exaggerated science fiction
stereotypical characters.
• Comic science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that exploits the genre's
conventions for comic effect. Comic science fiction often mocks or satirizes
standard SF conventions like alien invasion of Earth, interstellar travel, or
futuristic technology.
-Examples of Sci-Fi Comedy; Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Men in Black,
Spaceballs.

8. Subgenres- Romantic Comedy
• Romantic-Comedy is a genre that attempts to catch the viewer’s heart with the
combination of love and humour. This sub-genre is light-hearted and usually
places the two protagonists in humorous situation. Romantic-Comedy film
revolves around a romantic ideal, such as true love. In the end, the ideal triumphs
over the situation or obstacle, thus creating a happy ending.
-Examples of Romantic Comedy; When harry met Sally,

9. Hybrids- Disaster Films
• Disaster films, a sub-genre of action films, hit their peak in the decade of the 1970s.
Big-budget disaster films provided all-star casts and interlocking, Grand Hotel-type
stories, with suspenseful action and impending crises (man-made or natural) in
locales such as aboard imperilled airliners, trains, dirigibles, sinking or wrecked
ocean-liners, or in towering burning skyscrapers, crowded stadiums or earthquake
zones. Often noted for their visual and special effects, but not their acting
performances.
• The purpose of this Hybrid is to

10. Hybrids- Film Noir
• Film noir (meaning 'black film') is a distinct branch of the crime/gangster sagas from
the 1930s. Strictly speaking, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style or tone
of various American films that evolved in the 1940s, and lasted in a classic period until
about 1960. However, film noir has not been exclusively confined to this era, and has
re-occurred in cyclical form in other years in various neo-noirs. Noirs are usually black
and white films with primary moods of melancholy, alienation, bleakness,
disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt
and paranoia. And they often feature a cynical, loner hero (anti-hero) and femme
fatale, in a seedy big city.
• The purpose of this Hybrid is to allow the viewer to be immersed in the storyline, by
the use of drama and likeable storylines. Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence,
despair and paranoia . These are all to create an order of suspense.
• Some examples of Film Noir are films such as; Angels With Dirty faces.

11. Hybrids- Melodramas
• Melodramas are a sub-type of drama films, characterized by a plot to appeal to
the emotions of the audience. Often, film studies criticism used the term
'melodrama' pejoratively to connote an unrealistic, pathos-filled tales of romance
or domestic situations with stereotypical characters that would directly appeal to
feminine audiences ("weepies" or "woman's films").
• Melodrama was created because the Church wanted theatre to reflect how we
should act and behave. The main story of Melodrama usually involves a heroine
getting kidnapped by an evil villain and the hero coming along to save the girl and
show that 'good always triumph's over evil' and that 'all evil people will pay in the
end‘
• An example of a melodrama is ‘The perils of Pauline.’