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Genre Investigation
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- 2. What is Genre? Genreis 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 inHorror 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.