1. Theories of genre: selling to
an audience

2. Rick Altman (1999) & Jason
Mittell (2001)
• Altman suggests that genre offers audiences’
a set of pleasures.
• Audiences actively select what genre they
want to consume based upon experience and
prior knowledge.
• Mittell states that genre is used to sell
products to audience then. It makes reference
to the audiences’ knowledge of society and
other texts.

3. Task 1.
• Go back to the 2 paragraphs you wrote last lesson
and re-write them incorporating the ideas of Rick
Altman and Jason Mittell. Acknowledge that you
were producing a product for a specific
demographic and drew inspiration from
professional texts (give examples).
• This need only be very basic ( a sentence of 2).
• Work will be selected at random to be shared
with group.

4. Genres are not fixed: They evolve and
change

5. David Buckingham
• David Buckingham argues that 'genre is not... simply
"given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of
negotiation and change' (Buckingham 1993, 137).
• We could argue that this is why we have seen the
emergence of hybridity (the splicing of two of more
genres).
• Think about your trailer. Does it play with the codes and
conventions? Why? Is it to place a refreshing new twist on
the genre and keep the audience interested? Is it to match
the subtle changes in society - Think about the horror
genre and Carol Clovers theory of the final girl. This links to
the use of archetypal characters and the perpetuation of
ideology.

6. Steve Neale
(1995) of systemisation” – they
• “genres are processes
change over time.

7. Changing
Themes notes that “any theme
• David Bordwell (1989)
may appear in any genre”
• For instance: Currently gang culture and the
rising of the underclass is a societal anxiety??
• How many current films can you name that
deal with this theme? How many genres do
they belong to?

8. Task 2
• You have 15 minutes to research and write
down:
• How your product is part of a genre that has
changed over time.
• Give 3 examples of professional texts that
evidence a change in your genre over time –
think about narrative themes (as society has
evolved how have the plots), think about the
proliferation of technology.