The document discusses genre across different art forms including literature, visual arts, music, and film. It provides definitions and explanations of genre, how genres are formed and evolve over time. In film, genres are categorized based on various elements like setting, theme, mood, format, and target audience. However, there is no fixed or definitive way to categorize genres as many films combine elements of different genres and defy conventions.

1. Genre

2. • Genre from French, genre French
pronunciation: "kind" or "sort", from Latin:
genus (stem gener-), Greek: genos, is the term
for any category of literature or other forms of
art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether
written or spoken, audial or visual, based on
some set of stylistic criteria.

3. • Genres are formed by conventions that
change over time as new genres are invented
and the use of old ones are discontinued.

4. • Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of
borrowing and recombining these
conventions.

5. • History
• This concept of genre originated from the
classification systems created by Aristotle and
Plato.

6. • Plato divided literature into the three classic
genres accepted in Ancient Greece: poetry,
drama, and prose.

7. • Poetry is further subdivided into epic, lyric,
and drama. The divisions are recognized as
being set by Aristotle and Plato; however, they
were not alone.

8. • Many genre theorists contributed to these
universally accepted forms of poetry. Similarly
many theorists continued to philosophize
about genre and its uses, which caused genre
as Plato and Aristotle knew it to evolve and
further expand.

9. Visual arts
• The term "genre" is much used in the history
and criticism of visual art, but in art history
has meanings that overlap rather confusingly.

10. • Genre painting is a term for paintings where
the main subject features human figures to
whom no specific identity attaches - in other
words, figures are not portraits, characters
from a story, or allegorical personifications.

11. • These are distinguished from staffage:
incidental figures in what is primarily a
landscape or architectural painting.

12. • Genre painting may also be used as a wider
term covering genre painting proper, and
other specialized types of paintings such as
still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and
animal paintings.

13. • The concept of the "hierarchy of genres" was a
powerful one in artistic theory, especially
between the 17th and 19th centuries. It was
strongest in France, where it was associated
with the Académie française which held a
central role in academic art.

14. The genres in hierarchical order are:
• History painting, including narrative religious
mythological and allegorical subjects
• Portrait painting
• Genre painting or scenes of everyday life
• Landscape (landscapists were the "common footmen in
the Army of Art" according to the Dutch theorist
Samuel van Hoogstraten) and cityscape
• Animal painting
• Still life

15. Film Genre
• In film theory, genre refers to the method
based on similarities in the narrative elements
from which films are constructed.

16. • Most theories of film genre are borrowed
from literary genre criticism. As with genre in
a literary context, there is a great deal of
debate over how to define or categorize
genres.

17. • Besides the basic distinction in genre between
fiction and documentary (from which hybrid
forms emerged founding a new genre,
docufiction), film genres can be categorized in
several ways.

18. • Fictional films are usually categorized
according to their setting, theme topic, mood,
or format. The setting is the milieu or
environment where the story and action takes
place

19. • The theme or topic refers to the issues or
concepts that the film revolves around. The
mood is the emotional tone of the film.

20. • Format refers to the way the film was shot
(e.g., anamorphic widescreen) or the manner
of presentation (e.g.: 35 mm, 16 mm or 8
mm). An additional way of categorizing film
genres is by the target audience.

21. • Some film theorists argue that neither format
nor target audience are film genres.

22. • Film genres often branch out into subgenres,
as in the case of the courtroom and trial-
focused subgenre of drama known as the legal
drama.

23. • They can be combined to form hybrid genres,
such as the melding of horror and comedy in
the Evil Dead films.

24. Definition
• Martin Loop argues that Hollywood films are
not pure genres, because most Hollywood
movies blend the love-oriented plot of the
romance genre with other genres.

25. • Staiger classifies Andrew Tutor's ideas that the
genre of film can be defined in four ways.

26. • The "idealist method" judges films by
predetermined standards. The "empirical
method" identifies the genre of a film by
comparing it to a list of films already deemed
to fall within a certain genre.

27. • The Apriori method uses common generic
elements which are identified in advance. The
"social conventions" method of identifying the
genre of a film is based on the accepted cultural
consensus within society. Jim Colins claims that
since the 1980s, Hollywood films have been
influenced by the trend towards "ironic
hybridization", in which directors combine
elements from different genres as with the
Western/Science fiction mix in Back to the Future
Part III.

28. • Genre is always a vague term with no fixed
boundaries. Many words also cross into
multiple genres. Recently, film theorist Robert
Stam challenged whether genres really exist,
or whether they are merely made up by
critics.

29. • Stam has questioned whether "genres [are] really 'out there' in the
world or are they really the construction of analysts?". As well, he
has asked whether there is a "... finite taxonomy of genres or are
they in principle infinite?" and whether genres are "...timeless
essences ephemeral, time-bound entities? Are genres culture-
bound or trans-cultural?". Stam has also asked whether genre
analysis should aim at being descriptive or prescriptive. While some
genres are based on story content (the war film), other are
borrowed from literature (comedy, melodrama) or from other
media (the musical). Some are performer-based (the Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers films) or budget-based (blockbusters), while
others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity
(Black cinema), location (the Western), or sexual orientation (Queer
Cinema)

30. • Many genres have built-in audiences and
corresponding publications that support them,
such as magazines and websites. Films that are
difficult to categorize into a genre are often less
successful as such film genres are also useful in
areas of, criticism and consumption Hollywood
story consultant originality and surprise." Some
screenwriters use genre as a means of
determining what kind of plot or content to put
into a screenplay. They may study films of specific
genres to find examples.

31. • This is a way that some screenwriters are able
to copy elements of successful movies and
pass them off in a new screenplay. It is likely
that such screenplays fall short in originality.
As Truby says, "Writers know enough to write
a genre script but they haven’t twisted the
story beats of that genre in such a way that it
gives an original face to it".

32. • Screenwriters often attempt to defy the
elements found in past works, as originality
and surprise are seen as elements that make
for good film stories.For example, European-
filmed spaghetti westerns changed the
western film genre by eschewing many of the
conventions of earlier Westerns.

33. • There are other methods of dividing films into
groups besides genre. For example auteur critics
group films according to their directors. Some
groupings may be casually described as genres
although the definition is questionable.For
example, while independent films are sometimes
discussed as if they are a genre in-and-of
themselves, independent productions can belong
to any genre. Similarly, art films are referred to as
a genre, even though an art film can be in a
number of genres.

34. • Genre can also be distinguished from film
style, which concerns the choices made about
cinematography, editing, and sound.A
particular style can be applied to any genre.

35. • Whereas film genres identify the manifest
content of film, film styles identify the manner
by which any given film's genre(s) is/are
rendered for the screen. Style may be
determined by plot structure, scenic design,
lighting, cinematography, acting, and other
intentional artistic components of the finished
film product.

36. • Others argue that this distinction is too
simplistic, since some genres are primarily
recognizable by their styles.

37. • Many film historians and film critics debate
whether film noir is a genre or a style of film-
making often emulated in the period's
heyday.Indeed, film noir films from the 1940s
and 1950s were made in a range of genres,
such as gangster films, police procedural
dramas, and thrillers.

38. • Categorization
• Film genres can be categorized according to
the setting of the film.

39. • Nevertheless, films with the same settings can
be very different, due to the use of different
themes or moods.

40. • For example, while both The Battle of Midway
and All Quiet on the Western Front are set in a
wartime context, the first examines the
themes of honor, sacrifice, and valour, and the
second is an anti-war film which emphasizes
the pain and horror of war.

41. • While there is an argument that film noir
movies could be deemed to be set in an urban
setting, in cheap hotels and underworld bars,
many classic noirs take place mainly in small
towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open
road.

42. • The editors of filmsite.org argue that
animation, children's films, and so on are non-
genre-based film categories.

43. • The non-genre based categories they list
include children's films, family films, cult films,
documentary films, pornographic films and
silent films.

44. • Linda Williams argues that horror, melodrama,
and pornography all fall into the category of
"body genres", since they are each designed
to elicit physical reactions on the part of
viewers.

45. • Horror is designed to elicit spine-chilling,
white-knuckled, eye-bulging terror;
melodramas are designed to make viewers cry
after seeing the misfortunes of the onscreen
characters; and pornography is designed to
elicit sexual arousal.

46. • References
• Bawarshi, Anis. "The Ecology of Genre." Ecocomposition: Theoretical and
Pedagogical Approaches. Eds. Christian R. Weisser and Sydney I. Dobrin. Albany:
SUNY Press, 2001. 69-80.
• Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1:1 (1968): 1-
14.
• Bleich, David. "The of Language and the Pedagogy of Exchange." Pedagogy 1.1
(2001): 117-141.
• Charaudeau, P.; Maingueneau, D. & Adam, J. Dictionnaire d'analyse du discours
Seuil, 2002.
• Coe, Richard. "'An Arousing and Fulfillment of Desires': The Rhetoric of Genre in
the Process Era - and Beyond." Genre and the New Rhetoric. Ed. Aviva Freedman
and Peter Medway. London: Taylor & Francis, 1994. 181-190.
• Keith, Barry. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press: 2007
• Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. Malde, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000. 14.

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