Genre theory analyzes genres by identifying their characteristics and how they relate to audiences and producers. Genres develop conventions over time but also change with social values. Producers benefit from genres as they attract predictable audiences and allow cost savings, while audiences enjoy familiar narratives and escapism within an expected framework. Scholars like Dyer, Konigsberg, Allen, and Neale have analyzed how genres provide pleasure, reflect human experiences, require cultural knowledge, and remain dynamic over cultures and eras.

1. GENRE THEORY
Genre of Films

2. The concept of Genre
Genre theory is concerned with:
 Identifying the characteristics of genres
 The relationship between genres, audiences
and texts
 And their producers

3. The concept of genre
 Genres develop because audiences eventually become tired of repetition.
Genres are subject to changes in social attitudes, beliefs and values and
have to reflect these changing social influences. Within a genre you can
have variation.
 Producers like genre because they are constructed for a known audience,
they aim them at a target market with predictable responses. They also use
repeated storylines and stock characters; they also allow reuse of sets,
props and actors, because studios and film companies like to save money.
They are also tried and tested and provide a level of security for investors,
and budget and financial returns are easier to predict.
 An audience likes genres because they know what to expect, and this
means the audience can plan their viewing with certain expectations while
enjoying subtle variations within a predictable framework. The audiences
can also feel a sense of escapism, through a genre it is a consistent form of
release. Furthermore the audience can engage quickly with easily
recognisable plots and characters. Finally the audience enjoy predicting the
outcomes of certain genres. And following on from that, the audience can
feel quite safe knowing what to expect, with a sense of cultural variety.

4. Richard Dyer
 Was an influential genre theorist, who in 1973 argued
that genres are pleasurable because they ‘’offer the
audience escapist fantasies into fictional worlds’’ which
remove the boredom and pressures of reality.

5. Ira Konigsberg
 ‘Enduring genres reflect universal dilemmas and moral
conflicts and also appeal to deep psychological needs’
Human experience is repeated in every generation – the
essential dilemmas of life remain the same.

6. Robert Allen
 He adopted a political stance to his theory. He said that
‘Any text requires what is sometimes called cultural
capital on the part of its audience to make sense of it’
He says audiences bring their past knowledge and
experience of a genre to a particular text and this
enables them to understand it.

7. Nick Abercrombie
 ‘Said that we get pleasure from looking at the
conventions of a genre and how they are manipulated’.
He says knowing what to expect makes us enjoy the
unexpected.

8. Repertoire of Elements
 Steve Neale says that genre is not a category with fixed criteria: it is
dynamic. He says genre is fluid, changing over time and across
cultures. He says we like to feel secure but we also need to feel a
sense of surprise. E.g. what makes people laugh in one country
may not in another.

9. A film can draw on a repertoire of
elements:
 Iconography and style
Setting
Narrative (Plot, Storyline)
Characters
Themes (Good V.s Evil)