Genres change over time due to changes in society, technology, audience expectations, and media institutions. Target audiences for genres have become younger overall, and audiences now expect genres to both follow conventions and introduce novel elements. Individual influential texts, directors, authors, and stars can also significantly impact genres by defining conventions or bringing new approaches. Media institutions aim to profit from popular genres and influence the styles and themes produced. As society changes, genres evolve to reflect new values and representations.

1. Why do genres change
over time?
Generic texts do not have a set of fixed and unchanging characteristics
but, like any other texts, they reflect the changing times and societies in
which they are produced as well as changes in media institutions, such as
the film industry, themselves. If you are studying Genre, you should be
aware of how and why a particular genre has changed over time and you
should be able to account for the similarities and differences between
texts from the same genre which have been made at different times.

2. Changes in Target Audience
 Media institutions and producers need to have a clear idea about the
audience a text is likely to attract before production begins and the age,
gender and social class of the target audience is likely to influence the
way a text is made from choices about who will appear in it to the kinds
of special effects used. Of course, the audience who actually
consumes a text may be very different from the audience intended and
different texts from the same genre may appeal to different audiences.
 It is often argued that target audiences for films have become younger
over the years. This is known as the ‘juvenilisation’ of cinema and may
be why horror films are now usually aimed at a mainly teenage
audience.

3. Changes in Audience Expectations
 Contemporary audiences are much more sophisticated viewers than those who
saw the first moving pictures or television programmes and an audience reading
a text from an established genre is likely to be familiar with the codes and
conventions of that genre from reading similar texts. So, if you read a romance
novel where the leading lady doesn’t end up with her man you’d certainly be
surprised and possibly feel cheated. If, while watching a horror film, you see a
woman who is alone in a house at night, opening a door, against a background
of scary, tense music your heart rate might increase and you’d prepare yourself
for the woman to reveal something, or someone, pretty nasty. Your familiarity
with these codes and conventions – the character, the setting, the music - from
watching similar horror films or television programmes, all raise your
expectations, even if there is nothing on the other side of the door (in which case
of course, you breathe a sigh of relief only for the killer to jump up from the
window!). Perhaps surprisingly, much of the enjoyment that comes from
watching, or reading, generic texts is derived precisely from knowing what to
expect from them. Filmmakers can manipulate our emotions by meeting or
cheating the expectations we have of a text based on our readings of similar
texts. The popularity of certain kinds of texts proves that for many audiences
familiarity breeds contentment rather than contempt!

4. Audiences continued
 Having said this, texts need to strike the right balance of
repeating certain codes and conventions while adding
something new – a contemporary setting, a final ‘twist’, a
moment where a protagonist behaves unexpectedly or perhaps
even a self-conscious parody of existing codes and conventions
– in order to keep the genre fresh and prevent us from getting
bored. These novelties may be rejected or may be absorbed
into the genre so that they become conventional in future texts.
As an example, Scream, one of the first horror films to self-consciously
parody the conventions of the genre, was
considered to be groundbreaking when it was released in 1998
but, only two years later, after a spate of similarly inter-textual
and self-reflexive films, Scary Movie, a parody of these
parodies, was released in 2000. In order to enjoy Scary Movie
audiences would need to be familiar not only with the
conventions of horror but also with films that parody them,
showing just how quickly genres change and audiences become
familiar with these changes.

5. Changes in Society, Ideologies,
Values and Representations
 The effect that the media has on audiences is always a subject
for debate. Is it that audiences’ tastes and values influence the
media or vice versa? Wherever you stand in this argument, it is
clear that contemporary audiences are harder to shock and
more accustomed to representations of graphic violence, sexual
images and ‘bad’ language as well as more spectacular special
effects than ever before.
 In order to explain how and why a genre changes over time you
should be able to show how different texts reflect the values and
concerns of the society around them. The changing position of
women, governments, levels of employment, economic
climates, national and international conflicts, disease, transport
systems, immigration and emigration, attitudes to sex, violence
and the family and aesthetic movements are just some of the
issues that will influence representations and trends in the
media.

6. Censorship and Codes of Conduct
 If you look at the code of ethics applied to films in
1960 which banned explicit nudity, swearing
(including ‘Damn’, ‘God’ and ‘Hell’), and excessive
and lustful kissing you can see how far what is
considered acceptable, or tasteful, by both audiences
and the film industry has moved on. Modern
audiences are used to much more graphic sex and
violence and the boundaries of what is considered to
be ‘tasteful’ in film are stretched more and more each
year.

7. Influence of particular texts,
 Genres can be heavily influenced and suddenly
rekindle their popularity or change direction because
of the impact of individual texts which come to be
seen as genre defining. Genre defining moments
are fairly rare in the media and may only become
apparent long after a text is produced when we can
properly see its influence. Although texts which are
successful at their release will be imitated in media
owners’ attempts to cash in on what made them
popular, the most influential or critically acclaimed
texts are not always those that are the most popular.

8. Influence of stars, authors and directors
 As well as the influence of particular texts it is also important to
recognize the impact of particular directors, authors and stars.
For example, the influence of Hitchcock, often described as a
master of suspense, continues to be seen in contemporary
thrillers not least those which are remakes of his work such as A
Perfect Murder or Gus Van Sant’s ‘karaoke’ Psycho. Some
films are made as vehicles to showcase a particular star and
exploit his or her popularity (this was particularly evident in the
number of action films starring Schwarzenegger or Stallone)
while the names of particular authors will guarantee funding for
their books, and often the films of their books. Many films are
based on the thrillers of John Grisham, for example, Philip K
Dick has been influential in the development of the Sci-Fi genre
and, more recently, J. K Rowling has earned millions for herself
and the publishing and film industries through her Harry Potter
books.

9. Media Institutions e.g the Film
Industry
 Media texts do not just appear – the consumption of
a text is the final stage of a process beginning with
the decision of powerful media owners to fund a text,
usually based primarily on the profit they anticipate it
will make, and followed by the production, editing and
marketing of the text, all rigorous, costly and lengthy
processes involving the business and creative
decisions of what could amount to hundreds of
people. Over time, particular studios or publishers
become associated with particular genres and they
will influence the style or themes of the texts they
produce.

10. Changes in Technology
 Your examiner will not expect you to know an
enormous amount about this, but to understand genre
properly you should have some appreciation of the
importance of technological change. Examples of
technological advances in the film industry include the
invention of the Steadicam which allowed the camera to
appear to float and enabled the stalking shots so
important in horror films, developments in digital video
editing techniques which led to fast paced editing and
exact pacing of music with on-screen action. The Blair
Witch Project is a good example of a film influenced by
new technology – its entire look is the result of the use
of cheap digital cameras which did not exist a few years
ago and it was the first films to be marketed initially
through the Internet, itself an important new technology.