Every aspect of media shows a reliance on genre. Thus, before approaching to the genre theory, we should first know the three important questions regarding genre theory, which are what, why, and how. For this reason, I will be explaining what is genre, why do genres change over time, and how do genres define our values?
II. Study Description
The term ‘genre’ comes from French means 'kind' or 'class'. The term is usually used in rhetoric, literary theory, and media theory to refer to a type of 'text'. Genre theory is used in the media studies to distinguish the categorization of films. By using genre theory, we somehow create a way to describe films.
In order to understand more about genre theory, we can divide the theory into four parts. These
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Based on audience’s reviews and comments, the producer will probably make changes to the existing genre or perhaps create a new one. But, there aren’t any new genres provided, they are just basically updated from the existing genres. Therefore, genres may rise and fall with the change in cultures. For example, there are some changes in heroic adventure movies, earliest movies were undertaken by men while women only played a small role as the man’s lover. Now, the recent movies have women as a hero or the main character such as Wonder Woman or Kim Possible. Moreover, the previous superhero movies didn’t include sex scenes or too much romantic scenes like the superhero movies nowadays; the great example would be Deadpool where there are sex scenes, curses, and humor in the movie. Another example for the change in genres would be the horror genres, the audience of this decade would find it funny watching the 1920s horror movies, but in the years of 1920s, the audience would be really scare of this type of horror that the movie brought to them. Perhaps, the audience in the next generation will find it funny watching 2018 horror movies too, we cannot know! The same way fashion and makeup change so do genres because people see, taste, like, and dislike change according to the environment in which they are living. People in this generation expects more than people from the previous …show more content…
That is said, people dream to travel through spaces, discover somewhere out of the Earth, discover something new by their imaginations like power, magic, something fairy-tale, etc. so that is why fiction/sci-fi were created. On the other hand, every woman absolutely once dream of being a main character in her romance story, that is she wishes to become a woman who experiences a beautiful love story in which she will meet her high school sweetheart or an artist who truly deeply madly fall in love with her; some may want to experience a funny love story so we have rom-com. That is said, genders do participate in genres. While men tend to look for masculinity, power, and dangers in their life; women tend to look for something exciting, sweet, and funny. But that is not totally right to say that all men prefer action and all women prefer romance. There are still some men don’t like horror movies and there are still some women don’t like romance movies. And, there are some genres or movies that both men and women
The authors state, “Genres in literature are categories of writing recognized for their patterns of organization, their
... frustration of their action images. For these particular genres, the crisis of action in the context of failure begets the interrelated crises of masculinity and genre. The only remaining option for addressing this triple crisis is the confirmation of genre, and therefore masculinity, through the propagation of empty genre signifiers.
The genre of the film is how we know what kind of film it is. Genre is a French word which literally means type; it shows what category a film comes under. There are certain factors in a genre which will identify it. Things like settings, characters and themes can all be similar in one specific genre.
Barry, , Keith, and Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader III. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
In her book, West of Everything, Jane Tompkins discusses the essential elements that define the genre. From her discussion, one can extract a working definition: the setting, th...
Friedman, L., Desser, D., Kozloff, S., Nichimson, M., & Prince, S. (2014). An introduction to film genres. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Film scholars around the world agree that all genres of film are part of the “genre cycle”. This cycle contains four different stages that a specific genre goes through. These stages are: primitive, classic, revisionist, and parody. Each stage that the genre goes through brings something different to that genre’s meaning and what the audience expects. I believe that looking at the horror genre will be the most beneficial since it has clearly gone through each stage.
Defining a film genre is in some ways difficult and simplistic. Every genre has stated what would define its boundaries. The difficult part is finding one that is solidified by the movies in the genre. The stated definition that this paper will digest and regurgitate is that a Western is a film which is set in the American frontier west. The typical time setting is somewhere in the mid to late 19th century and early 20th century(Dirks, 1). They glorify the past-fading values and aspirations of the mythical by-gone age of the American West(Dirks, 1). Over time, however, Westerns have been redefined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed. This actually makes the definition more lucid, making other films flexible enough to fit quite nicely into the genre.
There were several new concepts that were introduced to me this semester including the topic of genre. I found out that it was more than a classificatory tool. According to Bawarshi and Reiff, genre has changed into “a shaper of texts, meanings, and social actions”. In other words, genres are used to change and influence social interactions and to produce meaning-
Genres are helpful in the general public as they give spectrum to different people and their different tastes. It also accommodates for any mood one may be in if they wanted to watch a film. It characterizes the films and sorts them into place for the viewer’s pleasure, “At all levels of the filmmaking and film-viewing processes, then, genres help assure that most members of society share at least some general notions about the many films that compete for our attention.” (Bordwell & Thompson, 2004: 110)
In the art of filmmaking there is a number of reoccurring doubt that stain the theory of genre and if genre really exists, or if it’s a re-enactment of different people’s views and analysis, alongside this is also the question about cultural and transcultural genre. Proceeding with this argument that hangs in our society is that if British cinema constitutes as a true distinctive form of filmmaking. In film there are many Identities that distinguish the culture and define multiple dominant cultural integrities, Film has started moving types of cinema away from national cinema as a whole and separating it into certain sub-culture genre’s showing the difference from one national identity to another often giving a reproduction of a countries image
The genre i have studied is musicals. A musical is a film which has musical performances from the actors to express their feelings. The films from this genre that i studied are 'Singin' In The Rain' (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952), 'Grease' (Randall Kleiser, 1978) and 'Hairspray'(Adam Shankman, 2007). I studied two characteristics of the musical genre (Breaking Into Song And Dance and The Grande Finale) that are shown in the films studied. The identifying characteristics of 'Breaking Into Song And Dance' and 'The Grande Finale" are always seen in musicals. These characteristics are expected to be in a musical by the audience and ultimately make a musical what we predict it to be, a film that expresses characters feelings through song while
Like any other type of movie or show, there are many different type of genres in anime, including comedy, romance, action, and drama. There are also anime targeted to the male audience (shonen), and for the female audience (shoujo). Anime is not bias, they make anime for every single type of person. Every person has their own preference for what they may like, some people may like to watch action, some may like to watch romance, and etc. However even within anime there are unique types of genres limited to only anime. Some Unique types of genres limited to only anime can include “Mecha”, “Mahou Shoujo”, “Slice of life”, “Shounen Ai”, and also “Shoujo Ai”. These genres are unique, Mecha would involve robots, mahou shoujo would include magical girls (Sailor Moon), slice of life tries to captures the everyday life, Shounen Ai and Shoujo Ai are very unique. Shonen Ai, means Boys love, and Shoujo Ai means girls love, this types of genre are very unique as it is not introduced in many other types of shows, these genres freely express homosexual relationships. However that is not the only unique feature that animes have.
draws on this form of genre to present the idea that we are all a
Genres are categories of type of films, categorized in specific styles or subject maters, some genre stay single in a movie and other movies have a mixed range of genres. Uncovering the genre of a movie before viewing would reveal the movies subject matter and suitability. For example a crime/drama movie may start with a drama start but because the movie displays its genre the viewers will know eventually later on the movie will begin to involve crime scenes, what also defines the what genre it is, is the certain stock characters and dramatic situations associated with a specific category, such as a mobster having family issues.