Post four: Genre as a media concept

Understanding the Term Genre

All of the information and quoting in the following slides are refrenced from 'McDougall, J.2006. The Media Teacher's Book. London: Hodder arnoldrevolved'.

Slide 1:

This slide revolves around Robert Altman (an American film director and critic) and his theories.

Theories:

1) 'That genres are defined by producers and easily recognised by audiences'.

2) 'That texts 'belong' clearly to a particular genre in each case'.

Generally due to the codes and conventions used in films it is relatively easy to distinguish what genre or sub genre the film is.

Sub genres - the mutation of genres to incorporate other genres.

3) 'That genres develop in predictable ways'.

Some  genres develop in predictable ways such as 'Sci-fi' films, due to technological development e.g. speical effects the genre will develop as technology does.

4) 'That texts in a genre share key characteristics'.
All texts in a specific genre will share certain characteristics, otherwise known as conventions. If the text did not share any of these characteristics it would not be classed as the genre, conventions must be met to follow a genre. However, the market are always wanting something new and exciting and in order to do this some conventions have to be broken but in order for the next new film to be new and exciting they must then take the convention breaking further.
- Creating something new - next films has to go further than the last.

5) 'That genres are ideological'.
Definition of Ideology

The technical formular for ideology is 'idea + group + power = ideology'; in the case of a genres is could be argued according to this formula that they are ideological the Idea (genre) + the group (audience) + the power (producer) = ideological. However it could be argued that producers have to and do both listen to and meet audience demands.

6) 'That they  are not specifically located in history'.

7) 'That genre critics are distanced from the practice of genre, or it's working'.
- Do not work with genre closely so who are they to say what genre is or isn't.

Slide 2:
Slide two is based around 'thoughts on genre'
'Might ways in which we label and divide objects, texts and people be constructed in ways that serve particular interests, rather than in logical, natural patterns?' - McDougall, J.
- This quote is revolved around the division of films into genres and sub-genres, logically and automatically people possess a habit of organising films into ‘logical natural patterns’. A example of a sub genre created using ‘logical natural patterns’ would be a romantic comedy – something like a ‘romantic horror’ does not work therefore it is not ‘logical natural patterns’.                                                          

'Should we read genre as a noun or adjective?' - Altman, R.
- Read as a noun because it is there and we are all aware of it
This question raised by Altman goes back to the original question and main questioning of the word genre itself. Genre could be considered a noun due to the fact that is it present and we are all consciously aware of it, it is also relatively like an object to an extent, like a label but a mental one, it posesses object like qualities. On the other hand genre could be instantly as an adjective as it could be viewed as a 'descriptive word'; the word 'genre' describes something about a film. Genre could be logically argued to be either/both a noun or an adjective.


Slide 3:
'Tomatoe puree' - where would you find it in a supermarket?'
'What would happen to this item if it were shelved in another part of the shop?'
'Would the thing itself be any different?'

The questions involving tomatoe puree although seeming both strange and irrelevant to the studying of genre theorty raised a lot of logical questions that at first appear to be simple but made us as a group think very differently about the genre theory as a whole.

- When asked where we thought we would find tomoatoe puree in a super market there were several very different yet valid and reasonable answers; some people said in the chillers, as to keep it cool. Some people said down a condoments isle, pairing the puree with food it would logically be placed with such as pasta. Similarly to the tomatoe puree this happens in the process of catagorising films, certain people will focus on specific aspects of the film and catagorise it according to those aspects or codes and conventions where as others will focus on other aspects this resulting in people placing the same film into different genres. This question and the following two prodcued a debate about genre, the use of it and whether it is needed.
Slide 4:
For you take as students when considering genre is NOT 'how does genre work? BUT why does genre work?

After studying and fully understanding all of the critical opinions and points raised in the previous slides I would personally state that the term 'genre' works due to the interests served through the process of labelling a film. When giving a film a label, a genre, it is not only benefitting the audience as they can get a grasp of the kind of films they enjoy but helps the film industry due to the fact that this labelling makes the process of identifying a gap in the market a much more simple process and shows what films are popular and where. So the use of genre raises and lowers the popularity of films along side the success of the film industry generally.


Slide 5:
'According to Neale (1980), gene treory is to do with circulation of expectation in circulation between industries, media texts and audiences. This leads to 'regulated variety'. Hartley (1999) describes a contract between producer and audience which 'disciplines' choices and reduces desires.


Slide 6:
So a grasp on genre theory actually leads you away from the notion that genre is an easy, blunt tool with which to produce texts along conventional lines.

For Neale, genre is a state of combinations more or less randomly distributed, and genre texts are those which form particular patterns of combinations, or atleast are seen that way by audiences or critics.