Post 4

Genre as a Media Concept

Genre is an ancient concept that has been in existence since Aristotle's time.

When we approach a film text we come across a pre-defined set of tools and conventions, both producers and audiences categorise and thus the encoder, also known as the film maker can be decoded by the audience easily and gratification will be achieved. Genre allows media products to be packaged and targeted at an audience so they can then select products according to previous experience of the genres. Audience preference clearly affects the genres available, therefore getting the dead genres.

What is Genre

Below is a spider diagram showing what I think genre means:

The Formal characteristics of genre

Genres work through their formal characteristics. These are know essentially as codes and conventions, these include stylistic characteristics, iconography, mise-en-scene, and narrative structure

Stylistic Characteristics

When looking at film, stylistic characteristics are camera work, lighting, sound effects, speech, music and editing, these can also be called technical codes.

Iconography

An icon is a key type of sign, and is something which resembles the object for which it stands but which has meaning beyond its psychical form. A stetson hat is an icon for a western film, and a butchers knife for horror. Particular styles of knives are very 'iconic' in some horror films, that for both the film producer and audience the icon acts as a sort of shorthand saving them time filling in the background of the character and action. If we see a butchers knife the audience automatically takes a series of assumptions to the characters. Genre works because it does not let our assumptions down. In reality there is no link between big knives and murderers, most of the population have bread knives at home , but when this is used in film this will immediately have significance.

Mise-en-scene

Mise-en-scene includes everything within the frame: location, image, set-design, the kind of characters, lighting, the camera's position, and the angle of view. All these elements generate mood, atmosphere and the general 'feel' of the genre. The same aspects of mise-en-scene are used in certain genres and the audience will be able to spot these over and over again. Genre usually provides crucial visual clues, these visual cues stimulate our expectations and when these are met, the audience are then working with the media producer, successfully decoding his encoded meaning. 

The codes of genre

The ingredients of a certain genre and the elements that make it recognisable are called conventions, these provide a common link between types of films, and these then become the visual elements that we expect when we see a film.

There are seven codes that are used in genre these are

• Technical codes - Camera, lighting techniques, sound
• Symbolic codes - body language, use of colour, mise-en-scene
• Character codes - costumes and make up of a particular character
• Written codes - captions,anchorage
• Narrative codes - the shape and structure of the narrative 
• Enigma codes - a sense of mystery that intrigues the audience 
• Action codes - action that make us realise where we are in the narrative and that the story is developing.   

Some facts about genre as a concept

1. It is an ancient concept that has been in existance since Aristotle's time.
2. Writers learn by imitation and should observe the codes and conventions of genre.
3. "Genre can be defined as a structural patern which embodies a universal life pattern....Genre is universal, basic to human perceptions of life"-John Cawelti
4. Genre also has the advantage of developing a process already in existence.
5. Genres work as a kind of formula that the industry can use, a 'blueprint' for production. This is supported by the vertically intergrated Hollywod Studio System of the 1930s and 1940s
6. Genres also saved time and money within the system, as everybody knew how to do their specific job.
7. Genre's work as a 'label' they exist as categories central to decisions made in their marketing by distributors and exhibitors. They are a way of informing the audience the audience about the basic format of the film. 
8. Genres act as a 'contract with their audienc, who enjoy the repetition of certain conventions, yet find pleasure in the novelties of new ideas
9. Emily Atenhol believed that different types of film appeal to various segments of the audience, for example, males and females prefer different genre films.
10. Genres change over time. The pattern of development, growth, maturity and decline seems to relate to changing political, social, artistic trends. For example Westerns have been in decline but Westerns may again become popular and provoke the same feelings of patriotism. However the horror genre, for example follows a less linear life cycle. Genres do appear to reflect the times in some way and this has the advantage of making genres seem current despite being an old concept.
11. Hybribds and crossovers, are films that combine two or more genres which have existed in the early days of Hollywood and blur the boundaries between catergories weakening the concept.
12. Some films dont belong in any genre at all, this generates the issue that genre is perhaps not universal.
13. Frank McConnell, for example, sugests four genres, the Epic, Adventure Romance, Melodrama and Satire that correspond to the four-stage historical cycle of culture.
14. Schatz on the other hand offers just two genres, the 'genre of order' such as Westerns and Science fiction and the 'genre of integration' which are Musicals and Comedies.
15. Todorov's view is that there is just one genre, that is presented or dressed differently each time
16. A disadvantage of genre is the fact that there is no agreed list or even number of film categories and the ideas can be very contrasting, this suggests that genre is harder to negotiate and is hard to find one strict definition of genre.
17. The existence of film genre depends mainly on the recognition by the mass audience.
18. The terms 'western' and 'musical' were initially used as adjective, describing one aspect of a film rather than a category of a film and looking back we can see that most films are assigned to categories. This means that the way film genres exist could depend more on a critics labelling than the actual audience recognition.
19. Big film companies like Paramount and Warner Bros avoided making genre films and decided to make encompassing fims that attract a bigger audience. It tended to be the smaller, independant studios that created the genre films.
20. Studio's lost control of the monopoly in 1949, after Paramount lost its case with the American Government, this also means that studios are not run in the way they used to and this means that genres may not be appropriate. This could be mirrored by our increasing 'postmodernist' society that favours hybrids, intertextuality and bricolage, where it is harder to talk about 'simple' genre films.
21. Patrick Philips suggests that 'A 'genre-world' is one in which there are a limited and predictable range of features'. This is because all film makers use the same codes and conventions but with a twist to gain audience satisfaction.
22. Genre can be thought of as dynamic, meaning that something will change, like the society and culture it exists in, over time. This then means that no one idea or theory about genre as a concept will always be true
23. The advantages and disadvantages of using the concept of genre and indeed the understanding about what it's strengths and weaknesses are, will also change in relation to the society around it.    

Review of Genre from my opening sequence
When creating our opening sequences last year me and my group opted to go for the crime genres, at the beginning of the task we took in as much information about the types of conventions in this genre. However at the time we had very little knowledge of how genre's worked and the history of the different genres. Subsequently this meant that when we did pick the crime genre we weren't very aware that this was a less popular type of genre and isn't as established as a genre like a rom-com. As a group we also did the stages of the planning of the fim in the wrong order. This happened because to begin with we worked out the narrative of the story before we had a genre in mind. This then meant that we had to find a genre to fit our narrative, which meant that this ended up being the crime genre, because at this point we had only just worked out the genre of our film, this then meant that we had to find conventions to fit into the narrative so that it made sense. This resulted in our group not really sticking to the task of making a genre film. The genre related parts of the film were also very strict and as a group we didn't play around with the different genres and sometimes subvert them or give them a bit of a twist.

Conclusion
Now after taking a proper look at the concept of genre, for the next media task we do, which is our main films, I will design my narrative around the genre I pick, so I will be sticking within the task. I will also try to use the genre concept of repetition and difference. If every film stuck to the same conventions of their particular genre, then all films would be very similar and would all be very boring. This concept was created by Neale and he states that 'difference is absolutely necessary to the economy of genre': mere repetition would not attract an audience. And this is what I am going to do for my short filml, as I am going to stick to the conventions of my genre but in fact subvert them and give them a bit of a twist.