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'Genre is an act of ‘similarity and difference’; this simple idea is essential to understanding genre theory.'
'Genre is an act of ‘similarity and difference’; this simple idea is essential to understanding genre theory.'
Media Theorist – Rick Altman
Genre is very much like a cake... No... Hear me out on this one...
When you bake a cake, you follow a recipe right? You want to make a cherry pie, then cherries are an essential element. In films the recipe is called the repertoire of elements. Most cakes use the same basic ingredients, same as in a genre film, these same ingredients are called generic conventions.
The deceptively simple idea outlined above by Altman suggests that when you explore a film in terms of it’s genre you are essentially studying how far it follows the recipe and how far it subverts (mixes in new and unexpected ingredients) audience expectations.
Understanding “genre theory” is both very simple and very complex. Taking the word at its definition, genre is the: “term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria.”It is important to understand, though, that what we consider film genres today are, more often than not, hardly pure film genres, as they were in the early days of film. The majority of content produced in the last several decades are often genre hybrids, using the rules of genre theory to produce new, unique, and different stories.
Some basic genres include the following:
Action
Comedy
Drama
Fantasy
Horror
Mystery
Romance
Thriller
Western
From there, you could dive a bit deeper. Sub-genres were developed to give names and expectations to certain types of films within each genre. The “thriller” genre, for example, had the following sub-genres:
Crime Thriller
Disaster Thriller
Psychological Thriller
Techno Thriller
What are genre conventions?
Genre conventions are story elements such as character archetypes, key events, and settings that are commonly found in a specific genre. These conventions not only define each specific genre but also define the our expectations of a story in that genre. So, for example, if i go to see a horror film I will have different expectations for that story than I would got a Western? And that's because each genre has a specific set of conventions and obligatory scenes that make it work.
And these obligatory scenes and conventions are objective, meaning that they need to exist in a story to give it shape and to make it “work” according to the genre guidelines.
Here are some examples of genre conventions:
In a mystery story, you'd expect there to be clues and red herrings for the detective to follow. Clues and red herrings are a convention of the mystery genre.
In an action story, you'd expect there to be a mentor figure who helps the protagonist learn, grow, and change. This is a convention of the action genre.
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