Genre

“Genres are created through a process of repetition and recognition leading to anticipation and expectation.”

Graham Burton (2000) GENRE THEORY

• As genres become established audiences begin to have certain expectations

• Every genre contains generic conventions that audiences would expect and gain gratification from

• films like Halloween, Mean Girls and IRobot rely upon differing conventions relating to their specific genre

Genre & Expectation

Genre texts are successful because AUDIENCES like their…

- Familiarity (like a warm blanket!)

- - They give us an informed choice

PRODUCERS of media texts like them as they..

- - Give them a blueprint or toolbox to use and experiment with

- - They have a proven popularity

- - so they can (almost always) guarantee some success

- - They can target their audience more easily - marketing campaigns etc…

Why do We Like Genre?

All genre texts combine…

• “The familiar and the unexpected” (G.Burton 2000)

• The “same but different” (Nick Lacey 1999)

How Genres Change

• Repetition of the conventions could lead to boredom.

To keep us interested producers offer us what we know with a twist

This can be …

- Hybridity

- New Techniques

- Modern Social Issues

- Different characters

How Genres Change

Hybridity/Hybrid: The fusion or combination of different genre styles

• Repetition and Difference:

Most media texts have a pattern of repetition and difference.

They have identifiable similarities, but also contain new elements or similar elements used in new ways.

Genre

Steve Neale

‘Genres are instances of repetition and difference’.

He adds that difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre’ :mere repetition would not attract an audience.

Audiences...

- can select texts based on their genre.

• have expectations about a text based on its genre, allowing them to draw pleasures from its conventions, such as repeated narratives.

However, pleasure can also be drawn from differences

- identify with repeated elements in generic texts and may shape their own identity in response.

What do genres mean for audiences?

Producers…

- market texts according to genre because an audience of fans of that genre has already been established.

- - standardise production practices according to genre conventions.

- - subscribe to established conventions but also allow creativity within a given format to keep the genre fresh/modern.

What do genres mean for producers?

• Genres have a certain amount of predictability and repeated elements, which make them distinctive and which help to define them.

• All genres have a portfolio of key elements (conventions)from which they are composed.

• Not all examples of a genre will have all the elements all the time.

• It is these elements which make up the formula or a repetition of elements of a given genre.

• Genres can be combined to create new forms or Hybrids

GENRE CONCLUSIONS