Dictionary genre | ˈ zh änrə| Noun a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature,...

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genre |ˈ zh änrə|

Noun

a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.

ORIGIN early 19th cent.: French, literally ‘a kind’ (see gender ).

Thesaurus

Noun

historical fiction is my favorite genre of literature

category, class, classification, group, set, list; type, sort, kind, breed, variety, style, model, school, stamp, cast, ilk.

GenreGenre

•Action

•Adventure

•Comedy

•Crime/Gangster

•Drama

•Epics/Historical

•Musicals

•Science Fiction

•War

•Westerns

Major Movie Genres(according to Tim Dirks [filmsite.org])

GenreGenre

“In English-speaking countries, the term ‘genre’ came to be applied to literary works during the nineteenth century, at a point in history at which art of all kinds began to be industrialized, mass-produced for a popular public (Cohen, 1986, 120).”--Neale in Creeber 2)

GenreGenre

Megagenre: A large, all encompassing, umbrella genre, having no distinct subject matter or style or iconography or formulae. The megagenres of the movies might be thought of as non-fiction (documentary) film, fiction film, animated film, and experimental / underground film.

GenreGenre

•Biopics

•Chick Flicks

•Detective/Mystery

•Disaster

•Fantasy

•Film Noir

•Guy Films

•Melodrama

•Road Films

•Romance

•Sports

•Supernatural

•Thrillers/Suspense

Major Movie Sub-Genres(according to Tim Dirks [filmsite.org])

GenreGenre

•Aviation

•Buddy

•Caper

•Chase

•Espionage

•Fallen Woman

•Jungle

•Legal

•Martial Arts

•Medical

•Parody

•Police

Minor Movie Sub-Genres(according to Tim Dirks [filmsite.org])

•Political

•Prison

•Religious

•Slasher

•Swashbucklers

GenreGenre

“The classification of texts is not just the province of academic specialists, it is a fundamental aspect of the way texts of all kinds are understood.” (Neale in Creeber p. 1)

GenreGenre

“In many cases, of course, it is likely that audiences will have some idea in advance of the kind of film (or play or programme) they are going to watch. They will have made an active choice either to watch or, if their preferences dictate, to avoid it. They will have done so on the basis of information supplied by advertising, by reviews, and previews, perhaps by a title (such as Singin’ in the Rain) or by the presence of particular performers. They are therefore likely to bring with them a set of expectations, and to anticipate that these expectations will be met in one way or another.” (Neale in Creeber 1)

GenreGenre

Relevant Terms for Genre from Hans Robert Jauss, German Reception Theorist/Reader-Response Critic

“generic audience”

“generic frustration”

“generic tension”

GenreGenre

The “repertoire of elements” that identify genres (Lacey [2000], cited by Neale in Creeber 3):

•Character Types

•Setting

•Iconography

•Narrative

•Style

GenreGenre

Institutional Aspects of Genre:

•Scheduling

•Modes of Production

•Demands of Advertisers

•Demands of Audiences

•Developments in Adjacent Entertainment Institutions/Media (Neale in Creeber 4)

GenreGenre

Hybridity: The now common tendency to “splice” together different genres.

GenreGenre

“Genres came to be identified with impersonal, formulaic, commercial forms and distinguished from individualized art. Ironically, this represented a reversal of previous characterizations, which saw ‘high art’ as rule-bound and ordered (as evident in genres lke the sonnet and tragedy) and ‘low art’ as unconstrained by the rules of decorum” (Cohen, 1986, 120).--Neale in Creeber 2

GenreGenre

Genre films essentially ask the audience, "Do you still want to believe this?" Popularity is the audience answering, "Yes." Change in genre occurs when the audience says, "That's too infantile a form of what we believe. Show us something more complicated." And genres turn to self-parody to say, "Well, at least if we make fun of it for being infantile, it will show how far we've come." Films and television have in this way speeded up cultural history.

Leo Braudy, American film scholar

GenreGenre

Thomas Schatz's life history of a genre (from Hollywood Genres) :

an experimental stage, during which its conventions are isolated and established, a classic stage, in which the conventions reach their “equilibrium” and are mutually understood by artist and audience, an age of refinement, during which certain formal and stylistic details embellish the form, and finally a baroque (or “mannerist,” or “self-reflexive”) stage, when the form and its establishments are accented to the point where they “themselves become the “substance” or “content” of the work. (37-38)

Thomas Schatz, American film scholar

GenreGenre

The Gangster Film The Western

A "story of enterprise and success ending in precipitate failure" (453).

A story of a man's struggle to retain his honor, even in defeat.

A romantic tragedy about a man "whose defeat springs with almost mechanical inevitability from the outrageous presumption of his demands: the gangster is bound to go on until he is killed" (458).

A classical tragedy based on a hero of virtue always prepared for defeat; need not end in the death of the hero.

A tale of the city. A tale of the frontier.

The gangster is "without culture, without manners, without leisure" (453).

The Western hero Is a figure of repose.

Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”(from The Immediate Experience)


The gangster is "lonely and melancholy.” The Western hero is also lonely and melancholy, but out of a profound worldly wisdom," the 'simple' recognition that life is unavoidably serious.”

The gangster is "expansive and noisy," not introspective.

The Western hero is "organically" introspective; he has to do what he has to do (457).

The gangster is violent in both his attractions and repulsions; he may lose control at any time.

The Western hero avoids violence at all cost; he is always in control.

The gangster is never satisfied; complacency is fatal to him.

The Western hero is complete within himself, self-contained.

The gangster is always trying to get ahead; always wanting to own something more, conquer some new territor.

The Western hero has no desire to get anywhere.


“Everyone wants to kill him and eventually someone will” (454)

The Western hero is also under customarily “under fire” but would avoid it if he could.

The gangster does not seem to need love in any traditional sense.

The Western hero does not seek love, is "prepared to accept it, but . . . never asks of it more than it can give"; love seems "at best an irrelevance"; the woman the Western hero loves (usually from the East) does not understand what he does and he is incapable of explaining it to her.

The gangster associates with prostitutes and “loose” women because of their “passive availability” and their “costliness.”

The Western hero associates with prostitutes because they understand him.

The gangster’s possessions are central to his being; he owns things in a gaudy, exhibitionistic way.

The Western hero owns nothing, or seems not to; money, possessions, a house, a regular place to seep, all seem alien to him.

GenreGenre


The gangster's death reveals his whole life to have been a mistake.

Even in death, the Western hero retains his honor.

A modern genre which "confronts industrial society on its own ground" (465).

Essentially "archaic" (466).

Dictionary genre | ˈ zh änrə| Noun a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature,...

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