Genre Investigation

By Emma Matthew

What is genre?

• Genre is a way of putting different categories of media text according to the content and style. Each genre has different characteristics which the audience can predict on what’s going to happen and how it is going to develop. E.g in crime films the audience may expect the villain to be captured and brought to justice.

• There are a variety of genres that include; horror, romance, comedy, thriller, sci-fi, crime and etc. These genres can also be hybrids such as rom-coms which can have typical conventions from both genres.

• Media texts are given specific genres in order to appeal to their target audience. For example horror films the audience would expect a lot of tension and supernatural characters. There is commonly one or more deaths within the film.

Horror genre theorists• Rick Altman – argues that genres are usually defined in terms of media language

(SEMANTIC CODES – the audience sees something and automatically link it to a film/genre.) Another thing Altman believe was Arbituary codes this is where objects put within the film to link more meaningfully to the film/narrative (genre).

• Tom Ryall – Argues that genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in the shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures, which act as a form of supervision over the work of production of film makers and the work of reading by the audience.

• Steve Neall – Believes that the audiences has expectations from the genre e.g. in an action film the audience would expect to see fast flashy cars.

• Daniel Chandler – Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or setting) and/or forms (including structures and styles) which are shared by the text which are regarded as belonging to them.

Tom Ryall & Horror Genre

Tom Ryall’s theory is the most relatable to the chosen genre of horror. He argues that each genre has a preordained framework that producers stick to when creating the plot and the final product. I think this particularly applies to horror genre as there are certain conventions that make up the final piece, without the recognition of each convention, the unit of drama cannot be considered a ‘horror’. For example, the antagonist is the killer. The killer is always suspicious, and keeps themselves isolated until they are ready to attack. This is typical ‘framework’ in which the producers need to conform, to create a horror piece. In addition to this, the structure of the film is usually similar within most horrors, for example the oblivious victim, suddenly faced by the dangerous killer, if with friends- they are usually murdered, and the main character is the only one left, good usually prevails and kills the killer, however, in a lot of horror pieces the killer isnt really dead, and the film is left on a cliff-hanger.