Genre Theory: Understanding the Dynamics of Literary and Film Genres, Slides of Literature

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GENRE THEORY

Genre Theory

Daniel Chandler: Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion

that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings)

and/or form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are

regarded as belonging to them.

Traditionally, genres (particularly literary genres) tended to be

regarded as fixed forms, but contemporary theory emphasizes that

both their forms and functions are dynamic. David Buckingham

argues that 'genre is not... simply "given" by the culture: rather, it

is in a constant process of negotiation and change' (Buckingham

1993).

Daniel Chandler: Every genre positions those who participate in a text of that kind: as interviewer or interviewee, as listener or storyteller, as a reader or a writer, as a person interested in political matters, as someone to be instructed or as someone who instructs; each of these positionings implies different possibilities for response and for action. Each written text provides a 'reading position' for readers, a position constructed by the writer for the 'ideal reader' of the text. (Kress 1988,)

Thus, embedded within texts are assumptions about the 'ideal reader', including their attitudes towards the subject matter and often their class, age, gender and

ethnicity.

• Steve Neale argues that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference' (Neale 1980); there would be no pleasure without difference. We may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated (Abercrombie 1996). We may also enjoy the stretching of a genre in new directions and the consequent shifting of our expectations.
• Other pleasures can be derived from sharing our experience of a genre with others within an 'interpretive community' which can be characterized by its familiarity with certain genres (Daniel Chandler).

Tom Ryall (1978) – 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 filmmakers and the work of reading by the audience.

John Fiske defines genres as „attempts to structure some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences.‟

Steve Neale (1990) argues that Hollywood‟s generic regime performs two inter-related functions: i) to guarantee meanings and pleasures for audiences ii) to offset the considerable economic risks of industrial film production by providing cognitive collateral against innovation and difference.

Can Genre be defined by audience? Is it a question of film

comprehension?

Neale (1990) – Genre is constituted by “specific systems of expectations and

hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact

with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process.”

Jonathan Culler (1978) – generic conventions exist to establish a

contract between creator and reader so as to make certain expectations

operative, allowing compliance and deviation from the accepted modes

of intelligibility. Acts of communication are rendered intelligible only

within the context of a shared conventional framework of expression.

Ryall (1998) sees this framework provided by the generic system;

therefore, genre becomes a cognitive repository of images, sounds,

stories, characters, and expectations

5. In turn, viewers become „generic spectators‟ and can be said to develop generic memory which helps the in the anticipation of events, even though the films themselves might play on certain styles rather than follow closely a clichéd formula. E.g. the attic scene from The Exorcist – we expect something to jump out on the woman because all the generic conventions are in place, but in the end, the director deflates the tension. We do not consume films as individual entities, but in an intertextual way. Film is a post-modern medium in this way, because movies make sense in relation to other films, not to reality.
6. It is the way genre films deviate from the clichéd formulae that leads to a more interesting experience for the viewer, but fore this to work properly, the audience must be familiar with generic conventions and style.

David Bordwell notes, 'any theme may appear in any genre' (Bordwell 1989)

„One could... argue that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can mark off

genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all experts or ordinary film-

goers would find acceptable'

d) Individual films belong wholly and permanently to a single genre.

e) Genres are transhistorical.

f) Genres undergo predictable development.

g) Genres are located in particular topic, structure and corpus.

h) Genre films share certain fundamental characteristic.

i) Genres have either a ritual or ideological function.

j) Genre critics are distanced from the practice of genre.