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The concept of genre theory, focusing on how genres are defined by conventions of content and form, and the importance of repetition and difference. Genres provide a framework for both producers and audiences, shaping expectations and pleasures. However, genres are not fixed forms but constantly evolving, and texts can exhibit the conventions of more than one genre.
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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.
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
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.