Genre

Film & TV Genres Film Drama/Comedy Documentary Action/Thriller Sci Fi Horror Musical Western Sword and Sandals Romantic Comedy Chick Flick High School Comedy TV Animated Comedy Drama Soap Police Procedural Detective & Mystery Variety Kids/children Courtroom drama

Film: fiction vs non fiction TV : scripted vs non scripted Non scripted: sporting events, game shows, reality shows and news. However, unless they are broadcast live, these "unscripted" TV shows are manipulated and edited to fit a particular running time and a predetermined outcome.

Setting: Western, Period, Historical, Courtroom Thriller, WWII Picture Theme: Disease of the Week, Romance, Alien Invasion Mood: Horror, Film Noir, Comedy, Tearjerker Format: 3D, animation, cinemascope, Found footage Audience: Melodrama, Teen movies, Chick flicks, Family film

Generally, the action genres—adventure, war, gangster, detective, horror, science fiction, and of course, the western—were addressed to a male audience, while musicals and romantic melodramas (also known as ‘‘weepies’’) were marketed as ‘‘woman’s films.’’

In film, common generic elements include subject matter, theme, narrative stylistic conventions, character types, plots, and iconography.

Ways to identify a Genre 1. Narrative structures: Types of plots Plot situations and issues Characters and character relationships

2. Visual Iconography Props or costumes and signifiers Shots and camera movements Locations and backdrops Lighting, styles, themes and background music Mood and tone

Iconography It refers to the signs that we associate with particular genres, such as physical attributes and dress of the actors, the settings and the ‘tools of the trade’ (cars, horses, guns). It constitutes a pattern of visual imagery that remains common to a genre over a period of time.

3. Ideology and Themes: Representations of gender, race, sexuality and place Values and ideologies Themes

The Function of Genre The concept of genre is useful in looking at the ways in which media texts are organized, categorized and consumed. The concept of genre suggests that there are certain types of media material, that are recognized through common elements, such as style, narrative and structure.

Genre and Audiences Audiences are said to like the concept of genre because of its reassuring and familiar promise of patterns of repetition and variation. Audiences become familiar with the codes and conventions of specific genres. Familiarity through repetition is therefore one of the key elements in the way audiences understand and relate to media texts.

Limitations of Genre 1.The concept of genre clearly can have limitations when applied to a range of media texts because of the variety and the need for constant updating of texts that are being produced. Many texts may look similar but are too different to be grouped together

2. Sometimes the category becomes too generalized to be helpful 2. Sometimes the category becomes too generalized to be helpful . Consider the distinction between American fantasy soaps and British realism soap operas.

Filmmakers from around the world have responded to the domination of American film by adopting Hollywood genres and ‘‘indigenizing’’ or reworking them according to their own cultural sensibility. Examples are the Italian ‘‘spaghetti western’’ or Hong Kong martial arts films. Other national cinemas have created their own genres. For example, German cinema in the 1920s and 1930s developed a distinctive genre of the mountain film, involving a character or group of characters striving to climb or conquer a mountain. The Heimatfilm, or Homeland film, is another genre of sentimental, romanticized movies about rural Germany and its inhabitants.

In Indian cinema, masala (or mixed spice) films combine a variety of heterogenous generic elements, as by inserting musical sequences in a dramatic film in a way uncharacteristic of Hollywood. In turn, Hollywood genre filmmaking has been influenced by some of these non-American genres. For example, Japanese samurai films