QUESTION 1B The list of concepts to which questions will relate is as follows: • Genre • Narrative • Representation • Audience • Media language
Genre
Genre is a French word that means type or kind.
Genre does not rely simply on what's in a media text but also on the way it is constructed.
Genre is a way of putting media texts into categories which share similar characteristics.
How do we identify genre? Mise en scene Camera Sound Symbolic codes Narrative Actors Director Action codes Editing Dialogue Representational issues
Why is genre useful for producers, distributors and audiences?
Hodges and Cress “Genres are typical forms of texts which link producers, consumers topic, medium and occasion”
Producers Distribution Audience
Hartley “Genres are agents of ideological closure; they limit the meaning of a given text”
Why is it useful for producers of media texts? Gives a pattern for construction, a template Genre pieces have an established audience who are easy to market to Certain personnel can develop their skills working within a particular genre (e.g. horror make up specialists) Stars can associate themselves with a particular genre e.g. Will Ferrell is known for a certain type of slapstick comedy, and his face on a poster instantly tells audiences what kind of movie they are likely to see if he is in it. Fans of a genre know the codes, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time
Fowler “One advantage of genres is that they can rely on readers having a pre-existing knowledge and expectations about the genre”
Why is it useful for distributors? Clear channels for marketing and distribution — easily targetable audience Concentration of distribution resources — no point in trying to get eg football matches to a non-sports audience Fans of a genre as a whole can easily be persuaded to buy other texts in the same genre eg dance music compilation CDs Provides a structure for retail outlets
“Genres can be seen as a kind of shorthand…” Gledhill “Genres can be seen as a kind of shorthand…”
Why is it useful for audiences? Genre helps audiences build up expectations about a film. It helps in the pre - selling of a film. Filmgoers like to have a general idea of what film they are about to see. But audiences get bored with too much repetition; they like to see a genre change, and evolve by responding to contextual influences to do with the way society changes.
“Genres are pleasurable because they offer escapist fantasies” Richard Dyer “Genres are pleasurable because they offer escapist fantasies”
“Pleasure is derived through repetition and difference” Neale “Pleasure is derived through repetition and difference”
“We derive pleasure from observing how the genre is manipulated” Abercrombie “We derive pleasure from observing how the genre is manipulated”
Fiske “Genres constrain the possible ways a text can be read, guiding readers to a preferred reading”
Roland Barthes (1975) It is in relation to other texts within a genre rather than in relation to lived experience that we make sense of certain events within a text. Read Fiske’s example on the next slide:
“A representation of a car chase only makes sense in relation to all the others we have seen - after all, we are unlikely to have experienced one in reality, and if we did, we would, according to this model, make sense of it by turning it into another text, which we would also understand intertextually, in terms of what we have seen so often on our screens. There is then a cultural knowledge of the concept 'car chase' that any one text is a prospectus for, and that it used by the viewer to decode it, and by the producer to encode it”. (Fiske 1987, 115)
Genre works in three ways: Altman Genre works in three ways: Semantic Syntactic Pragmatic
Altman 1. Semantic: characters, dialogue, sound, shot types…
Altman 2. Syntactic: the relationship between the character and the setting and the narrative.
Altman 3. Pragmatic: institution and audience
Where does your text fall within the genre taxonomies?
Product: Follows conventions Develops conventions Breaks conventions