RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES

 Genre-category or classification of a group of movies in which the films share similar subject matter and similar ways of organizing the subject  Cultural Rituals-the repetition of formulas that help coordinate our needs and desires  Generic conventions-are isolated properties or figures that that identify a genre through such features as character types, settings, props, or events that are repeated from film to film

RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES  Iconography-image or image patterns with specific connotations or meanings  When generic conventions are out in motion as part of a plot, they become generic formulas, the patterns for developing stories in a particular genre.  Generic expectations-describe a viewer’s experience and knowledge while watching a film that help to anticipate the meaning of particular conventions or the direction of certain narrative formulas

RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES  Hybrid genres-are those created through the interaction of different genres to produce fusions, such as romantic comedies of musical horror films  Subgenres-are specific versions of a genre denoted by an adjective, for example, the spaghetti western or the slapstick comedy

COMEDY SUBGENRES  Slapstick comedies-marked by physical humor and stunts, comprised some of the first narrative films  Screwball comedies-transformed the humor of the physical into fast talking verbal gymnastics, arguably displacing sexual energy with barbed verbal exchanges between men and women  Romantic comedies-humor takes a second place to happines

MELODRAMAS  Word itself indicates a combination of the intensities of music (melos) and the interaction of human conflicts (drama).  Fundamental Formulas & Conventions Characters defined by their situation or basic traits-struggle to express their feelings and emotions Narratives rely on coincidences and reversals and build towards emotional or physical climaxes Visual style that emphasizes emotion or elemental struggle

MELODRAMAS  Develop conflict between interior emotions and exterior restrictions, between yearning and loss and satisfaction and renewal.  Physical Melodramas focus on physical plight and material conditions that repress or control the protagonist's desires and emotions.  Family melodramas elaborate the confines and restrictions of the protagonist by investigating the psychological and gendered forces of the family.

MELODRAMAS  Social Melodramas extend the melodramatic crisis of the family to include larger historical, community, and economic issues.  Other subgenres: musicals, animated musicals, horror, crime films, gangster films

SIGNIFICANCE OF FILM GENRE  Prescriptive approach-assume that a model for genre preexists any particular films in that genre  Descriptive approach-a genre develops and changes over time; a successful genre film builds on older films and develops in new ways