Genre

I came accross this, it's something from a media essay i wrote way back in january, i like it.

Genre relates to the three 'phases' of the film industry in different ways. To the producer, the genre acts as a template for the film; To the distributor/promoter it provides an assumptions about who the audience is and how to market the film to that audience; and to the viewer (at the point of exhibition) genre acts as a label that identifies a liked or disliked formula and thus gatekeeps our tastes. Genre regulates our consumption, but it also provides 'rules of engagement' for the spectator in terms of the anticipation of pleasure.

In this way, as genre's become 'classic', the exert great influence over all of the areas of cinema. Production can be quicker and more confident, screenwriters follow tried and testing formulas and create characters that fit standard 'types' (stock characters), appropriate to the genre in question. Actors and actresses can be filtered into genres, their acting ability tranformed into star quality at the point when mannerisms, physical attributes, ways of speaking and acting fit a particular style. Directors, cinematographers, sound people, costume designers all have ready a shorthand to work with. Films can be produced as products on an assembly line. As viewers however we become 'generic spectators'.

The generic audience knows what to expect from a horror film or a sci fi film and judges it according to prior experience or the genre - in this sense we do not consume films as individual entities but in a fundamentaly intertextual way. Film's make sense in relation to other films, not reality.

However, genre texts do not work by simply copying other texts in the genre, but by adding their own contribution which strays more or less from the norm, depending on the directors intentions. Directors deliberatly frustrate the audience by leading them down blind genre alleys. This frustration is not negitive and usually leads to a more interesting experience for the viewer, but for it to work, it depends entirely on on whether or the generic template is firmly enriched in the audience.

Agree or disagree?