Film Genre

You will find a decade-by-decade profile of the horror genre elsewhere on this site.

The concept of genre is an important one for critics, film-makers and audiences, as well as media theorists. A lot of formal study has been conducted into the categorisation of film through various paradigms, and into how that categorisation informs our understanding of the film as text.

There are two approaches to the study of film genre. The first is descriptive, which involves viewing a film as belonging to a category, as being an example of a type. The film is perceived as sharing aspects and attributes with other films in the same category, and is analysed accordingly.

The second approach is functional, where the genre film is perceived as "collective expressions of contemporary life that strike a particularly resonant chord with audiences" (Experience & Meaning in Genre Films BK Grant, Film Genre Reader 1986). The repetitions of patterns in a genre film are the repetitions of social questioning — what frightens us (horror films)? What is criminal (gangster films)? What is morality (melodramas)? What is alien(science fiction)? — that must be repeated from generation to generation, as values change. Therefore genre films are a product of their socio-historic context; watching them becomes a cultural ritual whereby hegemonic values are examined, and perhaps enforced.

A combination of these two approaches is perhaps the most successful one - whereby a film is considered as both part of a paradgmatic set, and as the product of a time and place.

Useful Links:

Further Reading

  • Film/Genre - Rick Altman
  • The Media Student's Book Branston/Stafford (1999) Ch 8 pp105-124

 

 

 

 

Post A Message!!