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Genre Conventions
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Genre
In this course, Dr Pete Falconer (University of Bristol) explores the characteristics of genre and genre conventions, with a particular focus on film. In the first module, we think about genre conventions - the features which define genres and make them distinctive from each other - in terms of their types, their purposes, and how associations between genres and conventions develop. In the second module, we look at how the conventions of particular genres, and the meanings audiences give to them, can shift over time, and the kinds of contextual changes which make this happen. We finish with a third module discussing the ways in which filmmakers creatively engage with and combine genre conventions to create new meaning and styles, and the role of the “genre hybrids” they create in the development of film.
Genre Conventions
In this module, we think about genre conventions - the features which define genres and make them distinctive. We focus on: (i) examples of these features, including costume and narrative structure, and the important point that different genres are defined by different types of conventions; (ii) how genre conventions are used to shape audiences’ expectations and communicate key information, looking at the opening scenes of Scarface (1932) and The Irishman (2019); (iii) genres’ reliance on audiences’ prior knowledge, again focusing on the start of The Irishman; (iv) how genre conventions are developed over time through repetition, considered in relation to the figure of the “masked killer” in the horror genre; (v) Steve Neale’s argument that audiences’ understandings of genre are not only shaped by films themselves, but also a range of associated publicity and promotional materials which he terms the “intertextual relay”; (vi) the concept of the “generic corpus” - the groups of films (or other media) which are seen to make up a particular genre.
Hello. My name is Pete Faulconer.
00:00:06I'm a senior lecturer in film and television at the
00:00:08University of Bristol.
00:00:10In my academic research,
00:00:11I'm particularly interested in popular How they work,
00:00:13how they relate to each other, the histories,
00:00:16the critical and philosophical challenges that they present,
00:00:16and so on.
00:00:18I wrote a book on westerns that was published in,
00:00:20twenty twenty, and I'm currently preparing to
00:00:24write another book on horror movies.
00:00:29Genre is a major way of understanding film and television.
00:00:31It's used in different ways by filmmakers, film companies,
00:00:34audiences, critics, and many others.
00:00:37From the categories into which films and television programs
00:00:40grouped on streaming services,
00:00:43to the marketing emails sent out by cinemas alerting us to new releases,
00:00:44genre can be one of our main sources of information about a
00:00:45film or a show before we watch it.
00:00:48Genre can also be very important in our evaluation of
00:00:51a film or a television program,
00:00:54whether we judge it to be good or
00:00:56television program, whether we judge it to be good or bad,
00:00:59a success or a failure.
00:01:02This is something that I'm particularly interested in in
00:01:04my current research.
00:01:07The ways in which different genres are judged by different
00:01:08standards, and that the same qualities that might make,
00:01:10for example, a good horror film might also make, say,
00:01:13a bad romantic comedy.
00:01:17In this lecture, I'm gonna talk about some of the ways in which genre can
00:01:19function in film and in television.
00:01:22I'll draw on more examples from film than from TV because
00:01:24that's more my area.
00:01:28I don't have the same level of knowledge and expertise in
00:01:29television genres, but I will try to mention a few as I go.
00:01:31The lecture is divided into three main sections.
00:01:35The first section, titled genre conventions,
00:01:38deals with the features of genre and how they might work.
00:01:41The second section, genre contexts,
00:01:44looks at the different circumstances in which genres
00:01:47and their conventions could operate and what difference
00:01:50some of those might make to the meanings that are created.
00:01:53The third and final section is called uses of genre and
00:01:56considers the ways in which genres can be mixed,
00:01:59challenged, or otherwise complicated.
00:02:02I will also be throwing in some relevant bits of genre theory
00:02:05at points across the three sections,
00:02:08mainly relating to the work of British theorist, Steve Neill.
00:02:10I was originally gonna do a whole separate section on genre theory,
00:02:13but I came to the conclusion that theory works better when
00:02:16it is integrated with specific examples rather than treated in
00:02:19isolation when it can get a bit too abstract.
00:02:22This first section is on how genres are defined and
00:02:25understood and how they might be said to work.
00:02:28When trying to understand genre,
00:02:31we come up against certain challenges.
00:02:33One of these challenges is that different genres are defined in
00:02:36different ways through different features.
00:02:38Costumes, for example,
00:02:43can be an important part of how we identify some genres.
00:02:44If we watch a few minutes of, say,
00:02:48a science fiction film or a period drama,
00:02:50there's a good chance that we'll be able to recognize what
00:02:52genre the film is at least partly from what the characters are wearing.
00:02:55Costume then is a significant genre convention in at least some cases,
00:02:58and we might note that period drama is sometimes referred to
00:03:03as costume drama.
00:03:05However, to continue the same example,
00:03:07this doesn't mean that we can always use costume to identify a genre.
00:03:10What kind of clothes do the characters tend to wear in a
00:03:14romantic comedy or a horror film?
00:03:16It's difficult to give a clear answer to this sort of question.
00:03:18We may be able to come up with some examples of costumes that
00:03:21relate to these genres,
00:03:24from wedding dresses to Dracula style capes,
00:03:25but it's unlikely that in these cases,
00:03:28we'd be able to use the character's clothing to
00:03:30identify the genre quickly or reliably.
00:03:32Another way to frame this challenge of different genres
00:03:35being defined in different ways is to look at the names by
00:03:38which different genres tend to be called.
00:03:42Genre names act as shorthand definitions.
00:03:44They give us an indication of what to expect from this type of movie.
00:03:47Some names of genres, like gangster film,
00:03:52tell us what sort of people the film will be about.
00:03:54We already have a sense of what sort of characters it might contain.
00:03:57Other genre names, like western,
00:04:00tell us something about where the film will be set.
00:04:02Others still, such as horror, thriller, and romantic comedy,
00:04:05suggest the kinds of emotions that are associated with the genre.
00:04:09It's useful to reflect on something as basic as genre
00:04:13names because it makes it so clear that the defining
00:04:15features of genres are found in different places.
00:04:18It's also important to remember that no genre will be defined
00:04:21by a single characteristic.
00:04:24They will always be the product of multiple features working
00:04:25together in particular ways.
00:04:28But even bearing that in mind,
00:04:30we are still likely to recognize one genre more by, say,
00:04:32its location and characters and another more by its storylines
00:04:36and related mood.
00:04:40This means that it can be hard to be systematic when studying genres.
00:04:41This has caused some frustration among genre
00:04:44theorists over the years.
00:04:47It is easy to assume that you've come up with a reliable
00:04:48way of defining and identifying genres based on your study of
00:04:51one genre in particular,
00:04:55only to find that this method doesn't apply very well to other genres.
00:04:56An example of this is the western genre.
00:05:01Some of the most influential work on genre in the early
00:05:03years of academic film studies in the nineteen sixties and
00:05:07nineteen seventies was about westerns.
00:05:10Critics and scholars noted that the western genre had a large
00:05:12number of distinctive and recognizable visual features,
00:05:16including aspects of costume, cowboy hats, and the like,
00:05:19props, for example, particular types of gun, locations,
00:05:23the deserts and mountains of the American Southwest,
00:05:26single street wooden towns, and so on.
00:05:29Because of these and other visual characteristics,
00:05:32it was generally possible to identify a western by how it looked.
00:05:34However, when trying to use that same method to define other genres,
00:05:38it quickly became apparent that few of them had as obvious a
00:05:42characteristic visual style as the western genre.
00:05:45Most genres are likely to have some recurring visual
00:05:48components, but few have that same identifiable visual world
00:05:51of objects, places, and people that we see in westerns.
00:05:55What does a thriller look like or a romantic comedy?
00:05:59Genres like these are less easy to identify through elements
00:06:03like props and settings.
00:06:06A much more important feature when identifying and defining a
00:06:08genre like romantic comedy would be narrative.
00:06:11The narrative of a romantic comedy tends to be centered
00:06:14around the couple,
00:06:16the pairing of the two lead characters in the film.
00:06:18Still usually a man and a woman,
00:06:20but we're seeing more romantic comedies built around same sex
00:06:22couples and other gender identities now too.
00:06:25Whatever else happens in their narratives,
00:06:28most romantic comedies will end by bringing their
00:06:29couple together.
00:06:31An interesting point of comparison and contrast to the
00:06:32romantic comedy is the action film.
00:06:33The action genre doesn't have as identifiable a narrative
00:06:34structure as the romantic comedy,
00:06:36but it can still be
00:06:37be defined in terms of its overall structure and the kinds
00:06:44of events that it depicts.
00:06:47Action movies are built around moments of spectacular physical
00:06:49action, often violence.
00:06:52These can take many different forms, fights, car chases,
00:06:54other kinds of stunts,
00:06:57depictions of large scale destruction like buildings
00:06:59exploding and things like that.
00:07:01Although we'd usually expect an action film to end with the
00:07:03hero overcoming whatever challenging they've been facing,
00:07:06there's no ending that is quite as characteristic of the action
00:07:09genre as the coming together of the central couple is to the romantic comedy.
00:07:12The main requirement of the narrative in an action film is
00:07:17that it should contain a decent number of those moments of
00:07:20spectacular physical action that I mentioned,
00:07:23and join those moments together in a way that broadly makes sense.
00:07:25A consequence of this is there are probably more different
00:07:29story lines possible in an action film than in a romantic
00:07:32comedy because the narrative conventions involved are somewhat looser.
00:07:35It's important to point out at this stage that this doesn't
00:07:39mean that one genre is better than the other.
00:07:42It simply means that they are doing different things in
00:07:45different ways, and that typically,
00:07:47they rely on different conventions to create the kinds
00:07:49of meanings and experiences that we associate with each genre.
00:07:52A common piece of advice across a wide range of narrative media
00:07:55is show, don't tell.
00:07:58It's often considered better storytelling if the important
00:08:01information, for example,
00:08:03about which characters are to be considered sympathetic or
00:08:05what to expect as the plot develops,
00:08:08is demonstrated through what is shown to us rather than what is stated outright.
00:08:09It's stated outright.
00:08:10It's a tricky balance,
00:08:11which involves allowing the audience to draw their own
00:08:12conclusions from the material,
00:08:13but guiding them clearly towards which conclusions they should draw.
00:08:14But that's a conventional idea of effective
00:08:17storytelling in mainstream film, television, literature, and elsewhere.
00:08:26Genre can be a very helpful tool for showing and not telling.
00:08:30Genre conventions function by bringing preexisting meanings
00:08:33and associations to a new context.
00:08:36They can provide a vocabulary of images, techniques,
00:08:39and other features that the audience of a film might be
00:08:41reasonably expected to understand already.
00:08:44This is useful from a storytelling perspective
00:08:47because it means that not everything in the film needs to
00:08:49be explained and established from scratch.
00:08:52If an audience has some prior experience of and familiarity
00:08:54with the genre, the significance of particular
00:08:57elements, characters, settings, objects,
00:09:00gestures will be clearer straight away,
00:09:02giving the filmmaker more time to express what they want to
00:09:05express, that getting bogged down in basic explanations.
00:09:08I'll give you a couple of examples of how a film can use
00:09:12genre to convey narrative information and other meanings
00:09:15quickly and efficiently.
00:09:18I'll use two examples from from the same genre,
00:09:20the gangster film, one older example and one newer one.
00:09:23My first example comes from over ninety years ago,
00:09:25the original version of Scarface directed by Howard
00:09:26Hawks in nineteen thirty two.
00:09:28Among other
00:09:30things, looking at this example demonstrates how powerful a
00:09:35storytelling tool that genre conventions have been and for how long.
00:09:37Near the beginning of Scarface,
00:09:42we see the last couple of guests leaving the party.
00:09:43The host of the party is called big Louie,
00:09:46and he promises to throw an even bigger party next week.
00:09:48Left alone, big Louie goes to make a phone call,
00:09:52but is shot dead by someone who we see only in silhouette.
00:09:54This initial killing sets the film's whole plot in motion.
00:09:58The presentation of both Louis and his killer quickly makes it
00:10:02obvious what sort of film we are watching.
00:10:05First, we have a man named Big Louis who throws extravagant parties
00:10:07for a group of associates that he refers to as the boys.
00:10:11Then we have a killer in whose silhouette we can see his suit,
00:10:15his hat, and his gun.
00:10:19Genre conventions,
00:10:21including the typical kind of names that characters have,
00:10:22how they dress and behave,
00:10:25and the kind of props they tend to use,
00:10:27allow us to come to the quite reasonable conclusion that
00:10:29these characters are gangsters.
00:10:32This conclusion, in turn,
00:10:34might lead us to further expectations
00:10:36about the kind of killing that was,
00:10:38about the kind of world that the film takes place in,
00:10:40about the kinds of thing that might happen next in the plot, and so on.
00:10:42All of this can be established in just a few seconds,
00:10:46and the narrative can then get on with developing,
00:10:49moving forward, and introducing new material.
00:10:51My second example is a more recent gangster movie,
00:10:55Martin Scorsese's The Irishman from twenty nineteen.
00:10:59Again, I'll say a few things about the beginning of the film because
00:11:02it highlights how important genre conventions are to
00:11:05establishing the story.
00:11:08Although The Irishman starts in a nursing home with nostalgic
00:11:10nineteen fifties do what music,
00:11:14we're quickly given indications that it is a gangster movie.
00:11:16In the first five minutes of the film,
00:11:19we see a man being shot in the head with a snub nosed
00:11:21revolver, and the character of Frank Sheeran,
00:11:24played by Robert De Niro,
00:11:26putting on his gold wristwatch and sovereign ring.
00:11:27If we see in other gangster films,
00:11:30particularly those focusing on the mafia,
00:11:32we may well have seen characters wear similar jewelry.
00:11:34In Frank's voiceover,
00:11:37murder is euphemistically referred to as painting houses.
00:11:38This type of coded language is also associated with cinematic
00:11:42depictions of the mafia and other organized crime groups.
00:11:45There's also a reference to Jimmy Blue Eyes and Maya
00:11:49Lansky.
00:11:52Even if we don't happen to know that these are real life
00:11:53American gangsters from the twentieth century,
00:11:55Jimmy Blue Eyes is another name like Big Louie,
00:11:58exactly the kind that we might expect a character in a
00:12:01gangster film to have.
00:12:04Something that the name Jimmy Blue Eyes can function both as
00:12:06an authentic historical marker and as a convention.
00:12:09This highlights something important about the way that
00:12:13meaning is constructed in film, television,
00:12:16and other art forms.
00:12:18Most films will try to be broadly understandable on their own terms.
00:12:20That is to say they will give us the information we need to
00:12:24follow their story, understand their themes, and so on.
00:12:27At the same time, however,
00:12:30films and other works of art also rely on other sources of meaning,
00:12:31such as the knowledge and experience that their audiences
00:12:35have from the wider world.
00:12:38Some of this will just involve appealing to things things that
00:12:40are considered common knowledge or values that most of a film's
00:12:42audience would probably be expected to share.
00:12:46For example, at one point in the comedy horror film,
00:12:48Happy Death Day,
00:12:51the main character walks out into an university courtyard naked.
00:12:53Although the film reinforces the point by showing us the
00:12:57shocked reactions of her fellow students as she walks past,
00:13:00the scene relies on our awareness of the social
00:13:03conventions surrounding public nudity.
00:13:05The reason I'm talking about how film sometimes rely on an
00:13:08audience's wider knowledge to create meaning is that this is
00:13:11central to how genre works.
00:13:15In the case of genre though,
00:13:17the knowledge comes less from the wider world than from other films.
00:13:19The more horror films you've seen,
00:13:22the more you'll be able to recognize the conventions of
00:13:24the horror genre and understand the meanings that these
00:13:26conventions help to create.
00:13:29This doesn't mean that you have to be an expert in a particular
00:13:30genre to understand the meaning of its conventions,
00:13:33but it does mean that genres build on audience's previous
00:13:36experiences to create meanings.
00:13:39To return to the example of the Irishman,
00:13:41the first character that we get a clear look at in the film is
00:13:44Frank Sheeran, played by Robert De Niro.
00:13:47If we recognize De Niro,
00:13:49we might remember that he has often played gangster characters.
00:13:51This itself could help to shape our expectations for what kind
00:13:55of character he will be this time and what he will do.
00:13:58Film stars themselves can act as genre conventions with
00:14:02different stars associated with different genres.
00:14:05An association between a star and a genre will be built up
00:14:08slowly over the course of multiple films.
00:14:12This is how genre conventions tend to develop.
00:14:14They start out in relative isolation with their meaning
00:14:17only established by the film they are in.
00:14:20As other films from the genre adopt the same conventions
00:14:22though, their meanings get reinforced through repetition.
00:14:25This doesn't mean the genre conventions will have exactly
00:14:28the same meaning every time they're used.
00:14:31Jora films provide their own variations on shared conventions,
00:14:33and they're not just copies of the existing formula.
00:14:36But the more established a convention,
00:14:39the more a film will be able to draw on the meanings that it's
00:14:41had in its previous uses.
00:14:44For another example,
00:14:47consider the figure of the masked killer in horror films
00:14:48and particularly the horror subgenre of the slasher film.
00:14:51Influential nineteen seventies horror films like the Texas
00:14:55Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween featured killers that wore
00:14:58masks, but this was not yet a recognized convention.
00:15:01However, as more slasher films emerged,
00:15:06these films sought to emulate the successful elements of
00:15:08their predecessors,
00:15:11which often included creating their own masked killers.
00:15:12By the nineteen eighties,
00:15:16the lone killer who wears a mask had become a well known convention.
00:15:17Audiences could recognize this type of character,
00:15:21and films could use that recognition to help tell their stories.
00:15:24I've been talking a bit about the accumulation of meaning,
00:15:27how genre conventions build up particular meanings and
00:15:30associations as as they are repeated over time.
00:15:33Before I conclude this section, I'll bring in a little theory.
00:15:36One of the important things that Steve Neal points out is
00:15:40that our understanding of a genre,
00:15:43the meanings we associate with it, the films we include in it,
00:15:45our expectations of what it involves,
00:15:49get shaped and developed not just through films,
00:15:51but through a variety of associated texts, posters,
00:15:54trailers, reviews, merchandise, and many others.
00:15:58Neil describes this larger network of related texts as the
00:16:03intertextual relay.
00:16:06Essentially, this means that meanings and associations are passed or
00:16:08relayed between texts, and our experience of all of
00:16:12these will help to shape our understanding of a genre.
00:16:17What we expect from, say,
00:16:19an action film will be shaped as much by the marketing we
00:16:20have seen and the reviews we have read as by our viewing of
00:16:23previous action films.
00:16:27It is rare that we will see a film and know absolutely
00:16:29nothing about it.
00:16:31We'll generally have some impression of what it involves
00:16:33gained from a range of different sources.
00:16:35These sources broadly are what Neil calls the intertextual relay.
00:16:38While we're on these matters,
00:16:43I'll throw in one more theoretical term used by Neil
00:16:44and others, generic corpus.
00:16:48A generic corpus is a group of films, television programs,
00:16:51or other texts that makes up a genre.
00:16:55Corpus means body in Latin,
00:16:57so the term refers to the body of texts that are included genre.
00:16:59Anything that fits into that genre is part of the generic corpus.
00:17:03Two things to note here.
00:17:08One, the size of a generic corpus could vary considerably
00:17:09from genre to genre.
00:17:13Take, for example, the television genre of the soap opera.
00:17:15In this case, the generic corpus is huge,
00:17:18made up of hundreds of shows,
00:17:21which in turn have thousands of episodes.
00:17:22In contrast, a film genre with a notably small corpus is the comedy of remarriage.
00:17:25This genre label comes from the American philosopher Stanley
00:17:31Cavell and refers to a subgenre of Hollywood romantic comedy
00:17:34from the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties.
00:17:38Although there may be more examples from that time,
00:17:40Cavell himself only writes about seven specific films.
00:17:43These films make up his generic corpus for the comedy of remarriage.
00:17:47And this leads me to the other thing that I want us to note at this stage,
00:17:51and that is that generic corpuses can be subject to
00:17:54disagreement and debate.
00:17:57Different people, filmmakers, critics, audience members,
00:17:58will have filmmakers, critics, audience members,
00:17:58will have different ideas about what should or should not be
00:18:00included in a particular genre category.
00:18:02When I was writing my book on westerns,
00:18:04one of the most common questions that I was asked by
00:18:06people was whether a particular
00:18:10film counted as a western or not.
00:18:14Some films may be subject to competing claims,
00:18:17with some people arguing that it should belong to one generic
00:18:20corpus, while others argue that it should belong to another,
00:18:23and perhaps some suggesting that it should belong to both or to neither.
00:18:26I'm gonna leave that here for this section,
00:18:30but I'll try and take some of the matters I've raised a
00:18:33little bit further and throw in a few more complicating factors
00:18:35as we proceed through the next two parts of the lecture.
00:18:38Thanks very much.
00:18:40
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Falconer, P. (2024, October 14). Genre - Genre Conventions [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/genre
MLA style
Falconer, P. "Genre – Genre Conventions." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 14 Oct 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/genre