Genre

Genre effectively means kind,sort and class. Genres have certain characteristics, for example if you saw a thriller then you are bound to see certain things that you would usually identify with a thriller.

Audiences and Genres
The audience may choose to watch a film because of the genre of the fim and because they know and understand the charcteristics of this genre they then might find it enjoyable to predict what is going to happen next.

For example the film scream lays out the rules of the genre- what is going to happen and then shows it happening. This is postmodern.

An audience recognizes the key elements and conventions of a genre and respond accordingly, hese key elements are called paradigms.

For example in my thriller my key conventions may be: Crime, Chasing- Fast Pace, Mystery, Slow Motion, Blurring of the images.

Or my music video key conventions may be: Lip Synching, Slow Editing, Seeing the back of our main character- walking away.

Two types of paradigms have been identified:

Iconographic: signs and symbols (costume, props, settings in a genre)
Structural: the way a text is put together and the shape it takes, how the structures in the text deal with issues such as ideology and gender (how is gender represented)

Target Audience
Genres appeal to certain target audiences. For example our thriller was targeting a young audience mainly teenagers between the ages of 16-25 who are male. Whereas our music video was targeted at a young audience similarly ages 16-25 who are female.

Christian Metz
it is said that genres tend to become 'tired' over time with audiences becoming less interested. He identified four phases:

1. The initial Phase (first created)

2. The classical phase (being bettered, in its element, at its best)

3. The declining phase (starting to go downhill, not as well made, less important characters)

4. The parody phase (making a joke out of the genre, ending the genre)

Example

1. Airport
2. The towering Inferno
3. Airport '80: The Concorde
4. Airplane!

Example in music videos

1. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
2. Thriller - Michael Jackson
3. Scream - Michael jackson
4. Friday - Rebecca Black / Gangnam Style (postmodern and ironic)

Institutions and Genre
Producers of generic narratives depend on a certain amount of immediate communication with the audience. They want the narrative to be easily comprehensible. Genres that use key conponents that are easily recognizable are particularly important.

The audience know what to expect from a genre but at the same time they want something new and some variations to prevent dissatisfaction and boredom. Thus any text in a genre is a combination of the familiar and the unexpected.

Key components of Genre
-Stock characters (a villain having a small army of people and a hero having an assistant)
-stock plots, situations, issues and themes (Mcguffin)
-Stock locations and Backdrops
-Stock props and signifiers
-Music and Sounds
-Generic conventions