6. Genre Theory

Genre is a type of category that a product is classified in e.g Films are categorized into different genres like horror and comedy. Certain tropes, codes and conventions define these genres and are needed in certain texts to be classified as that particular genre

Genres can be determined by the use of conventions, e.g. the use of scary music to build anticipation and suspense is often used in the horror genre, as well as motifs of spiritual disturbance and death,

Genre is a critical tool that helps us study texts, audiences respond to these texts by dividing them into categories based on these common elements.

Daniel Chandler (2001) argues that the word genre comes from the french - and originally Latin - word for 'kind' and 'class'. The term is widely used in rhetoric, literary theory and media theory to refer to a distinctive type of text.

Sub Genres:

• All genres have sub-genres
• A sub-genre is basically a genre inside of a genre
• This is were a genre is divided up into more specific categories, it allow audiences to identify them more specifically by their conventions. (Barry Keith Grant)
• However, Steve Neale (1995) stresses that "genres are not systems they are processes of systematisation" - i.e. they are dynamic and evolve over time

Hybrid Genres:

• A hybrid genre is basically a mixture of two or more genres 

• Genre is a process of systematisation; the idea that any text reflects the ideology of the era that they have created.
• They evolved with the times in which they are made.

The Hypodermic Needle Theory: The idea that information/ideas are given to an audience, e.g. the media giving information to the public, and it is wholly taken in and believed.

Generic characteristics across all texts share similar elements of the below depending on the medium:

• Typical mise-en-scene/visual style (iconography, props, set design, lighting, temporal and geographical location, costumes) 
• Typical Cinematography (shot types, camera angles)
• Typical narratives (plots, historical setting, set pieces)
• Generic types i.e. typical characters (do typical male/female roles exist, archetypes? Propps Character Types?)

Levi Strauss - Theory of Binary Oppositions: Strauss believed that all the majority of narratives happen to include in them at least one binary opposition. These binary oppositions were and are still used to thicken up the plot and in turn further the narrative.
Examples of a binary oppositions in media:

• Good vs Evil
• Light vs Dark
• Love vs Hate
• Black vs White
• Man vs Woman
• Young vs Old
• East vs West
• North vs South

Binary oppositions, however, aren't always good in films, they can often bring up issues of stereotypes, the most common being man vs woman, it can often bring up stereotypes of men being the 'hero' of the women being the 'damsel in distress'

Jason Mitchell (2001) argues that genres are cultural categories that suppress the boundaries of media texts and operate with industry, audience and cultural practices as well.





                                              Genre
Institution↗ codes and conventions  ↖ Audience
                                  ↘      Text        ↙

In short, industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Media producers use familiar codes and conventions that very often make cultural references to their audience's knowledge of society and other texts.