GENRE THEORIES

By Emma Jane Laffoley

RICK ALTMAN

Rick was the man who suggested that in order to fully understand the concept of a genre you need to take a 3 point approach;

♥ Semantic♥ Syntactic ♥ Pragmatic

RICK ALTMAN

Semantic:The semantic approach is looking at the building blocks of what makes up a genre, for example; typical costumes, props and settings. In the Thriller genre the typical props used would be; knives, guns and fake blood, the typical costumes would be; a scary masks and dark clothing and finally the typical settings would be the woods and haunted houses.

EXAMPLE – TH E BL ACK SWAN (DAR RE N AR ONOFSKY , 2010 )

Costumes: black (to connote evil), white (to connote good) & red contact lenses to make the black swan look evil.Props: fake blood, knives, drugs & mirror. Setting: A very low lighting dance studio.

RICK ALTMAN

Syntactic:This approach is the deeper structure of the genre which would be the; themes, narrative and character’s relationship. For example in the Thriller genre the conventional themes would be; death, revenge and isolation. The conventional narrative would be psycho killer goes after innocent protagonist and murder. Finally the character relationship would be that the protagonist has a bad past with the antagonist.

EXAMPLE – SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

Themes: domestic violence, revenge and jealously. Narrative: A young woman fakes her own death to get away from the domestic violence and her husband stalks her to try and find if she’s still alive.Character's relationship: manipulative relationship where the husband is so controlling that the wife decides to fake her own death.

RICK ALTMAN

Pragmatic:Altman realised that the genre of media txt can be decoded differently by different members of the audience, which he see’s as active. This means that to develop the genre you need to realise that the audience will not always understand the genre the same as other members of the audience. For example a Thriller film may be terrifying to one person but to another be comical.

STEVE NEALE

Repetition & Differences:Steve Neale suggested that genres can either repeat conventions or they can challenge them. For example Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) would have followed conventions set by Alfred Hitchcock whereas a film like Chatroom (Hideo Nakata, 2010) would have challenged these conventions by including technology for the psychopath to mess with the teenagers minds and encourage them to commit suicide.

EXAMPLE

The audience may feel that Thriller comes hand in hand with Horror as they may see conventions featured in Horror films that are also featured in Thriller films. For example I personally think that most Horror films also count as Thriller films as they use similar conventions and they make you jump with fear.

CHRISTIAN METZChristian was a French theorist who believed that genres go through a cycle of changes as time goes on. These stages are:

♥ Experimental♥ Classical♥ Parody♥ Deconstruction

CHRISTIAN METZ

Experimental:This is the stage in which generic conventions and codes are put in place. An example of this in the Thriller genre is Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960’s film Psycho which featured a psychopathic killer and extreme violence, these are both conventions of the Thriller genre.

CHRISTIAN METZ

Classical:This is the stage where conventions and codes are being followed and can be seen as a guideline for other films who want to be part of the genre. For example the Thriller/Horror film Scream followed conventions set by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho such as; a psychopathic killer and extreme violence.

CHRISTIAN METZ

Parody:Now that conventions have been set then directors can create parody films although for this stage to work, the audience must fully understand the classical stage. An example of a Thriller Parody would be Scary Movie (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2000) which parodies Scream. If you didn’t understand the conventions of the Thriller genre then you wouldn’t understand the references in Scary Movie.

CHRISTIAN METZ

Deconstruction:This is the development stage where the film being made will challenge conventions or merge the genre with another to create a hybrid e.g. rom com is a hybrid of romance and comedy. An example of a Thriller film in the deconstruction stage would be Unfriended (Levan Gabriadze, 2014) as it features the psycho killer as being behind a computer screen instead of in real life like Scream.