RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES

RITUALS, CON VENTION S, & AR CHETYPES

Genre-category or classification of a group of movies in which the films share similar subject matter and similar ways of organizing the subject

Cultural Rituals-the repetition of formulas that help coordinate our needs and desires

Generic conventions-are isolated properties or figures that that identify a genre through such features as character types, settings, props, or events that are repeated from film to film

RITUALS, CON VENTION S, & AR CHETYPES

Iconography-image or image patterns with specific connotations or meanings

When generic conventions are out in motion as part of a plot, they become generic formulas, the patterns for developing stories in a particular genre.

Generic expectations-describe a viewer’s experience and knowledge while watching a film that help to anticipate the meaning of particular conventions or the direction of certain narrative formulas

RITUALS, CON VENTION S, & AR CHETYPES

Hybrid genres-are those created through the interaction of different genres to produce fusions, such as romantic comedies of musical horror films

Subgenres-are specific versions of a genre denoted by an adjective, for example, the spaghetti western or the slapstick comedy

COMEDY SUBGENRES

Slapstick comedies-marked by physical humor and stunts, comprised some of the first narrative films

Screwball comedies-transformed the humor of the physical into fast talking verbal gymnastics, arguably displacing sexual energy with barbed verbal exchanges between men and women

Romantic comedies-humor takes a second place to happines

MELODRAMAS

Word itself indicates a combination of the intensities of music (melos) and the interaction of human conflicts (drama).

Fundamental Formulas & Conventions• Characters defined by their situation or basic traits-

struggle to express their feelings and emotions• Narratives rely on coincidences and reversals and

build towards emotional or physical climaxes• Visual style that emphasizes emotion or elemental

struggle

MELODRAMAS

Develop conflict between interior emotions and exterior restrictions, between yearning and loss and satisfaction and renewal.

Physical Melodramas focus on physical plight and material conditions that repress or control the protagonist's desires and emotions.

Family melodramas elaborate the confines and restrictions of the protagonist by investigating the psychological and gendered forces of the family.

MELODRAMAS

Social Melodramas extend the melodramatic crisis of the family to include larger historical, community, and economic issues.

Other subgenres: musicals, animated musicals, horror, crime films, gangster films

SIGNIFICANCE OF FILM GENRE

Prescriptive approach-assume that a model for genre preexists any particular films in that genre

Descriptive approach-a genre develops and changes over time; a successful genre film builds on older films and develops in new ways