Transcript Warshow

Dictionary
genre |ˈ zh änrə|
Noun
a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature,
characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject
matter.
ORIGIN early 19th cent.: French, literally ‘a kind’ (see
gender ).
Thesaurus
Noun
historical fiction is my favorite genre of literature
category, class, classification, group, set, list; type, sort,
kind, breed, variety, style, model, school, stamp, cast, ilk.
Genre
Major Movie Genres
(according to Tim Dirks [filmsite.org])
Genre
•Action
•Epics/Historical
•Adventure
•Musicals
•Comedy
•Science Fiction
•Crime/Gangster
•War
•Drama
•Westerns
“In English-speaking countries, the term ‘genre’
came to be applied to literary works during the
nineteenth century, at a point in history at
which art of all kinds began to be industrialized,
mass-produced for a popular public (Cohen,
1986, 120).”--Neale in Creeber 2)
Genre
Megagenre: A large, all encompassing,
umbrella genre, having no distinct subject
matter or style or iconography or formulae.
The megagenres of the movies might be
thought of as non-fiction (documentary) film,
fiction film, animated film, and experimental /
underground film.
Genre
Major Movie Sub-Genres
(according to Tim Dirks [filmsite.org])
Genre
•Biopics
•Melodrama
•Chick Flicks
•Road Films
•Detective/Mystery
•Romance
•Disaster
•Sports
•Fantasy
•Supernatural
•Film Noir
•Thrillers/Suspense
•Guy Films
Minor Movie Sub-Genres
(according to Tim Dirks [filmsite.org])
•Aviation
•Jungle
•Political
•Buddy
•Legal
•Prison
•Caper
•Martial Arts
•Chase
•Medical
•Slasher
•Espionage
•Parody
•Swashbucklers
•Fallen Woman
•Police
Genre
•Religious
Movie Genres/Subgenres
Action Adventure—Jungle | Martial Arts | Mountain | Spy | Swashbuckler
Art—Any genre or subgenre may be an "art" film
Comedy—Buddy | Black Comedy | Mocumentary | Parody | Road | Romantic Comedy | Satire
| Screwball Comedy | Slacker
Crime—Blaxploitation | Caper | Film Noir | Gangster | Hardboiled Detective | Police
Procedural | Prison | Private-Eye | Trial Films
Cult—Any genre or subgenre may be a "cult" film
Drama—Domestic | Education | Historical | Political
Epic--Biblical | Greek Myth | Historical
Gender—Gay and Lesbian | Rape-Revenge | Women’s Pictures
Horror—Demonic Possession | Haunted House | Monster | Serial Killer | Slasher | Vampire
Life Story—Autobiography | Biopic | Diary Film
Melodrama—Disease/Disability | Ethnic Family Saga | Weepie | Yuppie Redemption
Music—Concert Films | Musicals | Rocumentary
Science Fiction and Fantasy—Cyber Punk | Disaster | Dystopia | Fantasy | Post-Apocalypse |
Prehistorical | Space Opera | Supermen and Other Mutants | Time Travel
Sports—Auto Racing | Baseball | Basketball | Boxing | Football | Horse Racing | Track |
Wrestling
Teen Films—Pre-Teen Comedy | Teen Sex Comedy | Coming of Age
War—Aerial Combat | Civil War | Korean | Prisoner of War | Submarine | Viet Nam | World
War I | World War II
Western—Cattle Drive | Indian War | Gunfighter
Genre
“The classification of texts is not just the
province of academic specialists, it is a
fundamental aspect of the way texts of all
kinds are understood.” (Neale in Creeber p.
1)
Genre
“In many cases, of course, it is likely that audiences will
have some idea in advance of the kind of film (or play or
programme) they are going to watch. They will have made
an active choice either to watch or, if their preferences
dictate, to avoid it. They will have done so on the basis of
information supplied by advertising, by reviews, and
previews, perhaps by a title (such as Singin’ in the Rain) or
by the presence of particular performers. They are
therefore likely to bring with them a set of expectations,
and to anticipate that these expectations will be met in
one way or another.” (Neale in Creeber 1)
Genre
Relevant Terms for Genre from Hans Robert Jauss,
German Reception Theorist/Reader-Response Critic
“generic audience”
“generic frustration”
“generic tension”
Genre
The “repertoire of elements” that identify
genres (Lacey [2000], cited by Neale in Creeber
3):
•Character Types
•Setting
•Iconography
•Narrative
•Style
Genre
Institutional Aspects of Genre:
•Scheduling
•Modes of Production
•Demands of Advertisers
•Demands of Audiences
•Developments in Adjacent Entertainment
Institutions/Media (Neale in Creeber 4)
Genre
Hybridity: The now common tendency to
“splice” together different genres.
Genre
“Genres came to be identified with impersonal,
formulaic, commercial forms and distinguished
from individualized art. Ironically, this
represented a reversal of previous
characterizations, which saw ‘high art’ as rulebound and ordered (as evident in genres lke the
sonnet and tragedy) and ‘low art’ as
unconstrained by the rules of decorum” (Cohen,
1986, 120).--Neale in Creeber 2
Genre
Genre films essentially ask the audience, "Do
you still want to believe this?" Popularity is the
audience answering, "Yes." Change in genre
occurs when the audience says, "That's too
infantile a form of what we believe. Show us
something more complicated." And genres turn
to self-parody to say, "Well, at least if we make
fun of it for being infantile, it will show how far
we've come." Films and television have in this
way speeded up cultural history.
Leo Braudy, American film scholar
Genre
Thomas Schatz's life history of a genre (from Hollywood
Genres) :
an experimental stage, during which its
conventions are isolated and established, a classic
stage, in which the conventions reach their
“equilibrium” and are mutually understood by
artist and audience, an age of refinement, during
which certain formal and stylistic details embellish
the form, and finally a baroque (or “mannerist,” or
“self-reflexive”) stage, when the form and its
establishments are accented to the point where
they “themselves become the “substance” or
“content” of the work. (37-38)
Thomas Schatz, American film scholar
Genre
Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”
(from The Immediate Experience)
The Gangster Film
The Western
A "story of enterprise and success ending in
precipitate failure" (453).
A story of a man's struggle to retain his
honor, even in defeat.
A romantic tragedy about a man "whose
defeat springs with almost mechanical
inevitability from the outrageous
presumption of his demands: the gangster
is bound to go on until he is killed" (458).
A classical tragedy based on a hero of virtue
always prepared for defeat; need not end in
the death of the hero.
A tale of the city.
A tale of the frontier.
The gangster is "without culture, without
manners, without leisure" (453).
The Western hero Is a figure of repose.
The Gangster Film
The Western
The gangster is "lonely and melancholy.”
The Western hero is also lonely and
melancholy, but out of a profound worldly
wisdom," the 'simple' recognition that life
is unavoidably serious.”
The gangster is "expansive and noisy," not
introspective.
The Western hero is "organically"
introspective; he has to do what he has to
do (457).
The gangster is violent in both his
attractions and repulsions; he may lose
control at any time.
The Western hero avoids violence at all
cost; he is always in control.
The gangster is never satisfied;
complacency is fatal to him.
The Western hero is complete within
himself, self-contained.
The gangster is always trying to get ahead;
always wanting to own something more,
conquer some new territor.
The Western hero has no desire to get
anywhere.
The Gangster Film
The Western
“Everyone wants to kill him and
eventually someone will” (454)
The Western hero is also under
customarily “under fire” but would
avoid it if he could.
The gangster does not seem to need
love in any traditional sense.
The Western hero does not seek love, is
"prepared to accept it, but . . . never asks of
it more than it can give"; love seems "at best
an irrelevance"; the woman the Western
hero loves (usually from the East) does not
understand what he does and he is
incapable of explaining it to her.
The gangster associates with
prostitutes and “loose” women
because of their “passive availability”
and their “costliness.”
The Western hero associates with
prostitutes because they understand
him.
The gangster’s possessions are central The Western hero owns nothing, or
to his being; he owns things in a gaudy, seems not to; money, possessions, a
exhibitionistic way.
house, a regular place to seep, all
seem alien to him.
Genre
The Gangster Film
The Western
The gangster's death reveals his whole
life to have been a mistake.
Even in death, the Western hero retains
his honor.
A modern genre which "confronts
industrial society on its own ground"
(465).
Essentially "archaic" (466).