Genre

Theoretical Evaluation of Production

Genre – a style or category of art, music or literature.

Codes and conventions and signs and signifiers

Daniel Chandler (2001)

Sub genres

Steve Neale (1995)

“Genres are not ‘systems’ they are processes of systemisation.”

Barry Keith Grant

All genres have sub genres

Divided up into more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them specifically by their families and what become recognisable characteristics.

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

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

Genre also allows audiences to make choices about what products they want to consume through acceptance I order to fulfil a particular.

Rick Altman (1999)

He argues that genre offers audiences ‘a set of pleasures’

·         Emotional pleasures

·         Visceral Pleasures

·         Intellectual Pleasures

The strengths of genre theory

The main strength o genre theory is that everybody uses it and understands it – media experts use it to study media texts, the media industry uses it to develop and market texts an audiences use it to decide what texts to consume.

The potential for the same concept to be understood by producers, audiences and scholars makes genre a useful critical tool. Its accessibility as a concept also means that it can be applied across a wide range of texts.

Christian Metz (1974) argued that genres go through a typical cycle of changes during their lifetime.

Experimental stage

Classical stage