Film: Genres and Genre Theory

Film: Genres and Genre Theory

Reviewed by: Notions of Genre: Writings on Popular Film Before Genre Theory ed. by Barry Keith Grant, Malisa Kurtz Christina Parker-Flynn Notions of Genre: Writings on Popular Film Before Genre Theory. Edited by Barry Keith Grant and Malisa Kurtz. University of Texas Press, 2016, 294 pages Each genre film, according to one of the most firmly established “rules” of film genre study, must exhibit qualities that determine its relationship to other examples in the genre. Barry Keith Grant and Malisa Kurtz’s Notions of Genre is no different. While claiming to be something unique, a study in genre through works written before the academic tradition (1970-) became firmly established, it also self-locates precisely within the types of writings one expects in a genre reader. Notions of Genre offers a compilation of essays on popular film from 1945 to 1970 that reflect an early and organic preoccupation with film genre theory, prior to its proper academic application. A distinguished film scholar well known for his Film Genre Reader, “the first scholarly anthology on film genre” released in 1986, Barry Keith Grant reveals his enthusiasm for the prehistory of film genre in the Introduction to its current, fourth edition (2013), in which he emphasizes the early significance of Robert Warshow’s article on the gangster film (1948) and André Bazin’s essay on the western (1952), both works included here in Notions of Genre, as the earliest contributions to genre theory (7). Grant and Kurtz use essays by more familiar authors—like Warshow and Bazin, who have been considered forefathers to genre study since the publication of Christine Gledhill’s The Cinema Book (1985)—to balance out their reintroduction of historically lesser-known work and authors. Grant and Kurtz divide the collection into four sections, the first two (“Comedy” and “Western”) directly indicative of film genre labels, and the last two (“The Fantastic” and “Crime and Punishment”) more universally applicable beyond the realm of film studies proper. The first section on “Comedy” is nicely anchored by the first two readings, James Agee’s “Comedy’s Greatest Era” and Siegfried Kracauer’s “Silent Film Comedy,” important and familiar works written by authors who clearly befit the book’s project. Though perhaps better known as a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, James Agee was one of the earliest and most steadfast film critics before the vocation truly existed, defending film’s artistry as a writer at Time and The Nation, and writing his most influential piece, “Comedy’s Greatest Era,” included here, as a freelancer for Life Magazine. Kracauer’s essay largely argues that the physicality of slapstick comedy evoked “material life at its crudest” and therefore intrinsically “conformed to the spirit of the medium predestined to capture the fortuitous aspects of physical life” (36). Though Kracauer’s essay represents meta-level film Theory more than genre theory in a limited sense, both Agee’s and Kracauer’s texts lament the devaluation of physical comedy at the advent of sound cinema. The remaining four readings in the section range from 1963 to 1968 and all revolve around the same axis. In “Whatever Happened to Hollywood Comedy?” Dwight MacDonald illustrates how “the old magical world” of silent comedies disappears by mid-century, when contemporary films become too realistic to be amusing abstractly, with films like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad [End Page 59] World (1963) violating the “basic rules of comedy” (54). The last two essays explore film comedy systematically, with Donald W. McCaffrey charting “The Evolution of the Chase in the Silent Screen Comedy,” and Carolyn and Harry Geduld mapping the transformation of comedic characters upon the introduction of sound. Highlights of the second section on the “Western” include Bazin’s highly influential essay “The Western, or the American Film Par Excellence” and George Bluestone’s “The Changing Cowboy: From Dime Novel to Dollar Film,” another early work in adaptation studies, itself pioneered by Bluestone’s seminal book Novels Into Film (1957). Interestingly, despite being devoted to a genre not highly regarded for its representation of diversity, this section exemplifies the widest assortment of critical methods and authors of any in the book. Harry Schein, chemical engineer and founder of the...

Reviewed by: Generic Histories of German Cinema: Genre and Its Deviations ed. by Jaimey Fisher Roger F. Cook Generic Histories of German Cinema: Genre and Its Deviations. Edited by Jaimey Fisher. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013. Pp. 314. Cloth $95.00. ISBN 978-1571135704. This collection of twelve substantial essays fills a notable gap in scholarly work on German film and is a welcome addition to Camden House’s prominent series in German Studies. In the introduction the volume’s editor, Jaimey Fisher, documents convincingly the need for a volume that focuses on the history and theory of genre in German cinema. He provides a good overview of the scant existing scholarship on German genre films and then describes how Generic Histories addresses the topic in a way that can contribute both to the history of German film and to genre theory more broadly. He lays out two key goals of this anthology. One is to illuminate from [End Page 682] a new perspective the links between art cinema and popular film. The second, more central concern is the need to override the partitioning of German history into fixed periods that are seen as distinct and disconnected. Fisher asserts that in emphasizing “the ongoing histories of film genres and their ever mutating forms” (4), the essays in this volume read genre in the German context across the boundaries of these periods and, in doing so, seek to contribute to genre theory more broadly. After stating these objectives, Fisher addresses briefly the influence that German theorists (Adorno, Horkheimer, Kracauer) have had on genre theory, before offering a brief historical sketch of critical writing on film genre. He does so in order to spell out the specific contribution that the “historic-discursive approach” of Generic Histories has to offer. Tailoring his short account of a complex history to this end, Fisher argues that genre theory as a whole has tended to follow a triangulated model constructed around the filmic text, audiences, and industry institutions. The thrust of this historical account (which includes John Calweti, Rick Altman, and Steve Neale, among others) is to show that the various models of genre theory have struggled to find an approach that incorporates both a historical focus on institutions and practices and a discursive engagement with the filmic text. Generic Histories seeks to rectify this by offering a history of German genre film that does both and that can thus serve as a model for genre studies in general. The collection pursues this goal by assigning a certain structure to the individual contributions. Each essay provides a general history of its designated genre and then provides a reading of a particular film as a case study. For the most part, the articles follow the design laid out in the introduction and, in doing so, give a broad history of genre film in German cinema. The contributions cover the most important genres: horror films, the essay film, science fiction, musicals, war films, crime films, the Heimat film, romantic comedy, and detective/police thrillers. While the collection may not cover every genre (e.g., political thriller, Bergfilme, and historical films are not included), there are no glaring gaps. In most cases, the essays also trace the development of a particular genre across different periods in German history, delivering on the promise in the introduction of “transperiod genre criticism.” Of all the contributions, Lutz Koepnick’s piece adheres to the plan laid out in the introduction most effectively. It provides an excellent critical perspective on the history of science-fiction film in German cinema, explaining its limited success in relation to German social, political and cultural history. In a skilled balancing of case study with the larger scope of his piece, he frames his arguments with a discussion of two Fritz Lang science-fiction films of the 1920s (one classic and one minor), and then comes back to Metropolis in a strong conclusion that solidifies his argument with a superb analogy drawn from a classical moment of German science-fiction. Gerd Gemünden also contributes effectively to the theoretical purpose of the volume. He gives a strong reading of Edgar Ulmer’s 1934 horror film The Black Cat as...

This paper examines the pedagogical and decolonial possibilities of teaching genre cinema through non-Western perspectives. As a sessional instructor teaching across multiple institutions in Vancouver, Canada, I elaborate on how I have taught genre cinema as a decolonial and pedagogical project. Through course design that recognises the way that the evolution of film theory in general, and genre theory in particular, has been encoded in Euro-Western-centrism and analysis, my teaching practice brings into conversation other knowledges and approaches to film-making and film studies that have often been excluded from film studies pedagogy. My pedagogical project is to decolonise film studies, including genre theory, as exemplified in such courses as: Re-Visioning Genre Theory, a fourth-year course at Emily Carr University of Art and Design; Genre Cinema: From Classical Hollywood to Global Contemporary, a third-year course at the University of British Columbia; and Refiguring Futurisms, a fourth-year film seminar at the University of British Columbia. Some of the questions explored in my research and teaching practice consider how genre cinema is adopted and subverted in contemporary non-Western films. In this paper, I use Latin American decolonial theory to focus on Brazilian cinema as an exemplar of non-Western and decolonial approaches to genre theory.

It is fitting that genre studies and sound studies should join forces, since both have at times been cast in the role of understudy in the larger field of film and television studies. That is, the study of genre is typically understood to have emerged as an alternative to the prevailing tendency towards auteurist scholarship, while work on sound has often presented itself as an antidote to a ‘visual bias’ in the field. Both approaches also share an investment in broadening the scope of media analysis: genre studies by engaging with a nexus of media production and reception, and the intertextual dimension of film and television cultures; and sound studies by exploring the intermedial dimension of media cultures, as well as the ways in which sound articulates texts, bodies and spaces. A number of recent monographs and edited collections have demonstrated how these two areas of inquiry can form a productive partnership. Robert Miklitsch's Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir joins a growing body of scholarly work that combines the study of film sound and film genre: monographs include Robert Spadoni's Uncanny Bodies, William Whittington's Sound Design and Science Fiction, Peter Stanfield's Horse Opera, and Sarah Kozloff's discussion of dialogue in Westerns, screwball comedies, gangster films and melodramas.1 Also of note are two collections on sound and genre edited by Philip Hayward.2 Miklitsch's book contributes to this scholarly discussion through a wide-ranging analysis of sound and music in the films noirs of the 1940s. Miklitsh has a knack for locating and explicating film sequences that demonstrate the importance of sound, although at times I found myself wishing for a more substantial historical and theoretical framework in order to provide ballast to his argument and unite the book's many intriguing case studies.

Genre can be defined as a pattern of communication that conforms to community norms. Genres are not fixed, but are constantly evolving and emerging. Examples of familiar genres range from speech utterances to publications, from text messages to databases, from blogs to formal reports. Genre studies are a multi-disciplinary area, which has the potential to yield much of relevance to the archival community. With these words, we introduced our call for the papers for this special issue of Archival Science. We were cautiously optimistic that authors would come forward with interesting and insightful papers on various aspects of genre and archives. We received a tremendous response, with a large number of very promising proposals. The seven papers that subsequently made it through the reviewing process into this special issue represent the highest quality submissions, but by no means the totality of research activity in archival science with a focus on genre. The concept of genre is not one that has figured prominently in either archival discourse or practice to date. It has been suggested that there is a potential for it to be relevant in archival description and appraisal (Oliver et al. 2008), but it has attracted much more interest in related disciplines—particularly the information retrieval/information seeking behaviour research communities (see Anderson 2008 for an in depth literature review of genre in information studies). Consequently, if asked about genre, an archivist may think of those ill-conceived lists of document types, which become longer and longer as yet another ambiguous ‘type’ is added. Or, he or she may think of genre as a blunt instrument used in libraries to organise the fiction collection into broad groupings such as romance, mysteries and

In this commentary I will consider a topical thread that runs through most of the essays comprising this issue of New Literary History and the one before it. The topic is the relation between history and in literary studies. In his contribution to this symposium, Michael Prince cites Ralph Cohen's suggestion that both the notion of (literary) and genres themselves appear to be to theory. Prince goes on to suggest that genre's resistance to theoretical consideration tells us more about than it does about itself. For if, as everyone seems to agree, is an essential element or aspect of literarity, then genre's resistance to implies that itself is inimical to literature and should not, therefore, be brought to bear upon the literary artwork. Indeed, Prince holds that it may be genre's resistance to that generates the endless task of literary interpretation, which has the role in criticism of mediating not only between literature and life but also between literature and as well. If we hold to interpretation and abandon we might be able, Prince tells us, to produce a low-level theory of genre without falling into paradox or self-contradiction. And in his essay on mauvais genres, he provides a brilliant historical account of how eighteenth-century English thinkers, in their attempt to construct a theory of genre, met with a kind of resistance by that left them in a wasteland of and a quagmire of logical contradiction, left them, that is, with little more to do than turn over the question of to the newly emerged field of aesthetics, where the paradoxes it generated could be assimi lated to the idea of the sublime. Thus, Michael Prince's alternative to a theoretical approach to the question of is a history (in this case, of the failure of one attempt to construct an adequate theory) of genre. This is consistent with Ralph Cohen's historical approach to the study of genre. Cohen's idea that is resistant to is not itself a theoretical finding; it is a historical or more precisely a historicist one. It is based on the fact that no one has ever produced a compelling of in spite of the

Rethinking Genre Theory Film Genre: and Beyond, by Barry Langford, Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Barry Langford correctly contends that while has become an increasingly contested concept in scholarship, the film continues to dominate much of Hollywood's annual output. To add to his point, at the time of this review, the top-grossing films in the United States include two horror films, a sports film, an action/adventure film, a historical drama, two teen films- one a musical and another a college comedy-and, finally, an animated children's film. While genre theory has traditionally focused on the formation of such Classical categories as the Western, the gangster, the romantic comedy, the horror, and the combat film, the need for a redefined understanding of genre-one which accounts for the post-Classical emergence of the notoriously difficult to define science-fiction and blockbuster action that make up the bulk of multiplex fare every summer- is more necessary than ever. Langford's Film Genre successfully addresses this growing need by working through the question of how the academic and industrial concept of genre emerges, and convincingly promoting an evolutionary model that focuses on genre formation as a process rather than as constant and internally consistent. Instead of decrying the post-Classical impulse toward genre blending and bending as a threat to traditional notions of genre theory, Langford effectively demonstrates that these impulses have been a key feature of genre since the beginning of narrative film. Langford carefully balances his critique of the constantly evolving generic categories between two audiences. On one hand, he pitches his discussion toward students who might be coming to an understanding of genre for the first time, and on the other, he successfully navigates the various and sometimes competing assertions of genre scholars. More specifically, Film Genre extends and revises the expert's sense of genre by pointing to the prescient need to reformulate rigid conceptions of genre films as being only systematic, routinized, and internally consistent productions intended for mass audiences. Langford divides his book into three major sections. First, he traces the emergence of four Classical genres-the Western, the musical, the war/combat film, and the gangster film-and provides significant examples of how scholarship and the industry have shaped the ways in which audiences have come to understand the key signifiers of each. The second section focuses on what he refers to as transition genres of the horror and science-fiction film, clarifying how each contributes to the destabilization of the categories described in the first section. Finally, the third section explores contemporary post-Classical genres like noir, the action blockbuster, and other complex forms like documentary, the Holocaust film, and pornography in order to demonstrate how the mutability of generic form has been a constant and consistent feature of narrative film. Each chapter, moreover, includes a discussion that goes beyond Hollywood to explore how other national cinemas have treated the specific genres under consideration. Lastly, each chapter provides a case-study of a specific analyzed within the matrix of scholarly approaches employed by the author throughout the book, which makes Film Genre especially useful for students. Langford's approach to Film Genre allows him to successfully achieve the important goals of extending the pioneering work of genre theorists like Thomas Schatz, Rick Altman, and Steve Neale, and providing an accessible explanation of Hollywood's historical relationship with the genre film. Langford's flexible definition of genre depends heavily on reinvestigating the significance of melodrama to narrative film. Identifying what he refers to as the melodramatic modalities of genres, Langford's theory helps to clarify why genre films often fail to fully satisfy the rules of their form. …

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access The Challenge of the Medieval Text. Studies in Genre and Interpretation. By W. T. H. JACKSON. Edited by JOAN M. FERRANTE and ROBERT W. HANNING. New York: Columbia University Press. 1985. xi + 246 pp. $42.50. TONY HUNT TONY HUNT ST ANDREWS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume XL, Issue 2, April 1986, Pages 192-a–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/XL.2.192-a Published: 01 April 1986

Over the past century there have been significant developments in the construction of what has become known as paraenesis. Gammie's theoretical perspective on genre analysis highlights three aspects of genre. First, genre is a constructed, analytical device. Second, the genre constructed must be flexible enough to allow variation. Third, to analyze a given text within the confines of a particular genre. The distinction of paraenesis and protrepsis should be seen as subsets or emphases for the social application of paraenetic discourse to differing audiences. Largely indebted to, Dibelius and, more recently, Malherbe, the study of paraenesis has been a study of genre.Keywords: Genre analysis; Lund-Oslo; Paraenesis

This paper presents a genre analysis of the contemporary obituary. Following a literary review, a mixed methods approach is employed to analyse a sample of obituaries of the same deceased person but from a variety of UK sources. The intention is to carry out a pilot project to explore the possibilities of some analysis techniques for genre description. Bhatia’s (1993) seven steps for genre analysis are employed with special attention given to step 6, the analysis of the texts for discourse patterns. For this step corpus tools are employed to identify discourse patterns that characterise the sample texts and that could potentially indicate markers for obituary genre characterisation. This method has been employed both to investigate differences between the texts in the sample and also to identify common characteristics among the sample texts that could potentially distinguish the obituary genre from other genres. The texts are analysed for lexical density, readability, clause complexity, phrase complexity, and syntactic sophistication, among other things. Then a qualitative analysis is carried out to investigate the wider discourse aspects of the genre, also considering multimodal aspects of the contemporary obituary genre. The findings contribute to the knowledge of the discourse patterns of the obituary genre and could be replicated in further research activity to increase the reliability and generalisability of the findings, as well as furthering knowledge of discourse distinctions between different genres.

This article explores the symbiotic relationship between genre theory and film marketing, emphasizing how the integration of genre conventions into marketing strategies enhances audience engagement and box office success. Drawing on Thomas Schatz's theory of cultural ritual, the study examines how genres function as cultural frameworks that reflect and reinforce societal norms. By understanding these frameworks, film marketers can create targeted campaigns that resonate with audiences' expectations and cultural contexts. The paper highlights the dynamic interplay between production, film, and audience, illustrating how recurring genre conventions guide both creative and marketing efforts. Through case studies such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Netflix's "To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before," the article demonstrates the practical application of genre theory in crafting compelling marketing strategies that balance tradition and innovation, ensuring the ongoing relevance and appeal of cinematic genres in a global market.

Research aim. To analyse classification of genres of modern television, and educe reasons, that assisted birth of the new CRT forms, переосмисленню of traditional genres, becoming of new types of the televisional broadcasting. To extend an idea about genre aspects and investigate progress of genres trends on modern television.Research methodology. By means of analysis of modern telecasts, to investigate socio-economic and political changes in the state, that influenced on diffusions of all genre system, educe reasons that assisted the origin of new genre formations, and also educe basic progress of television trends in a historical aspect.The scientific novelty. In the process of evolution of televisional genres, types and formats of телемовлення it is observed the tendency of the integrated selection of telecasts, diffusion, hybridization of genres, became, new genre formations appear due to confluence, or substituting for one genres other. In connection with it it is expedient to consider a progress of genres trend on modern television, to find out and set reasons of origin of new genres, external and internal copulas between them, to systematize practical knowledge on the basis of scientific approach.Conclusions. In the process of research reasons, that assisted переосмисленню of traditional genres, birth of new, becoming of new types of telecasts, were educеd. It was found out, that in connection with the evolution of genres, next to concepts diffusion and differentiation of genres arise up concept of confluence of genres, and the permanent process of washed out of genre borders results not only in the origin of hybrid genre forms but also permanent genre enriching. A study of genres, their possibilities and characteristic signs is especially important for a journalist, as exactly genres determine the specific of their work and professional activity. In genres maintenance of the program, her subjects and range of problems, methods of work of journalist, form of intermingling, shows up with a spectator. Inculcating the newest digital technologies, using riches of expressive facilities, телевізійники constantly extend and diversify the genre palette of the programs.

Purpose Though contemporary Genre Studies, and especially American Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS), has made great progress through prioritizing the functional aspect of genre, there is now much to be gained by giving renewed space to the formal and thematic sides of genre as well, granting the concrete utterances, making up particular genres, equal weight in the theory and analysis of genre. The purpose of this shift is emphatically not to take anything away from current Genre Studies; I admire what is being done in genre research today and want to add to it and expand it by demonstrating some of the possibilities enabled by a modified approach. Findings Current Genre Studies, as encountered in RGS, is an impressive and highly organized body of knowledge. By re-introducing literary and high rhetorical subject matter, which has been under-studied in RGS, into it, the chapter demonstrates some of the complexities involved when Genre Studies confront genres whose utterances are more complex than the “homely discourses” usually discussed in RGS. Formal and thematic features play a far too significant role in literary works to be explicable simply as derivations from function alone. But this is not limited to works of literature. The chapter finds that though more complex genres, literary and high rhetorical, most consistently invite utterance-based interpretations, other genre-based studies can benefit from them as well. Originality/value The chapter offers a perspective on genre which gives renewed weight to formal and thematic interpretations of genre, by allowing the utterances themselves to re-enter center stage. This enables an improved understanding of complex genres. It also revives close reading as a viable approach to understanding genre and thus to inform the rhetorical, linguistic, and sociological perspectives dominant in current genre scholarship. Finally, it improves our understanding of genre in both a systematic and a historical perspective. The chapter demonstrates, thus, that an understanding which puts as much weight on a genre’s utterances, as it does on its function is viable as an interpretation of genres, and is fruitful as an approach to them.

There is a global tendency for parents to conceive children later in life. The maternal dimension of the postponement transition has been thoroughly studied, but interest in the paternal side is more recent. For the moment, most literature reviews on the topic have focused on the consequences of advanced paternal age (APA) on fertility, pregnancy and the health of the child. The present review seeks to move the focus away from the biological and medical dimensions of APA and synthesise the knowledge of the other face of APA. We used the scoping review methodology. Searches of interdisciplinary articles databases were performed with keywords pertaining to APA and its dimensions outside of biology and medicine. We included scientific articles, original research, essays, commentaries and editorials in the sample. The final sample of 177 documents was analysed with qualitative thematic analysis. We identified six themes highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of APA research. The 'terminological aspects' highlight the lack of consensus on the definition of APA and the strategies developed to offer alternatives. The 'social aspects' focus on the postponement transition towards reproducing later in life and its cultural dimensions. The 'public health aspects' refer to attempts to analyse APA as a problem with wider health and economic implications. The 'psychological aspects' focus on the consequences of APA and older fatherhood on psychological characteristics of the child. The 'ethical aspects' reflect on issues of APA emerging at the intersection of parental autonomy, children's welfare and social responsibility. The 'regulatory aspects' group different suggestions to collectively approach the implications of APA. Our results show that the field of APA is still in the making and that evidence is lacking to fully address the issues of APA. The review suggests promising avenues of research such as introducing the voice of fathers of advanced age into the research agenda. The results of this review will be useful for developing policies and preconception health interventions that consider and include prospective fathers of advanced age.