G235: Critical

Perspectives in Media

Theoretical Evaluation
of Production 1b)

Overview
Q1b) is also out of 25 marks and
you have 30 minutes to write it.
You have to theoretically evaluate ONE of your coursework
pieces against one unseen media concept/area of theory
from a choice of:
•Genre
•Narrative
•Representation
•Audience
•Media Language

We recommend that you pick the product you want to

analyse and stick to this for the exam. We recommend your
video but we are not being prescriptive. For you to succeed
in this side all homework must be handed in as it is basically
practise for the exam.
 G235: Critical
Perspectives in Media

Theoretical Evaluation
of Production

1b) Genre
Aims/Objectives
• To introduce the concept of genre
theory and key genre theorists.
• To have a basic understanding of how
to categorise evaluate your
coursework against genre theory.
 What Is Genre?
• ‘Genre’ is a critical tool that helps us study
texts and audience responses to texts by
dividing them into categories based on
common elements.
• Daniel Chandler (2001) argues that the word
genre comes from the French (and originally
Latin) word for 'kind' or 'class'. The term is
widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media
theory to refer to a distinctive type of ‘text’.
• All genres have sub genres (genre within a
genre).
• This means that they are divided up into
more specific categories that allow
audiences to identify them specifically by
their familiar and what become
recognisable characteristics (Barry Keith
Grant, 1995)
• However, Steve Neale (1995) stresses that
“genres are not ‘systems’ they are
processes of systematization” – i.e. They
are dynamic and evolve over time.
Generic Characteristics across all texts share
similar elements of the below depending on
the medium...

• Typical Mise-en-scène/Visual style

(iconography, props, set design, lighting,
temporal and geographic location, costume,
shot types, camera angles, special effects).
• Typical types of Narrative (plots, historical
setting, set pieces).
• Generic Types, i.e. typical characters (do
typical male/female roles exist,
archetypes?).
• Typical studios/production companies.
• Typical Personnel (directors, producers,
actors, stars, auteurs etc.).
• Typical Sound Design (sound design,
dialogue, music, sound effects).
• Typical Editing Style.
• KEY: Important elements, less important
elements, elements of minimal importance.
Styles
• NOTE: Comedy and animation are not genres,
they are styles or treatments.

Wall-E (2008)

Wall-E (2008) Spaceballs (1987)

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.

In short, 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 in order to fulfil a particular
pleasure.
Pleasure of genre for audiences
• Theorist Rick Altman (1999) argues that genre
offers audiences ‘a set of pleasures’.
Emotional Pleasures: The emotional pleasures offered to
audiences of genre films are particularly significant when they
generate a strong audience response.
Visceral Pleasures: Visceral pleasures (‘visceral’ refers to
internal organs) are ‘gut’ responses and are defined by how the
film’s stylistic construction elicits a physical effect upon its
audience. This can be a feeling of revulsion, kinetic speed, or a
‘roller coaster ride’.
Intellectual Puzzles: Certain film genres such as the thriller or
the ‘whodunit’ offer the pleasure in trying to unravel a mystery
or a puzzle. Pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and
forecasting the end or the being surprised by the unexpected.
The Strengths Of Genre Theory

The main strength of 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
and 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.
Short Film- medium not genre?
• The medium of short film does not have a
specific genre (see notes on conventions of
short film).
• However the things that separate short films
from feature films are that they often have
single strand narratives and/or focus on few
characters.
• They can be very often anti-
narrative/surrealist.
• Short films can be ambiguous, open meaning
(Eco, 1981) and often experimental.
Genre Development and Transformation

Over the years genres develop and change as the

wider society that produce them also changes, a
process that is known as generic transformation.
Christian Metz in his book Language and
Cinema (1974) argued that genres go through
a typical cycle of changes during their
lifetime.

Experimental Stage
Classic Stage
Parody Stage
Deconstruction Stage
Music video –medium with many
sub-genres /postmodern styles?
• Music video is a medium intended to appeal
directly to youth subcultures by reinforcing
generic elements of musical genres.
• They are called pop-promos as they are used
to promote a band or artist.
• Music videos are postmodern texts whose
main purpose is to promote a star persona
(Dyer, 1975).
• They don’t have to be literal representations
of the song or lyrics.
• In terms of genre, there are narrative and
performance and some that combine both.
Both performance and narrative based
videos are very often purely intertextual
Blink 182 ‘Say it ain’t So’, Weezer ‘Buddy
Holly’.

•They often pastiche/parody films or offer

commentary on social events. Green Day’s Basket
Case (1996) pastiches One Flew Over The
Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).
• Others include themes which may fit around the
lyrics of the song or society (particularly if the
band are well known activists known for
supporting a cause).
• This is a medium known for being experimental
and controversial (see conventions).
• The generic conventions stay the same but the
style (the look of something) changes between
music genres.
Documentary – mediation of the
real?
• Documentary ‘modes’ (Bordwell, 1989) or
sub-genres have grown in number since
the 1950s and these are clearly listed on
the handouts with a detailed explanation
about generic elements and examples.
Nicholas Abercrombie (1996) suggests that 'the
boundaries between genres are shifting and
becoming more permeable';

Abercrombie is concerned with modern television,

which he suggests seems to be engaged in 'a
steady dismantling of genre‘.
Genre Themes

David Bordwell (1989) notes, 'any

theme may appear in any genre‘.
TASK: What do you think are some of the key
themes of sub genre of short film you have created?

TASK: What do you think are some of the key

themes of music videos (medium is primarily aimed
at youth audience and various subcultures)?

TASK: What do you think are some key themes

within your sub-genre of documentary?
Horror films, for example, are basically just modern fairy
tales and often act as morality plays in which people who
break society’s rules are punished.

Fear of the unknown – the monster is the ‘monstrous

other’ i.e. anything that is scary because it is foreign or
different.

Sex = death – in horror movies, especially Slasher movies,

sex is immoral and must be punished, werewolf movies
can be seen as a metaphor for puberty, vampires can be
as metaphors for sexually transmitted diseases or rape
etc.

The breakdown of society – post-apocalyptic movies are

about our fear (or secret desire for) of the breakdown of
society. The collapse of civilisation results in human kind
reverting to their animal instincts.
Some short films can also be social realist texts, and
so through their discourse they share some
conventional themes of horror/scare texts in general
such as:

The duality of man/ personal journey – the conflict

between man’s civilised side and his savage, primal
instincts, e.g. Jeykll and Hyde, Werewolf movies, the
Hulk, etc.

Segregation and alienation – two opposing cultures

or beings going through a struggle to survive .

As there are no standard themes of short movies,

depending on their audience they offer their own
themes.
Some music videos have themes for a more
youthful audience such as....

Teen angst
Rebellion - Conformity verses non-conformity;
Romance;
Sex/losing your virginity
Nostalgia – for the innocence of youth
Nihilism – the belief that there is no future;
Coming of age rituals (e.g. the prom, falling in
love, losing your virginity etc.);
Tribalism: Popularity verses unpopularity, e.g.
cliques;
Bullying
Juvenile Delinquency: Moral panics and the
teenager as a folk devil;
The currency of ‘cool’;
Hedonism – living purely for pleasure;
Friendship.

Other themes in music videos:

War
Crime
Poverty
Capitalism
Racism
Genres are not fixed. They constantly
change and evolve over time – your
coursework articles, as we have discussed,
are postmodern pieces.

David Buckingham (1993) argues that

'genre is not... Simply "given" by the
culture: rather, it is in a constant process of
negotiation and change’.
As postmodern theorist Jacques Derrida
reminds us, "the law of the law of genre . .
. is precisely a principle of contamination, a
law of impurity".

For example, short films and music videos

are in the process of genre cross-over.
Some narrative videos borrow from the
conventions of short films and in fact are
short films. E.g. Arctic Monkey’s music
videos ‘Scummy Man’. Portishead’s ‘To Kill
a Dead Man’ is essentially a short film noir
(1940s detective movie...).
In terms of your coursework
products....
• How we define a genre depends on our
purposes (Chandler, 2001).

• What was your purpose and the medium?

• Your audience and the industry sector you

were working within will have defined what
you understood as the genre and sub-genre
of the texts you created.
All this applies to posters, magazine spreads/pages, CD covers
etc, adverts.

For your homework:

“Media texts rely on audience knowledge of

generic codes and conventions in order for
them to create meaning”. Explain how you
used or subverted generic conventions in one
of your production pieces.