G235: Critical

Perspectives in
Media

Theoretical
Evaluation of
Production
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
 G235: Critical
Perspectives in
Media

Theoretical
Evaluation of
Production
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.
W - aE l (l 2 0 0 8 )

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
 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
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
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
Christian them
Metzalso
in changes,
his book a process
that is known as generic
Language and Cinema (1974)
transformation.
argued that genres go through a
typical cycle of changes during their
lifetime.
 
Experimental Stage
Classic Stage
Parody 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
• 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)?
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
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

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
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
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.