5/03/20

Genre: Research for Practice

Genre is roughly translated from the word ‘type’, relating to the ‘types’ of film. Genre is used to organise film better in terms of appealing to target audiences and for marketing strategies.

Horror is one of the most popular film genres, media created to induce fear into audiences’ yet, though this fear is something enjoyed by masses. The horror genre often tends to follow tropes, these being story themes or narrative structures repeated to where they are recognised to a particular genre or film. Horror often involves: ‘jump scares, no signal, abandoned building, vengeful spirit, final girl’ (Loggie, M, 2017) some others that may fit this are ‘psychopaths, ‘the reveal’, gore.’ These tropes fall into Thomas Schatz approach to genre, based on the narrative themes (Abrams, N, Bell, I & Urdis, J pg. 323).

Another way of presenting the horror genre is through Colin McArthur’s approach to genre through iconography (Abrams, N, Bell, I & Urdis, J pg. 320) – the technical and visual significance of the film. The use of images to represent ideas: ‘disfigured face, the haunted house’ and often symbolism for death through props such as the knife (Woolley, S, 2015). Iconography is all in how the film is put together to represent the overarching theme of horror. Some breakdowns of genre are considered flexible – not as restricted to the bounds of “what makes a [genre] film?” – instead there are a lot of overlapping features of various genre types. Steve Neale is one such with this judgement, focusing on the repetition. His theory based on the contrasting sides of conforming to stereotypes, in this case ‘jumpscares’, or whether to subvert audiences’ expectations by not following the codes and conventions known (Abrams, N, Bell, I & Urdis, J pg. 326).

There are many other theories where genre is recognised and separated. Stereotypes of these genres become noticeable to viewers inspiring spoofs (Abrams, N, Bell, I & Urdis, pg. 331-33), an example of this is the ‘Scary Movie’ (2000) series of films – these films contain clear parodies to horror classics including ‘Halloween’ (1978) and ‘The Ring’ (2002). Both films containing a variation of the aforementioned tropes. Understanding genre is essential in the film production process – without, marketing of films would be similar no matter the genre, therefore confusing audiences.

This look into genre, and ‘the variations on the approaches to discovering genre’, including those not referenced within this document, were interesting to learn about – giving overall more depth on how both script and characters work – as well as features to look out for when determining the themes and genre of a production. Many codes and conventions could essentially be used to identify differing genre types. The horror genre, continues to grow in popularity, most of what makes a good horror is following these conventions however, also finding a level of individuality.

Bibliography

Abrams, N. Bell, I & Urdis, J (2010) Studying Film: Bloomsbury, London Borough of Camden (Accessed: 9/03/20)

Loggie, M (2017) Available at: https://www.raindance.org/6-common-horror-film-tropes/ (Accessed: 9/03/20)

Woolley, S (2015) Available at: https://prezi.com/rxbz4zugrwaq/iconography-of-horror/ (Accessed: 9/03/20)