Lydia Bedding

Genre is a way of categorising media texts according to the style and content of the media text. Genres have paradigms, these are

certain characteristics that the audience use, leading to the audience having expectations as to how the media will develop. E.g. in a romantic comedy film the audience would expect a man

and woman to end up together at the end of the film.

There are many varieties of genre within film such as horror, comedy, sci-fi, thriller, romantic, crime, historical and many

more. There can be hybrids of genres as well such as rom-com which also has specific conventions of this hybrid genre.

Media texts are given a specific genre in order to attract a specific target audience for example in a horror film the

audience are likely to expect weak and stronger characters, weapons, suspense and dramatic music etc. There are usually

one of more deaths with the horror genre.

WHAT IS GENRE?

Rick Altman argues that genres are usually defined in terms of media language (SEMANTIC elements) or certain ideologies and narratives

(SYNATIC elements).

Daniel Chandler: Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particluar conventions of content (such

as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them.

David Bordwell notes, ‘any theme may appear in any genre’ (Bordwell 1989) ‘one could..argue that no set of necessary and sufficient

conditions can mark off genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all expects off ordinary film-goers would find acceptable.

You can apply these codes and conventions from these different theorists to the horror genre as horror films typically contain an isolated

setting with dark/low lighting and a villain/supernatural being.

GENRE THEORISTS.