RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES

RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES

Genre-category or classification of a group of movies in

which the films share similar subject matter and similar ways

of organizing the subject

Cultural Rituals-the repetition of formulas that help

coordinate our needs and desires

Generic conventions-are isolated properties or figures that

that identify a genre through such features as character types,

settings, props, or events that are repeated from film to film

RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES

Iconography-image or image patterns with specific connotations

or meanings

When generic conventions are out in motion as part of a plot,

they become generic formulas, the patterns for developing stories

in a particular genre.

Generic expectations-describe a viewer’s experience and

knowledge while watching a film that help to anticipate the

meaning of particular conventions or the direction of certain

narrative formulas

RITUALS, CONVENTIONS, & ARCHETYPES

Hybrid genres-are those created through the

interaction of different genres to produce fusions,

such as romantic comedies of musical horror films

Subgenres-are specific versions of a genre denoted

by an adjective, for example, the spaghetti western

or the slapstick comedy

COMEDY SUBGENRES

Slapstick comedies-marked by physical humor and

stunts, comprised some of the first narrative films

Screwball comedies-transformed the humor of the

physical into fast talking verbal gymnastics, arguably

displacing sexual energy with barbed verbal

exchanges between men and women

Romantic comedies-humor takes a second place to

happines

MELODRAMAS

Word itself indicates a combination of the

intensities of music (melos) and the interaction of

human conflicts (drama).

Fundamental Formulas & Conventions• Characters defined by their situation or basic traits-

struggle to express their feelings and emotions• Narratives rely on coincidences and reversals and

build towards emotional or physical climaxes• Visual style that emphasizes emotion or elemental

struggle

MELODRAMAS

Develop conflict between interior emotions and exterior

restrictions, between yearning and loss and satisfaction and

renewal.

Physical Melodramas focus on physical plight and material

conditions that repress or control the protagonist's desires and

emotions.

Family melodramas elaborate the confines and restrictions of the

protagonist by investigating the psychological and gendered

forces of the family.

MELODRAMAS

Social Melodramas extend the melodramatic crisis

of the family to include larger historical, community,

and economic issues.

Other subgenres: musicals, animated musicals,

horror, crime films, gangster films

SIGNIFICANCE OF FILM GENRE

Prescriptive approach-assume that a model for

genre preexists any particular films in that genre

Descriptive approach-a genre develops and

changes over time; a successful genre film builds on

older films and develops in new ways