genre

genre

- originally French, meaning "kind" or "type". - certain types of movies (sci-fi, action, comedy, musical, western)

The usefulness of genre categories

-help producers decide what films to make -despite popularity, fantasy and science fiction films are green-lighted - success of young-adult fantasy: harry potter led to many studios to finance costly but unprofitable ventures into the same territory (inkheart, the golden compass) - during the 60s studios backed The Sound of Music and other big-budget musicals because they attracted a wide audience - contemporary musicals tend to be lower-budget items such as Mamma Mia! and the Step Up series Advertising tends to pinpoint a film's genre - poster for Twilight: Eclipse proclaims: "Vampires. Werewolves. Humans. It's time to chose a side." - coming-attractions trailers and the film's poster design usually leave no doubt about what genre the film is in, the better to tagret fans - critics and entertainment reporters play a role in this promotional success. - they can announce what genre the film belongs to and express an evaluation of how well it fulfills certain conventions

Genre Mixing

A genre may also change by mixing its conventions with those of another genre. - In 1979, Alien proved innovative because it fused science fiction conventions with those of the contemporary horror film, centering on a monster stalking its victims one by one. The rusting spaceship became the futuristic equivalent of the old dark house full of unseen dangers. By the 2000s, the science fiction / horror blend had become conventional, as in Pitch Black and Doom. The musical blends easily with other genres. -- There have been musical melodramas, such as Yentl and three versions of A Star Is Born. The Rocky Horror Picture Show created the musical horror movie. During the 1930s and 1940s, singing cowboys such as Gene Autry were popular, and the Western musical was revived in the 1960s with Cat Ballou. - Likewise, comedy can merge with any other genre. Mel Brooks and Woody Allen have created comedies out of the conventions of science fiction (Spaceballs, Sleeper), Westerns (Blazing Saddles), outlaw films (Take the Money and Run ), thrillers and detective stories (High Anxiety, Manhattan Murder Mystery), even historical epics (History of the World Part Love and Death). Comic touches can lighten dramas, and if the proportions are somewhat equal, we have what some call a "dramedy" or a "seriocomedy." The combinations seem almost limitless. In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, bumbling escaped prisoners accidentally become country singing stars, and the result is at once an outlaw movie, a social protest film, a slapstick comedy, and a musical. Filmmakers understand that mixing genres is a good way to innovate. - The romantic comedy is typically associated with female audiences, but in the late 2000s some producers believed that adding some elements of raunchy comedy would attract men. The result was such films as The Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up. According to one producer: Fundamentally , they're romantic comedies , but the concepts are very male-appropriate" - Guardians of the Galaxy found success by treating save-the-universe space opera as a comic premise Filmmakers may borrow from other cultures too. - The Japanese swordplay film, based on virtuoso combat and themes of honor and revenge has blended well with the Western. Sergio Leone based his Italian Western For a Fistful of Dollars loosely on the plot of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and the same Japanese director's Seven Samurai provided the basis for the Hollywood Western The Magnificent Seven. Similarly, widespread fan interest in Hong Kong movies during the 1980s and 1990s led the Wachowski sisters to mix hightech science fiction effects with martial arts choreography in The Matrix. The fact that genres can intermingle doesn't mean that there are no distinctions among them. - The Matrix is a hybrid, but we can still differentiate standard Hong Kong martial-arts films from standard Hollywood science fiction tales. - Although we can't pin down a single description of a genre that will apply for all time, we can recognize that at any moment in film history, filmmakers , critics, and audiences largely agree on the genres in play. Again, there are usually core examples , ones that makers and viewers agree are clear-cut instances , as well as more peripheral or mixed cases

Genre History

Because filmmakers frequently play with conventions, genres change constantly. A comedy from the 1920s is likely to be very different from one in the 1960s. Across history, the conventions of genres and subgenres get recast, and by mixing conventions from different genres, filmmakers create new possibilities surprisingly often.

The Western

Earliest film genres, established in the 1910s...partly based on historical reality because in the American West there were cowboys, outlaws, settlers, and Native tribes. - films also derived their portrayal of the frontier from songs, popular fiction, and wild west shows Quite early, the central theme of the genre became the conflict between civilized order and the lawless frontier - from the east and the city come the settlers who want to raise families, the teachers who aim to spread learning, and the bankers and government officials - in contrast, people outside of the eastern civilization - native Americans but also outlaws, trappers, and traders, and greedy cattle barons iconography: - the covered wagon and the railroad are set against the horse and canoe; the schoolhouse and church contrast with the lonely campfire - costumes: the settlers' starched dresses and Sunday suits stand out against natives' tribal garb and the cowboys' jeans and Stetsons The typical Western hero stands between the two thematic poles - at home in the wilderness but naturally inclined toward justice and kindness, the cowboy is often poised between savagery and civilization. - "good bad man" as a common protagonist The in-between position of the hero affects common Western plots. - The protagonist may start out on the side of the lawless, or he may simply stand apart from the conflict. In either case, he becomes uneasily attracted to the life offered by the newcomers to the frontier. - Eventually, the hero decides to join the forces of order, helping them fight hired gunmen, bandits, or whatever the film presents as a threat to stability and progress. As the genre developed, a social ideology governed its conventions. - White populations progress westward was considered a historic mission, while the conquered indigenous cultures were usually treated as primitive and savage. - Western films typically have been full of racist stereotypes of Native Americans and Hispanics. On a few occasions, filmmakers treated Native American characters as tragic figures, ennobled by their closeness to nature but facing the extinction of their way of life. The best early example is probably The Last of the Mohicans (1920). Nor was the genre always optimistic about taming the wilderness. - The hero's eventual commitment to civilization's values was often tinged with regret for his loss of freedom. In John Ford's Straight Shooting (1917), Cheyenne Harry (played by Harry Carey) is hired by a villainous rancher to evict a farmer, but he falls in love with the farmer's daughter and vows to reform. Rallying the farmers, Harry helps defeat the rancher. Still, he is reluctant to settle down with Molly. Within this set of values , a great many conventional scenes became standardized -the Indians attack on forts or wagon trains , the shy courting of a woman by the rough -hewn hero, the outlaws robbery of a bank or stagecoach , the climactic gunfight on dusty town streets. Writers and directors could distinguish their films by novel handlings of these elements . In Sergio Leone's flamboyant Italian Westerns , conventions are stretched out in minute detail and amplified to a huge scale. There were narrative and thematic innovations as well. After such liberal Westerns of the 1950s as Broken Arrow (1950), indigenous cultures began to be treated with more respect. - In Little Big Man (1970) and Soldier Blue (1970), the conventional thematic values were reverseddepicting Indian life as civilized and white society as marauding. Some films played up the hero's uncivilized side, showing him perilously out of control (Winchester 73 1950), psychopathic (The Left -Handed Gun 1958), or racist (Hostiles, 2017 ). The heroes of The Wild Bunch (1969) would have been considered unvarnished villains in early Westerns The new complexity of the protagonist is evident in John Ford's The Searchers (1956). - - After a Comanche raid on his brother's homestead, Ethan Edwards sets out to find his kidnapped niece Debbie. He is driven primarily by family loyalty but also by his secret love for his brother's wife, who has been raped and killed by the raiders. Ethan's sidekick, a young man who is part Cherokee, realizes that Ethan plans not to rescue Debbie but to kill her for becoming a Comanche wife. Ethan's fierce racism and raging vengeance culminate in a raid on the Comanche village. At the film's close, Ethan returns to civilization but pauses on the cabin's threshold before turning back to the desert. Western is most clearly defined by subject (of the American frontier), theme, and iconography

The Horror Film

Horror genre is most recognizable by the emotional effect it tries to arouse - aims to shock, disgust, repel-in short, the horrify. - this impulse is what shapes the genre's other conventions What can horrify us? - typically a monster - in a horror film, the monster is a dangerous breach of nature, a violation of our normal sense of what's possible - the monster might be unnaturally large (ex. King Kong) - the monster might violate the boundary between the dead and the living, as ghosts, vampires, zombies do - the monster might be an ordinary human who is transformed (ex. Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde) - or the monster might be something wholly unknown to science, as with the creature in the Alien films. - The genre's horrifying emotional effect, then, relies on a character convention: a menacing, unnatural monster Other conventions follow from this one. Our reaction to the monster may be guided by other characters who react to it in the properly horrified way. - In Cat People (1942), a mysterious woman can, apparently, turn into a panther. Our revulsion and fear are confirmed by the reaction of the woman's husband and his coworker. - By contrast, we know that E.T. is not a horror film because, although the alien is unnatural, he isn't threatening, and the children don't react to him as if he is. The horror plot will often start with the monster's attack on normal life - in response, the other characters must discover that the monster is at large and try to destroy it. This plot can be developed in various ways: by having the monster launch more attacks, or by blocking the characters' efforts to destroy it - in The Exorcist, the characters only gradually discover that Regan is possessed; after they realize this, they still must struggle to drive the demon out. The genre's characteristic themes also stem from the response the filmmakers aim to arouse - if the monster horrifies us because it violates the laws of nature that we know, the genre is well suited to suggest the limits of human knowledge. - It's probably significant that the skeptical authorities who must be convinced of the monster's existence are often scientists. In other cases, the scientists themselves unleash monsters through their risky experiments. A common convention of this type of plot has the characters concluding that there are some things that humans are not meant to know. - another thematic pattern of the horror film plays on fears about the environment, as when nuclear accidents and other human-made disasters create mutant monsters like the giant ants in Them! iconography: settings where monsters might lurk - old dark house in which a group of potential victims gather was popularized by The Cat and the Canary in 1927 and was reused for The Haunting (1999) and The Others (2001) - modern version of the haunted house seen in Paranormal Activity (2008) - Cemeteries can yield the walking dead; scientists' laboratories, an artificial human (as in Frankenstein) - Hitchcock juxtaposed a mundane hotel with a decaying mansion in Psycho, or when George Romero set humans battling zombies in a shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead Iconography: heavy makeup - a furry face and hands can signal transformation into a werewolf, while shriveled skin indicates a mummy - some actors have specialized in transforming themselves into frightening figures. Lon Chaney, who played the original Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera (1925), was as "the man of a thousand faces" - most recently, computer special effects and motion capture have supplemented makeup in transforming actors into beastly creatures Like the western, the horror film emerged in the era of silent moviemaking - some most important early works in the genre were German, notably The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), the first adaption of the novel Dracula - the angular performances, heavy makeup, and distorted settings characteristic of German Expressionist cinema conveyed an ominous, supernatural atmosphere Because a horror film can create its emotional impact with makeup and other low-technology special effects, the horror genre has been favored by filmmakers on tight budgets. - during 1930s, a second-rank Hollywood studio, Universal, launched a cycle of horror films. The popularity of Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932) helped the studio become a major company. - A decade later, RKO's B-picture unit under Val Lewton produced a cycle of literate, somber films on minuscule budgets. Lewton's directors proceeded by hints, keeping the monster offscreen and cloaking the sets in darkness. (ex. The Cat People - we never see the heroine transform herself into a panther, and we only glimpse the creature in certain scenes. The film achieves its effects through shadows, offscreen sound, and character reaction). In later decades, horror became a staple of the 1960s low-budget independent production, with many American entries targeted at the youth market. - George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) was budgeted at only $114K, but it found wide success on college campuses. At the other end of the budgetary scale, the genre acquired a new respectability, chiefly because of the prestige of Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973). These films innovated by presenting violent and disgusting actions with unprecedented explicitness. When the possessed Regan vomited in the face of the priest bending over her, a new standard for horrific imagery was set. Decades later, the Saw series raised the gore quotient even higher. The horror film entered into a period of popularity that has not yet ended. - Many major Hollywood directors have worked in the genre, and several horror films-from Jaws (1975) and Carrie (1976) to installments in the Twilight saga (2008 on)-have become huge hits. - Low-budget horror has flourished as well. The Blair Witch Project (1999), shot for a reputed $35,000, found a huge audience internationally. A decade later, Paranormal Activity, shot for $11,000, earned a spectacular $200 million at worldwide box offices. More broadly, the genre's iconography pervades contemporary culture, decorating lunch boxes and theme park rides. - Horror novels by Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer have been adapted for films and TV series, while genre classics such as The Mummy and Frankenstein have been remade for modern audiences . - The interest in producing horror films is global , with Europe and Asia adding to the repertory with 28 Days Later (UK), Nightwatch (Russia), The Host (South Korea), The Ring (Japan )The Devil's Backbone (Spain), Let the Right One In (Sweden), and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Iran) The centrality of horror to modern American cinema has set scholars looking for cultural explanations. - Many critics suggest that the 1970s subgenre of family horror films, such as The Exorcist and Poltergeist , reflects social concerns about the breakup of American families . - Others propose that the genre's questioning of traditional categories of normality is in tune with both the post-Vietnam and the post-Cold War eras: Viewers may be uncertain of their fundamental beliefs about the world and their identity. - Fans are also drawn by the imaginative special effects and makeup , so filmmakers compete to show ever gorier and more grotesque imagery . - For all these reasons , horror- film conventions grew so familiar that parodies such as the Scary Movie franchise and Shaun of the Dead became as popular as the films they mocked . Through genre mixing and the give-and-take between audience tastes and filmmakers ' ambitions , the horror film has displayed the interplay of convention and innovation that's basic to any genre.

Genres as Social Reflection

It's one thing to suggest that filmmakers deliberately address their films to current concerns or tastes. But some scholars suggest that at different points in history, the stories themes, values, or imagery of the genre harmonize with public attitudes in a more involuntary fashion. - For instance, don't the science fiction films of the 1950s with hydrogen bombs creating Godzilla and other monsters, reveal fears of nuclear technology run amok? Even if the filmmakers didn't knowingly put such messages in their work perhaps the success of the films reflected what the audiences felt. The hypothesis is that genre conventions, repeated from film to film, reflected the audience's pervasive doubts or anxieties. Many film scholars would argue that this approach helps explain why genres vary in popularityAs the public anxieties change, new genres will reflect more up-to-date concerns. Social processes can be reflected in genre innovations as well. - Many commentators saw Get Out as a film responding to contemporary debates on racial prejudice. The Armitages servants, Walter and Georgina, are literally dispossessed of their bodies through brain surgery. The silent auction using bingo cards reminds us that slaves were bought and sold In an ironic touch at the climax, the protagonist Chris can save himself only by picking cotton out of the ripped armchair Besides its references to slavery Get Out represents broader social pressures on African Americans to surrender their cultural identity. We see some of the African American characters adapting their behavior to upper-class white norms . Missy's use of a teacup and teaspoon to hypnotize Chris could be seen as mobilizing perfect symbols of white gentility As Get Out's popularity indicates, many viewers saw the film as relevant to its historical moment, particularly in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement . Such ways of looking at genre are usually called reflectionist because they assume that genres reflect social attitudes. Some critics, though , would object that reflectionist reading can become oversimplified . If we look closely at a genre film, we usually discover complexities that nuance a reflectionist account . For instance Get Out arranges African American characters on a spectrum in relation to white culture. At one extreme of assimilation , the gentrified black man Andre seems to have lost any trace of urban black culture he doesn't even recognize a fist bump. At the other extreme , the TSA officer Rod's talk and actions recall edgy comics like Chris Rock and Kevin Hart. Like many protagonists Chris finds himself between extremes. As a photographer whose work appears in galleries , he wants to succeed in a milieu defined by wealth and white privilege . In his awkward interactions with the Armitages and their friends, he remains polite and cordial But he knows he's an outsider, and he senses that the liberal whites' concern is patronizing . Often what seems to be social reflection results from the film industry's efforts to exploit the day's headlines. Jordan Peele surely made Get Out to express his social concern as a black man living in 21st-century America. But producer Jason Blum's interest in the project was likely also based on his instinct about what might sell. The result is less an involuntary reflection than a deliberate effort to treat current issues in a popular genre. Perhaps surprisingly , the film proved popular in Italy, South Korea , and elsewhere. Whatever its relevance to the American scene, the film may activate wider fears about the loss of identity and personal autonomy.

origins

Many film genres begin by borrowing conventions from other media. - The melodrama has clear antecedents in stage plays and novels such as Uncle Tom's Cabin. - Types of comedy can be traced back to stage farces or comic novels. - Musicals draw on both musical comedies and variety shows. Yet the film medium always reshapes an adopted genre. - For example, Western novels were already popular in the 19th century when cinema was invented. Yet Westerns did not become a film genre until after 1908. Why the delay? Westerns need outdoor landscapes. As films got longer (up to roughly 15 minutes) and studios hired actors on contract filmmakers may have been encouraged to shoot more on location. Using rural American landscapes in turn fostered stories involving the frontier, and the Western quickly became a tremendously popular genre. It was also a uniquely American genre, giving U.S. films a way to compete in the growing international market. In such ways film genres acquire their own history combining borrowings from other arts and distinctive innovations. One important pressure on genres is technology. - The musical film crystallized with the arrival of synchronized sound. - Fantasy and science fiction became popular partly because filmmakers had digital tools that could conjure up unreal creatures and imaginary landscapes. - Digital special effects have also enabled filmmakers to build photorealistic worlds for comic-book superheroes

Rituals and Ambivalence

Many film scholars believe that genres are ritualized dramas resembling holiday celebrations--ceremonies that are satisfying because they reaffirm cultural values in a predictable way. - At the end of Saving Private Ryan or You've Got Mail, who can resist a surge of reassuring satisfaction that cherished values-self-sacrificing heroism, the desirability of romantic love-have been validated? And just as one can see these ceremonies as helping us forget the more disturbing aspects of the world, the familiar characters and plots of genres may also serve to distract the audience from real social problems . Some scholars would argue that genres go further and actually exploit ambivalent social values and attitudes . - The gangster film , for instance , makes it possible for audiences to relish the mobster's swagger while still feeling satisfied when he receives his punishment . Seen from this standpoint , genre conventions arouse emotion by touching on deep social uncertainties but then channel those emotions into approved attitudes. Because genre films promise something new based on something familiar, they may also respond quickly to broad social trends. During the economic depression of the 1930sfor instance, the Warner Bros. musical films introduced social commentary into stage numbers. In Gold Diggers of 1933, a singer asks the Depression-era audience to remember "my forgotten man," the unemployed war veteran. More recently, Hollywood producers have tried to suit romantic comedies to the tastes of career women with the Sex and the City films and Sandra Bullock vehicles such as The Proposal and Two Weeks Notice. In Chapter 11, we consider how another musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, seems tailored to the home-front audience of World War II.

What makes a genre?

Most scholars agree that no genre can be defined in a single hard-and-fast way - in some genres the films share subjects or themes - a gangster film centers on urban organized crime - a science fiction film features a technology beyond reach of contemporary science - a fantasy film typically involves magical powers and supernatural characters Subject matter or theme isn't so central to defining other genres - musicals are recognizable chiefly by their manner of presentation: singing, dancing, or both - the detective film is partly defined by plot pattern of an investigation - some genres are defined by the distinctive emotional effect they aim for: amusement in comedies, tension in suspense films We may find films that fit the category to different degrees - an audience's sense of the core cases can change over history * for modern audiences, a core example of the thriller would be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, whereas for audiences of the 1950s, a prime example would have been something less gory, like Hitchcock's North by Northwest Sometimes a film seems to straddle two genres - Is Groundhog Day a romantic comedy or a fantasy? Is Psycho a slasher film or a mystery thriller? Spielberg's War of the Worlds combines horror, science fiction, and family melodrama - Mixing genres is one important source of change in film history

Genres and Cycles

Once a genre and its subgenres are launched, there seems to be no predictable trajectory. - We might expect that the earliest films in the genre are the purest instances, with genre mixing coming at a late stage. But genre mixing can take place very soon. Whoopee! (1930), a musical from the beginning of talking pictures, is also a Western. Just Imagine (1930), one of the first sound science fiction films, contains a comic song. Some historians have also speculated that a genre inevitably passes from a phase of maturity to one of parody when it begins to mock its own conventions . Yet an early Western , The Great K & A Train Robbery (1926), is an all-out parody of its own genre. Early slapstick comedies often take moviemaking as their subject and ruthlessly poke fun at comic conventions , as in Charlie Chaplin's farcical His New Job (1915 ). Over history genres rise and fall in prestige and popularity . The result is the phenomenon known as cycles. - A cycle is a batch of related genre films that enjoys intense popularity and influence over a fairly brief period . Cycles typically occur when a successful film triggers a burst of imitations . - The Godfather unleashed a brief spate of gangster movies . - During the 1970s, there was a cycle of disaster movies (Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure) - A cycle of fantasy adventures, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, and the Chronicles of Narnia franchise, emerged in the early 2000s. - Later there developed a cycle of romantic vampire films spearheaded by Twilight (2008), then another cycle of dystopian fantasies like The Hunger Games and Divergent. Often what seems a short-term cycle has persisted so long that it becomes a well entrenched subgenre. - Few observers would have predicted that the horror cycle that emerged with Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street would have lasted past the 1980s but it became known as the "slasher film" and was frequently revived , notably in the Scream series. - Action movies centering on comic-book superheroes formed a small cycle in the 1980s but became a flourishing subgenre in the 2000s with Batman Begins, Spider-Man Iron Man, the X-Men series, and many other entries. Because cycles and subgenres can emerge at any time, we should expect that no genre ever really dies. A genre may pass out of fashion for a time, only to return in updated garb. The sword-and-sandal epic set in ancient times was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It virtually disappeared until Ridley Scott revived it to considerable acclaim in 2000 with Gladiator, inspiring a cycle that included Troy, Alexander, and 300.

Four Genres

The Western, The Horror Film, The Musical, and The Sports Film

The Social Functions of Genres

The fact that every genre has fluctuated in popularity reminds us that genres are tightly bound to cultural factors. Why do audiences enjoy seeing the same conventions over and over?

The Musical

The musical came into being in response to a technological innovation - the notion of basing a feature-length film on a series of musical numbers did not emerge until the late 1920s with the successful introduction of recorded soundtracks. - earliest features to include the human voice extensively was The Jazz Singer (1927), which contained almost no recorded dialogue but had many songs. At first, many musicals were revues, programs of numbers with little or no narrative linkage between them. - Such revue musicals aided in selling these early sound films in foreign language markets, where spectators could enjoy the performances even if they couldn't understand the dialogue and lyrics . - When subtitles and dubbing solved the problem of the language barrier, musicals featured more complicated storylines . Filmmakers devised plots that could motivate the introduction of musical numbers. Two major subgenres of the musical emerged during the 1930s and are still with us. 1. the backstage musical , with the action centering on singers and dancers who perform for an audience within the story world . - Warner Bros. successful early musical 42nd Street (1933), set the classic pattern for backstage musicals by casting dancer Ruby Keeler as the understudy for a star who breaks her leg just before the big opening . The director tells Keeler , You're going out a youngster , but you've got to come back a star!" and indeed she wins the audience's cheers. During the decade Warner Bros.'s elaborately choreographed Busby Berkeley musicals , MGM's pairing of the youthful Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in a series of "Let's put on a show!" plots , and RKO's elegant cycle of films starring the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers established the conventions of the backstage musical . Later examples included musicals in which the characters are film performers , as in Singin in the Rain ( 1952). More recent backstage musicals are The Commitments , Music and Lyrics , Jersey Boys, and Dreamgirls . In some cases, dance competitions become the equivalent of stage shows , as in You Got Served and Stomp the Yard 2. Not all musicals take place in a show-business situation, however. There is also the straight musical, where people may sing and dance in situations of everyday life. - Even in backstage musicals, the characters occasionally break into song in an everyday setting. Straight musicals tend to be romantic comedies as well, so that songs and dances express the characters' fears, longings, and joys. - We analyze one straight musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, in Chapter 11. In 1968, The Young Girls of Rochefort took the romantic musical to extremes by having its characters sing most of the dialogue in the film, with dozens of passersby joining in dance numbers in the town's streets. - Straight musicals are rare today, but Julie Taymor made an effort to revive the subgenre in Across the Universe, basing the score entirely on Beatles songs and adding social commentary in the spirit of the 1960s In both backstage and straight musicals, the numbers often reflect a couple's courtship. Often the hero and heroine realize that they are an ideal couple because they perform beautifully together. - In Top Hat the Ginger Rogers character sheds her original annoyance with Fred Astaire during the "Isn't It a Wonderful Day" prime prime number, and by the end, they have clearly fallen in love . This plot device has remained a staple of the genre. John Travolta meets his romantic match on the disco dance floor in Saturday Night Fever (1977 ). - In Moulin Rouge! the lovers serenade each other, both onstage and off, with classic pop and rock songs, and the dance interludes in the House Party and Step Up films become courtship rituals. Musicals have long been associated with children's stories, from The Wizard of Oz to Frozen. - Many animated features contain musical numbers, a practice going back to Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. - But adult- oriented musicals have taken on more serious material. West Side Story portrays a romance that tragically crosses ethnic lines, and Pennies from Heaven evokes the bleak atmosphere of the Depression through characters who lip-synch to recordings from that era. Biopics of troubled performers, such as Control, Get On Up, and Walk the Line, become somber backstage musicals. While the western and the horror film may explore the darker side of human nature, Hollywood musicals tend to accentuate the positive. - high ambitions are rewarded when the show is a hit, and lovers are united in song and dance. In The Pajama Game, a strike is averted when the leaders of the union and management become a romantic couple. Some of these conventions persist today. The School of Rock and today's hip-hop and stepping musicals rework the backstage musical's theme that talent and hard work will eventually win out. Even the grittier Mile follows the traditional plot pattern of showing a gifted young performer overcoming disadvantages and finding success. The range of subject matter in musicals is so broad that it may be hard to pin down specific iconography associated with the genre: - The backstage musical has its characteristic settings: the dressing rooms and wings of a theater, the flats and backdrops of the stage, and the nightclub with orchestra and dance floor. - Similarly, performers in these musicals are often recognizable by their distinctive stage costumes . During the 1930s, Fred Astaire wore the most famous top hat in the cinema , a hat so closely associated with his musicals that the beginning of The Band Wagon -where Astaire plays a washed -up movie actor- could make a joke about it. Similarly , Travolta's white suit in Saturday Night Fever became an icon of the disco era. - Opportunities for novelty have always been present in the musical , however , as the musical numbers set in a factory ( The Pajama Game ) or on the prairie (Oklahoma!) indicate. The characteristic techniques of the musical are similarly diverse. - Musicals tend to be brightly lit, to set off the cheerful costumes and sets and to keep the choreography of the dance numbers clearly visible. For similar reasons, color film stock was applied quite early to musicals, including Eddie Cantor's Whoopeeand, and The Wizard of Oz. - While classic musicals tend to rely on long takes, contemporary musicals tend to be cut very quickly, partly because of the influence of MTV videos. Still, to show off the patterns formed by the dancers in musical numbers , crane shots and high angles remain common. - One technique widely used in the musical is not usually evident to viewers: lip- synching to prerecorded songs. On the set, performers move their lips in synchronization to a playback of the recording. This technique allows the singers to move about freely and to concentrate on their acting. The 1935 RKO Astaire- Rogers musical Swing Time is one of the exemplary backstage musicals. - Early in the film, Lucky, a gambler and tap dancer, is trying to quit his stage act and get married. But we sense that his fiancée is not right for him. She isn't a dancer, and she isn't even seen during the early scenes in which his colleagues try to trick him into missing the wedding Later, when Lucky goes to the city and meets the heroine , Penny (a name that echoes Lucky's precious lucky quarter), she quickly takes a strong dislike to him. In the dance school where she works Lucky pretends to be hopelessly clumsy. Yet when the school's owner fires Penny Lucky saves her job by launching into a graceful , unrehearsed dance with her. By the end, her animosity has disappeared , and the school owner arranges for the couple to audition at a fashionable club. Obstacles ensue , primarily in the form of a romantic rivalry between Lucky and the orchestra leader at the club. Further complications result from the sort of Big Misunderstanding characteristic of romantic comedies Penny thinks that Lucky intends to return to his fiancée . Near the end, Penny seems ready to marry the conductor She and Lucky meet , apparently for the last time , and their talk at cross purposes reveals the link between performance and romance: That Fred Astaire will never dance again is the ultimate threat and his song "Never Gonna Danceleads into a duet that reconfirms that they are meant for each other. In the end Lucky and Penny reconcile. The film calls on the newly established conventions of the genre. - Lucky wears Astaire's classic top hat and formal clothes. Astaire and Rogers dance in the Art Deco style sets that were typical of musical design in the 1930s. The film departs from convention, however, in a remarkable number, "Bojangles of Harlem," where Astaire pays tribute to the great African American dancers who had influenced him during his New York stage career in the 1920s. When he appears in blackface here, it is not to exploit a demeaning stereotype but to impersonate Bill " Bojangles" Robinson, the most famous black tap dancer of the era. Despite its backstage settings and show business plot, Swing Time sets some numbers in an everyday environment. - When Lucky visits Penny's apartment, he sings The Way You Look Tonight" as she shampoos her hair-using a convenient piano in her apartment to accompany himself (though a nondiegetic orchestra plays along as well). When the couple visits the snowy countryside and sings "A Fine Romance, there is no diegetic accompaniment at all, only an unseen orchestra. - The world of the musical makes it possible for people, at any time and in any place, to express their feelings through song and dance.

genre iconography

as a visual medium, cinema can also define genres through conventional iconography - a genre's iconography consists of recurring symbolic images that carry meaning from film to film Objects and settings often furnish iconography for a genre. - a close-up of a tommy gun lifted out of a 1920's Ford would probably be enough to identify a scene as being from a gangster movie, while a shot of a long, curved sword hanging from a kimono would place us in the world of samurai - the war film takes pace in battle-scarred landscapes, the backstage musical in theaters and clubs, the space-travel film in starships and on distant planets Film industries outside America can draw on Hollywood iconography - certain film stars can become iconographic as well-Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand for the musical, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood for the western, Arnold Schwarzenegger for the action picture, Steve Carell and Seth Rogen for comedy, Amy Adams and Sandra Bullock for romantic drama and comedy By knowing conventions, viewers have a clear pathway into the film - our expectations are set, and the film can communicate information economically Audiences expect the genre film to offer something familiar, but they demand something new as well. So a film can revise or even reject the conventions associated with its genre. - Bugsy Malone is a gangster musical (children play all the traditional roles) - 2001: Space Odyssey violated many conventions of the sci-fi genre: beginning with a lengthy sequence set in prehistoric times, synchronizing classical music to outer-space action, and ending with an enigmatically symbolic fetus drifting through space By blending or varying or even rejecting genre conventions, filmmakers force viewers to reset their expectations and engage with the film in fresh ways

analyzing a genre

both filmmakers and film viewers share some general notions about the types of films that compete our attention - filmmakers, the conventions are materials they work with - conventions shape our expectations about that we're likely to see and hear

The sports film

could argue that sports movies don't form a genre in the way Westerns, horror films, and musicals do. - Perhaps basketball, baseball, prizefighting, and other sports are simply subject matter for more traditional genres- dramas like Friday Night Lights, romantic comedies like Just Wright. But sports films have been a staple of film history since boxing matches drew audiences to Edison Kinetoscope parlors . - And just as there are fans of science fiction movies and gross-out comedies, there is a distinct audience for sports films. Sports films display their own plot patterns, iconography, and themes. - Competition and tournaments provide conflict, while a climactic win-or-lose big game can resolve the action and provide closure. - Suspense and surprise are built into sporting events. Just as important , films about sports can raise larger ideological issues. Succeeding in amateur sports can emphasize either individual achievement or group accomplishment . Professional sports give athletes access to money and power, and so the genre can develop themes of social mobility. - And to a surprising extent, sports films explore themes of racial and gender roles. One common plot pattern is the Cinderella story, showing how an underdog overcomes long odds to make it in the big leagues or to compete for a championship: - The film may have a central protagonist, as in Rocky and Mr. 3000. Or the plot may focus on a group usually a ragtag bunch that learns to overcome personal differences and work as a team. This plot pattern shapes The Bad News Bears (1976), A League of Their Own, and Dodgeball : A True Underdog Story. - Other Cinderella plots, such as those in Slap Shot, Any Given Sunday, and Whip It, match grizzled veterans with rising young stars in ways that highlight their differences in age , expertise , values, and styles of play Critics may call the Cinderella pattern a cliché, but any sport contains real- life examples of underdogs beating the odds. - Actual success stories were the basis of Miracle (2004) about the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team, The Blind Side, and The World's Fastest Indian. - Cinderella stories appeal to the audience because the hero or heroes are unlikely to succeed, and we sympathize with characters who risk everything for a dream. A second plot type in sports movies depicts athletes in the prime of their careers who are felled by disease or injury. - Examples are Pride of the YankeesBang the Drum Slowly, and Million Dollar Baby. - These movies show how easily the conventions of sports films can mix with other genres, such as the medical drama or the melodrama. In Eight Men Out and The Hurricane (1999), the athlete's career is cut short by social factors, such as scandal or a biased judicial system. Like the Cinderella story, the prime-of life storyline is made more plausible by being based on actual events. Then there are films like Fear Strikes Out, The Color of Money, and Seabiscuit. - Their plots resemble the Cinderella story in depicting battles against big odds, and they depend on the interrupted- career situation. But these films center on the athlete's comeback, a return to glory after battling personal flaws. - Comeback stories present the sport as a meritocracy: You can overcome almost any mistake if you have powerful skills and enduring passion. Along with these plot types come character conventions: the tough coach, dedicated but flawed athlete, the unscrupulous adversary , and the mate-male or female who resents the partner's obsession with winning at all costs. - A few films focus on figures more peripheral to the actual sporting event. The Scout and Million Dollar Arm dramatize efforts to nurture raw baseball talent. In Jerry McGuire, a cocky sports agent tries to build a company around the career of a temperamental wide receiver . Moneyball and Draft Day concentrate on maverick general managers who take risks to field a contender. Some sports films deviate sharply from these conventions of plot and character. Normally we are emotionally invested in the athlete's quest for a championship , but Raging Bull complicates our sympathyIts hero, Jake La Motta, seems fueled by an almost pathological jealousy and by his acceptance of boxing as a brutal bloodsport. Similarly, in Cobb, a warts- and-all biography of Detroit Tiger great Ty Cobb, writer-director Ron Shelton probes the dark side of the baseball legend. Cobb was a fierce competitor, an expert base stealer who used his cleats to gash any player in his pathOff the field , Cobb was a racist, a woman- hater, and a bullyInstead of presenting an admirable athlete, Cobb reminds us that some competitors channel their personal demons into their performance. In another departure from sports film conventions , a few movies concentrate on fans. Fever Pitch tells the story of Ben, whose obsessive passion for the Red Sox impedes his romance with his girlfriend , Lindsay . Initially , Lindsay treats Ben's fixation as an amusing personality quirk . But Lindsay realizes that Ben is unwilling to consider their future together ; he won't even make vacation plans without consulting the Sox's schedule. In making Ben a Red Sox fan, directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly shrewdly capitalized on the folklore surrounding the "lovable losers" of the baseball world . The Red Sox had not won a world championship since 1918, but in 2004 they wound up winning the world series. By sheer luck, the Sox's championship season gave the Farrellys an unexpected ending that combined the Cinderella story and the comeback story. The Iranian film Offside adds a fresh thematic twist to sports film conventions. - Using the 2005 match between Bahrain and Iran as a backdrop, Offside focuses on a group of female fans of the Iranian team who disguise themselves as men and try to sneak into Azadi Stadium. The plot of Offside initially centers on a girl paying her first surreptitious visit to a game. (We later learn that the girl's scheme is a tribute to her friend, a die-hard soccer fan killed in riots after the 2005 Iran-Japan World Cup match.) Security policemen see through the girl's disguise and take her to an improvised detention area. The bulk of the film's plot takes place around this holding pen. As we come to know the other female fans held there, we hear the match's progress offscreen; like the women, we will never see the actual game. By keeping the main event out of sight, Offside highlights the religious, cultural, and gender issues that affect an entire community. - As the match progresses , the soldiers and the girls gradually develop trust with one another. Yet their friendly relations are sometimes overshadowed by social taboos on women's roles. The situation leads to somewhat absurd complications. Only men are allowed in Azadi Stadium, so there are no women's restrooms. When one of the detainees needs to use the toilet , the soldier accompanying her takes several steps to preserve her virtue. First, the soldier makes the girl wait as he shoos men out of the lavatory . Then, when the soldier sees graffiti written on the restroom's walls, he instructs the girl to wear a poster over her face to shield her eyes In scenes like this, director Jafar Panahi blends implicit commentary on social ideology with a concern for flesh-and-blood individualsOffside is filled with small vignettes showing soldiersand detaineesgrowing awareness that they are mutually constrained by Iran's larger social structures. The soldiers must confront the fact that women can have deep love and knowledge of this apparently men's-only sportSimilarly, the female fans resent being shut out, but they come to understand that the soldiers are doing their duty as defined by Islamic law. In the film's final scenes, the bus carrying the soldiers and detainees gets stuck in traffic Masses of people have taken to the streets in hope of Iran's victory over the Bahrain team. While the men go to get snacks, the camera stays with the women on the bus. A shop window shows them a TV broadcast of the final secondsIran wins, the crowd goes wild and the soldiers are swept up in the street celebration. With no one to guard them, the women join the cheering, singing, and dancing crowds. The final image is a long tracking shot that follows these female fans parading through the streets of Tehran ( 9.30). An Iranian national anthem plays nondiegetically over this final shot, showing that women are not only passionate fans but loyal citizens. Like many genre films, Offside ritualistically resolves the drama's social problems. The conclusion dissolves the gender differences under Islamic law and absorbs everyone into the larger community. On this triumphant night, sports becomes the glue that holds the nation together. Although the sports film might seem to be a masculine genre, women's concerns also surface in Bend It Like Beckham , Battle of the Sexes, and Tonya . Other filmslike Remember the Titans , Glory Road, and 42 explore cultural attitudes toward race. - Offside has used the genre to present a modest and sympathetic portrait of female fans as a cross section of Iranian society. In this respect, it reminds us that the sports film can merge a concern for social issues with engaging dramas of suspenseful competition. In studying film, we often need to make explicit some things we ordinarily take for granted. - Genres are examples of such categories. At the back of our minds whenever we watch a film, ideas of genre govern what we expect to see and hear. They guide our reactions. They press us to make sense of a movie in certain ways. - Shared by filmmakers and viewers alike genre categories shape film art as we most often experience it. Still other kinds of categories guide our assumptions about the films we see. If we look beyond live-action fictional features, we find alternative modes of filmmaking. These depend on ways in which the films are made and the intentions of the filmmakers, and they often have distinctive approaches to form and style. The most common modes are documentary, experimental, and animated cinema. We examine these in the next chapter.

On the whole, genre is a category best used to

describe and analyze films, not to evaluate them.

The Godfather is a

gangster film

Defining a genre

popular, mass-market cinema rests on genre film making - most countries have versions of romance stories, action sagas, supernatural tales, and comedies - Germany has its Heimtfilm, the tale of small-town life - the Hindi cinema of India has produced devotionals, films centering on the lives of saints and religious figures, as well as mythologicals, derived from legend and literacy classics - mexican filmmakers developed the cabaretera, a type of melodrama centering on prostitutes

conventions of story and style

genre conventions often center on plot patterns - we anticipate an investigation in a mystery film; revenge plotlines are common in westerns; a musical finds ways to motivate song-and-dance situations. - the gangster film centers on the gangster's rise and fall as he struggles against police and rival gangs - we expect a biographical film ("biopic") such as Lincoln or The Theory of Everything to trace significant episodes in an actual person's life - in a cop thriller, certain characters are conventional: the shifty informer, the comic sidekick, the exasperated captain who despairs of getting the squad to follow procedure Other genre conventions are more thematic, involving broad meanings that are summoned again and again - the hong kong martial-arts film commonly celebrates loyalty and obedience to one's teacher - standard theme of the gangster film has been the price of criminal success, with the gangster's rise to power portrayed as a hardening into egotism and brutality - the screwball comedy traditionally sets up a thematic opposition between a stiff, snobbish social milieu and characters' urges for freedom and innocent zaniness. - a melodrama such as One Day suggests the cost of failing to recognize your true love other genre conventions involve stylistic patterns. Techniques that would be jarring in one genre may become common in another. - low-key and high-contrast lighting is rare in a musical or rom-com but it's standard in the horror film and the thriller - in an action picture, we expect rapid cutting and slow-motion violence - in the melodrama, an emotional twist may be underscored by a sudden burst of poignant music. That sort of music would be out of place in a horror film, which might instead offer us a grating burst of sound effects

Singin' in the rain is a

musical

Subgenres

some genre labels are very broad - the comedy category includes slapstick comedies such as Home Alone, romantic comedies such as The Big Sick, parodies such as the Austin Powers series, and raunchy male-orientated comedies such as The Hangover. - similarly, melodrama as thought of today encompasses stories of dysfunctional families (Manchester by the Sea) and doomed love affairs (The Fault in our Stars) For this reason, its useful to have subgenres to refer to distinct and fairly long-lasting types within a genre - there are sci-fi fiolms involving interplanetary travel (sometimes mockingly called "space opera), alien invasions of earth, biological experiments (like Rise of the planet of the apes), or future societies, like the worlds of Elysium and THX-1138. - These subgenres will have distinct conventions of their own and perhaps appeal to different viewers - reviewers have popularized terms like "dystopias" for bleak science fiction futures and "buddy films" for action movies like The Nice Guys that display male bonding

Psycho is a

thriller

Grand Illusion is a

war film

audiences know the genres of their culture very well--so well that genres may structure people's....

way of seeing the world