The Western: Creating and Re–creating the Concept of Genre

The Western: Creating and Re-creating the Concept of Genre

Introduction

         Despite the severe decline in the output of Westerns since the early 1970s this section has been included to emphasise the historical importance of critical work using the Western as a case study through which much genre theory developed. The work on Westerns as a genre has established a research paradigm or set of limits of thinking about genre which arguably needs revising. Neale’s work on the Western challenges this paradigm and argues that instead of being thought of as a ‘closed’ genre, Westerns need to be thought as an open-ended genre which is both hybrid and multi-generic. As Neale (2000) points out Westerns have occupied a pre-eminent position in writing of all kinds on genre in the cinema:

...the Western still features centrally in introductory accounts and in introductory courses on genre in the cinema fed in part by occasional attempts to revive it in Hollywood and by the resurgence of scholarly interest ^[1]

         Neale’s recent analysis (2000) problematises this early critical work and suggests that overemphasis on particular key westerns amongst critics has biased the critical output so that other issues surrounding genre theory in general and the study of the western specifically have become obscured. Neale further argues that decline of Western production means ‘its role as a generic paradigm, as a model or starting point for the study of Hollywood’s genres, is even more problematic now than it was before’ ^[2]

The Western and the Construction of American Identity

         It is hard to underestimate the importance of Westerns in American society, helping to play an important role in creating an American identity through a host of representations about the chain of events recreating popular, but not necessarily historically accurate views of the emergence and development of the United States.

The Western genre and surrounding discourses have blended in various ways to create a ‘mythology’ that has been:

uniquely central to US history, US culture and US identity. This mythology is grounded in the notion (itself as imaginative as it is real ) that there existed a moving western frontier in the US between the seventeenth and the late nineteenth centuries.’^[3]

         Neale notes that frontier mythology is the framework for most Westerns but many touch on this minimally. There are many other films which contain elements of the frontier within them. There were hundreds of Indian (Native American) Westerns made in the late 1900s, 1910s and 1920s. Some have argued that they constituted a genre in their own right. These were comprised from a widespread number of themes. Some saw the native American originally described as ‘Indians’ as a ‘noble savage’. Others were about the loyalty and devotion of native Americans to the European settlers.

Problems with the Western and Genre Theory

         The central position of the Western in the development of genre theory has created two linked problems:

• Work on the Western has strongly influenced theories about genre.
• Research into the phenomenon of the Western films themselves has often been limited because of the dominant position of genre theory and criticism, which means that other aspects about Westerns such as their role in the construction of an American national identity has been largely ignored within film studies.

         The centrality of the Western in genre theory can be measured by its prominence in both conventional and unorthodox accounts of genre. There are problematic aspects of both the centrality of the western to accounts of genre, and problematic aspects of the western itself.

         Neale draws on Buscombe’s research of 1970 to point out that the visual conventions or iconography of the Western are highly distinctive and highly coded. Neale argues that this strongly marked set of visual codes is the generic exception rather than the rule. These exceptions of Western coding include the combinations of an iconography^[4] or set of visual conventions including: clothing; decor; landscape. These conventions also include other aspects of its generic world such as the use of language and modes of transport. Overall Neale concludes that ‘ ... for all these reasons ...it [the Western] is hardly a suitable model for general conceptions and theories of genre’ (My emphasis)^[5].

         This understanding of the range of visual conventions (iconography) has been seen as a very important aspect of the Western, playing an important role in linking the product with audiences and as well as being an important arena for doing case study work in developing genre theory. Neale’s survey of genres leads him to suggest that other critics who have written on other genres using iconography as a key element of their ideas have not been able to develop their arguments in such a convincing manner as those who have written upon Westerns.

         If Neale’s suggestion is correct, then visual conventions can be considered as a much weaker aspect of other genres than has frequently been argued.^[6] This means that it is dangerous to use one model of genre as a model for all genres as it can close down ways of thinking about other generic categories. The logic of Neale’s argument also means that genres can be seen as both very specific in how they are constructed as well as sharing some common features.

Genre Hybridity in the 1920s Western

         Within the whole cycle of the Western genre hybridity - the sharing of other generic conventions - has been common. Neale draws on the work of Letraut, about 1920s silent Westerns. He points out that the films produced then were very different to later Westerns and therefore there wasn’t a ‘fixed nor substantive entity’ within the genre. There was a shifting array of differently stressed and diverse components and numerous alliances with other ‘genres, cycles and trends and from the specific and plural traditions these alliances call into play.’ ^[7]    

         These films sought to appeal to a variety of audiences ranging from children to adults and from the rural to the cities. There were a variety of hybrid terms used to describe the films such as :

• Romantic Western
• Western comedy drama
• Western farce
• Western mystery melodrama.

         It is also possible to discuss these films as a range of alliances utilising a wide range of cinematic conventions all of which are worthy of further research:

• The alliance between the Western, visual action and acrobatic athleticism ( chases and stunts - rodeos)
• The alliance between the Western, history and ‘realism’. These appeared in frontier epics with a stress on period detail and consistency, and in traditions of psychological characterisation and moral decision-making
• Alliance between the Western and comedy ^[8]- comic sidekicks, comic situations, traditions of parody / satire / deployment of stunt and action regimes of bodily gesture.

         It is possible to see that a variety of themes traversed these hybrid genres - religious conversion, racial prejudice, revenge, land-grabbing villains. The relationship to the frontier myth is either distant or complex.

New Research Methods^[9]: Reconstructing Genre Theories

         Some researchers have decided to avoid previously received wisdoms. For example, Stanfield in a partly published thesis in 1999 used different research methods based on archival research to re-explore the Western genre coming up with some quite different ideas to those written about previously which included an emphasis on the industry construction of the market. Stanfield’s research techniques included:

• Archival Research:
• Examining contemporary trade and newspaper resources
• The films themselves
• Cultural histories of the US of its popular cultures in the 19th and 20th centuries.

         As a result Stanfield argues that the role of the market ^[10] was very important. The B western was aimed at rural and small town audiences in which a variety of changing social and cultural relationships were examined through a variety of forms. ‘The singing Western’ was aimed at attracting female audiences for example. By comparison the A western appealed to metropolitan audiences and their concerns. The marketing ploy of romance through male lead stars to appeal to women was successful. This was a multi-generic approach.

         The market failure of Westerns in the 1930s was a combination of lack of romance, alongside an ill judged investment and deployment of new wide-screen technologies against a backdrop of depression. The subsequent relaunch of the Western included films designed to appeal specifically to women. A variation on this theme was the ‘City Western’ with well known male and female stars and dealing with adult themes such as drinking, gambling and sex.

         There was also a cycle of historical films which sometimes overlapped with the ‘city’ film. These were promoted as Americanised engagements with large-scale political and historical themes. They also helped to counter accusations that the censorship codes were preventing engagement with serious issues. They often managed to integrate romantic story-lines thus providing general appeal. The richness of content enables us to see these films as multi-generic.

         Neale suggests that the models and terms devised at the beginning of the post-war period to discuss Westerns in which the hero’s troubled relationship with society undergoes modification are more straightforwardly applied to Westerns of this post-war period and the late 30’s such as Stagecoach (1939) which received its canonical status at this time.

         It seems doubtful whether these models of the Western genre can be usefully applied to films of the earlier period. This means that within what can be classed as a genre there can be huge shifts in the way these films are made, viewed and criticised. This is all part of contextual criticism ^[11]. In the post-war context some westerns were able to articulate contemporary post-war and cold war concerns such as:

• Racism
• The return of the veteran and their rehabilitation into civil society
• The issue of national allegiance, especially in relation to the Vietnam war
• The re-marketing and industry reconstruction of the genre using Elvis Presley and other rising pop stars to capture the growing teen market.

         Neale also raises the issue of whether critical preference for films such as The Searchers (1956) and The Wild Bunch (1969) has tended to obscure the existence of other socio-cultural and aesthetic trends and other film titles resulting in a closing down of research and discussion about westerns in recent years.

Conclusion

         Overall it can be seen from this section that the critical work around the Western has been foundational in the study of genre. At the same time this work has been rather one-sided in its approach to genre ignoring many features that are now increasingly recognised as important to genre studies. These include the notion of genre as process of negotiation between audiences and the industry. Westerns can be seen as both hybrid and multi-generic, as part of a widely differing marketplace and as forming an arena for public debate when socio-political events such as the Vietnam war became an important part of the popular consciousness. Soldier Blue, based on the story of a cavalry massacre of a native American village, is a good example of this. The film functioned to demythologise both the ‘history’ of the American nation established through the Western as well as relate to a current oppressive war through this exposure of the past.

: 03 Apr 2007 15:02 |  Tags: Film Genres Film Studies Genre Genre Studies Genre Theory Kinoeye Open Studies Steve Neale The Western |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Genre the Everyday and Popular Culture

Genre the Everyday and Popular Culture

Introduction

            Genre, popular culture and the everyday have been three concepts historically linked and often made into a hierarchy which is very gender based. The concept of popular culture is itself a troubled one with accusations of elitism from some academics countered by accusations of crass populism by others. The Romantics criticised genre in ways which linked it with the everyday seen as repetitive and mundane, yet the role of romance in a wide range of genres aimed at markets segmented by age and gender can be seen as a desire to escape the everyday mundanities. A wider generic concern can expand Neale’s comment on the ‘women’s film’ genre as one which is strange and contradictory to think about other generic forms.

            Desire is often released by the culturally generic form such as romances. The character can move to higher things through romantic involvement but then the characters are reincorporated back into the everyday by becoming reconciled to it. David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) is a good example of this. Below some of these concerns are examined in more detail. In conclusion, the spectacular and its links with the romantic are seen to perform this role of reconciliation for the audience providing an generically based industry continuously fired by individual fantasies of escape and need for reconciliation.

History of Genre and Popular Culture

            Originally most modern concepts of genre had a hostile attitude to cultural products perceived of as industrialised and necessarily repetitious. This attitude originated in the Romanticist movement of the 19th century. Strongly criticising mass cultural products as routine , repetitive and formulaic these critics were trying to create a clear division between ‘high art’ and ‘low’/popular culture. The work of Neale (2000) through detailed empirical studies of popular films argues that it is better to consider genre as a complex process within the greater complex of cultural industrial strategies. As a result it is more appropriate to consider genre conventions as loose and open-ended rather than as a system which forecloses upon the meaning and quality of a film.

            The metaphor of repetition is very strongly associated with industrialism and its processes and it has also been strongly associated with the domestic environment. Industrialism has, for many, been seen as the way forward for humanity as a whole, making repetition positive for some theorists. This has been contrasted by the same theorists to the everyday or quotidian of the domestic environment which has been viewed as very socially conservative as time is seen as cyclical or going nowhere. This construction of time and domestic space is a highly gendered one. Time constructed as masculine linked to an industrialised workspace despite the repetition of the industrial processes is still envisaged as a form of progress. By comparison, domestic time considered as repetitive and circular is considered as feminised time and space without the possibility of progress^[1].

            A slightly different variation on repetition has been seen by Romanticist critics as running counter to the “greater” things in life. They have been very much in favour of supporting the concept of “ Art for art’s sake”. Romanticists are associated with anti-industrialism. In the 19th century important critics divided into left and right-wing approaches to Romanticism. William Morris wanted more of a return to crafts conceived of as an organic form of production valuing the best of ‘popular culture’ of the time. This can be contrasted with the approach of Matthew Arnold whose ideas of ‘high culture’ strongly influenced British arts policy until the 1980’s, for his ideas were adapted by T.S. Eliot , F. R. Leavis and Lord Keynes who was responsible for establishing the Arts Council in Britain after World War Two .

            More recently feminist social theorists such as Rita Felski and media theorists such as Roger Silverstone^[2] have been examining issues around the concept of the everyday. Both of these theorists are concerned to re-evaluate the everyday which is something we all usually take for granted thinking of it as almost “natural”. Both theorists come to similar conclusions which are that the repetitions of the everyday have a very important set of social, cultural and psychological functions, thus they are more positive about the term. In terms of child development repetition is very important in achieving a well-balanced child. In terms of media output a regular range of programmes helps us to receive and give meaning to our days and provides pleasure as well. These factors are described as ontological security. Ontology is about social being and here the expression means that people feel comfortable in the world and are able to function effectively when they have a strong sense of ontological security.

            To assume, as so many critics of generic output have done, that repetition is necessarily bad, creates a tendency to misread the complex processes and continuously shifting relationship of production and audience construction within the media world. In that sense nothing is ever quite the same. Critical positions which are totally anti-generic tend to assume a largely passive audience and as such is driven by an elitist view of the capabilities of the audience. Those popular films which can be said to be genre-based articulate a process which in an indirect way through the box-office relates to, informs and is informed by the desires, fears, needs of vast numbers of people.

The Spectacular and the Everyday

            The ways in which film as a form of ‘popular’ culture is consumed changed between the 1950s-1970s. The role of cinema as the primary form of mass media was eclipsed by television. The contextual ^[3] aspects of exhibition have changed beyond all recognition since the days of the classical Hollywood studio system. Consumption of films is still very popular. Frequently cinema release acts more as a form of promotion for the film. Shorter runs and the complex licensing arrangements, releasing the film through rental chains often owned by multi-media corporations, followed by satellite and cable release then retail shops and then terrestrial TV shows that a sophisticated hierarchical marketing system is in place to maximise profitability upon each film.

            Generic films aimed at a youth market tend to do well at the cinema. The audience are less tied to the domestic environment and have a relatively high disposable income. The youth audience is the largest group of regular cinema-goers. Audience analysis shows that the ways in which film interacts with the everyday is complex. More family oriented crowds at rental outlets such as ‘Blockbusters’ at weekends shows that cinema exhibition within the domestic environment at a time when the week is less structured by institutional requirements such as work and school means that longer films can be watched without breaking up weekday routines.

Conclusion

            The ‘Blockbuster’ is now major factor in the survival of the mainstream cinema as a distinctive media form with a major industrial base. The space of the cinema and the spectacular is an important industry feature which in helping fantasy breakout of the quotidian marked by repetition constructed as mundanity indicates that generally audiences are by no means strongly attracted by generic features of film alone. The blockbuster can be seen as working upon a widely differing range of socially constructed desires of romantic longing to escape the everyday.

            The marking of the everyday as unromantic by generically-based media industries provides the psychological space in which to develop products which are designed to construct a range of cultural and social practices constructed as ‘romantic’, whilst being careful not to overfeed those dreams. The social researcher Adorno can be seen to have made an important argument when he argued that there was a ‘fundamental symmetry’ between mass-culture and fascism: ‘both feed-off and reproduce immature character structures with high, almost childlike, dependency needs.’ ^[5]

            Use of special FX to create ‘magical’ aspects of narrative which have no relationship to reality of verisimilitude (narrative logic) are only viable because of the desire to escape yet this escapism must be resolved by the narrative closure into some sort of verisimilitude. In Charlotte Gray there is a classical romantic ending with an open but contented future ahead, in Titanic the irreconcilable differences of class must end in a heroic and tragic death made real by linking to historical events. In Minority Report reconciliation and a new stable family future beckon. Thelma and Louise have a slightly more difficult ending which can be read in a number of different ways. Verisimilitude says that they will die however breaking through the genre conventions by a non-specific ending allows for the possibility of a new form of the everyday and the possibilities for social change by breaching the conventions between rationality and irrationality as the space where generically based cultural products manipulate the imaginaries of their audiences.

: 03 Apr 2007 12:06 |  Tags: A Level Media Studies Film Genres Film Studies Genre Studies Genre Theory Kinoeye Open Studies |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

University Film Studies Departments UK

Film Studies Departments United Kingdom

For further advice on what to think about when choosing a film studies course check this Kinoeye entry

Introduction 

This posting is primarily to provide a quick links guide for potential undergraduate students of film studies in the UK. The listing doesn't distinguish between departments in terms of teaching quality or on any other grounds. It is up to the potential undergraduates to research these parameters for themselves. Given that this site is hosted by the University of Warwick clearly its own courses are prioritised. That's competition for you :-). 

Please note well: This posting is under continuous development as departments are registered in the course of other searches. As such it doesn't  currently represent a fully organised search.  It is just being posted as a courtesy to visitors.

Film Studies at University of Warwick

Department of Film & Television Studies

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/depta2z/film/

French with Film Studies

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/depta2z/french/r1w6/

Italian With Film Studies

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/depta2z/italian/r3w6/

German Studies can also incorporate a number of film modules:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/german/badegrees/germanstudies/

Film & Literature Course

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/depta2z/film/qw26/

UK Universities Film Studies Departments

Aberdeen University

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/prospectus/ugrad/study/subject.php?code=film_studies&prog=arts

Bangor University

Centre for Film Studies Bangor University

De Montfort University, Leicester

http://www.dmu.ac.uk/Subjects/Db/coursePage2.php?courseID=3146

Edgehill University

http://info.edgehill.ac.uk/EHU_eprospectus/leaflet/BA0018.asp

Edinburgh University

http://www.filmstudies.llc.ed.ac.uk/

Essex University

http://www.essex.ac.uk/filmstudies/current_students/courses.htm

Exeter University

http://www.ex.ac.uk/undergraduate/degrees/film_studies/film.shtml

Falmouth University College

http://www.falmouth.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170&Itemid=302

Gloustershire University

http://www.glos.ac.uk/subjectsandcourses/undergraduatefields/fl/entry2008.cfm 

Kent University

http://www.kent.ac.uk/studying/undergrad/subjects/film.html

King's College University of London

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/filmstudies/

Lampeter (University of Wales)

http://www.lamp.ac.uk/fm/modules/part-one-modules.html

Lancaster University 

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/cultres/degrees/ug/film-home.php

Leicester University

http://www.le.ac.uk/arthistory/ug/ba_film.html

London Southbank University 

http://prospectus.lsbu.ac.uk/courses/course.php?CourseID=1729

Manchester University

http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/combinedstudies/studyareas/areasofstudy/film/

Northumbria University

http://northumbria.ac.uk/?view=CourseDetail&code=UUFFTV1

Nottingham University

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/prospectuses/undergrad/school.php?code=000179

Oxford Brookes University

http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/filmstudies/

Portsmouth University

Film Studies

Languages and Film Studies

Queen Mary's College, University of London 

http://www.qmul.ac.uk/courses/study_degree_london_uk.php?dept_id=10

Queen's University Belfast

http://www.qub.ac.uk/film/

Reading University 

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/fd/index.htm

Sheffield Hallam University

http://www2.shu.ac.uk/prospectus/op_uglookup1.cfm?id_num=CUL012

Southampton University

http://www.film.soton.ac.uk/undergrad/ug.html

Southampton Solent University

http://www.solent.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/film_studies_ba/course_details.aspx

St. Andrews University 

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/undergraduate/index.html

Staffordshire University 

http://www.staffs.ac.uk/courses/undergrad/filmjournalismandbroadcastmedia/tcm11012064.php

Surrey University

http://www.surrey.ac.uk/undergraduate/cmc/index.htm

Sussex University

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/mediastudies/

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/publications/ugrad2008/subjects/Film%20studies/17071

UCL (University College London)

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/filmstudies/

University of Cumbria

http://www.cumbria.ac.uk/Courses/Undergraduate/ArtDesignMedia/FilmStudiesJointHons.aspx

University of East Anglia (Norwich)

http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/sectors/film/fshome.shtml

University of Ulster

http://prospectus.ulster.ac.uk/course/?id=3670

University of West of England

http://info.uwe.ac.uk/courses/viewCourse.asp?URN=14257&stream=

University of York

http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/tft/

Wolverhampton University 

http://courses.wlv.ac.uk/Course.asp?id=11628&type=1

UK Universities Language departments which have film studies modules 

Sheffield University Department of French 

http://www.shef.ac.uk/french/prospectiveug/modu

: 03 Apr 2007 10:41 |  Tags: De Montfort Film Studies Exeter University Film Studies Film Studies Film Studies Courses Film Studies Degrees Film Studies List Kings College Film Studies Kinoeye Leicester University Film Studies Media Studies Degrees Oxford Brookes Film Studies Portsmouth University Film Studies Degrees Queen Marys Film Studies Queenss University Belfast Film Studies Reading University Film Studies Sussex University Film Studies Uea Film Studies Uk Universities Undergraduate Film Studies Degrees Warwick University Film Studies Degrees |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The New Hollywood Director & the Role of Genre

The Relationship of the Director in 'New Hollywood' to Genre: Birth of the American 'Auteur'?

Introduction

The concept of genre has been examined from a number of angles. It has become apparent that what appeared to be a relatively simple critical category is a lot more complex. Many examples of genre hybridity and a multi-generic industrial strategy have been noted. It has also been stressed that genres are live cultures. Genres develop and change under the direct influence of the full range institutional factors which comprise cinema – Producers/ Exhibitors / Audiences – as well as having to respond to wider changes in the media environment. The case presented here argues that the higher profile the film the less it is reliant upon genre as a part of its marketing strategy and the more important the role of the director.

The Changing Industrial Environment

‘New Hollywood’ remains the dominant cinema on a global basis. Historically there are a number of institutional changes which have reshaped Hollywood. The production base of films, the relationships between the various companies which make up the film industry as well as the systems of exhibition have also evolved. Classical Hollywood cinema underwent restructuring during the 1950s. Antimonopoly legislation, the rapid growth of TV and the growth of higher levels of disposable income amongst the working classes were the major contributing factors to the need for restructuring.

The break-up of the old studio system saw film companies being taken over by industrial conglomerates. At the same time a new mode of exhibition started to develop in America – The Multiplex. This was necessary to try and halt declining audiences attracted by TV and other leaisure pursuits.  The first was a 4 screen version opened by American Multi-Cinema in Kansas City in 1966. It took until the 1980s for the multiplex to consolidate its hold over the American exhibition system, it then started to export the model with the first in Britain opening in Milton Keynes in 1985. It had a restaurant brasserie and social club. Guaranteeing at least one U certificate film it was an important marketing strategy for cinema. Conditions of exhibition have often been underestimated by critics however the fact that in the 1930s many American cinemas were air conditioned was a major summer attraction for audiences. These market factors need to be added to concerns such as genre and stardom.

Television offered another way of distributing films and so the opportunities for joint production arrangements became possible. This could reduce financial risk for the film companies by sharing costs on lower level productions ensuring a good stream of finance and funding the administrative and marketing forces necessary to its core activity of making premium feature films.

From the perspective of the development of genre the growth of the ‘made for TV’ market gradually replaced the low budget studio output. An important feature of these films was that they were shot with a TV audience in mind thus action had to remain central to the screen. This was because the aspect ratios of the original TV screens were different to those of cinema screens. The rapid growth of the installed base of wide-screen television able to screen films in their original aspect ratios will gradually erode the technological limitations of the ‘made for TV movie’.

Economic crisis in the 1970s followed the changes in the institutional arrangements of cinema. The 1980s saw the flourishing of new technologies such as satellite and cable accompanying the deregulation of media markets in many countries. Film companies became less interested in production as such but more concerned with distribution which was a lucrative but lower risk aspect of the market.

More changes in the regulatory and economic relationships of the industry meant that the way became open for higher profile independent producers, and filmmakers who could play with higher budget movies which allowed them to expand their vision. Film companies by this time had become horizontally integrated into media empires which included TV, Radio, and music strands within the corporate conglomeration. This meant that a range of synergies between companies could be utilised to market films. This included: TV and cable distribution arrangements; the production and distribution of soundtracks; the production of DVD’s and videos; the sale of rights on associated computer games and toys,T-shirts and other marketing materials. Overseas distribution provided another income stream. Multi-media corporations like this include Time-Warner-AOL, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV in America along with his extensive global media interests. Other sources of production income now include charging companies large amounts of money to feature their branded products within a high profile movie.

Role of the Director

This has meant that films hoping to be financially successful are increasingly reliant upon a range of strategies to reduce their risk . Film directors with a good profile are more able to make films that they want to make in the way they want to make them. This compares with the ‘Classical’ Hollywood period of production when the directors were largely at the mercy of producers who enforced tight shooting schedules and eliminated cost overruns. Several European émigré directors used to less industrialised ways of making films such as Fritz Lang who at the German company UFA regularly went well over the original budgets and schedules to get a film to his satisfaction. Many like Lang found it hard to adapt to Hollywood systems of production.

These European directors were considered as auteurs or authors who were putting their vision onto screen. Many of these directors created stars rather than depended upon stars. Josef von Sternberg was instrumental in bringing Marlene Dietrich to a wider audience. By comparison, Hollywood has always been dependent upon the star system as another marketing tool. Often there has been a symbiosis of stars with particular genres, John Wayne and the western and some war films, Clint Eastwood with westerns and more recently action-thrillers, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Siegel and Arnold Schwarzenegger with action-adventure.

Murray Smith (2002) teases out a useful distinction between the American concept of the auteur and a more European based conception of the auteur. For the latter the high-cultural traditions are seen as the most important aim of the film whilst in America these aims are attenuated by a desire to reach a much wider audience as well. Orson Welles as well as Martin Scorsese are examples of this type of director.

The role of the semi-independent filmmaker who has some power to negotiate their conditions is recently exemplified by Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2003) a film which he has apparently been longing to make for many years. There have been a series of high profile interviews with Scorsese in broadsheet newspapers, specialist film journals and TV review programmes.

In interview with Ian Christie, Scorsese responding to a question on how the film taps into 19th century revenge narrative like ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ commented that the film echoes genre forms, but also includes social, historical and personal issues.

We complicated it because I was interested in the emotions. It evolved from a story about a boy who needs a father and a father who needs a son, against a backdrop of the frontier meets the city, or a western meets a gangster film, topped off with a ‘soupcon’ of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery – all of that in one Movie! (Martin Scorcese).

Described by some critics as an 'epic', Gangs of New York is strongly dependent upon being a multi-genre film. It combined with Scorsese’s own reputation, and featuring stars such as the highly bankable Leonardo di Caprio, and co-starring Daniel Day Lewis. It also stars Liam Neeson appealing to Irish audiences. Both the latter actors have played leading roles in historical films such as Last of the Mohicans ( 1992) and Michael Collins (1996), a fact that will broaden the appeal of the film.

Thelma and Louise is strongly associated with director Ridley Scott who was able to exert quite a high degree of control over the production process rather than being entirely controlled by the financiers because of his previous success with films like Bladerunner (1982). As a British director Scott has an outsider’s eye for weighing up aspects of society considered as everyday to indigenous directors. In this way a key element of American identity, its landscape, became a key part of the film’s aesthetic appeal. Scott also had a particularly dynamic way of making cinema relying on direct takes with the actors unrehearsed to gain spontaneity. Much of the film’s success can be attributed to Scott’s directing skills.

In an entirely different context Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1929-30) was the result of an attempt to place German national cinema in a prestigious position as the new sound map of cinema unfurled in the 1930s. The film copied the variegated production strategy which was by then the Hollywood norm. Sternberg was a well known American director of German descent. Sternberg was not the production company’s first choice but the best they could afford.

The Blue Angel starred Emil Jannings Germany’s most successful internationally known actor with an academy award in Hollywood. The comng of sound had cut short Jannings' Hollywood career because of his very thick German accent. Sternberg had been directing Jannings in one of the films cited which won him the Oscar. Alongside him the experienced but hitherto unrecognised Marlene Dietrich. The film was based upon a modern literary adaptation from the novel Professor Unrat by the well known author Heinrich Mann. As a genre piece it was a typical tragedy in a wider generic sense as well as belonging to the genre of literary adaptations The film involving the tragic fall of a professional also featured the sleazy side of life with a mise-en-scene of night-clubs and jazz and thus could be expected to have a wide audience appeal. UFA, the largest German film company, was strongly concerned with establishing a core of generic production this film can be considered as an attempt to launch a ‘blockbuster’ to break into the American marketplace.

As the strategy for The Blue Angel makes clear the blockbuster film can be seen as strongly hinging upon the reputation and skills of the director part of whose range of skills will include working effectively with stars, to a budget, operating in a multi-generic environment, which means being familiar with, but going beyond, straightforward genre formulas. On the basis of this example it can be seen that the more high profile a film is for the studio the more it is weighted towards the influence of the director and away from a simple generic base.

Conclusion

On the basis of the examples used here it is possible to see that the directors in ‘New Hollywood’ blockbusters are playing a more independent role than their counterparts from the days of ‘Classical Hollywood’. Nevertheless, this role is quite distinctive from that of the auteur in the European conception. In the latter conception auteur either has an extremely strong vision of the film, and can frequently be linked with conceptions of artistic ‘genius’ or at least an 'art' film. alternatively the European Auteur will have developed team-style working relationships with actors and crew. Examples of the latter are the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the contemporary British directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Leigh is well known for having an improvisational style of working with his actors. The European auteur is far less dependent upon the star system and the other multi-marketing strategies on which the more industrialised approach of Hollywood depends.

: 03 Apr 2007 09:22 |  Tags: A Level Film Studies A Level Media Studies Auteur Film Genres Film Studies Genre Kinoeye New Hollywood Open Studies |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Has Traditional Genre Theory Misrepresented Hollywood?

Has Traditional Genre Theory Misrepresented Hollywood?

Introduction

   Steve Neale (2000) is concerned to examine and critique some of the critical ‘givens’ which have arisen amongst commentators and theorists regarding the relationship between Hollywood and genre. Neale has investigated a wider range of films from the perspective of genre theory than has been done previously and has compared these with some of the business models in use at various time in Hollywood. On the basis of these findings he argues for a serious revision of the dominant theoretical position held by critics of both the ‘Old’ Hollywood studio system as well as post-studio ‘New Hollywood’. Neale highlights the central importance of the way the Hollywood production system has been commonly considered as central to the creation and maintenance of generic output as a foundational aspect of its industrial strategy.

   Below the key aspects of critical genre analysis to Hollywood are summarised then Neale’s commentary is reported upon in a critical fashion. This section concludes that Neale is correct to argue for deepening the analysis of the role and importance of genre within the marketing strategy of cinema. Neale’s comments upon aspects of horizontal integration within the wider media matrix such as radio are also important. It is argued here that the implications of his positions are not seen as a radical revision of the dominant positions held by critics on the role of genre within cinema. Rather it can be seen that it is impossible to consider cinema as an isolated aspect of the generic system of media production across mass media as a whole.

Traditional Accounts of the Relationship Between Hollywood and Genre

   Neale has summarised traditional accounts of genre and its role within the film industry stressing the following features:

• Artistic products unlike mass products such as cars are ‘one of a kind’. Movies had to be different or nobody would return to the cinema
• Mass products usually are accompanied by a range within the product. New lines and fashions are generated to create and develop the market
• Hollywood genres offer a cost-effective equivalent to the lines and ranges marketed by other industries by producing a demand for similarities within the variety of product on offer thus degrees of difference are minimised
• Hollywood’s products are always different and diverse and genres differ from one another but within the range/genre, the films are always similar
• Genres thus perform a number of economic functions thus enabling :
  

1. The industry to fulfil the obligations of variety and difference in the product:
2. The product to be manufactured in a very cost-effective way
3. The nature of the output and the demand for this output to be closely regulated to minimise financial risk and maximise profit.

‘Old’ Hollywood Studio System

Originally generic film output has been linked to what has become known as the ‘studio system’, and the output of what is seen by many as ‘classical’ cinema. Key features of the studio system were:

• It describes the period of hollywood domination by the 'majors' between mid to late 1920s up to the end of the 1940s with a little overspill into the early 1950s
• There was an oligopoly of 8 major companies. Three produced and distributed films including independent ones. The remaining 5 were ‘vertically integrated’. In other words they produced and distributed films but they also owned first-run cinemas and cinema chains
• The system of ‘block-booking’ meant that independent cinemas and cinema chains were forced to show most of their films or none at all
• This combination of industrial organisation meant that there was a relatively secure and stable marketplace. As a result the industry was able to sustain itself by making long-term employment contracts with stars, directors and technicians. The industry could plan investment on in-house facilities. This allowed for ‘factory-system’ features within the industry
• It is argued, by some, that studios tended to engage in genre specialisation which led to variation but also generic consistency and generic fixity over 30 years.

Neale’s Critique

Neale doesn’t want to entirely reverse these established theories on the role of genre; Neale is concerned to use other research methodologies and research results to argue that these features have been overemphasised and that the model needs revision. Overall he ends up by suggesting that much greater research into different aspects of Hollywood cinema will generate different sorts of knowledge about the relationships between Hollywood as a centre of cultural production and wider socio-cultural features of America itself. Neale divides Hollywood output into the studio and post-studio periods and comments upon the different content strategies and business models prevalent at these times.

‘Old’ Hollywood Output as Hybrid and Cross-generic

   Neale takes the output of Hollywood films in 1934 as an example. This came to over 95 feature films altogether. Neale notes that both the variety of films and the terms used to describe them were very varied: ‘Immediately striking also is the relative paucity of canonic genres and “genre films’’’ (Neale, 2000: 234). Neale suggests that, whilst terms such as ‘western’ existed, there are many broader categories such as ‘costume picture’ and ‘drama’ which rarely or never feature in genre theory. Nevertheless, these terms were among the top three categories of box-office hits according to Variety magazine (1950, 5: 18).

Neale’s comments are useful to identify gaps in genre theory. These comments in themselves don’t destabilise the key arguments of dominant critical genre theory. Neale’s evidence points to the importance of genre as a descriptor of various film products. The generic descriptors he has isolated points to the industry need to ensure that a broad audience appeal was maintained. Neale’s evidence supports the argument that even in 1950 audience was treated as a singular mass market rather than as a plural audience. At this time TV hadn’t gained a big hold on mass audience and the need to create a wider choice of content wasn’t necessary for the industry at this point.

   Based upon the work of film historians Neale isolates the following points :

• Hollywood’s output was done on an annual seasonal basis
• This meant that cycles of films were emphasised. Cycles were used as units of calculation and on cyclical formulas as templates for films. (Long distance bus films are an example of these)
• Cycles were often linked to topical events such as prison breakouts
• The regular production of genre hybrids was a risk reduction strategy. These would not only appeal to fans of different picture types thus broadening the potential market^[1]
• The use of stars as a marketing tool leads Schatz to talk of ‘star-genre formulations’ and star-formula combinations’ rather than talking directly in terms of genre ^[2]
• Some stars were associated largely with specific genres such as Boris Karloff and horror. Other stars such as Katherine Hepburn weren’t associated with any particular story type

The fundamental planning and output were budgetary which overlapped with categories of distribution and exhibition. There was class A and class B output. Class A output was subdivided further:

• Superspecials: prestige pictures & big budget musicals. Often road-shown^[3]. Often produced by independents such as Selnick and Goldwyn’s Gone with the Wind (1939)
• Specials: bulk of these were class A films. Used pre-sold properties such as popular stars but lower production budgets. These usually opened on a first-run ^[4] basis in the metropolitan theatres owned by the big 5
• Programmers: These films had the lowest budgets. Typically based on original stories and minor stars often with short running times even as low as 50 minutes. Described as programmers they could fit the top or bottom of the double bills. They functioned as B films if at the bottom of a bill
• Another form of risk reduction was the creation of a series such as the Charlie Chan films.

The Post-studio Era

   The vertical integration which dominated Hollywood had been declared illegal in 1948 and the big 5 production companies were forced to sell off their cinema chains. The industry as a whole underwent major restructuring adopting a different range of business strategies to remain in business. To ensure good levels of profitability, they concentrated even more on risk reduction. These strategies included:

• Making fewer more expensively produced films
• Abandoning B movies, shorts and newsreels. These migrated to become the ‘made for TV movie’
• Introduction of new technologies such as wide-screen and big-screen
• Making blockbusters to be road-shown at premium prices
• Co-productions
• International market development
• Audience reconstruction through differentiation ( teenagers for example)
• Diversifying income streams through distribution and / or screening films on television.

   These changing structures in the 1950s and 1960s led to the development of what is now described as ’New Hollywood’ which has slightly modified these fundamental approaches. ‘New Hollywood’ creates the seasonal blockbusters which are now ‘blanket released’ rather than having a staggered release. These are the ‘economic cornerstone’ (Neale: 2000) of today’s Hollywood and are produced or co-produced by the majors.

Most of the recent blockbusters have been targeted at the teen and early twenties audiences. Therefore they differ significantly from the content of the output of the 1950s & 1960s. Technologically, special effects ( FX ) and surround sound have been significant. Income generation has been from spin offs - videos, computer games T shirts etc. Distribution through cable satellite etc. has expanded the media environment and given wider marketing opportunities.

Neale is keen to point out that there are no cast-iron formulas for success because film still remains one-of -a-kind and that consumers must be ready to take a risk before consuming a film. Films are previewed by test audiences who are surveyed for their responses. Unfavourable responses mean parts of the film may be re-shot ^[5]. Alternative endings are quite frequent. This has now led to a subsidiary market of ‘the director’s cut’.

Neale emphasises that the overall strategic approach of the industry is about risk reduction. With numerous differences between the generic output of ‘new’ and ‘old’ Hollywood.

Commentators have remarked that Hollywood has been marked by ‘sequelitis’ and ‘prequels’. By comparison, Neale cites evidence that there were approximately 6 times as many recycled scripts in the 1940s as in the 1970s. Critics and theorists have also suggested that ‘new’ Hollywood has been more concerned with hybridity, pastiche and illusion than the ‘old’ Hollywood often linking this with the ‘multimedia synergies’ of the present. However, Neale points to many older films which make allusions to others, which are ‘… often invisible to contemporary scholars’. He also points out that the ‘old’ Hollywood was itself marked by a plethora of media output much of which was very new such as radio and comics thus providing: ‘an extensive field of multimedia consciousness, institutional crossover, and inter-textual cross-reference...’ ^[6]

Conclusion

   ‘New’ Hollywood has often been considered as the driving force behind the reconstruction of the generic film using hybridity. Neale argues that early blockbusters such as Phantom Engine (1935) about a singing cowboy in space were more genre-hybrid than current blockbusters and suggests genre hybridity has always been present in Hollywood. Furthermore, Neale emphasises that genre as an industrial strategy is just one important element of a more complex and variegated industrial system than has previously been recognised.

   Neale’s position partially corroborates the argument that blockbuster marketing strategy is less reliant upon genre and follows a multiple marketing strategy. A note of caution is needed here. Neale’s example of the Phantom Engine is not analysed in detail. Drawing conclusions without greater information about the marketing strategy of that film could lead to a wrong impression.

   Much of the traditional genre theory still holds. It can be seen as a risk reduction strategy for an industry which must keep churning out product the industrially influenced analysis still seems convincing. Perhaps the critics of genre have overplayed their hands. The more sophisticated an audience the more likely they are to be dissatisfied with purely generic output. Marketing now has more complex ways to try and ensure commercial success.

: 03 Apr 2007 07:52 |  Tags: A Level Film Studies A Level Media Studies Film Genres Film Studies Genre Genre Studies Kinoeye Open Studies Steve Neale |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Genre and Multiple Marketing Strategies

Genre and Multiple Marketing Strategies

Introduction

          It has been seen elsewhere that it is possible to create a generic category by ‘reading against the grain’ that is interpreting the content of the output of the mainstream film industry differently. It is argued here that genre is best viewed as an important marketing tool of the full range of media industries. All these specific generic forms are appropriate for the media format being used. Genre can thus be seen as part of the institutional framework of any media system. The different generic approaches from the different media formats ensure as far as possible that the specific media product sells well. It achieves this by fitting in with established and emergent conventions of the specific media industry ^[1] being considered.

Horses for Courses

          It is always important to bear in mind the wider institutional context of particular media formats. In the case of film the A films with a big budget and high production values which were produced at the time of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1930s and 1940s have a strong similarity to the ‘Blockbuster’ movies currently being produced.

          The sort of films produced in the heyday of Hollywood classed as B or C films involving low production values based mainly upon formulaic genre conventions as a key marketing device were aimed at less sophisticated audiences, and more working-class audiences habitually went to the cinema as their major weekly night out. These sort of films could also provide screen content at low points in the season and functioned as training spaces for newcomers to the industry. Middle-class audiences were usually more discriminating and tended to go and view specific films which might have been genre based such as literary adaptions. The ‘made for TV’ movie has taken over the role of B and C movies.

Minority Report: A Case Study of Multiple Marketing Strategy

The recently released Minority Report provides some evidence of how a multiple marketing strategy is conducted using the following tactics:

• The use and promotion of a well known semi-independent director in this case Steven Spielberg. Spielberg is associated with a long string of well made films which have a wide popular appeal and contain a generally liberal ethos, and in most circumstances are a ‘safe’ film to see and utilises the spectacular to generate excitement.
• The use of a very well-known leading Hollywood star Tom Cruise who also runs a production company, and also in the use of Max von Sydow who would have appeal to older audiences and European audiences as well as showing that there is in depth commitment to quality actors.
• The use of genre hybridity in the construction of the narrative. The film is a detective-thriller/ science-fiction/political-thriller/melodrama family tragedy. Sight and Sound has even described it as a ‘future-noir’.
• The use of special FX - Hollywood film history has always been concerned with being at the cutting edge of cinematic technology. This links both the circus and the spectacle, powerful contributors to cinema.
• The film has been constructed as a ‘12’ in terms of the censorship and regulatory structures, to maximise family viewing. The spectacular has always been an important element of film marketing and appeal.
• These structural features of the film link into the reviews system which is an integral part of the marketing of films. Reviewers are in league with the film industry and enter into agreements not to reveal crucial elements of any twists in the plot especially the ending. This encourages the common cultural practice of ‘non-revealment’ embedded within the audience itself. People frequently say ‘don’t tell me the ending’, or somebody reporting on their experience of a film says I won’t spoilt the ending for you’. Mystique is an important aspect of marketing and plays cleverly upon audience desire.

          The content has a very wide appeal and it is important to a big multi-generic/hybrid genre film that a general idea of the content quickly becomes widely known. Minority Report has a particular contextual appeal ^[3] because of the post September 11 World Trade Centre attack, the subsequent build-up of anand execution of ‘regime-change’ in Iraq. The content is all about arresting and incarcerating people before they commit a crime. The film can currently be read by audiences as an allegory for major political crisis in the world 2002/ 2003 - the excuse for building up massive military presence on the borders of Iraq despite any clear evidence of even ownership, let alone intention to use weapons of mass destruction. This will appeal to more politically astute and sophisticated audiences.

          The ‘human interest’ aspect of the film comes through the family and personal break-up of the Tom Cruise character through the loss of their son perhaps through a paedophile kidnapping. This strong subplot linking into current fears of paedophilia and child pornography especially on the internet. The possibility of revenge, redemption and the re-establishment of family runs through the film linking it to revenge tragedies long established in literature. Here unlike the traditional tragedy redemption and a certain feel-good factor ‘Hollywoodise’ the ending.

          The representation of women is more troubled and ambiguous. Women are represented as being intelligent: it was a woman who invented the ‘precognitive system’. The wife of the leading character John Anderson - played by Tom Cruise - is also presented as being smart and determined, not only picking up on who the real criminal is but also having the ‘nouse’ to break into the high security police system and release her husband -the unlikely failure to remove John’s eyeball-identity seems a crucial flaw in the plot but that is not the point here.

          There is an unfortunate linkage of a gendered construction of femininity and instability of both woman and technology as being likely to go out of control ^[4]. This is a common feature of SF genre films. Maria, in Metropolis (1925), the T1000 robot in Terminator 2 (1991) are just two other examples of the linkage of the ambiguity and danger to the masculine status quo of feminised technology seen as ‘other’. In Minority Report the key ‘pre-cog’ is a woman without whom the other two males are unable to function. The ‘pre-cog’ only ever acts ethically and the emphasis she makes upon human choice reinforces a key ideological prop of humanist liberalism against the strong cultural fears of technological take-over. This is a key element of cross-media science fiction genre. Nevertheless, the ‘pre-cogs’ are placed on the margins of society apparently for ‘their own good’.

          The police-thriller aspect is obvious by being set in a police station, with tension maintained by an ever present time-factor. The ending supports the liberal ethos that the system in combination with ethical individuals will be capable of identifying and removing those who try to manipulate it unethically along the lines of films such as The Pelican Brief (1993).

          The political-thriller aspects of Minority Report are highlighted in the title itself. The title is a crucial part of marketing strategy. This title has a particular resonance in the United States because there is in general greater freedom of access to information than in the UK. In th UK censorship through the Official Secrets Act ensures that formal state control has a much stronger profile. The possible mechanisms for the suppression of information which can be reviewed through the judicial system immediately gives the film a wider impact. This occurs particularly amongst the American middle classes and the more politically aware minorities who are always concerned with issues of civil liberties and freedom of information. This links to the constitutional construction which has developed a system of ‘checks and balances’ to ensure that an over-mighty subject abusing power, or corporate abuse of power is apparently always controllable.

          The ‘romantic melodrama’ subplot ensures that there is a happy feel-good ending appropriate for the pluralistic target audience. This ending also gives some depth to a future which can come to terms with tragedy and deliver a future through reconciliation and human choice. Human choice to do what is ethically right is an important component of this type of film. It adds a greater intellectual and critical dimension to a format designed to have wide appeal. Audiences are effectively engaged with some of the ethical and moral dilemmas of the imaginary situation. In this sense the best cinematic output is capable of stimulating audiences to engage in situations which encourage an engagement with issues of citizenship. Frequently the best cinematic output follows a variegated production and marketing strategy and to reduce this purely to genre specificity can fail to reveal the more complex organisational approaches at work.

Cross-Media, Cross-Genre Marketing

          Outside the notion of a closed world of film genres media industries have engaged with other media genres to gain marketing leverage. This has been done by identifying the key market for a product and targeting it.

          A highly successful example of this was the marketing of Trainspotting (1995) by its distributors Polygram who spent approximately 50% of the production costs on marketing^[5]. Polygram employed a design agency with a client-base in pop and rock music. Polygram also entered a business partnership with EMI to launch the soundtrack.

          The film was adapted to appeal to trends identified within youth culture such as ‘laddism’ which was a reaction to feminism in the early 1990s still current in puerile and sexist ‘lads mags’. ‘Laddism’ itself is often read as response to the loss of traditional male jobs in smokestack industries. This links Trainspotting with films such as Brassed Off (1996), Billy Elliot (2000), and The Full Monty (1997). However, the take on work as a form of lost dignity is not a position taken in Trainspotting.

          Another cross-media linkage into youth culture was through associations with the growth of ‘Brit-Art’ and ‘Brit-Pop’. Knowing links with 60s culture a youth culture ‘golden-age’ were self-consciously echoed by groups such as Oasis and Blur. As well as linkages with punk in the anti-heroes style.

          Despite the relatively low budget the successful multi-marketing approach of Trainspotting played on generic plays across media formats to ensure an appealing commercial package that went far beyond simple genre formulations, by recognising the increasing sophistication and multiple audiences now found even in what was previously erroneously and simply dubbed as ‘the youth market.’

Conclusion

          The production and marketing tendencies coming from Hollywood blockbuster globalised marketing is tending to downplay specific generic aspects of the films. Stardom, the spectacular and a multi-generic framework is the current marketing formula. Specific aspects of a film can be niche marketed to fragmented media audiences as a way of trying to unify audiences in sufficient numbers to visit the cinemas and ensure healthy after-sales from TV licensing, rental and DVD markets. It has been noted by a number of writers ^[6] that theatre release through the multiplex system is not just simultaneous but often takes several screens at once, with audience choice paradoxically becoming more limited despite the growing number of screens in the UK. Just as the shape of the film market has changed so has the role of genre from an industry perspective.

: 03 Apr 2007 00:04 |  Tags: A Level Media Studies Film Genres Film Marketing Film Studies Genre Genre Studies Genre Theory Kinoeye |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Genre & Contextual Criticism: The Need for a Multi–perspectival analysis

Genre & Contextual Criticism: the Need for a Multi-perspectival Analysis

Introduction

           Genre criticism within film studies has frequently been concerned with its socio-cultural or contextual significance. Neale (2000) suggests that this is partly because Hollywood’s genres have been considered as aesthetically impoverished. This has led to two broad approaches to genre criticism within the tradition of socio-cultural criticism: the ‘ritual approach’ and the ‘ideological approach’. Below these two approaches are contrasted with the less well-known but increasingly important ‘production of culture’ perspective.

The Ritual Approach

           Thomas Schatz has argued that genres can be seen as a form of ‘collective cultural expression’ and as a vehicle for exploring ideals, cultural values and ideas within American society. This has led critics including Schatz to postulate that some genres take place in different social spaces as a ‘symbolic arena of action’ such as the cowboy or gangster film. In these films specific social conflicts are acted out.

           Where these social conflicts are acted out is described as determinate space. In contrast there are other genres such as the musical or social melodrama which take place in indeterminate space. In other words, the settings do not have to be repeated and the social conflicts are less concerned with control of territory but about a range of social conflicts and their reconciliation and or resolution.

           An important aesthetic flaw in Schatz’s case can be discerned in relation to the western. Musical-westerns such as Oklahoma (1955), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Calamity Jane (1953) are hybrid generic films. Schatz’s theory of genre and its relationship to space don’t hold up hold up well against these examples which suggest that the struggle for physical space is superseded by the ability to reconcile differences and attitudes. On this basis these genre hybrids can be considered as predominantly musicals rather than westerns although the settings remain a part of western genre.^[1]

           Another critique of ritual theory shows that textual analysis alone can lead to very misleading conclusions. This shows that within film studies a number of different research methods need to be used to gain a more accurate picture about the social context of reception and production. If a number of research methods are used together this is called triangulation.

           A criticism of ritual theory suggests that many people go to see a very wide range of films and that genre and formulas are no guarantee of success but at best provide limited profits. For example western films were cheap to produce and made small but regular profits from a relatively stable audience and thus provided a low risk bread and butter income stream. The ‘B’ and ‘C’ westerns can be considered as highly genre specific and as having low production values and narrow appeal. Perhaps they are better viewed as an early form of niche marketing.

           Another major flaw within the ritual theory is its dependence upon the assumption that audiences are representative of the American population as a whole and that this population as a whole is always preoccupied with the same cultural issues and problems. For example, there has been a considerable amount of research into black and ethnic minority representation Hollywood films to show that they were initially addressed to a white only audience.

           Another important point is that most genre theory assumes that all the audiences consume genre output in exactly the same way and also that they consume nothing else. In fact there are a number of what has been termed reader-to-genre relationships. Every reader or consumer of a text comes with a different range of preferences and interests which are unique.

Ideological Theory

           Ritual theory plays down the idea that Hollywood genres are in some way coercive through the filmic texts. By comparison ideological theory argues that audiences are manipulated by the business interests of Hollywood. Neale argues that there is a danger that these theories will close themselves off by becoming self-confirming. Neale describes theories of this nature as ‘Functionalist, reductive and profoundly pessimistic.’^[2]

           Neale’s tone here seems overly dismissive and accords with many other theorists and commentators on ‘popular’ culture who allow their own personal tastes to subvert their critical faculties. Strangely these criticisms can be applied to both the left and right of the political spectrum.

           The term reductive describes a straw figure who imagines that a cultural product contains an ideology which immediately contaminates whoever consumes this product so that they are entirely unable to be uncritical. This is often described as the ‘hypodermic’ theory of ideology. Undoubtedly there are a few people who hold to this simplistic notion, particularly on the right of the political spectrum, but few educated people hold to this concept.

           Of more interest is the concept of ‘pessimism’. Many theorists and supporters of cultural populism are concerned to criticise the left-wing members of the Frankfurt School of Social Research which started in Germany between the first and second world wars. The Frankfurt School supporters, especially Theodor Adorno, have been described as ‘pessimists’.

           Adorno was particularly scathing about the forms of popular culture he discovered in the United States after fleeing from Nazi Germany. For Adorno the cultural output in the United States was nearly as totalitarian in its approach as in Nazi Germany. Adorno has been written off by many commentators suggesting he was exaggerating the conditions of ‘popular culture’ based upon his dreadful experiences. However, many of those critics are unfamiliar with, have ignored or not researched crucial aspects about culture under the Nazis.

           Much of the film culture under the Nazis was genre-based cinema. Many of the films shown in Nazi Germany until 1939 were American ones. As has been pointed out elsewhere by Hake ^[3] a combination of genre construction and exhibitionary restrictions helped to oil the Nazi cultural machine. There is considerable evidence that the overall Nazi strategy regarding cinema was to be able to offer serious competition to the United States. Remodelling their industry and that of Occupied France was part of the strategy. There is evidence that Germany wanted to develop the French film industry into a sort of Trojan horse to penetrate the cinema markets globally.

           The films produced in occupied France particularly by ‘Continental Films’ were genre based.

           It can be seen from these examples that genre production as a strategy was relevant to Nazi thinking. Evidence such as this throws some empirical doubt upon the dismissal of Adorno as a pessimist. Rather it emphasises the importance of analysing ideology and the role it plays for media institutions and their products.

           Some see ideology as ‘hegemonic’, which is a form of social control created through generating a a broadly-based consensus of what counts as ‘common-sense’. A controlling role does not entirely stop other cultural products from emerging rather it subverts and controls these through the mechanisms of the market. In the light of this sort of evidence the role and importance of sophisticated theories of ideology in relation to genre and its important role in cultural populism should not be lightly dismissed.

The ‘Production of Culture Perspective’

           Neale uses work by Kapsis to take into account much wider industry factors which are largely ignored by the ideological and ritual theories. The industrial process for films is best seen as variegated and multiple. Which genres finally get made depends on the assessment of the various gatekeepers within the production system itself and their views of audiences future tastes. The higher echelons of management are acutely aware of the dangers of overproduction. Too many of one type of film could mean audience saturation and a fall off at the box office.

           Kapsis’ study shows that there are complex market research analyses continuously conducted on the market. These are cross-referenced to other institutional factors such as competition from Television - think of the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - or a shift in international markets. Other factors not mentioned in the analysis of Kapsis’ work are whether other external factors in the market affected this decision. One thing is certain, any withdrawal from the marketplace shows that senior management have decided that future profitability measured against risk was not acceptable. It also indicates that highly genre specific production is not seen as a premium profit-making part of the enterprise.

Conclusion

           All these different forms of contextual criticism have strengths and weaknesses. The ritual approach can be seen to be of relevance in more masculinised genres and it would be interesting to research Schatz’s ideas in relation to the war film genre. The musical and the melodrama which seemingly contradict Schatz’s theory are ‘feminised’ genres and emotional and psychic space is more important for women in these films. It has been suggested that there is an ideological issue of property and ownership at the root of these differently gendered genres. This doesn’t fully account for the different types of socially constructed space which are privileged. Recent sociological work has argued that much of a masculinised approach to what is described as modernity deals with time and space in a way that is gendered by considering non-domestic space as a male dominated space in which women are allowed as sexualised bodies rather than more fully developed individual people. Domestic space - including arenas such as shopping space and care space such as schools - is set against non-domestic space. The social theorist Rita Felski^[4] has noted that there is a fear and loathing of domestic space amongst modernist masculinity of the twentieth century. There is a mistaken concept that the rhythms of daily life are inherently conservative compared to the progressive more linear and apparently less repetitive world inhabited by men.

           The production of culture approach highlights the industrial aspects of the film industry. The relative popularity of a few horror films in video-stores measured against the reduction in output of horror movies by the larger films companies indicates that these companies think that the levels of profitability are insufficient and are reducing the numbers of products on the market. The current trends in the market or how the industry wish to reconstruct the audience/ market will be much clearer to them than to the critic. Usually the least successful products are removed which means that within each genre and sub-genre there is a tendency to create a cultic canon of the best films. At the heart of this is a combination of ‘quality’ in negotiation with economics. Constructing markets is about creating premium products as far as Hollywood is concerned.

: 02 Apr 2007 21:44 |  Tags: A Level Media Studies Film Film Genres Film Studies Genre Genre Studies Genre Theory Kinoeye Steve Neale |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mapping Genres

Mapping Genres

Introduction

            Genre can be used as a method of examining the history of narrative film and cinema more closely. The genres which have dominated the film market are mapped out below. These are the major genres which have been identified by genre critics. New and different genres can be added, however most of those listed below and are considered as uncontested genres have been around from very early in the history of cinema. These genres have evolved or hybridised, and in some cases, as with the western, have very nearly come to the end of the genre cycle. The social and cultural need for the western as a genre relevant to the United States in the 21st century rather than the early part of the 20th has disappeared.

            Firstly the major Hollywood genres are outlined then an important genre to European cinema is briefly examined, following that the notion of sub-genre is defined.

The Main Hollywood Genres

            Neale (2000) has reviewed the development of genre theory in relation to Hollywood and provides a mapping of the development of a range of genres which is drawn upon below. Genre critics and theorists have identified about a dozen major genres in Hollywood. Films which are uncontested as genres include:

The western

The comedy

The musical

The war movie

The thriller

The crime / gangster movie

The horror movie

Science fiction

The detective film

The epic

The social problem film

The teen-pic

The biopic

Action-adventure.

            Films which have become very problematic categories and sometimes critically contested categories include: Film Noir and Melodrama.

Newer Genres

            The range of available genres is not fixed and new genres are frequently in the process of emergence. For example, the 1960s mood of social and cultural liberalisation as well as the growth of widespread car ownership brought forth a new genre the ‘road movie’, with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) usually accepted as the first of these. Other well-known films in the genre include Easy-Rider (1969) and more controversially Thelma and Louise. Initially a masculine genre the road movie can be seen as providing a cultural replacement for the western.

            Neale’s work has provided a mapping of Hollywood genres, other areas of the world have developed their own genres. In India ‘Bollywood’ signifies a range of epic style romantic dramas, punctuated by musical fantasy sequences. Hong-Kong has been associated with the development of the ‘martial-arts’ movie made popular in the west through Bruce Lee Kung Fu films. These created a cult following for films starring Jackie Chan. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) signifies a Hollywood industry move into this market by creating a hybrid genre film. Hollywood achieved this by giving the film a much larger budget than the more strongly generic martial arts films. The narrative structure has also been changed to appeal to western audiences used to different narrative structures.

European Historical Costume Dramas: The ‘Heritage’ Film

            By comparison with Hollywood the situation in Europe has been variegated but quite different. Genres have been quite weak often gaining only a localised market. There has been a penchant for the historical costume drama in Europe, which has acted in a variety of ways including reinforced a sense of national identity with inter-war examples being seen in Britain with Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry V111 (1933). This film proved to be one of the most successful British films ever made in terms of breaking into the American market, the holy grail for European film industries. On the basis of this film Korda clinched a distribution deal with United Artists, which seemed like a licence to print a small amount of money. Whilst Korda’s heritage film doubled as a marker of national identity and commercial success, the emphasis on national identity in the heritage film was strongly present in a range of feature films made under the Nazis in Germany.

            In Nazi Germany both the content and the exhibitionary context^[1] worked together. A range of films being commissioned by the state to promote key concepts of Nazi ideology in propaganda form. Hake (2002) argues that because of these conditions of production these films could be seen as ‘a genre to themselves’ based upon Nazi constructions of the spectacular.

            It is important to emphasise here that very few feature films produced under the Nazi regime were directly propagandistic. Many of the films were generic variants of standard genres such as comedy and romance. Contextual criticism relating to the conditions of viewing is very important here. All narrative feature films were accompanied by newsreels and documentaries where much of the propaganda work took place. Early in the Nazi period Jews were legally excluded from cinemas. Later nobody was allowed into shows after they had started to stop people avoiding the documentaries and the newsreel footage.

            The holy grail of breaking into the American market has always been a feature of European cinema. The occasional success has frequently led to hubristic statements from a senior member of the British film establishment about the need to focus on this market which now lies at the feet of a newly revitalised film industry. The latest in this long line at time of writing being Alan Parker the outgoing chairperson of the British Film Institute in the autumn of 2002.

            The greatest successes in the American market have been amongst those European filmmakers who have gone to work in America from Hitchcock to Ridley Scott. This has not stopped the European film industry from trying to invent a formula based upon high-production values (read ‘big budgets’), utilising some higher profile European stars, and a hybrid or multi-genre mix. La Reine Margot ( France, 1994 ) directed by Patrice Chereau. Accessing the Eurimages fund, part of the European Union, is an example of this.

            Based upon a historical novel by Alexander Dumas on the role of Catherine de Medici and the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s the film fell into the trap of being over-melodramatic and as a historical film largely uninteresting, although Geoff Andrew offered a reading of La Reine Margot arguing that it was a way of referencing current French anxieties in Bosnia and the break-up of Yugoslavia^[2]. Viewed ten years later references to Bosnian break-up seem largely spurious spin which can be seen as cheap opportunism to try and gain audience. This costume melodrama was reversing the trend in France to make more interesting historical films such as The Return of Martin Guerre (1983) These had challenged the way in which history represents the past. Banking upon the heritage genre alone failed to impress American audiences.

            The development of other films in this genre such as 1492 (Ridley Scott:1992) about Columbus’ journey ‘discovering’ America went down well in Spain but failed to appeal anywhere else is a good example of cultural policy initiatives prioritising industrial aspirations to increase profitability rather than prioritising the representational needs of citizens and inhabitants of Europe. Thematically La Reine Margot could have said much more about problems of intolerance, fear and identity which has existed through much of its history. The relevance today when the issue of asylum seekers has become so prominent in the latter part of 2002 and early 2003 is far better covered by Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002).

Sub-genres

            Many of the genres mapped by Neale can be broken down further into a range of sub-genres such as the ‘cavalry western’, ‘slapstick comedy’, ‘police thriller’, ‘teen-horror’. These sub-genres often relate to identified market categories. The likelihood is that the more sub-generic or further down the chain of genre influenced film-making a film is, the more formulaic it is likely to be. This is likely to limit its appeal to certain audiences on grounds of content, and quality in terms of plot and characterisation as well as technical proficiency.

            It can be seen from the genre mapping provided by Neale that a category such as ‘teen-pic’ is far more oriented towards a specific market whilst many of the other categories have some elements of openness in their approach.

Conclusion

            From this brief mapping of genres it can be seen that a range of influences from different parts of society create, change and render particular genres obsolete or very minor roles.

            Investment decisions in what films to produce can be influenced solely by industry perceptions although these are likely to be picking up on social and technological change. The growth of the road movie and the decline of the western being useful examples. Genre such as historical costume dramas can be influenced by government and ruling elites who often have an interest in asserting a particular version of national identity especially if there is a growing feeling of crisis. This influenced both Korda’s film on Henry VIII as well as the output of German cinema under the Nazis.

            These sort of films have also been made recently in Europe with the backing of the European Union to try and break into the American market by producing higher value cinema. This largely industrially driven strategy of marketing heritage has not been very successful with the US audience. This shows that creating successful genres needs to have a successful domestic marketplace first. This is an area in which Hollywood has been historically very successful.

: 02 Apr 2007 18:09 |  Tags: A Level Film Studies A Level Media Studies Film Film Genres Film Studies Genre Genre Studies Genre Theory |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Genre Bibliography, Filmography and Webliography

Repetition or Revelation: Film Genre and Society. 2003

Bibliography, Filmography  & Webliography

Bibliography 

Adorno, Theodor. 1994. The Stars Down to Earth. London: Routledge

Altman, Rick. 1997 ‘Cinema and Genre’. In Nowell - Smith, Geoffrey. Ed : Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford : Oxford University Press

Ang, Ien. 1991. Desperately Seeking The Audience. London: Routledge

Austen, Guy. 1996. Contemporary French Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press

Bordwell, David. Staiger, Janet and Thompson, Kristin. (1985 ) The Classical Hollywood Cinema. London: Routledge

Branston, Gill. 2000. Cinema and Cultural Modernity. Milton Keynes : Open University Press

Brown, Geoff. 2000. ‘Something for Everyone: British film Culture in the 1990s’. Murphy, Robert. Ed. British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI

Bukatman, Scott. 1994. Terminal Identity. Durham North Carolina: Duke University Press

Cowie, Elizabeth. 1993 . ‘Film Noir and Women’. In Copjec Joan Ed : 1993 : Shades of Noir . London: Verso

Cook, Pam Ed. 1985 (First edition). The Cinema Book . London: British Film Institute

Corrigan, Timothy.1991. A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture after Vietnam . New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press

Christie, Ian. 2003. Interview with Martin Scorsese. Sight and Sound. January. p22

Elsaesser, Thomas. 1997. ‘Germany the Wiemar Years’ in Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. Ed: Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford : Oxford University Press

Felski, Rita. 1999-2000. ‘ The Invention of Everyday Life’. New Formations, No 39, pp. 15-31

Hake , Sabine. 2002. German National Cinema. London : Routledge

Hanson, Stuart. 2000. ‘ Spoilt for Choice? Multiplexes in the1990s. Murphy, Robert. Ed. British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI

Higson, Andrew and Maltby, Richard. 1999. ‘Film Europe’ and ‘Film America’ : An Introduction’. In Higson, Andrew and Maltby Richard. ‘Film Europe’ and ‘Film America’. Exeter: Exeter University Press

<!--[if !supportLists]-->Hofman, Katja. 2002. ‘Does my gun look big in this?’ Sight and Sound March

Katz, Ephraim. 2001 4th Ed . Macmillan International Film Encyclopedia. Basingstoke : Macmillan

<!--[if !supportLists]--> <!--[endif]-->Mark Le Fanu. 2003. ‘The dream life of architects’.  <!--[endif]-->Sight and Sound March

Luckett, Moya. 2000. ‘Image and Nation in 1990s British Cinema’. In Murphy, Robert. British Cinema in the 90s. London: British Film Institute

<!--[if !supportLists]--> <!--[endif]-->McNab, Geoffrey. 2002. Review of Charlotte Gray. Sight and Sound . March. p 41.

Moretti, Franco. 2001. ‘Planet Hollywood’. New Left Review, Volume 2 No 9 May / June. pp 90-101

Neale, Steve. 2000. Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge

Neale, Steve and Krutnik Frank : 1990 : Popular Film and Television Comedy: Routledge : London

Nichols, Bill . 1976. ‘Introduction’. In Nichols Bill Ed: Movies and Methods . California University Press : Berkley

Nichols, Bill. 1985. ‘Introduction’. In Nichols Bill Ed : Movies and Methods: Volume Two . California University Press : Berkley

Nowell - Smith, Geoffrey. Ed: 1997 : Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford : Oxford University Press

Pendakur, Manjunath and Subramanyam, Radha. 2002. ‘Indian Cinema Beyond National Borders’. In Jordan, Tim and Pile, Steve eds. 2002. Social Change. Oxford: Blackwell

Prawer, S.S. 2002. The Blue Angel. London: BFI

<!--[if !supportLists]-->Silverstone, R. 1994. Television and Everyday Life. London: Routledge

Smith, Murray. 2002. Trainspotting. London. British Film Institute.

Sobchack, Vivian. 1997. ‘The Fantastic’. In Nowell - Smith, Geoffrey. Ed : Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford : Oxford University Press

Street, Sarah. 1997. British National Cinema. London : Routledge

Sturken, Marita. 2000. Thelma and Louise. London: British Film Institute

Tasker, Yvonne. ‘Authorship and contemporary film culture’. Tasker, Yvonne. Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers . Routledge : London

Todd, Peter. 2000. ‘The British Film Industry in the 1990s’. Murphy, Robert. Ed. British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI

Tudor, Andrew. 1976. ‘Genre and Critical Methodology’. Nichols Bill Ed: Movies and Methods : California University Press : Berkley

Williams, Alan. 1992. Republic of Images: A History of French Film-making. Cambridge Mass: Harvard

Bibliographical Links to books not used but clearly important for Genre Theory

For teachers / FE Lecturers. The BFI Education and Resources on Genre:

Link to the Wallflower Press' useful 'Short Cuts' Series Number   33 | FILM GENRE From Iconography to IdeologyBarry Keith Grant

Refiguring American Genres:

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/6928.html

International Journal of Communication 1 2007. Online review of Daniel Biltereyst & Philippe Meers, (eds.), Film/TV/Genre, Ghent Academia Press, 2004, 209 pp, €22,00
(paperback). 

http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/31/4

Link to

Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition

http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780198159834

Filmography

Films mentioned in the text by title and year of release.

About a Boy (2002)

American Beauty (2001)

Billy Elliot (2000)

Bladerunner (1982)

Black Widow (1987)

Blazing Saddles (1971)

Body Heat (1981)

Bonnie & Clyde (1967)

Brassed Off (1996)

Brief Encounter (1945)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Calamity Jane (1953)

Charlotte Gray (2002)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Dirty Pretty Things (2002

Double Indemnity (1944)

East is East (1999)

Easy Rider (1969)

Elizabeth (1998)

Fatal Attraction (1987)

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

1492 (1992)

Gangs of New York (2003)

Gone with the Wind (1939)

Gosford Park (2002)

It Happened One Night (1934)

La Reine Margot (1994)

Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Life is Beautiful (1998)

M*A*S*H (1970)

Metropolis (1925)

Michael Collins (1996)

Minority Report (2002)

Modern Times (1936)

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1978)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Mulholland Drive ( 2001)

Muriel’s Wedding (1994)

Night at the Opera (1935)

North by North West (1959)

Oklahoma (1955)

Police Academy

Phantom Engine (1935)

Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Psycho (1960)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Saviour ( 1997)

Secrets and Lies (1996)

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Shallow Grave (1995)

Silverado (1985)

Soldier Blue (1970)

Some Like it Hot (1959)

Stagecoach (1939)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Terminator the Last Judgement (1991)

The Blue Angel (1929-1930)

The Full Monty (1997)

The Pelican Brief (1993)

The Producers (1968)

The Return of Martin Guerre (1983)

The Searchers (1956)

The Thin Red Line (1998)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Thelma and Louise (1991)

Titanic (1997)

Trainspotting (1995)

Webliography

Preface: At time of writing I didn't use the web for research purposes however this section will be developed as it is now a crucial part of everyday research with JISC backed organisations such as Intute organising along the lines of genre. 

Link to Intute 

http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=artifact666

Links to New Left Review Article by Franco Moretti who as a literary professor considers the role of genre in literature. This article is a later one than the one on NLR Series 2 Volume 5 'Markets of the Mind.

http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2440

'Markets of the Mind' link http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2273

Another link to a Moretti article this time considering cultural geography and film genres. (Very interesting to me anyway :-) )

http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2324

Link to Article by Tom O'Regan on the Crocodile Dundee phenomenon

http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/film/Croc.html

Link to Carol Laseur's honours dissertation Chapter 1 of The Field of Genre & Australian filmic Texts. several other chapters are also available online making an excellent open access resource!

http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/film/laseur/chap1.html

Link to: Favorite Films and Film Genres As A Function of
Race, Age, and Gender from the Journal of Media Psychology:

http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/sfischo/media3.html

An Introduction to Genre Theory by Daniel Cahndler from Aberystwyth University: 

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre.html

Link to the Goethe Institute on documentary films:

http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/thm/flg/en964789.htm

: 02 Apr 2007 16:19 |  Tags: Bibliography Film Genre Books Film Genres Film Studies Filmography Genre Genre Studies Genre Theory Webliography |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

An Introduction to Film Genre

Introduction to Genre

Preface. Please note that biblographic and film references can be found under the bibliography research tag in the sidebar "Repetition or Revelation....".  

Genre has become a key way of thinking about film from both industrial and critical perspectives. Superficially the concept of genre seems straightforward, however, this introduction seeks to show that it is a rather more complex but also more fascinating concept than simple groupings of similar films. Genre can be used as a research methodology it can also be used as a marketing and production strategy by cultural industries. Below is a comment from cultural critic Franco Moretti who is trying to map out the extent of the penetration of the global film market by Hollywood. Moretti stresses that his methodology includes the use of genres.

...if you look at a newspaper, or walk into a video-store, the reality of film genres literally leaps at you, as each film is being sold as something: a comedy, a film noir, science fiction, whatever. Taxonomy is not a scholastic pastime, it’s a product of the film industry itself, which makes it easier to recognise the film, and to buy the ticket ’ (My emphasis on second emphasis. Moretti, 2001 : 92-93).

Moretti understands genre as the construction of a range of mainstream media industry products which function to safeguard the future of the industry, by maximising and controlling the marketplace. These cultural products encourage potential consumers to enter into a pact with the industry. The industry effectively offers pre-packaged products which are familiar enough to ensure the likelihood of being pleasurable. These products are also instantly recognisable as representing a particular type of pleasure. The products are sophisticated enough to ensure to be distinct from other similar media products, by giving an impression of difference.

Reducing Business Risks

Business is about maximising profits and reducing commercial risk. The ability to create and package a film which is likely to have a reasonably predictable market is part of the skills-base of that industry. Both the potential audience and exhibitors recognise a media product by its generic likeness. Cinema chains aim to maximise audiences. They can tell from past box-office records how well particular types of film have done. Films seen as ‘difficult’ by not being easy to categorise into a genre, will be hard to distribute. If they seem too demanding of audiences they will be left to the small independent cinema outlets and be branded as ‘art cinema’ which for some commentators acts as a sort of miscellaneous genre category for ‘difficult subject matter’. ‘World Cinema’ is another rather strange category found in the video shops. The sections are usually comprised of a few martial arts movies alongside one or two films considered as canonical or fundamental to film conceived of as art.

This is not meant to imply that films classified within genres are necessarily bad. Some will be fairly low budget but clever enough to play with genre categories to escape from the prison of genre and take its audience with it. Ridley Scott’s controversial Thelma and Louise (1991) often described as a ‘road movie’ broke through a genre mould for example. In the case study later in the book it is argued Thelma and Louise can be considered as having a ‘hybrid’ generic form. The section also suggests the possibility that considering Thelma and Louise in relation to Hollywood-style genres is itself a limiting category. The possibility that it should be considered as simply within the traditional literary generic category of tragedy is put forward.

Describing a film from the perspective of genre can be limiting  but it can also serve to subvert the distribution system with a more radical product that might otherwise have failed to make headway. For example, war films can end up being critical or supportive of war and as media products they can be made better or worse than other movies in terms of engaging the audience as a piece of drama. Robert Altman’s excellent M*A*S*H (1970) was a well-made and well timed antiwar film which when produced went straight to the heart of the major political crisis facing the USA in the late 1960s, the war in Vietnam. As a typical war movie it doesn’t rate. No heroic battle scenes, rather it was comprised from satirical social commentary about war and wartime culture.

Origins of the Term Genre

It is useful at this stage to get an idea of the origins of the term genre for it is a critical category taken from other art forms and it has developed its own meanings within cinema.

• The term ‘genre’ comes from the French meaning kind or type.

• The notion of genre has played an important role in the categorisation and evaluation of literature.

• During the 1890’s films were usually classified by length and topic. Terms such as ‘fight pictures’ or ‘story film’ were used.

• After about 1910 the number of films made finally outstripped the demand for them. The growth of this competition meant that genre started to be used by the industry to identify and differentiate the films: ‘early film genre terminology served as shorthand communication between film distributors and exhibitors’ (Altman, 1996 : 276).

• At first the genre language of film borrowed heavily from literary and theatrical language before developing its own path. Prior to the 1st World War terms which related to the production practices such as ‘trick film’, ‘animated film’, ‘chase film’ were used.

• After the First World War genre terminology became much more specialised. The two major genres of film were melodramas and comedies and a range of sub-genres appeared which related to these thus : ‘ ‘slapstick’, ‘ farce’, and burlesque’ became separate genres rather than simply types of comedy’ (Altman, 1996 : 276).

Functions of Genre within the Cinematic Process

Genre has been seen as an important concept for each of the levels of the structure of cinema which the sections of this ebook elaborate upon in more detail:

• Production. The concept of genre provided a template for production decisions. It was a form of tacit knowledge among members of the production team which laid out the general parameters of style and content.
• Distribution and Marketing. The notion of genre was an important way of differentiating products. It became a mode of communication between producer and distributor, and between distributor and exhibitor. It also helped film reviewers, often non-specialists, place the product and measure it against other similar products. Reviewing is an essential part of the marketing of a film. In terms of distribution categories all films belong to some genre. It could be loose, such as ‘art-house movie’, or quite ‘tight’ such as ‘teen-pic’ movie. It immediately tells the exhibitor whether they are likely to be interested.
• Consumption. Describes standard patterns of spectator involvement. The idea of genre facilitates communication between exhibitor and audience. Importantly this works between members of the audience and potential audience. Generic ideas create a ready-made vocabulary of concepts to describe the nature and style of the film at a relatively simple level. This can attract larger audiences.

Those critics who have worked upon genre in depth argue that some films are: ‘Self-consciously produced and consumed according to (or against ) a specific generic model’ (Altman, 1997 : 277). This book doesn’t disagree with that approach however it does consider that films along with any other cultural products which have been developed with a commercial formula in mind frequently do this to cover up for lack of skills, imagination, finance or a combination of these elements.

The argument is developed particularly in relation to Hollywood that there is an auteur-genre continuum along which the budget and personnel of a film are chosen to meet an industry created audience ‘need’. Higher budget films are less formulaic and appeal to wider audiences many of which are culturally and intellectually sophisticated and who are not interested in low quality films. In these films  stars and high production values are as important as  any genre assignations.

In terms of national cinemas, film industries which are just starting out are weak on establishing genre films. Once an industry is more mature it will have established a generic output such as comedies for example. Hollywood has become hegemonic or dominant at producing strong genres imposing them on world-wide audiences. Genres from other national industries have generated fewer films with a more limited audience and are often strongly influenced by Hollywood genres.

Growth of Genres

As a more generically-based production system grows so there is often a shift from defining genre mainly by content to: ‘genre definitions based on repeated plot motifs, recurrent image patterns, standardised narrative configurations and predictable reception conventions’ ( Altman, 1997 : 277).

The use of genre films combined with more industrialised methods of production became very important in the rescue of the one-time largest European film-making company UFA in Germany. Originally the directors were allowed a great deal of artistic freedom which produced fine films now considered canonical. The artistic freedom meant that there were huge budget and time overruns which meant in Germany that UFA was threatened with bankruptcy by Deutsche Bank unless it changed its methods of production. New management methods based upon Hollywood industrial practices were introduced. Finance was separate from and in control of production.  New filmmakers were introduced who concentrated upon genre development.

Efficient genre directors such as Karl Hartl, Gustav Ucicky and above all Hans Schwarz put UFA back in the black, the latter with six films, among them some of the biggest box-office successes until then’. (My emphasis :Thomas Elsaesser, 1997 : 150)

This German example shows how important the development and maintenance of the concept of genre is, to mainstream film production. The example also supports the argument that the quality of these films was instantly forgettable. Few, other than professional researchers, now have an interest in this type of film. In a world overdosing from ‘informational output’ the criteria of quality seems increasingly important given the limited consumption time available.

Elsaesser’s position highlights how the institution of cinema is an industrial process which requires investment and profits to operate within a capitalist oriented ‘free-market’ system of production. Developing an understanding of the various aspects of genre takes on a particularly important role in helping us to understand the range of film choice and the type of content which is regularly available.

Other institutional factors creating and controlling genres

Content of course is not entirely limited to genre demands. Censorship and other governmental priorities regarding cultural policy can effect what genres are produced and how they are produced. This is particularly the case in countries which take a stance in their cultural policy which is concerned to rise above the market in some way. This can be the case in authoritarian regimes, or else in countries such as France which have prioritised a defence of a well established national cinema . As a consequence it tends to make more individualised films.

Genre also exists as a critical construction which can invent genres by identifying content and cultural linkages. It also exists as an industry practice. As such the concept of genre is a double-edged weapon which can be turned to the advantage of the film industry or against the film industry.

The complexity of film noir is a case in point. Film Noir was not an industry invented category but a critical category emerging from French critics in the aftermath of war when they saw some of the US thrillers which had been produced during the war but banned in France. Since that time many books and articles have been generated debating whether the genre exists at all and what the limits of this ‘genre’ might be. Critics suggested that the ’genre’ proffered a critique of urban American modern society and the ‘American Dream’.

Film noir has been considered as too complex to deal with in depth in an introductory work. It is worth noting that the trajectory of what started as a critical category into a commercial category is unusual. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s a range of ‘knowing’ films were deliberately produced as neo-noirs. Deliberately copying the visual style and frequently violent content of the original films and frequently having intensely pessimistic endings these films were targeted at a ‘knowing’ critical market. This shows that even the critical thought can be drawn into the marketplace.

The case of film noir highlights the shifting relationship between the industry and the critics in which the boundaries between industry, critic and audience rather than being fixed are being continuously redefined and contested. Originally genre meant films which produced by a cultural industry primarily to make money rather than to open up new ways of knowing and thinking about the world. The concept of genre can be used critically to bring into existence challenges to these ways of thinking by making different links between films to the industry. The idea of "Heritage Cinema" from British critics in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s saw costume dramas and literary adaptations as a conservative 'genre' which served the aims of the then current Conservative government well.  It then also shows that the original criticism of society can itself be turned into a commercial product perhaps based upon irony.

The relationship between the industry, the critics and the audience is an asymmetrical one. The industry holds most of the powerful cards. It can always control and even take advantage of criticism. Whilst the industry must create audiences by seducing viewers it is always on the industry terms rather than the viewers'.

Thinking of genre-based films as an asymmetrical arena of cultural negotiation can be useful. The multiple experiences of viewing publics who are differently positioned in terms of class, ethnicity, gender and territorial location. Because this cultural arena is subject to negotiation, the parameters of genre are constantly shifting as the industry tries to retain and recreate its audiences. This book has concentrated upon the dual aspects of genre as a tool of the film industry and as methodological way of researching the importance of film as a whole

The original book was set out in three main sections. Firstly it mapped out key genres and examined general aspects of genre theory touched upon above. It then proceeded to examine the wider cultural and industrial context in which genre operates. The final main section dealt with more specific genre areas, offering a few readings and possibilities for the reader to develop.   This blog  will by the nature of the way it is built differ slightly. A contents page with links will be added after the other sections have been posted. 

Genres themselves are always in a state of flux, emerging and dying away as wider social conditions change. There is a mutual performativity, operating through the asymmetrical communications system, between industry and consumer. The asymmetric weighting by the very nature of genre is in favour of the industry. This in itself can be seen as a part of the greater hegemonic process by which liberal democracies function.

Cinema organised and funded in ways which represent the global complexity of our social, cultural and economic lives in different ways has been possible to only a very limited extent. The study of genre necessarily needs to consider the contextual aspects of society and its relationship to cultural production rather than be limited to pure textual analysis. These kind of issues are raised in the second part.

Many cultural critics defend cinematic genres, but more critical cinema could, and should be available. When no alternative is offered it is difficult to see beyond the horizons of what is culturally possible when these horizons are policed by genre norms. Genre can be a beneficial critical category up to a point. All films can be described by highly generalised generic categories such as comedy or tragedy. Genre boundaries instituted by the industry frequently act to limit the cultural imaginations of audiences. This attitude discourages risk-taking as producers and consumers. This is because genre is by its very nature intimately bound up with the construction of a sophisticated marketplace organised to promote certain cultural products at the expense of others.

Issues of what is now being understood as cultural citizenship are not often raised within film and cinema studies.  A useful critical perspective to be constantly thinking of is the question of whether cinema alongside other cultural products produced primarily for profit is in the best interests of society as a whole and offers a wide diversity of representations of the society in which the viewers are based. Perhaps a cultural production system which is less market-oriented and more citizen oriented is what is required for advanced democracies?

: 02 Apr 2007 14:48 |  Tags: A Level Film Studies A Level Media Studies Film Genres Film Studies Franco Moretti Genre Genre Studies Genre Theory Kinoeye |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem