Exploration in GenreZara

What is genre?Genre is a type of media product to define a category of film in the film industry. Within each category, there are certain specific elements to help the audience understand the genre that they are viewing.Graham burton has created a theory to help define the genre with an equation of conventions that make up what is in a genre.

KE = P+St Ch+Pl(StSi)+I+Ba+(De)+Th= GenreKey elements

Protagonist

Stock characters

Plot icons

Stock situations

Background and decor

Themes

Key ElementsAll genres have specific key elements that are composed to help define their own genre. However not all genres may tick with the exact same key elements. For example, Science Fiction is contains a mix of Science facts, but is written as a story making it fiction. All of the key elements are extremely important as they add up to meet with the expectations of the audience on what they expect to see from the genre.

ScreamOne example f the use of key elements is the Horror Comedy film Scream. This film purposely points out the main conventions of a Horror film, which inevitably happen to the characters who mimic these conventions. Not only does it follow up to the key elements, it changes the expectations of the audience because the characters in the film are aware of these conventions that take place.

Stock charactersStock characters are those who are neither the protagonists nor the antagonists in the film, they can also be called background characters. Within these films, they play minor role that the audience expect to know and sometimes help the protagonist. Some films distort the audiences’ expectations the films Hostel 2; the only survivor was a Stock character being an arrogant male. The audience did not expect the main character being killed.

IconsIcons are one of the most important elements to defining genres because overall, they are what are seen to be able to identify the genre immediately. Horror for example, the audience is expected to see anything involving blood, killings, and dark atmospheres like storms and rain. They are a key symbol within genres and that people are able to know what genre it is by jut looking at he icon that belongs with it.

It is important for Audiences and Producers?Genre is important for audiences and producers because not only does it give the target audience a choice of their favourite type of film, for producers, they are able to market the film based off the genres’ iconography and marketing. Producers are able to market their Horror films through the use of icons (Blood, death, killers, Screaming etc.) and appeal to their audience with iconography. The audience’s would expect certain conventions that a Horror film would have (If it is a Horror film, they would enjoy the anticipation of being surprised with the producers changing expectations of the plot in the film.

Does the theory of genre work?Each genre needs specific elements for it to become it’s own genre. Nowadays, no genre can always have the exact conventions due to the increase of genre hybrids and the mixing of conventions from two or more genres. However, the key elements that make a genre are more or less correct as the theory covers all that is found and needed for the audience to figure out what type of genre the film is. Genres are figured out by the main conventions within the key elements, but with genre hybrids, it takes a little more to figure out its conventions.