Tuesday 30 September 2014

Genre Theory

Genre tends to be based on generic conventions of content; it ends up being repository of images, sounds, stories, characters and expectations.  According to Steve Neale (1990)- the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of "difference in repetition". This means that the audience have expectations for each genre and although it ends up making the conventions somewhat repetitive, industries still to at least lightly use them throughout different aspects to please the intended audience. He also adds that "difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre" indicating that if everything was exactly the same, the audience would eventually get bored, there is no pleasure without difference.

Tom Ryall (1998) describes genre theory as "patterns/styles/structures which transcend individual films and which supervise both their construction by the film-maker and their reading by an audience."
 John Fiske defines it as "attempts to structure some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences."

Music Videos can have genres due to the narratives that are played throughout it, for example, a sad song more have a tragic narrative to it.