Key Concepts: Genre, Narrative & Representation

Genre: Definition and Key Points

Genre is the classification of any media texts into types or categories.  Each genre can be identified by a range of elements that allow us both to recognise that particular genre and to expect certain things to occur within it.

These elements are commonly known as conventions. If we say that we like westerns or sit-coms people will share these expectations and instantly recognise what we mean when we say we like them.

Conventions

Conventions are really ideas that we all share about particular genres. We would be unlikely to see all of the conventions in any one film, TV programme or magazine. But we would expect to find a few of them and would be disappointed if they were not there. You could say that part of our pleasure in a media text comes from knowing what might happen next whilst still having the possibility that our expectations may be wrong.

What Is the Point of Genre?

If we say that a group of films are all in the same genre, this means in some ways they are similar. What is the point of that? Shouldn’t all films try to be different? Don’t audiences want novelty?

Well, they do and they don’t. From the audience’s point of view, genre has its uses. If every film were completely different from every other one, how would you know if you were going to like it? The thing about films is, you have to pay for them before you know if you like them (unless you’ve seen it before). So you need some way of telling whether it’s your kind of film. One way is if it stars an actor you like. And another way is if it’s in a genre you like  say, a horror film, or science fiction. At least this gives you an idea of what sort of story the film will be. Of course some actors become so linked to a specific genre they become the same thing; this is very useful for the institution or industry producing the films.

For the film industry, genre has several advantages. For the industry too, it’s good that audiences have some sense of whether the film is to their taste. It’s also a help in marketing films. If certain genres have recognisable visual motifs, these can be used in advertising as a shorthand indication of what sort of film it is. Making films in genres made it easier to plan production. Certain kinds of sets and costumes could be used over and over again. A studio could invest in certain types of actors if it specialised in a particular genre. Even stories and scripts could be recycled.

Obviously filmmakers have to strive for novelty too. If every film was just the same, both filmmakers and audiences would die of boredom. But genre can actually help create novelty. By upsetting the conventions of a genre, a filmmaker can create originality. In fact, we can say that in film genres, there must always be a combination of similarity and difference. In some ways making films is just like any other kind of industrial production. And in some ways it’s not.

THE KEY ELEMENTS OF GENRE

1. All genres have a portfolio of key ELEMENTS that make up the formula. They add up to what we unconsciously expect to see, and that we enjoy seeing.

•PROTAGONISTS  recognizable lead characters  often male, usually loners

•STOCK CHARACTERS  recognizable though minor characters

•PLOTS AND STOCK SITUATIONS  Storylines that are predictable and recognizable

•ICONS  this is the aspect of genre that we immediately recognise and latch on to. Think of them as symbols that tell us what genre we are seeing. We think of three types; objects, backgrounds and stars. Icons are usually visual, but sound may be used.

•BACKGROUNDS AND DECOR  If backgrounds become very distinctive then they become icons; consider the interior decor of a western saloon.

•THEMES  All genre narrative says something about conflict between good and evil, alternative views of right and wrong, but certain themes crop up in some genres more than others; consider change in the western, or deceit and betrayal in detective genres. Themes are linked to value messages  the theme of a story expresses certain values that are communicated to an audience. The theme becomes a message.

2. Genres have the quality of being RECOGNIZABLE, but story makers depend on this instant recognition for instant communication with the audience. No time is needed to set up a character or a situation. Of course an attraction of genre material is that it will mix the familiar with the unexpected.

3. All media products give a kind of pleasure to the audience, but with genres there is a range of pleasure to be had because of ANTICIPATION, EXPECTATATION and PREDICTION. The very qualities that make a genre formulaic can make it more interesting to the audience.

4. The building blocks of genre  the elements, the messages and themes  all depend on REPETITION and REINFORCEMENT so that they continue to be understood by the audience. Importantly, the meanings are also repeated, so that we accept as truth the generic representation of something; consider the myth of the Wild West.

5. All the elements of genre combine to make a kind of FORMULA. Within this formula there are certain rules or CONVENTIONS that we expect to be followed  although an effect can be achieved by not doing so.  This formula is known as the repertoire of elements.

6. Genres are good for the industry, but they are also good for the audience. The industry makes profits; the audience enjoys them.

SUBGENRES are subdivisions within genres that become established through repetitions. For instance, there are Slasher horror movies within the horror genre.

HYBRID films mix the conventions of two or more genres, thus reinterpreting them. Alien is an example of a sci-fi horror.

SPOOFS arise when the conventions of a genre become so established they can be easily parodied for humour e.g. Scary Movie is a horror spoof.

Genre Theory

Richard Dyer argued that entertainment or genre forms are pleasurable precisely because they allow a kind of fantasy escape from a reality often experienced as full of exhaustion and alienation, into a fictional world coded as abundant, energetic, transparent, intense and with moments of community.  Following the Russian literary theorists Bloch and Bakhtin, he called them utopian (derived from the Greek meaning, ‘no place’ and ‘good place’) pleasures, not in the sense that they literally represent or speak about political utopias, but that key moments and qualities give sensuous expression to such feelings that ‘things could be better’.

Jackie Stacy has argued that Dyer’s categories need to be thought through more specifically, in relation to gender, class, ethnicity and different historical periods, as well as to the places where entertainment happens, such as the luxurious escape into the cinemas for women in the 1930s and 1940s.  However, they are still a valuable way to begin to explain the pleasures/fantasies of genre forms – and politics and even news.

The Real or the Verisimilitude (appearance of being real)

All genres, from television news to heavy metal music, are constructed, working with codes and conventions: there is no neat division to be made between ‘the real’ and ‘the imagined’.  Yet some genres are perceived as having more verisimilitude, or connection to the ‘real’, than others, which makes a key difference to assumptions as to what their ideological work might be. 

This ‘real- seemingness’, the ways that media forms will combine systems of what seems ‘real’, ‘likely’ or ‘probable’ in texts, involves two areas:

Generic verisimilitude: sets of expectations, which are internal to the genre.  E.G garlic has magic powers in vampire films.

Cultural verisimilitude: the genre’s relationship to expectations about the world outside the genre.  E.G courtroom dramas make references to public or political events outside the film.

Repetition and Difference

One of the most widespread ways of dismissing genre, entertainment or popular forms is the charge that they are all the same.  For the owners of media industries these profitably standardised practices are an attractive part of genres.  But this emphasis on ‘sameness’, ‘repetition’ or ‘standardisation’ does not work when we come to audiences’ enjoyment of genres. 

The most recent development in thinking about familiar entertainment genres has been to put them into context of audiences’ understandings and activities.  Genres are no longer seen as sets of fixed elements, constantly repeated, but as working ‘repertories of elements’ or fluid systems of conventions and expectations.  These conventions and expectations include areas of: Narrative, Audio-visual codes (mise en scene and iconography), Ideological themes.

Frank McConnell’s theory is based around the idea that instead of basing genres around the obvious visual clues, it is more meaningful to split texts according to their themes and plots and in particular their leading characters.  He came up with five genres, which specifically refer to typical events in the history of any society and the characters that play a part in them.  He believes that since films reflect society, they will always involve these kinds of typical events: The king – establishing the state – the epic, The Knight – consolidating the state – the adventurous romance, The Pawn – trapped in the institutionalised state – the melodrama, The Fool – responding to the madness of the state – the satire, Apocalypse – the collapse of the state which leads to a new beginning – no single hero.

Genre Theory: Continued.

Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style) which are shared and belong to them. The attempt to define particular genres in terms of sufficient textual properties is sometimes seen as attractive but it poses many difficulties. For instance, in the case of films, some seem to be aligned with one genre in content and another genre in form. The film theorist Robert Stam argues that 'subject matter is the weakest criterion for generic grouping because it fails to take into account how the subject is treated (Stam 2000, 14).

Film theorist, Robert Stam, refers to common ways of categorizing films:

While some genres are based on story content (the war film), other are borrowed from literature (comedy, melodrama) or from other media (the musical). Some are budget-based (blockbusters), while others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity (Black cinema), location (the Western) or sexual orientation (Queer cinema). (Stam 2000,14).

Films can help to remind us of the social nature of the production and interpretation of texts. In relation to film, many modern commentators refer to the commercial and industrial significance of genres. McQuail argues that: The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently relating its production to the expectations of its customers. Since it is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices, it can be considered to order the relations between the parties to mass communication. (McQuail 1987, 200)

Steve Neale observes that 'genres... exist within the context of a set of economic relations and practices', though he adds that 'genres are not the product of economic factors as such. The conditions provided by the capitalist economy account neither for the existence of the particular genres that have hitherto been produced, nor for the existence of the conventions that constitute them' (Neale 1980, 51-2). Economic factors may therefore account for the perpetuation of a profitable genre.

Narrative Theory

Narrative is simply a way of organising material so it makes sense. Edward Branigan (Narrative Comprehension and Film, p3) describes narrative not just as a chain of events or cause and effect, but as an;

“activity that organises data into a special pattern which represents and explains experience”

Film as Fairy Tale.

Propp’s theory

Vladimir Propp, a Russian critic, active in the 1920’s, published his Morphology of the Folk Tale in 1928. While the Soviet cinema was producing excellent films, Propp was essentially interested in the narrative of folk tales. He noticed:

Folk tales were similar in many areas. They were about the same basic struggles and they appeared to have stock characters. He identified a theory about characters and actions as narrative functions. Characters, according to Propp, have a narrative function; they provide a structure for the text.
Characters that perform a function

The Hero – a character that seeks something
The Villain – who opposes or actively blocks the hero’s quest
The Donor – who provides an object with magical properties
The Dispatcher – who sends the hero on his/her quest via a message
The False Hero – who disrupts the hero’s success by making false claims
The Helper – who aids the hero
The Princess – acts as the reward for the hero and the object of the villain’s plots
Her Father – who acts to reward the hero for his effort

Actions as functions of narrative

Preparation
A community/kingdom/family is in an ordered state of being A member of the community/kingdom/family leaves home
A warning is given to the leaders of the community or a rule is imposed on the hero
The warning is discounted/ the rule is broken
The villain attempts to discover something about the victim of the broken rule
The villain tries to deceive the victim to gain advantage The victim unwittingly helps the villain
Complication
A state of disorder The villain harms a member of the community/kingdom/family
One of the members of the community/kingdom/family desires something
The hero is sent to get what is desired
The hero plans action against the villain
Transference
The hero leaves home
 The hero is tested or attacked/ he meets the test and is given a magical gift or helper
The hero reacts to the donor
The hero arrives at the place he can fulfill his quest
Struggle
There is a struggle between the hero and the villain |
The hero is branded
The villain is overcome
The state of disorder is settled
Return
The hero returns
The hero is pursued
The hero escapes or is rescued
The hero arrives home and is not recognised
A false hero claims rewards
A task is set for the hero
The task is accomplished
Recognition
The hero is recognised
The false hero or villain is unmasked
The false hero is punished The hero attains the reward (princess/ kingdom)
To Propp events are not just about character and action but also about progressing the narrative.

CRITICISMS Propp’s theory of narrative seems to be based in a male orientated environment (due to his theory actually reflecting early folk tales) and as such critics often dismiss the theory with regard to film. However, it may still be applied because the function (rather than the gender) of characters is the basis of the theory. E.g. the hero could be a woman; the reward could be a man.

Critics argue that Propp’s strict order of characters and events is restrictive. We should rather apply the functions and events randomly as we meet new narratives. E.g. the hero may kill the villain earlier than Propp expects. Changing the traditional format will change the whole way the text is received.
Some critics claim there are many more character types than Propp suggests and we should feel free to identify them. E.g. the stooge in a sci-fi film, who is usually nameless and usually killed early on to suggest the power of the alien force, is a typical modern character type.

It applies to Fairy Stories and to other similar narratives based around 'quests' IT DOES NOTAPPLY TO ALL NARRATIVES.

WHY THE THEORY IS USEFUL It avoids treating characters as if they are individuals and reminds us they are merely constructs. Some characters are indeed there just to progress the narrative.

Todorov’s theory

Tzvetan Todorov simplified the idea of narrative theory whilst also allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts with his theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium.
The theory is simply this:
◦ The fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium (everything is as it should be)
◦ It then suffers some disruption (disequilibrium)
 ◦ New equilibrium is produced at the end of the narrative

Seems simple enough and easily applicable to all films! But theories can never be THAT easy! There are five stages the narrative can progress through:

• A state of equilibrium (all is as it should be)
• A disruption of that order by an event
• A recognition that the disorder has occurred
• An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
• A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium

Here narrative is not seen as a linear structure but a circular one. The narrative is driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium. However, the equilibrium attained at the end of the story is not identical to the initial equilibrium. Todorov argues that narrative involves a transformation. The characters or the situations are transformed through the progress of the disruption. The disruption itself usually takes place outside the normal social framework, outside the ‘normal’ social events. E.g a murder happens and people are terrified. Someone vanishes and the characters have to solve the mystery. So, remember:

• Narratives don’t need to be linear.
• The progression from initial equilibrium to restoration always involves a transformation.
• The middle period of a narrative can depict actions that transgress
everyday habits and routines.

There can be many disruptions whilst seeking a new equilibrium (horror relies on this technique).
Enigma codes Barthes identified a number of narrative codes referring to the realist text.
The most common of these is the Enigma code.
Enigma codes refer to audience desires to know what will happen next. This code sets puzzles, questions and resolves them within the text. ‘the function of the enigma code is to delay revelation, to dodge the moment of truth by setting up obstacles, stoppages, deviations ..delaying final disclosure until the ultimate moment’ (Stam et.al.) Narrative and Non - Fiction

APPROACHES TO REPRESENTATION

You will all be familiar with this term as a key concept to help you analyse an unseen media text, but this term is also used and an area of academic theory in Media Studies. You will need to become well read and confident in this area of theory and research. You will need to know all the related theory, debates, political, historical and social context.

Key areas for studying ‘Representations’:
◦ Two detailed studies of the images of particular groups or places across a range of media.
◦ Alternative images of these groups or places across the media.
◦ General issues of representation and stereotyping within the media.
◦ Problems of producing fair and accurate media representations.
◦ Representations and power in the Media.
◦ Reasons for dominant representations (e.g. historic, economic, social, political, etc).

Here are some notes outlining the key theories about Media Representations.

The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey – Feminist Theory – Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema – Written in 1975
The cinema apparatus of Hollywood cinema puts the audience in a masculine subject position with the woman on the screen seen as an object of desire. Film and cinematography are structures upon ideas. Protagonists tended to be men. Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of male gaze – “voyeuristic (women as whores) and fetishistic – women as unreachable madonnas”. (Also narcissistic – women watching film see themselves reflected on the screen). (Film texts: Alien, Jackie Brown).

People who criticise her ideas say that she is ignoring the fact that all genders – male and female want to feel dominated and overwhelmed by the cinema experience. Also, she ignores the fact that men are capable of ‘metaphoric transvestism’ whereby they are able to view the film from the perspective of a woman. (Thelma and Louise, The Piano, Knocked Up, Brick Lane).

Subculture – Representation of Groups – Dick Hebdidge

In his book, Subculture and The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdidge said that a subculture is a group of like minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant on to which they belong. Ken Gelder lists 6 ways in which a subculture can be recognised: 1) Often have negative relationship to work 2) Negative or ambivalent relationship to class 3) Through their associations with territory ( The street, the hood, the club) rather than property 4) Through their stylistic ties to excess 5) Through their movement out of home into non-domestic forms of belonging (social groups as opposed to family) 6) Through their refusal to engage with they might see as the ‘banalities’ of life. Other ways of recognising a subculture might be symbolism attached to clothes, music, visual affectations like tattoos etc. (Examples – Ben and his friends in Knocked up representing a subculture some of the values of which Alison and as such the America she initially represents might benefit from). Subcultural values often associated with being ‘cool’.

Semiotic Analysis

SIGNS

A sign, according to Saussure (1915/1966), is a combination of a concept and a sound-image, a combination that cannot be separated. But because Saussure does not find these terms quite satisfactory, he modifies them slightly:

I propose to retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified [signifié] and signifier [signifiant]; the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts. (p. 67)

The relationship between the signifier and signified—and this is crucial—is random, unmotivated, unnatural. There is no logical connection between a word and a concept or a signifier and signified, a point that makes finding meaning in texts interesting and problematic.
The difference between a sign and a symbol, Saussure suggests, is that a symbol has a signifier that directly relates to it.

One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is a rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and signified. The symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just another symbol, such as a chariot. (p. 68)

We can now start looking at texts differently and can start thinking about how it is that signifiers generate meaning. How do signifiers generate meaning? And how is it that we know these meanings?

Sign: A Combination of Signifier and Signified

LANGUAGE AND SPEAKING

Texts (such as films, television programs, and commercials) are “like languages,” and the rules of linguistics can be applied to them. What a language does is enable the communication of information, feelings and ideas by establishing systems and rules that people learn. And just as there is grammar for writing and speaking, there are grammars for various kinds of texts—and for different media.
Saussure made a distinction that is useful, between language and speaking. Language is a social institution, made up of rules and conventions that have been systematized, that enables us to speak (or, more broadly, to
SIGN
signifier
Sound-image
signified
Concept
communicate). Each person “speaks” in his or her own manner, but this speaking is based on the language and rules that everyone learns. A television program such as Star Trek can be viewed as speech that is intelligible to its audience because the audience knows the language. That is, we know the signs and what they signify; we know the conventions of the genre, or what is acceptable and unacceptable.

We know the codes!

Sometimes there is confusion, and the code applied by the creator of a program isn’t the code used by the members of the audience. In such cases there is bad communication. What makes things complicated is the fact that, generally speaking, people are not consciously aware of the rules and codes and cannot articulate them, although they respond to them. An example of this kind of mix-up is a scene in a film or TV program that is meant to be sad but generates laughter in audience members.

It is obvious, then, that people are “speaking” all the time, even when they aren’t saying anything verbally. Hairstyles, eyeglasses, clothes, facial expressions, posture, gestures, and many other things communicate or “speak” (that is, signify continually) to those who are sensitive to such things and who are mindful of signs and signifiers. Maya Pines (1982) has offered this explanation of semiotics:
Everything we do sends messages about us in a variety of codes, semiologists contend. We are also on the receiving end of innumerable messages encoded in music, gestures, foods, rituals, books, movies, or advertisements. Yet we seldom realize that we have received such messages, and would have trouble explaining the rules under which they operate.

1. Semiotics is concerned with how meaning is created and conveyed in texts and, in particular, in narratives (or stories).
2. The focus of semiotics is the signs found in texts. Signs are understood to be combinations of signifiers and signifieds.
3. Because nothing has meaning in itself, the relationships that exist among
signs are crucial. An analogy can be made with words and grammar: It is the ways in which words are combined that determine what they mean. Language is a social institution that tells how words are to be used; speaking is an individual act based on language.
4. Texts can be viewed as being similar to speech and as implying grammars or languages that make the texts meaningful. Codes and conventions make the signs in a narrative understandable and also shape the actions.

CONNOTATION AND DENOTATION

The word connotation comes from the Latin connotare, “to mark along with,” and refers to the cultural meanings that become attached to words (and other forms of communication). A word’s connotations involve the symbolic, historic, and emotional matters connected to it. In his book Mythologies (1972), Roland Barthes, a distinguished French semiotician, addresses the cultural connotations of many aspects of French daily life, such as steak and frites, detergents, Citroen automobiles, and wrestling. Barthes’s purpose, he says, is to take the world of “what-goes-without-saying” and show this world’s connotations and, by extension, its ideological foundations.

Denotation, on the other hand, refers to the literal or explicit meanings of words and other phenomena. For example, Barbie Doll denotes a toy doll, first marketed in 1959, that was originally 11.5 inches high, had measurements of 5.25 inches at the bust, 3.0 inches at the waist, and 4.25 inches at the hips. The connotations of Barbie Doll, in contrast, are the subject of some controversy. Some scholars have suggested that the arrival of the Barbie Doll signified the end of motherhood as a dominant role for women and the importance of consumer culture, because Barbie is a consumer who spends her time buying clothes and having relationships with Ken and other dolls. The Barbie Doll doesn’t prepare little girls for the traditional role of motherhood in the way other kinds of dolls do—allowing them to imitate their mothers in caring for their “children.”

Comparison of Connotation and Denotation
Connotation
Figurative Signified(s) Inferred Suggests meanings Realm of myth
Denotation
Literal Signifier(s) Obvious Describes Realm of existence

A great deal of media analysis involves discovering the connotations of objects and symbolic phenomena and of the actions and dialogue of the characters in texts—that is, the meanings these may have for audiences— and tying these meanings to social, cultural, ideological, and other concerns.