Genre Theories

What is Genre?

'Genre' is considered a critical tool that helps us study texts and audience responses to texts by dividing them into categories based on common elements.  

Daniel Chandler (2001)

Theory argues that word genre comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for 'kind', or 'class'. The term is widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory to refer to a distinctive type of 'text'.

Barry Keith Grant (1995)

Grant's idea is that media texts can be divided up into specifically by their familiar and what became their recognizable characteristics.

Steve Neale (1995)

He states that genres are not 'systems' they are processes of systematization ie they are dynamic and evolve over a period of time.


Vampires have appeared in most Thriller genre films has developed and changed over a long period of time. The fist film to have a vampire appear was Nosferatu in 1922, a silent film of which shows how vampires are a deadly supernatural creating fear in the audiences. However this has soon evolved gradually into the attractive, sexy character that is Edward Cullen in the Twilight saga. Vampires are seen as sexual icons and most vampire film in this current society involve a relationship between a vampire and a human of which the human surrenders to become one of them. This idea that genres can develop is certainly seen through how vampires are portrayed in media texts.

Jason Mittell (2001)

Jason argues that genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industries, audience and cultural practices as well. Industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Media producers use familiar codes and conventions that are very often make cultural references to their audience knowledge of society, other texts.
Genre also allows audiences to make choices about what product they want to consume through acceptance in order to fulfill a particular pleasure.

Pleasure of genre for audience

Rick Altman (1999)

Altman argues that genre offers a 'set of pleasures'.

Emotional Pleasures
Offered to audiences of genre films are particularly significant when they generate an audience response.




Disney Pixar are well known for playing with audiences emotions and taking people on a emotional roller coaster. This all stemmed from the film Finding Nemo. One recent film Up released in 2009, play with the audiences emotion by creating a character with an poignant back story which affect makes the audience feel sorry for this animated character. Audiences may seek this pleasure to bring them back to reality and stir up forgotten feelings of emotion and think about the characters feelings and emotions rather than their own.

Visceral Pleasures
(refers to internal organs) are 'gut' responses and are defined by how the film's stylistic construction elicits a physical affect (roller coaster ride)


The trailer above is for the movie The boy in the striped pajamas, the story takes the audience through a roller coaster of events that leaves the audience saddened by the events that occur. Due to the film being about a true story it makes the audience feel more emotional and frequent to internal responses as the events really did happen. People may seek this style of genre for realism. Most gut responses come from movies that are often sad and involve death as this is a more effective response.

Intellectual Puzzles
Thriller or the 'who done it' offer the pleasures in trying to unravel a mystery or a puzzle. Pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and forecasting the end or the being surprised by the unexpected.




The movie Now you see me, is based on four illusionists that try to pull off one of the biggest tricks but are tracked by FBI agents to try and arrest them for stealing from a bank in one of their tricks. This film would be considered a puzzle for the audience because the audience is lead to question there actions and how they manage to pull their tricks. Some audience may watch this film for a intellectual puzzle pleasure.

Strengths of Genre theory

One strength of genre theory is that everybody can understand it even without realizing you are. It is universal therefore music industries use it to develop and market specific texts. Making it easier to categorize different types of film. Genre theories are assessible to any media texts not just film therefore it can apply to anything.

Genre Development & Transformation

Over the years genre has developed and changed as the wider society that produce them also changes. A process known as the generic transformation.

Christian Metz Language & Cinema (1974)

Metz argues that genre goes through a typical cycle of changes during it's lifespan.

• Experimental Stage
• Classical Stage 
• Parody Stage
• Deconstruction Stage

Music Video

Music videos are intended to appeal directly to youth subcultures by reinforcing generic elements of musical genre. Pop-proms are used to promote a band or an artist. Postmodern texts, which is a label given to historical are within society and culture, whose main purpose is to promote a star persona (Dyer 1975). Most music videos are either performance or conception , don't have to be literal representations of the song or lyrics.

The music video on the left is Basket Case by Green Day and references the film One flew over the cuckoo's nest. By placing them side by side you can see that Green Day has used similar mise-en-scene and cinematography to create a scene from the film on the right. This shows us that music videos don't have to have significance to the song but can be used to promote film also.


Themes of Genre

David Bordwell (1989)

David Bordwell says tat 'any theme may appear in any genre'. Some themes include:

Horror films: This film is basically just modern fairy tales and often act as morality plays in which people who break society’s rules are punished.

Fear of the unknown: Themes of which the monster is the ‘monstrous other’ i.e. anything
that is scary because it is foreign or different.

Sex = death: This theme is seen in horror movies, especially Slasher movies, sex is immoral and must be punished, werewolf movies can be seen as a metaphor for puberty, vampires can be as metaphors for sexually transmitted diseases or rape etc.

The breakdown of society: Is the concept of post-apocalyptic movies are about our fear
(or secret desire for) of the breakdown of society. The collapse of civilization results in human kind reverting to their animal instincts.

Some short films can also be social realist texts, and so through their discourse they share some conventional themes of horror/scare texts in general such as:

The duality of man/ personal journey: Is the conflict between man’s civilized side and his savage, primal instincts, e.g. Jeykll and Hyde, Werewolf movies, the Hulk, etc.

Segregation and alienation: The theme suggests two opposing cultures or beings going through a struggle to survive . As there are no standard themes of short movies, depending on their audience they offer their own themes.

Themes associated with the youthful audience:

• Teen angst (fear, worries)
• Rebellion (conforming vs non-conforming)
• Romance 
• Sex (loosing virginity)
• Nostalgia (innocence of youth)
• Nihilism (belief that there is no future)
• Coming of age rituals (prom, falling in love)
• Tribalism (popularity is everything)
• Bullying

Other themes in music videos:

• War
• Crime
• Poverty
• Capitalism
• Racism

David Buckingham (1993)

David argues that 'genre is not... Simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change'. 

As postmodern theorist Jacques Derrida reminds us, "the law of the law of genre . . . is precisely a principle of contamination, a law of impurity". For example, short films and music videos are in the process of genre cross-over. Some narrative videos borrow from the conventions of short films and in fact are short films.

To Kill a Dead Man is a short film made in 1994 by the trip hop group Portishead. The film is a spy movie which revolves around an assassination and what happens afterwards. The band produced a short film with reference of there music and shows that music videos are borrowing conventions of films and shows the cross over between the two media texts. There is also reference from this video in another one of Portishead's songs, Sour Times.