Genre Flashcards
Thomas Schatz: pg. 692
•Genres emerges as multiple relationships the films have
Screwball Comedy
oHis girl Friday
oIt happened one night
oBringing up baby
oWomen on the verge of a breakdown
Howard Hawks
oHis girl Friday
oRio Bravo
oBringing Up Baby
oOnly Angels have Wings
Cary Grant
•His Girl Friday
oNorth by Northwest
oBringing Up Baby
oCharade
connections
•Think about relationship, similarities, continuity, overlap between these films
Hollywood
- Genre linked to systematized + standardized mode of production Hollywood used during Golden Age
- Ppl enjoyed similar themed movies but varied enough to maintain interest
- Hollywood created well established formulas + produced many films that followed formula
Studios
- Diff in films produced by film studios
- Certain studios became known to use certain genres
- Not confined to hollywood
genre
grouping of films that filmmakers and film viewers, film financiers and film critics assume to possess some common set of characteristics.
•Share a deep structure
•We need a working definition already to analyze characteristics
•Which comes first: film genre or genre films
Andrew Tudor
“Genre is what we collectively believe it to be.”
•“to appeal to common set of meanings in our culture”
•common cultural consensus, form is adhering to genre
•constitution of genre depends on audience’s perception + recognition of those norms
•they help to build structure into a familiar + meaningful system by simply recognizing it + acknowledging it
Thomas Schatz
“Whereas the genre exists as a sort of tacit ‘contract’ between filmmakers and audience, the genre film is an actual event that honors such a contract” (691).
Tacit Contract
- Filmmaker: genre provides visual + narrative vocabulary
- Spectators: form expectations + make meaning while seeing film
- Financiers: readily recognizable identity + makes it easier to sell
- Critics: provides vocabulary + provides traditions in order to measure quality
- Speaks to conventions film will use strategically
recurring conventions: visual
certain props, settings costumes
recurring conventions: aural
Certain musics, sound effects, speech patterns
recurring conventions: technical
Certain lighting, casting choices
recurring conventions: Narrative
initial state of equilibrium-problem-new equilibrium
oSpecifics of narrative development
oVariation on equilibriums
oVariation in types of conflict
oVariation in solutions (violence, self determination, integration into community)
oVariation in types of characters
Types of recurring conventions: Thematic
experiences, values, social systems, beliefs being communicates
oKind of ideological work genre is doing
oAttempt to resolve some sort of conflict in the society that produces + consumes these genre films
Thomas Schatz: genres of determinate space
take place in a specific arena both geographically and symbolically
Western and the gangster film, are relatively easy to identify due to their distinctive and stable iconography
Thomas Schatz: genres of indeterminate space
“[depend] less on a heavily coded place than on a highly conventionalized value
system” (698)
musical and the screwball comedy, are generally more diverse in terms of their visual, aural, and technical conventions
•Narrative + thematic conventions are more at issue
Western
•Visual – lone man with cowboy hat as he rides on a horse in the desert encountering a frontier setting
oMan is outside interacting with environment, Woman in house contained spatially + graphically
oGender division of labour: more concerned with masculinity
oGuns, Lone homestead, Landscape, Saloon
oNatural colours – concerned with nature
Western
•technical conventions – long + else to show landscape of west as site of future expansion + possibilities
oshot at widescreen (academy ratio), shown at 1.66-1
oAdapted to developments in widescreen technology
Western
- Aural – spurs (men on the move), slow talking, abrupt bursts of gunfire, nondiegetic music
- Contrast of slow speech + quick draw
- Men don’t talk too much, when they do it’s slow
- Narrative conventions – usually lone hero enters an arena, acts on arena: eradicates some threat to community, hero exits arena
Western
oRestitution of social order: alleviates threat
omasculine identity: usually male hero, John Wayne – quick decisive action, determination, rugged individualization, skilled with guns
olaw of the gun: gun fight hero wins,
onature of honour: operates in accordance with internal code, knows sometimes necessary to use gun for good
Western
- doctrine of manifest destiny: westward expansion as preordained
- Western relatively stable
- Great constancy of looks, sound, narrative, themes
- Genre of determinate space: takes place in specific arena both geographically + symbolically
- Frontier; geographical space, west in USA, boundary pushing itself further, civilization + savagery on either side
Gangster
city streets, hats match suits
oCloser shot scales + camera set ups that give sense of containment
oWomen feature as mole (blonde, tough, sexy, loyal)
oQuick paced speech, rat a tat tat gun sounds
oRise + subsequent fall of criminal
oAmerican dream as illusion
Gangster
oPursuit of success oLoss of ideals oRelationship betw law + outlaw oScorcese + Francis Coppola oBoardwalk empire
Musical
•Visual, aural, tech conventions: singing + dancing
•Narrative: overcoming obstacles to put on a show, find heterosexual romance, to create community
onumber – narrative development, repeat
onecessary for action that provide occasion for singing + dancing
olike Porn
Musical
omusical numbers don’t simply interrupt, rather they contribute toward its development in some way
•Thematic – social integration
oSelf expression, creative liberation + productive energy
oCapacity to transform for any situation
Mode
something broader
•Can’t be reduced to genre
•Genre has greater level of specifity
Screwball Comedy
physical comedy + fast-paced witty dialogue, a narrative battle of the sexes + eventual union + tendency to produce a vision of love + marriage predicated on companionability + play
•Conventions inform how they are made, how they are distributed + audiences’ expectations + experience
•Goal is to produce amusement + laughter: incongruity, deviation from social norm, exaggeration
Screwball Comedy
- Visual, aural, tech: witty banter, slapstick
- Narrative: two protagonists, man + woman, usually W has higher class status, diff from each other in some fundamental way
- Battle of sexes fuelled by animus + attraction
- Attraction wins out as couple enters into a union
- Thematic: social integration
Screwball Comedy
- Notions of companionability + play goes back to fast dialogue, displays couple as playful
- Role play: tries on diff identities, diff priorities + social values
- Can lead to transformations that lead to the new equilibrium
- Allows for disruption of status quo that can be productive
Generic Transformation
dynamic system, one that undergoes revision over the course of its lifespan
•Revision happens slowly + gradual changes in sensibilities of filmmakers + filmgoers
•Dynamic system: inevitably gonna change
•Can be multiple catalysts
Generic Transformation
in response to changes within the film industry, be they technical or industrial in nature, or changes within the sociocultural sphere at large
Western Change
- Technical: widescreen technology
- Theatres equiped with masks + right kind of screen could create widescreen effect
- Vista vision: Paramount 1.75:1
- Good, Bad, Ugly: 2.35:1 after 1959
- Tend to use widescreen as possible
- Incredible importance of the frontier, usually an ELS of landscape dominated by horizontal horizon line
Western Change
- Industrial changes: when we think of western, we think of hollywood westerns
- Supreme court ordered studios divest themselves on theatres which loosened hold on film
- By 1960 studio system has changed
- Westerns after were created in diff industrial context
- More personal + indiosyncratic projects
Western Change
- 70s – used for more personal expression
- Kevin costner changed radically the racial politics
- Lots of foreign filmmakers simulate/relocate western
- Representation of american indians: native were villified
- Racist justification of colonialism
- More sympathetic representation of indian americans
sociocultural changes
tend to inspire the most large-scale generic transformation
•Response + reaction to sociocultural context
•More explicit + gratuitous images of violence
•Same time wars were televised, mass media provided verbal + visual accounts of violence
•Ppl in general more exposed to violence
genre films
- Genre films not noted for originality
- Posession of deep structure that other genre films share
- Tend to employ well worn conventions that ensure legibility + similarity to other texts
- Neglect of genre films: originally important part of masterwork in any medium
Mythic Nature of Genre Films
genre films allow a society to tell itself the same stories over and over again in an almost ritualistic function, they are like myths and thus provide insight into the values, concerns, and practices of the society at issue
• Variations in itirations
Claude Lévi-Strauss’s work on myth
means of recasting a complex cultural system or dilemma into more basic oppositional terms.
•Structure: binaristic, identify pairs of terms that formed a tension
•Purpose to resolve at least provisionaly conflict/social tensions: provide logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction
•Used to confront conflicts
•Oedipus myth
•Overvaluating family relations + devaluating familial relations
genre film
serves to resolve, even if temporarily or provisionally, the conflicts created by these opposing terms; as Thomas Schatz notes, when it does so the “genre film’s function as cultural ritual is most evident” (700)
Thomas Schatz
- Pg. 699 “the most significant feature of any generic narrative may be its resolution - its efforts to solve, even if temporarily, the conflicts that have disturbed the community welfare. It is the repeated assertion that these conflicts can be solved, seemingly timeless cultural oppositions can be resolved favourably for the larger community”
- Efforts to solve conflicts that disturb community welfare from seemingly timeless cultural oppositions
Thomas Schatz
•“Resolution occurs even if temporarily in a way that strokes the collective sensibilities of the mass audience. Film’s function as cultural ritual most evident” (700)
Western: Mythic Terms
genre structured by the binary oppositions between individual and community, town and wilderness, and order and anarchy, among others
Screwball Binaries
social conflicts at issue
•Man/woman: battle of sexes, battle gives way to truce, diff not an impediment to their union, differences ensure that they are complementary
•Aversion/attraction: vasolates between wanting to stay + wanting to go, aversion makes attraction so strong, interplay
•Social norms/transgession: eccentric + even inappropriate, end in a pretty conventional way (formation of couple + live happily ever after), all transgressive behaviour gets compensated for by affirmation of social norms
Schatz: reconciles genre’s status as myth and its dynamic nature
“[E]ach genre has a static nucleus that manifests its thematic oppositions or recurring cultural conflicts. And each genre has, through the years, dynamically evolved as shown by the ways its individual films manipulate those oppositions. If we see genre as a problem-solving strategy, then, the static nucleus could be conceived as the problem and the variety of solutions (narrative resolutions) as its dynamic surface structure” (700)
Western Binaries/Conflicts
oIndividual/community
oTown/wilderness
oOrder/anarchy
social conflicts
- Any given genre continues to attempt to solve the same social conflicts
- Understanding social politics/colonialism
- Feminism + multiculturalism
- What differs is how oppositional terms are resolved
- What kind of resolution is achieved in the face of social conflict
Celestino Deleyto: Dynamic
“Genres are not groups of films but, rather, abstract systems formed by elements taken from many films. The generic bag contains conventions, structures, and narrative patterns, but no films.”
Celestino Deleyto: Dynamic
- “most genre critics assume that they are working with set of stable, fixed terms even though genre are constantly changing, due to not only intrinsic evolution but also the specific interests of those who create them: producers, studios, directors and critics themselves” (225)
- individual film genres way more complex + chaotic that even Schatz allows
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar. Spain, 1988)
- Almedovar: nothing pure about his work – draws on multiple sources, bears the traces of lots of influences (Hollywood cinema)
- Influenced by international art film tradition – intertextual references
- Queer aesthetics
- Influenced by spanish culture
- When he was born, it was a dictatorship
- After dictator died, explosion of activity as ppl started to do things that ppl couldn’t do before
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar. Spain, 1988)
- Contemporary Melodrama:
- Woman’s film – female protagonist, broach stereotypical women concerns, targeted toward female audiences
- Nature of love + desire, family responsibilities, nuances of human psychology, heterosexual + family relations, involve suffering, usually end in resignation + compromise
- Weepies: ending ends in a puddle of tears
