A) Definition of Genre- distinct type of category that a certain group of films are related and share common characteristics
a. Myth – subject of movie, character, plot, setting, character, theme, type of actor, mood, atmosphere, type of music
b. Content/form distinction i. Difference between content and form is that content is what is being said and form is how it is said ii. Content is the criteria which we distinguish between genres
c. Myths, conventions, and iconography as constituents of a genre i. Conventions- certain ways of doing things in genres/talk some about form
1. Musicals- use music and dance to tell the story.
2. Science fiction- uses special effects
3. Gangster Films – the way they talk, the type of dialogue. They don't talk like that in other types of films ii. Iconography- series of images and sounds that are repeated in a number of films of the same genre
1. In gangster film, it’s the flipping of a coin; hear screeching of brakes or machine gun
d. Content of the work (Myth)- the stories i. Myth- same story ii. Message- Same sort of subjects/themes iii. Same Characters iv. Same Settings v. Same type of actors vi. Same dialogue/movements vii. Same atmospheres viii. Same conflicts
e. Form of the work i. Visual design/composition/sound design
B) Film Genres
a. Tragedy- image of man going beyond the balance, breaking the limits, being heroic, pressing to reach the realm of heaven and be like a God, appealing to man’s infallibility i. Not in use today; we don’t live in a world of heroes
1. by and large it is a lost genre ii. The hero is evoked nostalgically today (Star Wars, etc) iii. Age of anti-heroes iv. Implies a ceiling and a cellar; implies a significant universe; when you secularlize (like today) you displace these ceilings/cellars v. Tragedy arouses fear and pity and we don’t want fear and pity from out art forms today. vi. Tragedy’s make us think and we don’t like thinking (we is dumb)
b. Comedy- image of man being finite, limited, boundaried. About fragmentation i. Comedy stylizes the character and situation; has an abstract quality ii. Distances you from the characters iii. One way to distance is exaggerate the characters iv. Most intellectual of all genres because everything makes a point v. Farce (least offensive comedy), black comedy, comedy of manners, social satire, romantic comedy, gross-out comedies, screwball comedies
c. Melodrama- hard to define because it is everything else that is not tragedy or comedies; they all deal with the typical aspects of life i. Westerns, biographies, suspenseful, adventure, science-fiction- public stories