Film Genre and the Genre Film - Thomas Schatz Notes PDF

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WEEKLY READING FOR GENRE STUDIES....

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Film genre and the genre film - Thomas Schatz 1991 Introduction Film genre, two definitions: 1)Static: A familiar formula of interrelated narrative and cinematic components that serves to continually reexamine some basic culture conflict. E.g. All Western movies confront the same fundamental issues (taming of the frontier, celebration of hero's individualism, the hero's conflict with the frontier…) in elaborating America's foundation ritual and that slight formal variations do not alter those static thematic characteristics. 2)Dynamic: Changes in cultural attitudes, new influential genre films, the economics of the industry, and so forth, continually refine any film genre. E.g. Western means something different today. Its evolution of Western heroes from agents of law and order to renegade outlaws or professional killers show change in society. Film genre and genre film differences: Film genre: genre exists as a contract between filmmakers and audience. E.g. To discuss Western genre means to discuss conventions which identifies Western instead of discussing specific western films. Genre film: an actual event that honours such contract. A film genre can be examined in terms of its fundamental structural components: Plot, character, setting, thematic, style, etc. It can be identified either by its rules, components, and function (Static) or conversely by the individual films which comprise the genre (more dynamic as films change). The deep structure is the genre, and the surface structure is the film. These two concepts provide the basis for genre study. When watching a genre film, the audience thinks about both the deep and surface structure. On one hand analysing the film itself, on the other hand forming expectations, predictions, and interpretations base on the genre in which the film belongs.

Language analogy Genre can be studied, like a language, as a formalized sign system whose rules have been assimilated, consciously or otherwise, through culture consensus. Knowledge of film genres enable us to understand genre films. Film genre is specific grammar or system of rules of expression and construction and the individual genre films as a manifestation of these rules. However, verbal communication is relatively consistent from speaker to speaker, whereas generic competence varies widely. Another flaw of the analogy is that language system is essentially neutral and meaningless, it is manipulated by a speaker to make meanings. While film genres are different, a genre film represents an effort to reorganize a familiar, meaningful system in an original way. The analogy is concerned with the tension between grammar and usage. In language, grammar is static and is used in everyday life. In cinema, genre films have the capacity to affect the genre that governs it, thus the tension is bidirectional. In terms of critic, linguistic only concerns about the process of communication, quality of communication is under rhetoric. Whereas genre critics are concerned about both the process and

quality of generic communication. As the critics watch and interpret movies of the same genre and develop competence and familiarity of that genre, the critics are able to recognize, appreciate, and articulate the similarities and differences among those movies. We understand genre films because of their similarity, but we appreciate them because of their differences.

Grammar of film genre We can appreciate difference between genre films only when we begin to examine films systematically, when we consider the systems whereby an individual film makes meaning. We have to understand how commercial and formal systems are realized in actual productions. Genre production should be addressed on three levels of inquiry: 1)characteristics shared by virtually all genre films (and thus by all genre) 2)characteristics shared by all films within any individual genre 3)characteristics that set one genre film off from all other films. To discern a genre film's quality, its social and aesthetic value. We will attempt to see its relation to the various system that inform it. A genre film (Like other stories) can be examined in terms of its fundamental narrative components: plot, setting, and character. The genre film's narrative components, because their familiar formula that reaffirms the audience's values and attitudes, assume a preordained thematic significance. Each genre film incorporates a specific cultural context. Generic contexts are more than locations. American frontier is not only a physical location for Western films, it is also a cultural milieu where inherent thematic conflicts are animated, intensified, and resolved by familiar characters and pattern of action. Both the community and conflict have been conventionalized. The determining, identifying feature of a film genre is its cultural context, its community of interrelated character types whose attitudes, values, and actions flesh out dramatic conflicts inherent within that community. Such community and characters are created by specialized groups of filmmakers and even studios. A genre represents a range of expression for filmmakers and a range of experience for viewer.

Character and setting: Communities in conflict Grammar (system of conventions) of film genre is influenced by material economy (motivate studios to refine story formulas) and narrative economy (translated from material economy, for filmmakers and viewers). Dramatic conflicts intensify and is resolved through established patterns of action and by familiar character types. These dramatic conflicts represent the social/historical/geographical aspect of the culture in which the genre is focused on. Setting provides an arena for conflicts, which are themselves determined by the actions and attitudes of the participants (generic character types, which form communities and value structure which both define and solve the problems).

Social problems (dramatic conflicts) are different in each genre. Gangster has law and order, Western has individualism. The characters identities and narrative roles (functions) are determined by the relationship with the community and its value structure. These characters are physical embodiment of an attitude, a style, a cultural posture, or a world view. Generic hero helps to define the community and to animate its cultural conflicts. E.g. In Western, the hero is an agent of civilisation in the savage frontier. He represents both social order and the threatening savagery. Thus he animates the inherent dynamic qualities of the community, acts as a drama vehicle in which the audience can confront generic conflicts. Several genres can treat some form of threat (e.g. violence) to the social order, but the attitudes of the principle character and the resolutions precipitated by their actions distinguish the various genres. Thus, in a way, characters define genre. Broad distinction between genres can be: determinate space and indeterminate space 1)Determinate space (e.g. Western): we have a symbolic arena of action. It represents a cultural realm in which fundamental values are in state of sustained conflict. A specific social conflict is violently enacted within a familiar locale according to a prescribed system of rules and codes. A hero enters, acts upon the conflict, and leaves (entrance-exit motif). 2)Indeterminate space (e.g. melodrama): involved a doubled (thus dynamic) hero in the guise of a romantic couple who inhabit a civilized setting. A symbolic arena, and a struggle over control of the environment, is not necessary. Conflict arise from struggle of principal character to bring their own views in line with another or with a larger community. In conclusion. Indeterminate, civilized unspecific space. Determinate, contested specific space. Former celebrate social integration, latter uphold social order.

Plot structure: From conflict to resolution The films within a genre, representing variations on a cultural theme, will employ different means of reaching narrative resolution to the conventional conflict. Resolution is the most important feature of any generic narrative. It provides a method to resolve issues. E.g. Western, despite distanced from modern audience historically and geographically, present immediate social issues such as individual vs community, civilisation vs wilderness, order vs anarchy. The films show us how these conflicts can be resolved. In genre film, the predictability of conflict and resolution tends to turn audience attention away from the linear, cause-effect plot, redirect into conflict itself and the opposed value system/structure it represents. We can describe the plot structure of a genre film as: 1)Establishment (via various narrative and iconographic cues) of the generic community with its inherent dramatic conflicts 2)Animation of those conflicts through actions and attitudes of the genre's constellation of characters. 3)Intensification of the conflict by means of conventional situations and dramatic confrontations until the conflict reaches crisis proportions. 4)Resolution of the crisis in a fashion which eliminates the physical and/or ideological threat and thereby celebrates the temporary well-ordered community.

In this development, linear plot is subordinate to and qualified by the oppositional narrative strategy. Opposing value systems are either mediated by individual or collective, which eliminates one of the opposing systems. Or else they can be embodied by double heroes. Sustained success of any genre depends on two factors: 1)The thematic appeal and the significance of the conflict 2)Its flexibility in adjusting to the audience's and filmmaker's changing attitudes toward those conflicts. E.g. Western hero's status as both rugged individualist and as agent of civilisation. Genetic resolution operates by a process of reduction: the polar opposition is reduced, either through elimination of one of the forces (determinate genre) or through integration of the forces into a single unit (indeterminate genre). To avoid the fact that resolutions are only temporary, there is usually a social ritual or formal celebration at the end of the plot. (E.g. Wedding, betrothal, a Broadway show, Riding into sunset, etc.) Therefore, conflicts are actually not entirely solved, filmmakers reconstitute them by concluding the narrative at an emotive climax. Film produce later in the genre tend to challenge the naïve or masked resolutions of earlier films. However, nothing changes the fact that genre's popularity is the sustained significance of the conflict that it repeatedly addresses. Generic conflict and resolution involve opposing systems of values and attitudes, both of which are significant in contemporary American culture....