Let's talk about Genre
Genre originates from the French which in short means: sort or style and even a kind. It can be used to categorise artworks, images, books, music and film (basically all contents of media). Genre can also be used to categorise society in a way, for example: Hippies, Gangsters, Business people or subcultures like Punk, Goth, Body builders and Surfers. There are numerous genres out there, one of them might even help you find which category you fall into.
Yeah sure genres are great but if you ask me, i feel like genres are great for people who need that structure and organisation in their lives but i find it too confining. For example, if you were to find a movie and it is showing its genres, it would rarely just show one genre that the film comes under, as there are numerous, allowing there to be more than just the one genre within movies, television and music. Take the movie Guardians of the Galaxy... A fantastic movie featuring the genres:
- Comedy
- Action
- Sci-fi
- Drama
- Romance
This is showing that within media in relation to genre, it doesn't have to be confined down to to the one, as that just wouldn't be very entertaining now would it? Not only do the viewers of these films find them entertaining but will often gladly re-watch, as the genres involved were brought to life throughout various scenes, generating relatability and empathy towards characters.
Genres allow for various things in film to occur, such as scenes that will make you cry being comedy. Alien races fighting in space spanning through thousands of lightyears, involving a humanoid tree figure that can talk and is the last of his species the Flora Colossus (Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy) this would be listed under Sci-Fi or better known as Science Fiction.
You see, these are just labels on a movie to help categorise it, yet enable various things to occur throughout the span of the film, engaging the viewers to be more immersed with what is going on.
Personally i struggled grasping the general concept of genre, but with help from a great and educational video about this topic by the youtuber Dapper Mr Tom which you can go check out for yourself at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vOhTNmRrA
Throughout the course of the video, Tom describes some awesome facts about the origin of Genre, what it means and it is used to categorise numerous things within our society. he goes on providing some great examples which set the scene for the 'genres' we are most familiar with today and how you're able to identify the genre of a piece. Tom refers to these as what are known more complexly as "Paradigms". Moving on through the video, he says that a key feature to depicting a genre is "set", for example, if you were to film a movie following the western genre, the setting of it would generally take place in a more outback, country location as seen in most classical - western films with cowboys and pistols. And for a Sci-fi theres a good chance it will be in space with aliens of some kind. When genre is put like this, it makes it all seem much more easier and simplistic, Thanks Mr Tom!
Anyway, Genre is a format for categorising media, based upon the similarities they share to each specific categories description. But in todays society, the 21 century is complex when it comes to this topic as it is filled with so many sub genres to help categorise so many other different things, like people, movies, music, art and even cars. But as this is such a touchy subject, without the knowledge behind this topic, i wouldn't worry about getting too confused about it all.
References
Ann Casano's definition and history of genre available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-genre-definition-types-quiz.html
Dapper Mr Toms definition and understanding of genre available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vOhTNmRrA
Wingate, U. & Tribble, C. (2012). ‘The Best of Both Worlds? Towards an EAP/Academic
Literacies Writing Pedagogy’ in Studies in Higher Education 37/5:481-495.
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