The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers. Since it is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices, it can be considered as a mechanism for ordering the relations between the two main parties to mass communication.
Dennis McQuail 1987, p. 200
. . . saddled with conventions and stereotypes, formulas and
clichés and all of these limitations were codified in specific genres. This was the very foundation of the studio system and audiences love genre pictures . . .
Scorcese, A personal Journey through American Cinema (1995)
Each director has their own different style, and this is a genre in it’s own right.
| Steve Neale | Neale believes that films of a type (genre, like romance or horror) should include features that are similar, so the audience know it is a horror film or romance, but also include features that are different, to keep an audience interested. This is his theory of repetition and difference. |
| predictable expectations | expectations that others have too that are set before and also throughout reading a book, watching a film or listening to a song. |
| reinforced | strengthen (an existing feeling, idea, or habit). |
| amplify | enlarge upon or add detail to (a story or statement). |
| repertoire of elements | the repetition of components that make up the ‘body’ of similar texts – corpus. |
| corpus | body of similar texts. |
| verisimilitude | the appearance of being true or real. |
| realism | the quality or fact of representing a person or thing in a way that is accurate and true to life. |
| construction of reality | |
| historically specific | in accordance with or with respect to history an historically accurate account |
| sub-genres | |
| hybrid genres | |
| different |