Genre is a type of music, film and anything which can be performed in different ways throughout media. There are differences and similarities, predictable or expected. It should also be unpredictable. Different people see genre in different ways- people who consume it.
Genre should be predictable and go along with the typical genre conventions but should also be innovative and unexpected. Genre is important to the people who make it (INSTITUTION) and the people who consume it (AUDIENCE).
Genre is a way of thinking about media production and media reception.
It helps identify how media texts are classified, organised and understood, essentially around SIMILARITIES and DIFFERENCE. Media texts hold similar patterns, codes and conventions that are both PREDICTABLE and EXPECTED, but are also INNOVATIVE (different) and UNEXPECTED.
. . . saddled with conventions and stereotypes, formulas and
Scorcese, A personal Journey through American Cinema (1995)
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 . . .
Institutions : Early Hollywood (an still today) revolved around large corporations which could be identified by certain styles and genres.
“genres are dependent upon profitability”