Genre is area of media language

how media texts are classified, organised and understood, essentially around SIMILARITIES and DIFFERENCE. In that media texts hold similar patterns, codes and conventions that are both PREDICTABLE and EXPECTED, but are also INNOVATIVE and UNEXPECTED.

Genre as ‘Textual Analysis’

Ed Buscombe notes that the ‘kind’ or ‘type’ of film is usually recognised “and largely determined by the nature of its conventions”. You can use genre to predict particular elements around: characters, setting, lighting, dialogue, music, sounds, mise-en-scene etc. Then should be able to elicit key characteristics (codes and conventions).

Notion of CREATIVITY. The way in which new ideas (creativity) emerge from the predictable and expected. 

SUB-GENRE film (a genre within a genre) or a HYBRID GENRE (a combination of two genres).

 “genre is a system of codes, conventions and visual styles which enables an audience to determine rapidly and with some complexity the kind of narrative they are viewing” -Turner

“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“