{"id":183,"date":"2015-01-22T11:51:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T16:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/?p=183"},"modified":"2015-01-22T11:51:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T16:51:48","slug":"what-is-genre-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/?p=183","title":{"rendered":"What is Genre? (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>In my The Screenplay as Literature <\/i>I employed the term genre<\/i> very sparingly; regrettably I never defined it.\u00a0 Because this term is often inappropriately used as it refers to film, I will endeavor to define it now.\u00a0 But before I do so, I would like to provide some background as to how the term originated.<\/p>\n

From my perspective, the term is most relevant to the American film industry.\u00a0 Loosely defined, genre<\/i> is \u201ca type or category\u201d of film.\u00a0 Obviously there can be a multitude of types or categories of films, but as the American film industry has always been pre-occupied with\u00a0financial gain, the types or categories of films that most interested it were those that were \u201cguaranteed\u201d to make money.\u00a0 This begs the question: is there actually any category of film that is guaranteed to make money, regardless of its quality or merit?\u00a0 My answer is that I really don\u2019t know, but much of the \u201cbusiness model\u201d of Hollywood is based on the assumption that there is such a thing.\u00a0 And that is the primary reason that so many films imitate other films that were successful at the box office.<\/p>\n

So what are some of these categories that the American film industry believes or has believed to make money?\u00a0 Terms such as melodrama and comedy are much too broad; but with a category such as \u201caction-adventure\u201d you may be getting warm.\u00a0 \u201cRomantic comedy\u201d is a pleasant sounding word\u2014though sometimes derisively referred to as \u201ca chick flick\u201d\u2014but a proposed romantic comedy starring Kate Hudson or Anne Hathaway would certainly warrant the attention of the studio bosses.\u00a0 But it is much further down the film industry \u201cfood chain\u201d\u2014the realm of independent production and distribution\u2014where the quest for this \u201cfool\u2019s gold\u201d takes on an even greater significance.\u00a0 In this \u201cjungle\u201d there is no margin for error: if you don\u2019t deliver what the theater owners and audiences want, you are out of business.\u00a0 And because films from the independents have had to be marketed on other than their merit\u2014assuming that they had any\u2014they were often referred to as exploitation<\/i> films.<\/p>\n

What are some of the film types that the independents believed to be profitable?\u00a0 Well, kung fu<\/i> or martial arts<\/i> films are a good place to start: in the early 1970\u2019s every independent distributor had to have its own kung fu film.\u00a0 And in New York City, there was a least one theater on Forty-Second Street that exhibited martial arts films twenty-four hours a day! \u00a0\u00a0But the most lucrative type of film for independents has to be the \u201cslasher\u201d film.\u00a0 This is a very violent and gruesome horror film: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre <\/i>and the Halloween<\/i> and Friday the Thirteenth <\/i>film franchises are prime examples.<\/p>\n

So how would I thus define genre?\u00a0 <\/i>I would define it as a type of film made for purely monetary reasons yet transcending its commercial underpinnings. And how is this accomplished? Usually by having a very powerful theme.\u00a0\u00a0 So what are some examples of genre<\/i>?\u00a0 Unfortunately, it is easier to define genre<\/i> than give examples.\u00a0 Obviously, whether a film transcends its commercial purpose is a purely subjective observation; but whether a film was primarily intended to make money is not always clear, even in Hollywood.\u00a0 For example, so-called \u201croad\u201d films have often been considered genre<\/i> and indeed have long been a Hollywood staple.\u00a0 What characterized these films is their depiction of a long journey across the United States (usually by car) where those embarking on this journey meet bizarre people along the way.\u00a0 And if much of the film takes place in the American Southwest, so much the better, as it reveals wide expanses of beautiful but empty landscape, conveying a feeling of alienation (an important theme frequently found in these films).<\/p>\n

While many \u201croad\u201d films were recognized for their artistic aspirations, it is not a certainty that they were made in order to make a lot of money, even though they were primarily financed by the big Hollywood studios.\u00a0 The seminal film in this category is Easy Rider<\/i> (1969), which was both a box-office and critical success; yet the filmmakers responsible for it appeared to be more interested in making an anti-establishment statement than in getting rich.\u00a0\u00a0 Owing to the success of Easy Rider<\/i>, a number of other \u201croad\u201d films were financed by Hollywood in the 1970\u2019s; to my knowledge, few of them performed well at the box office.<\/p>\n

So is there really a true film genre <\/i>according to my definition?\u00a0 Well, for the 1970\u2019s you might want to consider \u201cspaghetti\u201d Westerns.\u00a0 These are Westerns in which there is an inordinate amount of violence and where there is no clear differentiation between good and evil.\u00a0 Most of them were made in Spain, and not by Americans\u2014although they masqueraded as American films.\u00a0 These films were immensely popular throughout the world; and if they happened to be directed by Sergio Leone and starred Clint Eastwood (\u201cThe Man with No Name\u201d), even more so.\u00a0 Of course, in order to be truly genre<\/i>, you would have to find that these films transcended their purely commercial genesis.\u00a0 Many, including critics, did think so.<\/p>\n

Now that we have defined genre<\/i>, we need to examine what is its significance for contemporary filmmakers and critics.\u00a0 This I will do in my next post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my The Screenplay as Literature I employed the term genre very sparingly; regrettably I never defined it.\u00a0 Because this term is often inappropriately used as it refers to film, I will endeavor to define it now.\u00a0 But before I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism","tag-genre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screenplayasliterature.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}