Genre theory Steve Neale

Genre theory

1. Genre theory Steve Neale's Questions of Genre

2. Steve N eale Steve Neale  is Emeritus Professor of Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Genre (1980)   Genre and Hollywood   (1999), editor of Genre and Contemporary Hollywood  ( 2002), co-editor of Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (1998), and co-author of E pics, Spectacles and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History  (2010), editor of  The Classical Hollywood Reader  (2012), co-editor of  ‘Un-American’ Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era  (2007) and  Widescreen Worldwide  (2010), and a contributor to  Film Moments: Criticism, Theory, History  (2010 ), among other publications. Note : Do not mistake this scholar with Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics Stephen Neale , or Senior Lecturer in Systems Power & Energy, Dr Steven Neale . I have already seen many presentations on internet with the wrong image.

3. Genre theory Genre theory studies the nature of genre , why and how genres are created and why and how they evolve . Most of the work published on genre(s) to date tend to concern itself with Hollywood film genres, however this theory can be applied to the study of the generic conventions of other texts, such as music videos and popular music genres ), TV , radio , adverts , magazines , print and online newspapers , etc.: w e can look at their evolution over time, hybridity and the way they may challenge or subvert these conventions (unconventional texts ).

4. Genre theory Steve Neale argues that "genre are instances of repetition (generic conventions) and   difference“ : genre is a process by which generic codes and conventions in media products are shared by producers and audiences through a system of repetition and difference (all texts in a genre share certain codes and conventions, however they are different texts: think of horror films, rom-coms, action-adventure films, etc ). This means that genres are not fixed , but constantly evolve with each new addition to the generic corpus (the body of products in a genre), often playing with generic codes and conventions (subverting them) or exhibiting the conventions of more than one genre, becoming hybrids with other genres ( hybrid genres : romantic-comedy, science fiction-horror, etc.)

5. Genre Conventions Audience expectations: Most genres have elements that the audience expect since these elements have been used many times in previous texts from those genre/ sub-genre . These elements are called generic conventions , and they shape the audience expectations. Audiences are already familiar with this generic conventions (through previous knowledge of similar texts ) and they expect to find them in the media texts that they consume. These generic conventions help audiences to recognise and understand the text, since they create meanings that are necessary for the text to be intelligible and make sense.

6. Expectations & verisimilitude Neale says ‘genres offer a way of working out the significance of what is happening on the screen’ , as much as any other element of media language. E.g if a character in a film bursts into a song for no practical reason the audience would infer that it is a musical , so the element of songs is an expectation for musicals . Regimes of verisimilitude ( the appearance of being true or real)  vary from genre to genre. These regimes entail rules , norms and laws intrinsic to that specific genre (as per the musical example provided, which would not be the case in a drama , a western , a horror or a war film, for instance).

7. Neale refers to Todorov’s taxonomy of “two broad types of verisimilitude”: one that Todorov calls “ generic verisimilitude” (what has true or real appearance according to the internal rules of the genre ) and a “ broader social or cultural verisimilitude”. He says that “Neither equates in any direct sense to ‘reality’ or ‘truth’…Aristotle (…) has already perceived that the verisimilar is not a relation between discourse and its referent (the relation of truth) but between discourse (the media text) and what readers (the audience) believe is true . The relation is here established between the work and (…) public opinion ”. Public opinion is not ‘reality’ (what we know to be fact or ‘true’) but what audiences believe to be true . This is not necessarily based on knowledge ( episteme ), but just opinion ( doxa ). This last point is very important, since it is here where ideology , propaganda and demagogy operates, reinforcing opinions and beliefs ( doxa ), no matter how inaccurate, unfounded or misleading they may be (you can find numerous examples of this in newspapers or social media, for instance) Expectations & verisimilitude

8. Codes Codes are systems of signs, which create meaning. Codes can be either technical or symbolic . Technical codes are all the ways in which media language is used to tell the story in a media text, for example the camera work or the use of light in a film . Symbolic codes are those signs and symbols used to convey a specific meaning.

9. Genre as processes   Individual genres not only form part of a generic regime with its own rules and laws, but also themselves change , develop and evolve by borrowing from and overlapping other genres. Nearly all Hollywood's films are hybrids insofar as they always tend to combine one type of generic plot with other narratives e.g. a romantic comedy . Genre films, genres and generic regimes are always marked by boundaries and by frameworks which always have limits .

10. Genre History  Successful genres gradually lose their effective power through continual reproduction and they are forced to evolve (think of the evolution of the western genre, for instance, from The Great Train Robbery ( Edwin S. Porter , 1903) to John Ford’s westerns in the 40s and 50s (from Stagecoach to The Searchers , for instance) to the 1960s spaghetti-western (Italian westerns produced in Europe such as the Sergio Leone ones) to the successful TV drama series Deadwood (HBO, 2004) and the subsequent spin off film. Also, popular genres are forced to go to the background as new genres or hybrid genres become more popular. An example of this is the very popular romantic drama of the early days of cinema (1910s-1930s) being replaced by romantic comedy as early as the 1950s/1960s.  

11. Aesthetic characteristics of mass-produced genres T he term 'genre ' is a 19th century term. Although the concept is much older , the term itself emerges precisely at the time that popular , mass-produced generic fiction is making its first appearance . By contrast, 'true literature' is marked by self-expression , creative autonomy and originality and by a freedom from all constrictions and constraints, including those of genre .