Film genres - for Film Studies

1. genre & film
moving image arts study guide

2. Similarity and Difference
Genre refers to groups of texts which share a
pattern of similarity and difference.

3. Many of the earliest films were
genre pictures – as studios (as
always) tried to repeat success.

4. In Shakespeare, there are a limited number
of genres: Tragedies, Comedies, Histories

5. Film genres
Thriller, Action, Romantic Comedy, Road
Movie, Disaster Movie and various
hybrid genres including Period Drama,
Crime Drama, Horror Comedy etc.

6. changes in genres over
time reveal changes in our
society and our values

7. iconography
Genre films usually feature key
imagery that repeats itself
across different films

8. setting
Some genres have a distinct
location or time period

9. narrative
Some genres include specific story
structures (“a hero’s journey”) or narrative
devices (song & dance sequence,
showdown, chase scene, shopping
montage…)

10. characters
Heroes, sidekicks, antagonists:
some character types are
associated more with particular
genres and become “generic types”

11. style
Visual techniques can be specific (or
at least more common) in some
genres - e.g. low key lighting in horror;
epic music in superhero movies

12. themes
Universal themes characterise some
genres. What does it mean to be
human? Conflict between tradition and
modernity. What is truth? What is love?

13. Audience
The most important aspect of
genre: the response and
expectations of the target
audience

14. As an audience, we gain mastery over
genre texts by “reading” them — we feel
good about doing this

15. The pleasure for the audience often lies in the experience of
difference within the similarity (or vice versa!).

16. Genre is a bargain between media
producers and media audiences — we can
feel cheated if genres “trick” us

17. What scares you?

18. Mark Kermode
(BBC Film Critic)
“William Friedkin [director of The Exorcist] once said
that there [are] only really three reasons for making
movies: to scare people; to make them laugh; or to
turn them on. And that means there [are] only three
genres of movie. I actually think that as far as
horror movies are concerned, they are the
sump from which all great cinema comes...”

19. Types of Horror
Psychological Horror
Body Horror
Gothic Horror
All can involve elements of the supernatural (ghosts,
demons, spirits)
All can involve encounters with the monstrous
Other (who can appearto benormal until their
inner-monster is revealed).

20. Psychological Horror
Relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs,
emotional instability
Can also refer to personality disorders
Creates discomfort in the viewer by exposing
common vulnerabilities or fears – the
shadowy parts of the self or self-as-other

21. Examples
Psycho
The Birds
The Haunting
Blair Witch

22. Body Horror
Horror derived from a
sense of “wrongness” with
the body:
Physical transformations,
body degeneration,
mutations, or invasion/
violation of the body

23. Examples
UnChienAndalou
Alien
TheFly
TheThing
...anything by
Cronenberg!

24. GothicHorror
Romantic/Sexual imagery is blended
with other elements – it can be a
blend of psychological and body horror
Our inner fears are projected onto the
outside environment: buildings, forests,
the weather

25. Examples
Anything with
vampires!
Frankenstein
TheMummy
AmityvilleHorror

26. Freud’s paper “The Uncanny”
was published in 1919
In it, he tried to explain the appeal
of the horror genre

27. Freudnoticed that whereas most ART was
concerned with beauty, horror fiction was
concerned with its opposite: the
frightening or the fearful

28. “The class of frightening
things that leads us back to
what is known and familiar.”

29. Freud went further with this
idea and talked about things
that were hidden from theself.

30. The scariest
things are those
which fail to fit
a category: the
undead, the
not-human.