LO3 Genre Theory
film genres
Genre - the French word for type.
- romantic
- horror
- comedy
- adventure
- drama
- sci-fi
- rom-com
- chick flick
- anime
- crime
- British films
- musicals
- thrillers
- social realist
- children's
Theoretical concepts
- genre is a critical tool that helps us study texts and audience responses to text by dividing them into categories based on common elements, these common elements called conventions, stereotypes
this still demonstrates my chosen product is a period-drama due to the character looking cold and distressed this showing high verisimilitude and suggesting the cold weather refers to the situation.- Genres can often be further subdivided into more specific genre niches, (not hybrid genres), e.g a British drama is a subgenre of drama
- BARRY KEITH GRANT (1995) All genres have sub genres, they are divided up to more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them specifically by their familiar recognisable conventions or generic elements.
Dunkirk- This film is a period-drama sub-genre, its clear that the film is a period-drama due to the event the film surrounds happening in the 1940's, the micro elements that also alert the audience of the sub genre of the film are things like the diegetic fighter plane engine noises, the sound of the planes allows the audience to associate the film with an older period of time
- PATRICK PHILLIPS (1996) Genre offers audiences 'comfortable reassurance', genres fulfil audience expectations by following predictive patterns - we know what to expect from a text.
Dunkirk- This film creates comfortable reassurance for the audience by including aspects such as violence, from the violence we see weaponry such as guns, guns are a comfortable reassurance of drama genre.
- BRANSTON & STAFFORD (1999) big media companies like genres as they help to minimise risk and predict exposure, they act as a blueprint for success and make it easier to sell and market products to audeinces.
Dunkirk - The film Dunkirk's front cover is clear iconography for the genre of drama, it includes a close up image of the protagonist along with graphics creating a fire ember effect, the front cover helps to sell the film to the audience as they associate the idea of fire and embers with problematic situations and therefore dramas.
- RICK ALTMAN (1999) genre offers pleasures, these could be emotional pleasures; happy, sad,nostalgic. Visceral pleasures; 'gut' responses - excitement, fear, laughter. Intellectual Puzzles; making the audience think
Dunkirk - The film creates visceral pleasure as the film has a very tense atmosphere throughout, the tense scenes in particular include the protagonist in risky situations and in danger, the danger is a stereotype of a drama
- DAVID BOARDWELL (1989) any theme may appear in any genre, theme = the ideas, ideology
NARRATIVE vs STORY
The difference between story and narrative,
STORY
- It contains a plot, sequence of events
NARRATIVE
- The techniques used to tell the story and structure e.g Costumes, camera angles. Narratology
Exam question
Analyse how the mise-en-scene is used to create stereotypes in a media product you have studied (12)
The main plot of Dunkirk is a sequence of events that are surrounding world war 2, On a beach in Dunkirk, France British soldiers are stranded and surrounded by enemy German forces. The British government is trying to evacuate the beach however the ships leaving are getting continuously bombed meaning a huge loss of life, The British tactic is to get civilian boats to sail out to Dunkirk to ferry soldiers back to England.
- TIM O' SULLIVAN ET AL (1998) - All media texts tell us some sort of story, Through careful mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves (as a culture) - these are ideologies.
* The way the media carefully selects production techniques to create a specific meaning.
The Dunkirk ideologies - The wider meanings of Dunkirk include that men are hyper masculine and are the only sex that can be violent and aggressive, this is seen due to all the soldiers seen on screen are men and we only see women in a medical sense as nurses and carers.
- PAM COOK (1985) - the standard Hollywood narrative structure should have:
- A high degree of narrative closure.
- A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence
Dunkirk enigmas - The problems resolved in my film is the evacuation of the soldiers from Dunkirk is achieved thanks to the help of civilian leisure boats, this brings a sense of community to the audience.
- TZVETAN TODOROV (1977)
- Stage 2. This stability is disrupted by some kind of force which creates a state of disequilibrium
- Stage 3. Action directed against the disruption
- Stage 4. Restoration of a state of new equilibrium
Dunkirks stages of equilibrium
- Stage 1. The beach is in a state of disequilibrium as the soldiers want to get home
- Stage 2. The large tanker ships ferrying the soldiers are getting bombed so people are dying trying to get home, and German planes are bombing the beach.
- Stage 3. The civilian boats arrive and pick up the soldiers.
- Stage 4 All the soldiers are home safe in Britain.
- CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS (1958) - Binary opposites, e.g god versus evil.
Binary opposition in Dunkirk In Dunkirk the two polar opposites that exist in the film are German vs British.
- VLADIMIR PROPP (1928) - All narratives feature stock characters and that audiences understood stories because of such features.
- Villain/Protagonist
- Hero/protagonist
- Helper/supporter (sidekick)
- Princess (price for hero), one that is rescued/saved
Dunkirk Characters
- Protagonist soldier
- Hero general
- Helper soldier.
- Hero civilian sailers.
- ROLAND BERTHES (1977) - Enigma codes work to keep up setting problems or puzzles for the audience, Action codes work inform the audience in terms of what happening in the next shot/scene.
Dunkirk action codes
1. First shot 2. Second Shot
1. First shot 2. Second Shot
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