Page 33 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

CHAPTER 2

movie screen. Sixteen young men and women were transplanted to an
upscale Yucatan hotel for an all-expenses-paid spring break week and
were filmed as they frolicked. The looser constraints of the medium of
film enabled the reality genre to be more sexually explicit than its TV
counterparts. Producer Jonathan Murray declared:

It just seemed to us that there was an opportunity to take a form of enter-
tainment that is really working on cable and prime time and bring it to
the big screen. Spring break has been a staple of youth movies since the
1950’s. We decided it would look good on the big screen and doing it this
way would give audiences something they don’t get on television, which
is, quite frankly, some nudity, some sexual situations and language that’s
more realistic and honest. 23
As the promotional tag line for the film promised, “No scripts. No ac-
tors. No rules. Anything can happen during spring break, and it did.” 24
Some genres adapt comfortably as they move from one medium
to another. For instance, American Westerns first appeared in novels,
beginning with James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans
(1832) and Leatherstocking Tales (written between 1823 and 1841).
In the 1920s, the Western made the transition to film. Filmmakers took
advantage of the visual nature of the medium, making the breathtaking
Western landscapes an essential part of the genre. And with its action-
filled plots and spectacular feats of horsemanship, the Western became
a staple of the medium.
Westerns also made their way to radio in the 1930s. Assisted by the
sound effects of galloping horses and blazing guns, the audience used their
imaginations to conjure up their own vision of the West. In the popular
series Gunsmoke, the hero is Marshal Matt Dillon, who is described as
six-feet-six-inches tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. In the radio
adaptation of Gunsmoke, Matt Dillon was played by William Conrad, a
short, stocky man with a six-foot-six-inch voice.
When television made its way into American homes in the late 1940s,
Westerns made the journey as well. Radio programs, including Gunsmoke,
moved to the small screen. Conrad was replaced by James Arness, a tall,
strapping man who looked the part of Matt Dillon projected by Conrad.
During the 1950s, Westerns began appearing in “ancillary” media such
as comic books, cereal boxes, toys, and games.
However, in some respects, genres are often bound by the characteris-
tics of the medium. For instance, the visual properties of special effects

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