Page 44 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

FORMULAIC ANALYSIS

The success of a genre largely depends upon the audience’s ability
to recognize, identify, and respond to the formula of a genre. Thus, for-
mula is tied to the audience’s expectations: what they anticipate when
they attend a horror movie or romantic comedy. Satirists often use the
audience’s familiarity with formula as a source of humor. For instance,
The Colbert Report pokes fun at Fox News’s patriotic graphics by
overwhelming the screen with American flags and eagles. In addition,
Colbert’s persona exaggerates the pomposity that characterizes many
broadcast news personalities.
Artists are challenged to be innovative within the constraints of the
formula. Indeed, the need to adhere to formula can sometimes inspire
creativity. As an example, in the sixteenth century Elizabethan poets
were judged on their ability to create within the tight constraints of son-
nets, a lyric poem of fourteen lines consisting of four divisions: three
quatrains (each with a rhyme pattern of its own) and a rimed couplet.
The typical rhyme scheme for the English sonnet is: abab, cdcd, efef,
gg. These standard rules establish a frame of reference that determines
the artistic merit of the poems (as well as the poets). What distinguished
Shakespeare’s sonnets from those of his contemporaries was his ability
to work so magnificently within these artistic limits.
In like fashion, what determines the enduring quality of a genric
presentation is how well it works within the formula. For instance, what
has established I Love Lucy as a classic TV sitcom is what the show was
able to achieve within the standard sitcom formula.
One of the major challenges facing media communicators is explor-
ing complex themes and issues within the constraints of the formula. In
his film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), director Charlie
Kaufman used the established formula of the romantic comedy to
examine a range of thorny questions about human nature. Film critic
A.O. Scott observes:

How much do we know, Mr. Kaufman asks—about ourselves, about the
world we inhabit, and, most crucially, about other people—and when do
we know it? What do we do with this knowledge, and what good does
it do us?
If learning can be dangerous, is unlearning—in this case the literal era-
sure of memory, as practiced by Tom Wilkinson’s ethically compromised
Dr. Mierzwiak—any safer?
Couching such inquiries inside a romantic comedy—a romantic com-
edy that stars Jim Carrey, for that matter—may sound like a too-clever
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