Page 49 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

CHAPTER 3

One way, then, to identify a premise is to begin with this statement:
The x genre presents a world in which. . . . As an example, the premise
of action/adventure video games such as F.E.A.R. is rooted in a nihilistic
worldview—a world in which life has no meaning. Critic Charles Herold
describes the premise of F.E.A.R.:

I can easily handle a dozen men armed with assault rifles. I stand firm
before defense drones, blasting away with my shotgun. . . . In the game,
you are part of an elite strike force designated First Encounter Assault
Recon. . . . Called in to track down the psychic leader of an army of tele-
kinetically controlled soldiers, you discover that you are not the only one
who wants them dead, and you explore warehouses and office buildings
filled with dead bodies and blood dripping from the ceilings. 8
Based upon this premise, the characters in F.E.A.R. simply exist from
moment to moment, completely at the hands of fate (or, more specifically,
the skill level of the players). Success is defined by the player’s ability
to survive in a world that is one big battleground.
A premise can simultaneously exist in layers: (1) the premise of a
genre; (2) the premise of a subgenre; (3) the premise of an individual
series. To illustrate, the premise of the reality genre is as follows:
Non-actor contestants are placed in a competition or artificial cir-
cumstance that they must contend with in the course of the series. Often,
these people are placed in conditions that require them to work together
as a team to accomplish difficult tasks.
Subgenres have a more narrowly defined premise. Thus, the premise
for transplantation reality subgenre can be described as follows:
A person is moved into a new environment. The program centers on
how he or she reacts to the new situation, as well as how those in that
environment react to a stranger in their midst.
Finally, each series within a genre has its own distinct formula. For
instance, below are examples of premises for a transplantation series:

• Faking It places a person from a low-end profession to work in a
high-end career. Examples include training a bike messenger as a polo
player or teaching a sheep shearer to pass as a high-end hairstylist.
• Now Who’s Boss challenges an executive to perform low-level jobs
in his own company.
• Worlds Apart transplants American families to Borneo, Mongolia,
and other remote locales.

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