Page 62 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

FORMULAIC ANALYSIS

• Bowling moms Linda and Karen miss the flight and drop to last
place. The moms finish last, but because it’s a non-elimination round,
they stay in the race. The catch: they have to start the next leg with
no money.
• Colin and Christie finish a day ahead of everyone. But instead of
enjoying their inevitable victory for this leg of the race, Colin and
Christie get into a fight. As a result, the couple opt to use the Fast
Forward, a one-time break allowing a team to skip all tasks.
• Charla and Mirna get a tip on an early flight, wait for the others to
fall asleep, and then sneak to their gate.

Although the teams were ostensibly in competition with one another,
the subplots reveal that they all shared the same feelings, concerns, and
experiences. All of the contestants were immersed in the quest; however,
no one appeared happy or inspired by the competition. Instead of enjoy-
ing the journey of life, the teams were focused entirely on the finish line,
which offered the promise of fulfillment. The rules of the “game” (a
metaphor for society) divided the contestants, so that they were willing
to cheat one another to get “ahead.”
At other times, subplots are latent—that is, not formally introduced
but often of more interest to the audience than the manifest plot. For in-
stance, in The Great Race the impact of the competition on interpersonal
relationships was an unspoken but central element of the plot. Contestant
Zachary Behr explains:

[In 2002] my college friend Flo Pesenti and I finished first in the CBS-TV
reality show “The Amazing Race.” Flo and I didn’t get along—she was
constantly threatening to quit. And I wouldn’t let us spend more than a
few dollars on food, which I somehow deemed unnecessary. In fact, the
tension between us eventually became one of the main subplots of the
show that season. 16

Indeed, this approach can be expanded: identifying subplots in pro-
grams belonging to a particular genre can disclose patterns with respect
to characteristic themes and messages in the genre.
In addition, genres contain distinctive plot conventions: that is, recur-
rent incidents that appear within a narrative. Plot conventions can appear
across a number of genres. However, some plot conventions appear so
frequently within a particular genre that they have become associated

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