Page 111 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

GENRE

supports its construction and use in representation. The thing objected
to is perpetuated by the very form of the objection.
This strand of thinking has invited attacks from those who argue
that gender is not a matter of discourse or representation so much as a
lived experience. But experience should not be attributed to distinct
genders. Perceived behavioural differences and the reality of gender
experience themselves result from discourses and ideology and the
culture that supports them.

See also: Discourse, Identity Politics, Ideology, Representation
Further reading: Butler (1990)

GENRE

Genre can be understood as the categorisation of media texts
according to shared characteristics. Arising from film studies (and
before that literary and art criticism), the term can also be applied to
fiction, popular music and television as well as media not usually
thought of in generic terms, such as magazines or even news reporting.
Steve Neale (1981: 6) argues that genres can be understood as
‘systems of orientations, expectations and conventions that circulate
between industry, text and subject’. Accordingly genre analysis will
concentrate either on the producers, the directors or the audiences of
these texts. It is argued that for the producers, or more broadly
speaking the industry that produces generic texts, genre stands as a
means of creating an identifiable product for sale. This is evident in
analysis of Hollywood where it has been argued that ‘creativity’ is
forsaken in favour of formula, the latter being a term used to denigrate
the specificities of film genres. The same hierarchy can be seen to exist
in other media – in fiction between ‘creative’ literature (non-generic)
and generic forms such as romance or thrillers, or in television
between the ‘single play’ (non-generic) and ‘formula’ formats such as
soap operas or game shows.
The relationship between creators of media texts and genre has
remained largely within the tradition of film theory. Directors such as
John Ford, for example, are praised for their subtle manipulation of
genre (see McBride and Wilmington, 1975) and for utilising the
conventions of genre to remit their personal vision of culture and
society.
Praise such as this is rarely awarded to the audience in the study of
genres, as audiences were understood to use genre simply as means

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