An introduction to genre for students of Media Studies

1. GENRE

2. GENRE IS...
A set of codes and conventions used in a media text and
understood by us all
It is particularly important that both producers and audiences agree
on these codes and conventions

3. Codes
Codes are the way in which, images, sound and
colour are combined to communicate the style
of the text

4. Conventions
Conventions are the elements of the text that
are repeated so often that the audience
recognises the style
i.e. a convention of a crime story involves a
crime!

5. How do we know?
Our culture defines our expectations
Fear of the dark
Murder is wrong
The police solve crimes

6. How do we tell what a
genre is?
A genre takes our culturally defined
expectations and represents them in media
texts
It uses codes and conventions to do that

7. Those codes and
conventions include..
Iconography (the use of symbols and images)
Themes
Time and place of setting
Style of narrative

8. Repetition
In order for texts in a genre to be recognised,
they need to conform to similar and repeated
codes and conventions

9. Difference
However, in order for a genre to survive, it
must be different in some way, otherwise the
audience gets bored - this is called genre
fatigue

10. Industry
The industry uses genre to try to guarantee
the success of their products
Actors, directors and styles are a part of that
process

11. Audience
The audience votes with its feet and so tells
the industry whether or not they like the
genre
Again actors, and their popularity, are a part of
that process

12. Moving on
The industry is constantly reinventing itself so
no we have cross genre and hybrid genre
These are texts that combine and mix the
elements of more than one genre to make a
new one - Sci-fi Western

13. Thank you
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