1. Mass Communication & Media
Literacy 04

2. Genre
Everyone knows that rock and pop music should
be unfettered, blowing raspberries in the face of
authority and convention. Nevertheless, there is
a handful of rules. They are there for the general
good, and must be obeyed. High on the list
comes the one about never mixing rock or pop
with classical music. When rock musicians start
dabbling in classical music, the best you can
hope for is a novelty record, along the lines of B
Bumble and the Stingers' Nut Rocker. The worst
you can fear is an uncontrollable outbreak of
Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Meanwhile, the
world of classical musicians "going rock" is a
dark realm, where gruesome operatic man-
bands G4 and Il Divo rule and Lesley Garrett's
hair-raising assault on the Beatles' Blackbird is
the national anthem.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jul/08/popandrock.shopping2

3.  Identify one specific text that you have consumed
recently from each of the following media areas
 Journalism, press, magazines
 Radio
 Photography
 Advertising (print or audio-visual)
 Video/computer gaming
 Popular music
 Film
 Television
 Think of a general term or label for each text that could
be used to categorise it within each medium
 What features does your text share with other similar
texts from the same field?

4. Genre
Kind
Type gene, genotype
category
A term for the classification of
media forms
A signifying system that relies on sets of codes
and conventions shared by producers and
readers of texts
What are the common
features of different texts
that allow them to be
grouped together?

5. Problems of definition
 Definitions of genre are circuitous
 We define genres based on what we’ve seen or heard of media
texts already, in anticipation of others that we might see or
hear ... How is this possible?
 Women’s magazines – a genre in which differences
make a difference but similarity trumps
 Using syntagm and paradigm to unpack the
complexity

6. Genre: working definition
 Genre is a recognisable grouping, subset or type of
media form comprising the paradigmatic elements
(stories, rhetoric, signification) that are drawn upon
in the creation of individual syntagmatic texts

7. What genres do
 Genres provide audiences with a ‘horizon of
expectations’ (Allen & Gomery, 1993: 84)
 What do you expect from a TV police series?
 Are these key features that despite differences can place TV police
series in such a genre?
 Genre’s are therefore dynamic – changing diachronically
(over time) and synchronically (at any one moment)
 The menu of components allows dynamic change within
the ‘food’ that is actually served
 Genres allow media producers to organise media
consumers

8. Genres die out
 Western films
 Hollywood musicals
 Rock concept albums
 Beauty contests on TV
 Soviet propaganda films
 British war comics
 Electro music
 Cigarette advertising
 Why have these genres died
out?
 How might we evidence
and explain the decline of
films, comics and dramatic
TV films related to Britain’s
role in the Second World
War?
 What kinds of methods
would evaluate the nature
of this decline in terms of
quantity of texts and their
qualities?

9. Genres mix and merge
Genre synthesis is attractive to Hollywood executives, with its suggested promise of doubling
the audience. The success of comedy king Judd Apatow is predicated on the notion: what if we
took a classic genre skewed towards women, the romcom, and added male-centric humour?
Then we'd have a date movie - say, Knocked Up - that both genders wanted to see. Wouldn't
that be neat? After all, Titanic, still the world's biggest ever box-office hit, reached the broadest
audience possible with its something-for-everyone mix of historical setting, action spectacle and
romance. In fact, the success of recent vampire-themed chick hit Twilight seems to confirm the
commercial upside in adding youthful romance to the mix.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/22/outlander-mash-up-movies

10. Genre and ideology
 Fiske and Hartley talk of genres as agents of
‘ideological closure’ because they act to close down
the meaning potential of a given text and the way
that is understood
 The symbolic spaces provided by media texts are
ultimately conservative and predictable reinforcing a
sense that ‘this is the natural order of things’ – no
other ways of seeing the world are possible
 Think TV sitcoms

11. Genre: summary
 Think of genre as:
 Sets of codes and conventions concerning content, story,
signification, and thematic treatment – aesthetic dimension
 As a way for producers to organise consumers, audiences,
readers – this is its economic dimension
 As a way for audiences to find types of media texts that appeal
and that satisfy the ‘horizon of expectations’ – consumer
dimension