Film Genre & Theories
Film studies or Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Film theory should not to be confused with general film criticism, or film history.
Brief History
French philosopher Henri Bergson's Matter and Memory (1896) has been cited as anticipating the development of film theory during the birth of cinema. Bergson commented on the need for new ways of thinking about Cinema movement, and coined the terms "the movement-image" and "the time-image" for cinema.
Early film theory arose in the silent era and was mostly concerned with defining the crucial elements of the medium. It largely evolved from the works of directors like Germaine Dulac, Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, and Dziga Vertov and film theorists like Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs and Siegfried Kracauer. These individuals emphasized how film differed from reality and how it might be considered a valid art form.
In the years after World War II, the French film critic and theorist André Bazin reacted against this approach to the cinema, arguing that film's essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its difference from reality.
Film genre refers to the method of categorizing films based on similarities in the narrative elements from which films are constructed or the emotional responses they elicit. Most theories of film genre are borrowed from literary genre criticism. Besides the basic distinction in genre between fiction and documentary (from which hybrid forms emerged founding new genres, docufiction and docudrama), film genres can be categorized in several ways.
The setting is the or environment where the story and action takes place (e.g., a war film, a Western film or a space opera film). The theme or topic refers to the issues or concepts that the film revolves around (e.g., science fiction film, sports film or crime film). The mood is the emotional tone of the film (e.g., comedy film, horror film or tearjerker film). Format refers to the manner of presentation (e.g.: 35 mm, 16 mm, 8 mm or digital). Additional ways of categorizing film genres is by the target audience (e.g., children's film, teen film or women's film) or by type of production (e.g., B movie, big-budget blockbuster or low-budget film).
Film genres often branch out into subgenres, as in the case of the courtroom and trial-focused subgenre of drama known as the legal drama. Genres that at first may seem unrelated can be combined to form hybrid genres, such as the melding of horror and comedy in Nightmare on the Elm Street films. Other popular genre combinations are the romantic comedy and the action comedy film.
Definition
American film historian Janet Staiger states that the genre of a film can be defined in the following ways - The "idealist method" judges films by predetermined standards. The "empirical method" identifies the genre of a film by comparing it to a list of films already deemed to fall within a certain genre. The "social conventions" method of identifying the genre of a film is based on the accepted cultural consensus within society.
Martin Loop contends that Hollywood films are not pure genres, because most Hollywood movies blend the love-oriented plot of the romance genre with other genres.
Genre is often a vague term with no fixed boundaries, and many films also cross into multiple genres. Recently, film theorist Robert Stam challenged whether genres really exist, or whether they are merely made up by critics. Stam has questioned whether "genres are really 'out there' in the world or are they really the construction of analysts?"
Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites. For example, horror films have a well-established fanbase that reads horror magazines such as Fangoria.
Screenwriters often use genre as a means of determining what kind of plot or content to put into a screenplay. They may study films of specific genres to find examples. This is a way that some screenwriters are able to copy elements of successful movies and pass them off in a new screenplay.
Categorization It is hard to draw up a classification of genres. This is because “a genre is easier to recognize than to define” and therefore most academics agree that any genre cannot be identified in a rigid way". Furthermore, different countries and cultures define genres in different ways. A typical example are war movies. In US, they are mostly related to the two World Wars, whereas in other countries, movies related to wars in other historical periods are considered war movies.
Film genres may appear to be readily categorizable from the setting of the film. Nevertheless, films with the same settings can be very different, due to the use of different themes or moods. For example, while both The Battle of Midway and All Quiet on the Western Front are set in a wartime context and might be classified as belonging to the war film genre, the first examines the themes of honor, sacrifice, and valour, and the second is an anti-war film which emphasizes the pain and horror of war.
Linda Williams juxtaposes the genre with the perspective of audiences’ perceived reactions. She “argues that horror, melodrama, and pornography all fall into the category of "body genres", since they are each designed to elicit physical reactions on the part of viewers.
- Horror is designed to elicit spine-chilling, eye-bulging terror;
- Melodramas are designed to make viewers cry after seeing the misfortunes of the onscreen characters
- Pornography is designed to elicit sexual arousal.
This approach can be extended: comedies make people laugh, feel-good films lift people's spirits, inspirational films provide hope and strategies.
SUB GENRES
Action film
Disaster film
Martial arts film
Spy film
Action thriller
Superhero film
Comedy film
Comedy of manners – Angoor
Slapstick – David Dhawan films – coolie no. 1, hero no. 1
Parody film - Borat
Black comedy – Jaane Bhi Do yaaron
Comedy horror – Go Goa Gone
Romantic comedy film – katti batti
Teen movie – High School
Drama film
Crime drama
Historical drama
Docudrama
Legal drama
Psychodrama
Comedy-drama
Melodrama
Tragedy
Hybrid film
Docufiction – Michael Moore’s Sicko
Note - Articles might have inputs from articles in public domain
