Representation and Conventions - helps study texts and audience responses to texts by dividing them in to categories based on common elements.
Chandler (2001) suggested that the word genre comes from the french for "kind" or "class". It refers to a distinctive type of text.
Barry Keith Grant (1995) All genres have sub-genres which everything can be divided into. By being divided into specific categories, the audience are able to specifically identify the media text.
Neale (1995) suggests that genres are not systems, they are processes of systemization, i.e. they are dynamic and evolve over time.
Consistent and constant exposure to a genre allows the audience to recognise the familiar conventions associated with a model (or a paradigm). Genres change to reflect the era in which they're produced.
Mittell (2001) suggested that cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience and cultural practices as well. Industries use genre to sell products to audiences.
Self-Reflexive - use conventions. Aware that they are a media text.
Genre also allows audiences to make choices about what products they want to consume through acceptance in order to fulfil a particular pleasure. This links to Audience Theory.
Altman (1999) came up with the theory of Pleasure of Genre for Audiences. He suggested that there were three:
1. Emotional - generate a strong response.
2. Visceral - 'gut' responses. 'Rollercoaster'.
3. Intellectual - 'thriller' or 'whodunnit'.
Strengths of Genre Theory:
- Everyone uses and understands it.
- Media industry use it to market and advertise their product.
- Applied across a wide range of texts.
Genre Development and Transformation
- Generic transformation, genres develop and change as the wider society that produce them also changes
- Genres go through a typical cycle (Metz 1997) Experimental, Classic, Parody, Deconstruction.
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