Mercifully, we're doing a genre I know a lot about: I've seen virtually none of the further viewing for the other weeks. But Period Drama, ah, I've seen the lot!
Room with a View, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth, Mansfield Park, A Cock and Bull Story, Atonement - the only ones I haven't are Howard's End, Persuasion and Orlando. And save the latter, I feel I wouldn't learn much from seeing them.
Thanks mum. If I do a genre question, and then pass this exam, this is going to be wholly down to you and my indoctrination from a very young age into the joys of social dances, top hats and floppy hair.
So, what is genre? A series of films which share narrative, stylistic and thematic characteristics or conventions. Or, "genre is what we collectively believe it to be" - but how do we define this?
There are two approaches: to start with genre, and fit films into those boxes, or to start with a film, and build a genre from it.
Genre is defined by the audience's expectations, and the industry's control of those expectations. Repetition and difference guarentees profit - in other words, doing the same thing in slightly different ways. An excellent example would be Reservoir Dogs, which freely plagarised from heist movies of the past, and yet added ultraviolence and slick dialogue which would later be adopted as part of the modern crime genre. Furthermore, films can exist on presold expectations, allowing resources to be reused. In the classical hollywood system, this would be reusing the same Western backlot for every horse opera. Substitute the assumption that if they put Matthew McConnaughty in a rom com, it's gonna do OK automatically.
If you think I'm kidding, look up the poster for Pride and Prejudice, then Sense and Sensibility, then Becoming Jane and play spot the difference.
So it's a three way thing, from the producers -> movies -> audiences, and back again. Between them, the three argue about what exactly "rom com" means, and even though there will be the occasional oddball, there will be a healthy clump in the middle which remains the basic definintion.
Critics hate this unreality: the "London comma England" of the romantic comedy, for example. Genre relies on a very strong narrative image: it is a fantasy film, that farmboy will turn out to be a prince, there will be swords, orcs, wizards, a score lovingly ripped off from Hans Zimmer and a huge CGI battle at the end. Why are people singing? Oh, it is a musical - this makes sense.
These images, they argue, aren't real and are separated from any image of reality. I emphatically reject this point! Firstly, in cinema, all reality is constructed - even the choice to film serious, real life dramas with shakey hand-held camera is itself generic. I'd also debate that "genre movies" were that separate from reality. Certainly part of the appeal of period/fantasy/scifi - three genres which seem furthest from life - is that they are escapist. But ah, they're secretly about the present...(or not very secretly, if you're Battlestar Galactica)
This is also at the heart of why genre studies are important: if auterism is high brow, then genre is populist. This is about what real people are watching. Horror movies! Romances! It is, supposedly, the "popular" cinema of what people want to watch (or in any case, the only cinema the media presents them with) and thus vital in terms of representation: they play a key role in the constructing of social identities, i.e. as a woman. I remain convinced that the Teen Movie cliche about Jocks vs Geeks has actually created itself, with life imitating art far more than the other way around. It exists in the world of industry and marketing, as a way of selling a movie. An example is My life without me, which was sold in Spain on the name of its director Isabel Coixet, but in America was sold as a family drama.
Thus the divide exists: AUTEUR (high-brow) vs GENRE (low-brow), with the occasional film crossing the border i.e. Unforgiven
This leads to another criticism - that genre is institutionalised, safe and a vehicle for the dominant ideology. Hard to debate, really. Genre has evolved as part of the system, because Hollywood likes to promote their new films by imitating successful ones. Naturally, then, it homogenises and plays it safe, and is not all that representative outside of the mainstream. The word "gaze" is used - I'll be blogging on male gaze in about two hours time, but it's not just a gender thing. To appeal to everyone, films are taken from the perspective of a normal everyman. He's white, straight, fairly-well-off-but-not-too-rich, just like you folks at home. Except you women. And you poor people. And you ethnic minorities, and you sexual deviants you - but hey, none of you count! Yeh, when it's a product of the system genre does encompass all this. I wonder if Period Drama is so badly thought of precicely because it appeals to the female audience?
In the 1980s, the genre "heritage films" came under stick for its conservatism. They showed these upper middle class pastoral images of a better England, with opulent design, country houses and slow character development - national myths, land of hope and glory! Clear escapsim from Thatcher and also, critics claimed, irrelevant compared to the social realism boom which was also taking shape. In escaping from the Tories and unemployment, people took refuge in an idealised Britain. Merchant/Ivory (their slash, not mine), Brideshead Revisited and Chariots of Fire vs My Beautiful Laundrette and its friends.
I know I should have learnt my lesson about fantasy fights by now, but wonder who'd triumph in Charles and Sebastian (Brideshead) vs Omar and Johnny (Laundrette). Charles and Seb could certainly drink them under the table...
The same thing happened in the 90s, with the Trainspotters vs the Janespotters. Critics just loathed it! Why are you watching these idealised fantasies, complete with cliches of Englishness, when you could be watching contemporary meaningful cinema?! Even as an escape from Tory Britain, nevertheless it was still ideologically right wing. Freudian slip, I typed "white wing", and indeed period dramas are not racially diverse. Arguably with very good reason, but as a trend still not very healthy. And indeed, the idealism of period drama is key: few produce an image of the past outside of its materialistic context, not showing beyond the seductive trappings. A false notion of historical reality. In other words, while Sense and Sensibility may be saying "oh noes! Look at the state of us poor womenfolk!", it's still providing an unbearably nostalgic and lush look at that time, taking the bite off any criticsm.
They drew pretty much the same split as I did above with plot/location, by dividing "narrative space" from "heritage space". A scene moving on the plot - and now we're going to have ten minutes of country dancing. Lord X meets Lady Y - but look at that carriage coming up the gravel drive. It's almost the opposite of German Expressionist style cinema, where the shapes of the buildings and lighting matches the psychological state of its characters. Take Gotham city. Gotham needs to be a bad place for narrative purposes, but it's also symbolic of corruption within the characters and a mirror for Batman's own darkness. Critics note that this approach is absent in period drama - no matter the situation, the lights will remain on and the world uninvolved in the narrative. Any storyline is framed by gorgeousness - Marie Antoinette took this to its logical conclusion by almost disposing with story entirely. Any worries are detatched in a staid, sanitised, but always very nice atmosphere. Do you get emotional about the characters? Well, yes, but the camera isn't going to give you a devastating close up in favour of a long shot on a horse in a valley in front of a stately home.
Nowadays, we're almost post-period. A Cock and Bull Story gives us a hilarious pastiche of the genre, while Elizabeth sexes it up, and Bleak House cheats the style. The debate remains: what is period drama today
As a whole, I feel one should be pragmatic: appreciate genre, but also understand not to be constrained by it.
So, in brief:
Room with a View, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth, Mansfield Park, A Cock and Bull Story, Atonement - the only ones I haven't are Howard's End, Persuasion and Orlando. And save the latter, I feel I wouldn't learn much from seeing them.
Thanks mum. If I do a genre question, and then pass this exam, this is going to be wholly down to you and my indoctrination from a very young age into the joys of social dances, top hats and floppy hair.
So, what is genre? A series of films which share narrative, stylistic and thematic characteristics or conventions. Or, "genre is what we collectively believe it to be" - but how do we define this?
There are two approaches: to start with genre, and fit films into those boxes, or to start with a film, and build a genre from it.
Genre is defined by the audience's expectations, and the industry's control of those expectations. Repetition and difference guarentees profit - in other words, doing the same thing in slightly different ways. An excellent example would be Reservoir Dogs, which freely plagarised from heist movies of the past, and yet added ultraviolence and slick dialogue which would later be adopted as part of the modern crime genre. Furthermore, films can exist on presold expectations, allowing resources to be reused. In the classical hollywood system, this would be reusing the same Western backlot for every horse opera. Substitute the assumption that if they put Matthew McConnaughty in a rom com, it's gonna do OK automatically.
If you think I'm kidding, look up the poster for Pride and Prejudice, then Sense and Sensibility, then Becoming Jane and play spot the difference.
So it's a three way thing, from the producers -> movies -> audiences, and back again. Between them, the three argue about what exactly "rom com" means, and even though there will be the occasional oddball, there will be a healthy clump in the middle which remains the basic definintion.
Critics hate this unreality: the "London comma England" of the romantic comedy, for example. Genre relies on a very strong narrative image: it is a fantasy film, that farmboy will turn out to be a prince, there will be swords, orcs, wizards, a score lovingly ripped off from Hans Zimmer and a huge CGI battle at the end. Why are people singing? Oh, it is a musical - this makes sense.
These images, they argue, aren't real and are separated from any image of reality. I emphatically reject this point! Firstly, in cinema, all reality is constructed - even the choice to film serious, real life dramas with shakey hand-held camera is itself generic. I'd also debate that "genre movies" were that separate from reality. Certainly part of the appeal of period/fantasy/scifi - three genres which seem furthest from life - is that they are escapist. But ah, they're secretly about the present...(or not very secretly, if you're Battlestar Galactica)
This is also at the heart of why genre studies are important: if auterism is high brow, then genre is populist. This is about what real people are watching. Horror movies! Romances! It is, supposedly, the "popular" cinema of what people want to watch (or in any case, the only cinema the media presents them with) and thus vital in terms of representation: they play a key role in the constructing of social identities, i.e. as a woman. I remain convinced that the Teen Movie cliche about Jocks vs Geeks has actually created itself, with life imitating art far more than the other way around. It exists in the world of industry and marketing, as a way of selling a movie. An example is My life without me, which was sold in Spain on the name of its director Isabel Coixet, but in America was sold as a family drama.
Thus the divide exists: AUTEUR (high-brow) vs GENRE (low-brow), with the occasional film crossing the border i.e. Unforgiven
This leads to another criticism - that genre is institutionalised, safe and a vehicle for the dominant ideology. Hard to debate, really. Genre has evolved as part of the system, because Hollywood likes to promote their new films by imitating successful ones. Naturally, then, it homogenises and plays it safe, and is not all that representative outside of the mainstream. The word "gaze" is used - I'll be blogging on male gaze in about two hours time, but it's not just a gender thing. To appeal to everyone, films are taken from the perspective of a normal everyman. He's white, straight, fairly-well-off-but-not-too-rich, just like you folks at home. Except you women. And you poor people. And you ethnic minorities, and you sexual deviants you - but hey, none of you count! Yeh, when it's a product of the system genre does encompass all this. I wonder if Period Drama is so badly thought of precicely because it appeals to the female audience?
What exactly constituts Heritage Film has yet to be resolved. Certainly, it's been definied negatively - trivial, fake, mumsy, conservative. But it suffers from the same problem I've defined in genre as location vs. plot. Pride and Prejudice is a period drama because of the location - when you turn it into Bridget Jones' Diary, it is no longer a period drama. It can be a romance, horror, mystery, thriller, crime, whatever. Zulu is a war film because it is set during a war, but in terms of storyline it makes far better sense as a western: it's High Noon in shiney boots. Valkyrie is ostensibly historical drama - actually, it's a caper movie (go back and read my discussion of the genre on Cinecism)
In the 1980s, the genre "heritage films" came under stick for its conservatism. They showed these upper middle class pastoral images of a better England, with opulent design, country houses and slow character development - national myths, land of hope and glory! Clear escapsim from Thatcher and also, critics claimed, irrelevant compared to the social realism boom which was also taking shape. In escaping from the Tories and unemployment, people took refuge in an idealised Britain. Merchant/Ivory (their slash, not mine), Brideshead Revisited and Chariots of Fire vs My Beautiful Laundrette and its friends.
I know I should have learnt my lesson about fantasy fights by now, but wonder who'd triumph in Charles and Sebastian (Brideshead) vs Omar and Johnny (Laundrette). Charles and Seb could certainly drink them under the table...
The same thing happened in the 90s, with the Trainspotters vs the Janespotters. Critics just loathed it! Why are you watching these idealised fantasies, complete with cliches of Englishness, when you could be watching contemporary meaningful cinema?! Even as an escape from Tory Britain, nevertheless it was still ideologically right wing. Freudian slip, I typed "white wing", and indeed period dramas are not racially diverse. Arguably with very good reason, but as a trend still not very healthy. And indeed, the idealism of period drama is key: few produce an image of the past outside of its materialistic context, not showing beyond the seductive trappings. A false notion of historical reality. In other words, while Sense and Sensibility may be saying "oh noes! Look at the state of us poor womenfolk!", it's still providing an unbearably nostalgic and lush look at that time, taking the bite off any criticsm.
They drew pretty much the same split as I did above with plot/location, by dividing "narrative space" from "heritage space". A scene moving on the plot - and now we're going to have ten minutes of country dancing. Lord X meets Lady Y - but look at that carriage coming up the gravel drive. It's almost the opposite of German Expressionist style cinema, where the shapes of the buildings and lighting matches the psychological state of its characters. Take Gotham city. Gotham needs to be a bad place for narrative purposes, but it's also symbolic of corruption within the characters and a mirror for Batman's own darkness. Critics note that this approach is absent in period drama - no matter the situation, the lights will remain on and the world uninvolved in the narrative. Any storyline is framed by gorgeousness - Marie Antoinette took this to its logical conclusion by almost disposing with story entirely. Any worries are detatched in a staid, sanitised, but always very nice atmosphere. Do you get emotional about the characters? Well, yes, but the camera isn't going to give you a devastating close up in favour of a long shot on a horse in a valley in front of a stately home.
Nowadays, we're almost post-period. A Cock and Bull Story gives us a hilarious pastiche of the genre, while Elizabeth sexes it up, and Bleak House cheats the style. The debate remains: what is period drama today
As a whole, I feel one should be pragmatic: appreciate genre, but also understand not to be constrained by it.
So, in brief:
- Genre is not purely about films, but expectation, and the symbiotic relationship between the two.
- Genre helps us understand why and how films work, i.e. musicals
- The genre elements are often what constitutes it's pleasure, i.e. monster movies
- Genre is exploited by media-heads to sell and promote new films
Comments (2)
Genre
I think there is a contract between director and audience. The audience goes to a Western and expects horses, gunfights and tumbleweed. If this is not delivered the audience is short-changed; a comedy needs to be funny, a musical needs songs, space opera needs spaceships. Non-genre films have to fight for their space on the screen because our expectations have to be pegged onto something else (star, director, novel plot). Even run-of-the-mill genre films can be entertaining if they deliver on the contract. I watched "Garden State" the other week and wondered what it was supposed to be.
Offbeat? Great modern music? Timid male lead? Bittersweet? Garden State is a mumbly-wacky-indie-movie, which has become a genre all of it's own.