Put simply, genre movies are those commercial feature films which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations. Popular cinema is mostly comprised of genre movies – the kind of films most of us see, whether we ‘go to the movies’ or ‘to the cinema’, or watch films on DVD or videotape at home. Throughout film history genre movies have comprised the bulk of filmmaking practice, both in Hollywood and other national cinemas around the world. While there are different genres in different countries, the films that are made, distributed and exhibited in commercial venues everywhere are overwhelmingly genre movies.
Yet while genre movies are often understood as the equivalent of ‘popular cinema’, as opposed to art cinema and experimental cinema, the distinction is in fact hardly so clear. The films of such important yet diverse art cinema directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman and Rainer Werner Fassbinder are infused with elements of genre. David Bordwell has argued convincingly that art cinema itself is a genre, with its own distinct conventions and modes of address, and that American genre films, as shown in the work of Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola, have absorbed them (see Bordwell 1979).
Popular cinema is organised almost entirely according to genre categories – science fiction, horror, thriller, pornography, romantic comedy, and so forth. From the particulars of film advertising in the various mass media to television broadcast schedules to the organisation of tapes and DVDs at the local video rental outlet, the idea of genre informs every aspect of popular cinema from production to consumption. The pervasive presence of genres in popular culture is clear when one considers that the word itself refers simultaneously to a particular mode of film production, often equated with the classic Hollywood studio system; a convenient consumer index, providing audiences with a sense of the kind of pleasures to be expected from a given film; and a critical concept, a tool for mapping out a taxonomy of popular film and for understanding the complex relationship between popular cinema and popular culture.
Tom Ryall has distinguished three levels at which we should understand genre in the cinema: the generic system (the relation of individual genres to each other and to Hollywood production in general), individual genres (defining individual genres and their common elements) and individual films (reading individual films within their generic contexts) (1998b: 329). This book will examine film genres and genre films at all three levels, focusing (although not exclusively) on American cinema, the most successful production centre of genre movies around the world. It offers a combination of theory and practical criticism, balancing ideas about genres with readings of specific films.
The series of case studies provide concrete examples of theoretical concepts and anchor them in specific texts. The films examined represent a range of genres across the history of sound film, and each discussion offers an analysis of the film as a genre film. Genre criticism allows for both the categorisation and evaluation of genre films. These are two very different critical tasks and should not be confused, although they often are. Genre helps us see the unique properties of individual works by permitting comparison of them with others that have similar qualities. As well, films, like all works of art, can only be judged in relation to other works.
Chapter 1 begins by placing film genres within the wider context of popular culture, itself comprised of numerous generic discourses in a variety of media. The emphasis of the chapter is on explaining the various elements of genre films, including conventions, iconography, settings, narratives, characters and actors. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the problems of genre definition, with film noir as a specific example. Chapter 2 examines how genre films relate to the culture that produces them. Genre films are discussed as mass-mediated equivalents to ritual and myth that address both topical issues arising at particular historical moments and more universal questions. Within these contexts, questions of ideology and history are explored in case studies of the musical and the horror genres. Chapter 3 explores issues of authorship in the context of genre, and includes several case studies of recognised auteurs showing how directors with different sensibilities are able to work within generic traditions to express their own vision. Chapter 4 considers broader questions of representation, focusing on how genre films depict gender, race, sexuality and class, again supported with several case studies. The book concludes by moving beyond Hollywood and American cinema to consider other national cinemas and their involvement in genre filmmaking.
Throughout, the aim has been to balance general claims with specific examples, and textual analysis with historical and cultural context. While theoretical approaches such as feminism, psychoanalysis, structuralism and postmodernism are employed, the emphasis here is on their accessibility and relevance for the study of film genre and genre films. Thus, this book is neither a genre history nor a history of genre theory and criticism, but rather a broad introduction to the topic that will provide the necessary tools and models for understanding and appreciating genre films.