FAVz056 Rethinking Genre: Theories, Methods, and the Example of Recent American Popular Cinema

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2015
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Richard Nowell (lecturer), doc. Mgr. Petr Szczepanik, Ph.D. (deputy)
Mgr. Luděk Havel, Ph.D. (assistant)
doc. Mgr. Petr Szczepanik, Ph.D. (assistant)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Jiří Voráč, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
each even Thursday 12:30–15:45 03019
Prerequisites
Based on multidirectional dialogue and debate, this learning environment demands students who are confident communicating in English and who are committed to working with (and through) sometimes challenging abstract ideas. A background in the study of film and/or other screen media is an essential prerequisite to this course, as is the drive to confront the complex realities of genre’s operations across audiovisual cultures.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.

The capacity limit for the course is 20 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/20, only registered: 0/20
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 6 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
Course Goals and Student Learning Objectives

Rethinking Genre emphasizes the compatibility of genre theory and historical research. And while each seminar centralizes a specific topic under this general rubric, students are encouraged to see these topics as offering complementary tools which can – and at times should – be synthesized within their repertoires of conceptual frameworks and practical skills. By the end of the course, students will be expected to demonstrate a solid understanding of all of the topics listed below, and to produce a theoretically-sound and empirically-researched paper showcasing some of them:

• how genre might be conceptualized generally
• how and why perceptions of specific genres might differ and change somewhat
• how and why perceptions of genre(s) influence the assembly and content of media texts
• how and why perceptions of genre(s) operate in marketing campaigns and materials
• how and why trends form across output; why they emerge, develop, and decline
• how and why conceptions of genre shape the repackaging of certain types of text
Syllabus
  • Course Description and Purpose
  • Rethinking Genre invites students to radically re-approach the concept of genre. It aims to do so, by furnishing them with cutting-edge conceptual models and methodological frameworks intended to help illuminate genre’s roles in the production, assembly, distribution, and reception of audiovisual texts. The course builds from the position that the sense of structure underpinning a “first generation” of scholarship on genre was as flawed as a “second generation” turn to polysemy. Instead, students will approach the phenomenon of genre – and by extension individual genres – as characterized by a structured polysemy, i.e. by a bounded range of elements, tendencies, and qualities. While drawing examples from recent American popular cinema, Rethinking Genre emphasizes the extent to which genre is an organizing principle traversing audiovisual culture; everything is in some way generic. The insights gleaned across this course therefore promise to be transferable or adaptable to analyses of other historical junctures, territories, and media.
  • COURSE OUTLINE
  • Session 1
  • Conceptualization I: What is Genre?
  • While scholars labored in their efforts to define individual genres, they exerted less energy attempting to pin down what we mean by the notion of genre. Accordingly, in this session we ask “what is genre”? This question boasts a two-part answer – one part disarmingly simple, one altogether more complex. In positing a model that claims fully to conceptualize genre – rather than just individual manifestations thereof – we find surprisingly useful inspiration from the field of Star Studies. By conceptualizing genre as a purely theoretical concept based in a multiplicity of discursive iterations snowballing across time and space we furnish ourselves with a transferable framework. In so doing, we unburden ourselves of the fruitless search for a universally applicable factor-X, and instead lay a solid foundation from which we can start to explain how genre functions.
  • Preparation
  • Richard Dyer, “Stars as Specific Images”, in Stars (London: BFI, 1998), pp. 60-85.
  • Jason Mittel, “A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory”, Cinema Journal, 40.3 (2001), pp. 3-24.
  • Session 2
  • Conceptualization II: Contestation and Flux
  • The model outlined in the first session explains why individual perceptions of a particular genre are likely to differ somewhat at any given moment and are likely to change over the years. Contestation and flux are an unavoidable side effect of genre’s status as a multifaceted process unfolding across time and space. Approached in this way, we jettison assumptions that individuals see genres the same way, while also appreciating that understandings are not quite infinite; neither supremely structured nor endlessly polysemous but in fact structured in their polysemy. Doing so helps us to understand how genre operates in the assembly and content of media texts.
  • Preparation
  • Steve Neale, “Melo Talk: On the Meaning and use of the Term ‘Melodrama’ in the American Trade Press”, The Velvet Light Trap 32 (1993), pp. 66-89.
  • Mark Jancovich, “‘A Real Shocker’: Authenticity, Genre and the Struggle for Distinction”, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 14.1 (2001), pp. 23-35.
  • Session 3
  • Assembly I: Movies
  • Genres would not exist without media texts; which is not the same as saying our categorization of media precisely replicates industrial categories. Accordingly, the next part of this course focuses on the industrial use of genre, examining two of the principal texts screen industries handle: films and marketing materials. This session focuses on the former, considering how at a given moment decision-makers perceive a given genre, the different ways a genre can factor into content, and how we can explain that most films are at once calculatedly assembled as examples of a given genre and as hybrid texts which invite viewers to position them in a range of categories.
  • Preparation
  • Rick Altman, “Why are Genres Sometimes Mixed?”, in Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), pp. 123-143.
  • Jim Whalley, “‘A Process to Learn Something’: Pearl Harbor and the Producer’s Game in contemporary Hollywood”, New Review of Film and Television Studies 9.3 (2011), pp. 265-282.
  • Session 4
  • Assembly II: Marketing Campaigns and Promotional Materials
  • Work on film marketing might well have occupied a marginal position in genre studies for many years, but it was ahead of the curve in recognizing the incentives driving the production of media texts which invoke multiple categories of cultural products. In this session, we will consider how and why marketing campaigns and materials fracture a film’s identity in order to ensure audiences expect multi-generic texts.
  • Preparation
  • Barbara Klinger, “Digressions at the Cinema: Reception and Mass Culture”, Cinema Journal, 28.4 (1989), pp. 3-19.
  • Thomas Austin, “‘Gone with the Wind plus Fangs’: Genre, Taste and Distinction in the Assembly, Marketing and Reception of Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, in Steve Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 294-306.
  • Session 5
  • Output I: Production Trends & Film Cycles
  • With countless decision-makers relying – consciously or otherwise – on loose templates to organize the content of their films, a significant amount of output belongs to historically specific production trends. In this session, we will challenge the dominant – and to my mind utterly bogus – position that such trends are symptoms of topicality. Instead, in the face of numerous non-topical trends, we will consider whether it might be more fruitful approaching these phenomena from an industrial perspective. In particular, we will think about whether trends – and the film cycles, clusters, and staples they generate – might follow specific principles governing their emergence, duration, and decline.
  • Preparation
  • Tico Romao, ‘Engines of Transformation: An Analytical History of the 1970s Car Chase Cycle’, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 1.1 (2003), pp. 31-54.
  • Richard Nowell, “From Pioneers and Speculators to Prospectors and Carpetbaggers: A Model of Film Cycle Development”, in Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle (New York: Continuum, 2011), pp. 41-55.
  • Session Six
  • Output II: Repackaged Genre Films
  • While some trends leave isolated temporally specific collections of similar films behind them, some types of film reemerge in large number after apparently lengthy hiatuses. If understandings of production trends are still in their infancy, then our appreciation of the historical dynamics of repacking is positively embryonic. However, some scholars have considered how an effort to negotiate perceptions of a dormant genre factors into the assembly and marketing of new films. Accordingly, this session focuses on the dynamics of “re-positioning” as it pertains to reorienting audience expectations through strategic acts of content-tailoring and marketing.
  • Preparation
  • Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
  • Valerie Wee, “Resurrecting and Updating the Teen Slasher: The Case of Scream”, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 35.2 (2006), 50-61.
Teaching methods
Methods of Instruction

Delivered in the English language, Rethinking Genre is an advanced level course intended for students either actively engaged in or thinking about conducting original research on film or other aspects of audiovisual culture. The course is organized into six three-hour seminars, mainly comprising structured discussions and practical exercises. Where the discussion parts of the seminars weigh up the merits, shortcomings, and limitations of important theoretical contributions to the field, exercises are intended to reinforce the practical dimensions of these approaches. Based on multidirectional dialogue and debate, this learning environment demands students who are confident communicating in English and who are committed to working with (and through) sometimes challenging abstract ideas. A background in the study of film and/or other screen media is an essential prerequisite to this course, as is the drive to confront the complex realities of genre’s operations across audiovisual cultures.

Texts and Resources

As they are expected actively to contribute to seminar discussions, students are required to study the set readings before class. All readings will, be available in PDF form to download from the course webpage before the start of the course. Students are advised to bring hard copies of the relevant readings to class, as the use of electronic devices is not be permitted except during exercises. Any films to be viewed in preparation for this class will be made available to students in timely fashion.
Assessment methods
Assessment

Rethinking Genre is presaged on the notion that theoretically informed perspectives on genre can be practically applied to the study of audiovisual culture, thereby promising to help us shed new light on the production, content, dissemination, and reception of films and other media. Put differently, this course is geared to facilitating the production of cutting-edge research. Students will therefore work toward a research paper of 4,000 words, applying the frameworks and methods examined across the course to their own original research to a genre of their choosing. The case studies centralized in these papers may either focus on a hitherto neglected media genre or radically revise understandings of a genre that has been the subject of scholarly or popular attention. In so doing, students will work towards the production of a genuine contribution to the discipline. Students should submit a proposal in writing at time to be announced spotlighting their research question(s), their methods, and a research plan. Time will provided at the end of the course for students to complete their research and write up this essay.

Grading/Evaluation: Grades from A-F will be awarded based on the criteria specofoed in the attached PDF file.
Language of instruction
English
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