What is Genre?
“Genre is a collection of
shared rules that allows a film maker to use established communicative formulas
and the viewer to organize his own system of expectations”. – Moine (2009)
In
the world of film, Genre can be known as a ‘type’. Films and TV Programmes are categorized into a
type of genre for example: Action, Romance, Adventure, Drama, Comedy, etc. This
gives choice to the filmgoers to make it easier for them to decide, what type
of film they want to see.
There
are a wide verity of Genres all of which are very versatile to definitively
describe a style of film. Moine describes the wide range of Genre as being ‘a
jungle’. Therefore it describes how difficult it is to make out just exactly
what any Genre is.
One
of the things that make a Genre difficult to describe is the fact that in terms
of society you could possibly consider that a genre reflects what goes on in
the real world. Standards in society come out in how the film is made.
The
Gangster storyline in the 1930’s reflects on how crime was at that time ‘a good
guy being brought down by society and becoming a criminal.’ (Moine. 2009) For
example Moine describes that gangster films ‘frequently tell the story of an
individual, a victim, who has only been made blameworthy or turned into a
criminal by society’ – Moine (2009)
Moine
goes on to say that an audience expects certain things to happen when
approaching a type of film and one would expect to see ‘guns blazing, cars
screeching, and fast paced, tough and slangy dialogue’ – Bergan (2011) and there
is a principal which Moine calls ‘Shared Rules’. This collection of pointers give
the audience expectations of what will be in the film.
However
when viewing something like ‘Pulp Fiction’ – directed by Quentin Tarantino 1994
- the audience gets some of what it expects, like crime and different types of violence
like cathartic violence and glamorised violence, but there are also elements of
black comedy and excessive drug-taking.
Tarantino dares to go beyond the Shared Rules and make a certain type of
film, which is out of the ordinary and problematic in its structure, going
against the simple ‘Good VS Evil’ storyline.
Tarantino
uses the guideline to the gangster genre in Pulp Fiction, but he also adds
casual dialogue to disguise the true nature of what is about to happen for
instance, in the scene where two hit men are on their way to commit an
assassination. Audiences usually expect Gangster films to be serious, but in
Pulp Fiction the comedy comes through in unexpected moments like this one.
Tarantino also makes his films unique by providing a signature in the
selection of the choice of actors for his films.
With Samuel L Jackson you have the stern, seriousness in the eyes of a
character, a hit man who later dares to question fate and destiny and his place
in life. He sounds more like a preacher than a hitman. Tarantino puts this in the
script and Jackson provides.
John Travolta is also termed as unusual casting when you watch him on
screen. At the time no one wanted John Travolta and the last film he did before
‘Pulp Fiction’ was ‘Look who’s talking 3’. However, Travolta being a versatile
personality is not only an actor but a dancer as well, and he dances in Pulp
Fiction. Tarantino wanted Travolta to dance in a certain kind of way. That
comes out in the twist when you watch the dancing scene. Travolta dances in
quite a rigid way. It shows off character in the twist in contrast to Thurman’s
Zsa Zsa Gabor catlike movements. Once again, Tarantino’s involvement in how he
wants the dancing to be portrayed makes the scene quirky and quite humorous.
Tim Roth is English and also dynamic, but also lower status in terms of
rank however he delivers the clever wit of the script off well because when you
watch his character interact in the ending scene that low status is seen
throughout even when he has the power of holding a gun in attempting to scare
people into robbing them.
Other stars such as Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames and Harvey
Keitel have special qualities of their own that fit into Tarantino’s vision of
the piece, wither it is comedic, serious, profound, nostalgic or a mixture of
all four said things. Tarantino’s vision of life combines anger and comedy into
the Gangster genre and Drama but at the same time viewers watching his films
know that what they are watching is a fiction. The events in Pulp Fiction are
not based on real life and the characters are not based on real people. Tarantino
specifies that his films stay within a fictitious reality. Tarantino comments
that he considers it to be “Good Cinema” when asked about his view on audiences
watching violent movies, people who are not violent people going into a
watching a heavy action movie its okay for them to sit back and enjoy the
violence Tarantino commented “It’s a movie. It’s a fantasy, it’s not real life
you watch a kung fu movie and one guy takes on a bunch of people in a
restaurant that’s fun”. Implying that because it is fiction there is a security
blanket about keeping what is contained within the movie, within the movie and
audiences respond to it as being a fictional representation of real life, but they
know it is clearly portrayed as not being real life.
Pulp Fiction is a problematic film which is about many alternate
stories, involving several characters’ back story, and how all these alternate
stories tie into the one complete day which is equal to the main plot; which in
turn makes up the film. Audiences hoping to see a gangster film do not get a straightforward
storyline that they might expect in the way that Moine suggests.
In developing a story idea for a short film,
it is all about coming up with a story and finding out where does it fit in
terms of a specific place. Horror? Sci Fi? or combinations of different genres
like Romantic Comedy, etc. I thought of
films and TV like: Minority Report, Independence Day, 28 Days Later, Torchwood
– Miracle Day because they mixed genres.
The film I helped with is set in a dystopian
version of our future. This brings in the Science Fiction element into it, but
it is also drama because there is a conflict between two brothers. The
background of the surrounding world is important because the audience will
understand more about the strict rules in the society that the world is based around,
academic intelligence rules over everything else which make a character under
emphasised pressure that he ends up betraying his brother.
The Thriller elements come into the storyline
making the pace quick and sharp emphasising time running out and my team wanted
to highlight this and make it clear the audience watching that the film is
restricted and we show and tell in presentation which helps the overall
interpretation of our idea come out in much more bold and stronger way.
The Horror elements make the drama all the
more enticing and gripping due the natural sense of threat surrounding the
negative responses. Characters who fail meet a horrific end, but this is left
more to the audiences’ imagination. It the power of suggestion, which plays on
the mind of the viewer to actively engage them into everything the short film,
is about.
“Producers and consumers both recognise a
genre as a distinct entity…” according to David Bordwell quoted in ‘Film Genre
from Iconography to Ideology’ (Grant. 2007) However Genres can be mixed up.
Pulp Fiction is not clearly a specified as being ‘just’ a gangster film because
of the comedy elements to it. The short fiction film I worked on is not
specifically just sci-fi because of the drama elements between the two
brothers.
The ‘Shared Rules’ set up of expectations is
there to allow the viewer to have a freedom of choice in their own personal
tastes in what they like and what they don’t like as well having the choice of
films which are a combination of different genres mixed together as an
experimental format. The jumble combinations reverts to the set of the way
Television and Film is today as most audiences need something to grip and or
persuade them into not partly watching but fully committed to watching it.
Therefore the differentiation of what genre is and the identification of genre
is very important for that reason.
NEXT TIME : Avengers - Age of Ultron
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