Genre Theory

In class I have researched a few theorist who have their own views on genre, films, characters and plot. These theorist include Rick Altman, Steve Neale, Robert Stam, Blumler and Katz, Tsvetan Todorov, Roland Barthe and Claude Levi-Strauss.

The first theorist I looked at was Rick Altman, who believes that you can't determine a films genre by the semantic elements such as props, costume, locations, music and colour, you have to take into account the syntactic elements which are the emotional themes e.g. love. The two films I looked at that are very similar in terms of the semantic elements were 'Assassin's Creed: Ascendance' and 'Toy Story

Assassin's Creed: Ascendance:

Semantic Elements: animated, colourful, terror, protagnosit, antagonist

Syntatic Elements: love, hate, anger and patriarchal, lonliness

Toy Story of Terror:

Semantic Elements: animated, dark, terror, protagnosit, antagonist

Syntatic Elements: humor, cool and love(friendship).

Steve Neale argues that film goes through a cycle and changes throughout its lifespan. His theoretical cycle is:

• Form finds itself

• Classic (Dracula)

• Pushes Boundaries (Psycho)

• Parody (Scary Movie Series)

• Homage (Scream)

He believes that that throughout a genres lifespan it changes because audiences get bored and want new and exciting films. For example the genre Horror has changed dramatically. Dracula was released in 1931 and was classified as 'A' which in nowadays is translated as a PG even though it was classed as a 'horror'. Psycho pushed the boundaries of horror films as in the first 5 minutes of the film a very famous actress was killed in a gruesome way that many people complained about as being too violent. After this many films followed the violent nature and by each year films are being made with gruesome deaths, deadly killers and frightening plot lines all because of Alfred Hitchcock film 'Psycho'.

For example: The opening sequence for Dracula (1931) is very different to the opening sequence for Sinister (2012). This proves that Steve Neales theory is correct and that films do go through a cycle to adapt to a new audience. The opening sequence to 'Dracula' includes a lot of credits including the title of the films, the actors, the director, producer and many more. Whereas, 'Sinister' starts off with footage which confuses the audience but is also very disturbing. The only credit used is the title of the film.