Lecture presentation for week 3 of Theory and Practice

1. Genre

2. political meaning
economy
Genre Theory institutions
Genre
Structuralism symbolic code
texts
cultural code
‘new’ media

3. Another way in which to
explore the media texts
construct meaning

4. Developed in relation
to film

5. Genre
• From the French for ‘type’ or ‘kind’
• At its simplest, a system for classification
• Widely understood and used form of
analysis

6. ‘Art vs Genre’

8. Contract between producer
and audience

9. Let’s start with what
we know . . .

10. Medical Drama

11. Medical = white coats,
doctors, nurses,
patients, hospitals

15. House

17. Medical procedural
Detective
Who Dunnit?

19. House offers generic
hybridity

20. Detectives
Holmes
Kojak
Columbo
Cracker

24. A mystery or problem to solve, tortured central
character who shares traits with his ‘nemesis’, dubious
dress sense? Relations to authority, the ‘sidekick’

25. • Genre is a signifying system
• A Paradigm
• The elements from which a text can draw
are syntagms

26. Functional
• Agents of ‘ideological closure’
(after Hartley)
• Limit meaning potential
• ‘Contract’ between producer and audience
as to content
• Annoying when broken!

27. “Typical forms of texts which link kinds of
producer, consumer, topic, medium, manner
and occasion” (Hodge & Kress, 1988, 7)
Think also about camera movement, editing techniques, colour, costume, language,
music . . .

28. For Producers . . . .
• Creative or Constraining? (Gledhill, 1985)
• Creative tension or ‘efficient’
communication (Fowler, 1989)

29. For Producers
• Constructs an audience
• Manages expectations
• Possibility of disrupting expectation
• Managing regulation

30. For Audiences
• Frames of reference
• Active process of constructing meaning
• Recognition requires ‘Cultural Capital’ -
Generic knowledge as a ‘competency’ or
literacy

32. New media forms often borrow from what has gone
before
Novels - epislatory format of letter writing
Radio - theatre concert and music hall
TV - literary adaptation and soap
Gaming - film, fairy story,

33. • So meaning is produced by the combination
of elements in particular ways
• Doesn’t require the presence of all possible
choices

34. • Individual texts may be recognisable
generically (shared paradigmatic features and
themes)
• Whilst differing dramatically from other texts
within that genre
• e.g. My Family & Peep Show - both sitcoms!

35. • Genres develop and change dynamically
over time (diachronically)
• They may combine - hybridity
• Or become extinct - cease to have cultural
currency

36. For Next Week . . .
• In your groups produce a presentation
which illustrates the key elements of the
genre you are given
• The presentation should be designed with
the conventions of the genre in mind (e.g.
font, colours, images, sounds)
• See LN for more detail