7

Chapter 14. Media Genres and Texts

The aim of this chapter is to look more closely at some examples of typical media content as revealed by applying some of the approaches and the methods out­lined in Chapter 13. It also introduces some of the concepts which are used to classify the output of mass media. In particular we explore the concepts of media format, genre and text.

Questions of Genre

In general use, the term 'genre' simply means a kind or type and it is often loosely applied to any distinctive category of cultural product. In film theory, where it originates, the term has been controversial, because of the tension between individual creative authorship and location in a genre (Andrew, 1984). An emphasis on the genre tends to credit the value of a work to a cultural tradi­tion rather than to an individual artist, who simply follows the rules laid down by the particular school of production. In relation to most mass media content, however, the concept of genre is useful and not especially controversial, since the question of artistic authorship does not usually arise.

For our purpose, genre can refer to any category of content that has the following characteristics:

• Its collective identity is recognized more or less equally by its producers (the media) and its consumers (media audiences).

• This identity (or definition) relates to purposes (such as information, enter­tainment or subvariants), form (length, pace, structure, language, etc) and meaning (reality reference).

• The identity has been established over time and observes familiar conven­tions; cultural forms are preserved, although these can also change and develop within the framework of the original genre.

• A particular genre will follow an expected structure of narrative or sequence of action, draw on a predictable stock of images and have a repertoire of vari­ants of basic themes.

The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expec­tations of its audience. Since it helps individual media users to plan their choices, it can also be considered as a mechanism for ordering the relations between pro­ducers and consumers. According to Andrew (1984:110), genres (of film)

are specific networks of formulas that deliver a certified product to a waiting cus­tomer. They ensure the production of meaning by regulating the viewers' relation to the image and narrative construction for him or her. In fact, genres construct the proper spectators for their own consumption. They build the desires and then represent the satisfaction of what they have triggered.

This view overrates the extent to which the media can determine the response of an audience, but it is at least consistent with the aspirations of media themselves to control the environments in which they operate. In fact, there is a good deal of evidence of audience recognition and use of genre categories in discourse about media. Hoijer (2000), for instance, applied a reception analysis to the inter­pretation of different television genres and found that each genre generated cer­tain expectations. Popular fiction in the realistic mode is expected to provide a valid reflection of everyday reality. Ideas of this kind were used by the audience as standards of criticism. Distinctions are made according to text characteristics of specific genre examples. For instance, expectations about realism were lower for American than for European serials (see Biltereyst, 1991).

Genre examples

The origin of genre analysis is credited by Berger (1992) to Stuart Kaminsky, who wrote that

genre study of the film is based in the realization that certain popular narrative forms have both cultural and universal roots, that the Western of today is related to archetypes of the past 200 years in the United States and to the folk talc and the myth. (1974: 3)

Stuart Hall (1974/1980) also applied the genre idea to the 'B-movie western'. In his analysis, genre depends on the use of a particular 'code' or meaning system, which can draw on some consensus about meaning among users of the code (whether encoders or decoders) in a given culture. According to Hall, we can speak of a genre where coding and decoding are very close and where meaning is conse­quently relatively unambiguous, in the sense of being received much as it is sent.

The classic western movie is then said to derive from a particular myth con­cerning the conquest of the American West and involving such elements as dis­plays of masculine prowess and womanly courage, the working out of destiny in the wide open spaces and the struggle of good versus evil. The particular strength of the western genre is that it can generate many variant forms that can also be readily understood in relation to the original basic form. For instance, we have seen the psychological western, the parody western, the spaghetti western, the comedy western and the soap opera western. The meaning of the variant forms often depends on the reversal of elements in the original code.

Many familiar examples of media content can be subjected to a genre analysis designed to uncover their essential recurring features or formulas, as Radway (1984) has done for the romance story, by exposing the typical 'narrative logic' (see Figure 14.2). It is also possible to classify the different variants of the same genre, as Berger (1992) does for the detective mystery. According to Bcrger, the 'formula' is a subcategory or genre and involves the conventions of that genre, with particular ref­erence to time, place, plots, costumes, types of hero, heroine and villain, and so on. A western, for instance, has a certain range of possibilities for the formulaic elements that will be known to experienced audience members. This knowledge enables the content to be read correctly when certain signs appear: for instance, white hats iden­tifying good guys, and the music that heralds the approaching cavalry.

More recent developments in media-cultural studies have given prominence to several familiar television genres and provided the boundaries for new fields of enquiry. A noteworthy example is the attention paid to soap operas, partly on account of their idenhfication as a gendered form of television (Modleski, 1982; Allen, 1987; 1989; Hobson, 1989; Geraghty, 1991; Liebes and Livingstone, 1998; Brunsdon, 2000). The more feminine characteristics of the soap opera genre were said to reside in its form of narrative, preference for dialogue over action, and atten­tion to the values of extended families and the role of mothers and housewives.

The soap opera is also a very typical example of a serial form of narrative. The great interest in the serial 'Dallas' during the 1980s (Ang, 1985; Liebes and Katz, 1990), for somewhat different reasons, also drew attention to the soap opera as a genre. The particular example also stretched the meaning of the term to include a media product which was very different from the early North American radio or television daytime serial. Even so, the wide and long currency of the term 'soap opera' applied to different kinds of drama confirms, in some measure, the valid­ity and utility of the concepts of genre and soap opera. One of the strengths of the genre idea is its capacity to adapt and extend to cope with dynamic develop­ments. This is well represented in the even more recent rise of the 'talk show' genre, which began as entertainment interviews with celebrities and as a 'break­fast television' format and has expanded luxuriously throughout the world in manifestations that range from the sensationalist knockabout to very serious occasions for political participation. The common elements holding the genre together arc not easy to identify, apart from the centrality of talk and the presence of a key anchor personality. But they often include some audience presence or participation, some conflict or drama, some degree or illusion of actuality, a strong dose of personalization and an illusion of intimacy (see Munson, 1993).

A typology of genres

So far it has seemed that genre analysis can only be applied to discrete categories of content, each with certain key dimensions. At least one attempt has been made at more of a meta-analysis. Berger (1992) suggests that all television output can be classified according to four basic types, produced by two dimensions: degree of emotionality and degree of objectivity. The typology is shown in Figure 14.1. The explanation of the terms is as follows:

		OBJECTIVITY High Low
EMOTIONALITY	Strong	Contests	Dramas
	Weak	Actualities	Persuasions