Media products can be classified into categories or genre. The word 'genre' comes from the French word meaning 'type' or 'class'. Genre can relate to books, films, music and even art, it is how they are all categorized. books and films are separated into different genres ranging from horror to comedy. people have preferences for certain genres in media. A genre can be recognised by its common set of distinguishing features for example the mise en scene varies through different genres. a film with a horror genre may have a dark, gloomy, negative setting whereas a comedy film would have very different and positive settings.
Audiences recognise these features and therefore expect certain things. For example, at the end of a romantic comedy film the two lead characters will realise they are in love. Audiences may even select a film or book on the basis of its genre which is what they are used for. Here is an example of the different genres.
You can also tell by the cover of the film what genre it will be, the covers of step brothers and the hangover look particularly amusing and the covers of the ring and sinister are very scary looking which indicates that the genre of the film is horror.
Generic conventions
Generic Conventions are the features shown by texts that allow them to be put into a specific genre. For example almost all Westerns use the Iconography of cowboy hats, features like this indicate that the film has a western genre. In horror films the typical generic conventions are things like:
- blood
- weapons
- bad weather
- screams
- night
- winter
- cold
- ghosts
- scary settings
- scary sounds
- a fearsome character
- a vulnerable victim
Slasher horror films : classic conventions and gender in Horror
Slasher films are a subgenre of horror films, typically involving a violent psychopath stalking and murdering several people, usually with bladed tools. The location is always a quiet and a suburban town, this helps to keep the audience with a sense of fear because it is a place that you would consider to be safe in. The location could be apart of the killers identity because it could explain a bad childhood or a significant event which the killer was involved in or which took place in. The lighting is used to add tension to the scene, it is mostly dark and it is used to add shadows in order to give the mysterious feeling.The connotations of shadows are mysteries, this is one of the conventions of slasher films and it is one of the important aspect of this genre of film. The first girl to die gives the film its meaning and sets the audience into the film setting by giving everyone a warning that this is a slasher film and that the killer has come to do their job. This character is often a girl who is a young attractive teenager of the age of the audiance the film is targeting and is usualy blonde. when the victim is the same age as the target audiance it makes it more scary and relatable which is the purpose of this genre.
At the time of creation of the Slasher subgenre, which was primarily produced in America, the world was immersed in much social, political and economical dispute and unrest. Within America itself the impact of the 1960s was still apparent not only in terms of change within the film industry, but socially. During the time of Fordism; an economy boom heightened by mass consumption in America, where the country found itself immersed in materialism, combined with the social and feminist revolution of the 1960s, Americans were ready to increase their levels of desensitization. The nation had become that of mass consumerism and commercialism and constant advertising of fast pace living and self indulgence created a stage for the Slasher. Jancovich depicts another reason for the embrace of the subgenre related to America’s sense of self which would force the progression of the genre.
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