neale genre theory

• Conventions and rules


  Those that are expected of a particular genre, such as action in an action film. Repetition.
• Sub-genre


  a subcategory within a particular genre
• Hybridity


  the process of mixing genres within a culture and across cultures
• Genres of order and integration (Schatz)


  Genre is based on the type of story being told, the iconographies are not important for these genres only the stories and values they communicate.
• Genre as cultural category'

  • genres are dependent on the wider cultural hierarchies and power structures
  • As a cultural product genres develop within 'interrelated sites of audience, industrial and cultural practices
  • if genres are ‘cultural categories’, produced with particular discursive practices, then they are not found in texts but are subject to the cultural readings of media industries, audiences and historical contexts
• Genre is an economic necessity

  • Genre is an effective marketing strategy because you are appealing to an audience which already exists
  • formatting (Jenkins) -  If a narrative was commercially successful, such as a western, the Hollywood studios would try to meet our demand for a similar experience and repeat the formula
• interplay of codes


  films message encoded through many different signs e.g costume, lighting, dialogue (mise-en-scene) 
• schatz - genres of order / integration

  • genres of order - texts that prioritise returning things to order - conflict in order to resolve plot e.g crime, western, detective
  • genres of integration - texts the prioritise getting people together romantically e.g rom-coms, musicals, melodrama