movie genres classification essay

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Classifying Movies: Genre, Target Audience, and Production Era

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

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Introduction, classification based on genre, classification based on target audience, classification based on production era.

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Ultimate Guide to Movie Genres — 90+ Genre Examples for Film & TV

Y ou’re looking for a movie genre list, maybe for inspiration, but every list you find has too broad or hyper-specific categories that it becomes overwhelming. We’ve created the perfect movie and TV genre list that will explain the various categories of film and television with their specific subgenres, and we’ll also include helpful examples for each along the way.

Watch: Movie Genres and Subgenres Explained

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Action Genre

Animation genre, comedy genre, crime genre, drama genre, experimental genre, fantasy genre, historical genre, horror genre, romance genre, science fiction genre, thriller genre, western genre, musical genre, movie & tv genres preface, why should you learn about genre.

There are storytellers and filmmakers who live inside particular genres, and you may even hear some of them say, “I make genre movies.” This seems simple enough on the surface, but being a ‘genre storyteller’ requires you to fully understand what your specific genre means. 

Let’s do a quick refresher on the overall meaning of genre:

Movie Genre Definition

What is a movie genre.

M ovie genres  are stylistic categories where a particular movie can be placed based on the setting, characters, plot, mood, tone, and theme. A film's main genre category will be based on where the majority of the content lands. A sub-genre  is a smaller category that fits inside a particular genre. Often this is a mixture of two separate genres. Genres and sub-genres change over time and are informed by one another. 

How do you determine a movie genre?

• Has the ability to generate sub-genres
• Describes the style of a work of entertainment
• Can be combined with other genres if needed

Genres and sub-genres can be mixed and combined until you go blue in the face (or fingers), so if you don’t see a sub-genre on this list you can combine the meanings of each respective genre to make your own. 

Now that you have a better understanding of genre's definition, let’s go over each category along with their sub-genres. We’ll have popular and accurate examples that will help clear up any confusion.

Action Movie Genre List

Movies in the action genre are defined by risk and stakes. While many movies may feature an action sequence, to be appropriately categorized inside the action genre, the bulk of the content must be action-oriented, including fight scenes , stunts,  car chases , and general danger.

Action Movie Supercut

Heroic bloodshed.

This action sub-genre is defined by values like duty, brotherhood, honor, redemption, and the protection of the vulnerable. It was initially created in Hong Kong cinema but has since made its way around the world. Ex. The Killer (1989), Hard Boiled (1992).

Military Action

While some movies may incorporate various military characters, settings , themes , and events, this particular sub-genre focuses on their exploits and suggests these events are entertaining rather than tragic. Some of the best Michael Bay movies come to mind. Ex. Commando (1985), G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009).

Espionage action movies are similar to military action movies in that they’re intended for excitement and entertainment rather than focusing on the political and psychological aspects of espionage. James Bond movies might be the most recognizable but there are plenty of others. Ex. Casino Royale (2006) , Mission: Impossible III (2006).

Wuxia Action

This highly specific sub-genre focuses on martial arts as both a form of excitement, but also as a chivalrous act of protection and honor. Ex. Hero (2002), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Disaster movies are defined by a large amount of destruction, specifically from naturally occurring events, where characters try to survive. If an alien force is the force of destruction, the film will be categorized as science fiction rather than a straight disaster movie. Ex. The Day After Tomorrow  (2004) ,  Dante’s Peak  (1997).

Movies in the adventure genre are defined by a journey, often including some form of pursuit, and can take place in any setting. Some of  Steven Spielberg's best movies  capture the essence of what makes this genre so exciting. Ex.  Raiders of the Lost Ark  (1981) ,  Lawrence of Arabia  (1962).

The  superhero  movie is defined by characters not only with supernatural abilities but using those abilities for altruistic purposes. If the film has superpowers that are used for questionable purposes, it would be more of a supernatural thriller versus a “superhero” movie.  Marvel movies  have been dominating of late but they only occupy a small percentage of the  best superhero movies  ever made. Ex.  Iron Man  (2008),  X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014).

Types of Animation Movies

The animation genre is defined by inanimate objects being manipulated to appear as though they are living. This can be done in many different ways and can incorporate any other genre and sub-genre on this list. For more info on animation, you can dive deeper on the types of animation , the principles of animation or see our list of the best animated movies of all time.

Animation Genre and History  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Traditional.

Traditional animation is defined by hand-drawn and painted images that are assembled to animate a cartoon that tells a story. Ex. Robin Hood (1973), The Flight of Dragons (1982).

Stop Motion

Stop motion animation is defined by taking real objects and adjusting them frame by frame to simulate motion and emotion. Stop motion refers to the style of photography, while stop motion such as claymation and sometimes puppet animation can fall into multiple sub-genres. Ex. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and some of the best stop motion movies of all time.

Claymation is a form of stop motion animation, except the subjects used are built specifically out of clay. Ex. Chicken Run (2000), Early Man (2018) and many of the best Rankin Bass Christmas movies .

This is where shapes are cut out and placed on top of one another to make figures and settings, all used to tell a story. Ex.  South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut  (1999).

Computer Generated Imagery

CGI is the most common form of modern animation, where modeling programs and software are used to animate cartoons. Ex. Shrek (2001), Rango (2011) and Pixar's incredible short films .

Puppetry animation is where puppets, including hand, stick, shadow, ventriloquist, and marionettes are used to tell a story.  Ex.  Team America: World Police  (2004).

Live-Action

Live-action animation is where animation, of any kind, is mixed with real-life subjects to create a single world.  Ex.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit  (1988),  Space Jam (1996).

List of Comedy Film Genres

The comedy genre is defined by events that are intended to make someone laugh, no matter if the story is macabre, droll, or zany. Comedy can be found in most movies, but if the majority of the film is intended to be a comedy you may safely place it in this genre. The best comedy movies range throughout this entire spectrum of humor.

Comedy Genre Scene Supercut

Action-comedy.

The action-comedy sub-genre incorporates humorous actions within the action, using the exciting events in the story for laughs. Ex. Hot Fuzz (2007),   Charlie’s Angels (2000).

Dark Comedy (Black Comedy)

Dark comedy (or Black Comedy) is defined by using attitudes and events that would normally be objectionable to set up humorous situations. Ex. Very Bad Things (1998),   Fargo (1996) and more of the best dark comedy movies ever made.

Romantic Comedy

Romantic comedies (aka Rom-Coms) are defined by comedy derived from relationship frustrations that are intimate in nature. This includes any combination of gender or situation across the sexual spectrum with films that include some of the best romantic quotes ever written. Some of Woody Allen's best movies redefined the genre. Ex. Sleepless in Seattle (1993), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003).

Buddy Comedy

A buddy comedy is defined by at least two individuals who we follow through a series of humorous events. Often their (platonic) relationship is the main source of comedy in the story. Ex. Rush Hour (1998), Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2003).

Road Comedy

Road comedies are defined by humorous situations derived from a journey along a set path, and often feature a set of stops and characters along the way that forces the protagonist (s) further down the road. Ex. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987),   Dumb and Dumber (1994).

Road Comedy Meets Slapstick

Slapstick comedy.

Slapstick comedy is defined by humor derived from physical movement, harm, or frustration that requires little to no dialogue. Ex. The Party (1968), Mouse Hunt (1997).

I’ve decided to put parody, spoof, and satire next to one another because they’re often thought to be synonyms, but truthfully they are not. A parody mocks and specifically targets a single piece of art or connected body of work. A parody is more precise, and more limited. Ex. MacGruber (2010),   Spaceballs (1987).

A spoof is broader than a parody because it mocks an entire genre or collection of similar, but separate works. Where parody targets a specific piece of art or entertainment, spoofs target the entire genre. Ex. The Naked Gun ( 1988), Not Another Teen Movie (2001).

Satire movies are the broadest of the three in that it mocks overall ideas, vices, human nature, institutions, or any number of concepts that don’t necessarily have a specific connection to another piece of art.

3 Types of Satire Explained  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Ex. In The Loop (2009),   Idiocracy (2006) or even Dr. Strangelove , just one of Stanley Kubrick's best movies .

A sitcom (situational comedy) is defined by a set group of people who must navigate through humorous situations and misunderstandings. Sitcoms in the past were very often captured using multiple cameras on a soundstage, but it is by no means required. For an inside look at how sitcoms are written, download your own copy of this Seinfeld script or the The Office pilot episode . Ex. Seinfeld (1989), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005).

Sketch Comedy

Sketch comedy is defined by a collection of separate situations, with no inherent connection to each other, and can include the use of parody, satire, spoof, and many other comedy sub-genres. Ex. Chappelle’s Show (2003), The Whitest Kids U’ Know (2006).

"Do you wanna go to war, Blake?"

Mockumentary.

Mockumentaries use the documentary format for parody, satire, or spoof. They don’t mock the format, but rather use the format to mock. Ex. This is Spinal Tap   (1984), The Office (2004).

The prank genre is defined by a mixture of real-life participants who are lead through a planned event without their knowledge. The orchestrators often have a premeditated intention to coerce foolishness or error from the participant for the sake of humor or surprise. Ex. Borat (2006), Nathan For You (2013).

Related Posts

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• The Best Dark Comedy Movies →
• Best Comedy Movies of All Time →

Crime Film Genre List

The crime genre deals with both sides of the criminal justice system but does not focus on legislative matters or civil suits and legal actions. The best crime movies often occupy moral gray areas where heroes and villains are much harder to define. Many of Martin Scorsese's best movies or Quentin Tarantino's movies fall within the crime genre.

How to Shoot a Shoutout  •  Heat vs. The Matrix

The caper sub-genre is defined by a group of criminals, often non-violent, who set out on a heist or job. A caper is often humorous and less serious in nature when compared to the other crime sub-genres. Ex.  Ocean’s Eleven (2001), A Fish Called Wanda (1988). 

The heist sub-genre is defined by a criminal, or group of criminals, who set out to steal something valuable, and have a more serious tone when compared to a caper story. The subjects must navigate a set of obstacles and avoid law enforcement, and often the “getaway” is incorporated. Ex. Heat  (1995), The Score (2001). 

A gangster story follows and explores the world of organized crime. A film may include organized crime, but if the majority of the story doesn't explore organized crime, it wouldn’t fall into this sub-genre. Ex. Goodfellas  (1990), Boyz in the Hood (1991) are just some of the best gangster movies (not to be confused with the best Mafia movies ). 

Cop (Police)

The cop sub-genre follows a street cop (not a detective) who deals with criminals, crime, and the overall lifestyle as an officer of the law. You might find that some lists will have cop movies and detective movies intertwined, but for our list, we’ll focus on the beat-cops. Ex. End of Watch (2012), Beverly Hills Cop (1984).   

A detective story follows an investigator or set of investigators, either private or as a representative of a government, and follows the clues and revelations of a particular case, or set of cases. 

The Whydunit  •  Not your typical detective film

The Whydunit, explained above, is a twist on the typical detective sub-genre, one that is more concerned with they "why" than the "who" like in murder mysteries.  Ex. L.A. Confidential  (1997),   Se7en  (1995).

The courtroom sub-genre requires the majority of the story to take place inside, or support the events that are connected to a court case. Ex.   A Time To Kill (1996). 

A procedural is defined by following the established day-to-day events of investigating, solving, and prosecuting crime. Procedurals often end in situations where law enforcement has learned a valuable lesson, but their lives may not be irrevocably changed from each particular case. Ex.  Law & Order (1990), Miami Vice (1984).

Types of Drama Movie Genres

The drama genre is defined by conflict and often looks to reality rather than sensationalism. Emotions and intense situations are the focus, but where other genres might use unique or exciting moments to create a feeling, movies in the drama genre focus on common occurrences. Drama is a very broad category and untethered to any era — from movies based on Shakespeare to contemporary narratives.

SPOILER ALERT  •  Drama Genre Scene Supercut

A modern melodrama is defined by the prioritization of dramatic rhetoric and plot over character. The events are intended to elicit an intense emotional response. A melodrama strives for situations used to illustrate a larger moral thesis that acts as an agent of empathy. Ex. Beaches  (1988), The Fault in our Stars (2012). 

The teen drama sub-genre is both simple and redundant. It focuses on the lives of teenagers, group dynamics, and general woes of adolescence. Ex.  The Virgin Suicides (1999), Kids (1995). 

Philosophical Drama

The philosophical sub-genre is defined by an exploration of the human condition, and the drama is derived from the questions that are presented by mere existence and life itself. Ex. The Razor’s Edge (1984), I Heart Huckabees (2004).

"What happens in a meadow at dusk?"

Medical drama.

The medical sub-genre focuses on the inherent drama of health conditions, the inner workings of hospitals, the relationship between doctors and medical staff, and the medical industry. There are medical procedurals that follow the day-to-day life of health care professionals. Ex.  House (2004), Bringing Out The Dead (1999).

Legal Drama

The legal-drama sub-genre is defined by lawyers, judges, and legal complications that may be peripheral but not enveloped by the criminal justice system or matters relating to crime and punishment. While a legal drama may dip into criminal justice matters, the real focus is on characters at a law firm or judges chambers rather than a crime. Ex. The Practice (1997), The Firm (1993).

Political Drama

The political-drama sub-genre focuses on the complications and inherent drama that takes place inside the world of politics. This can range anywhere from local government to national political climates. Ex.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), House of Cards (2013).

Anthropological Drama

The anthropological sub-genre focuses on the drama derived from human behavior and society at large, and while the story may feature a central protagonist, the story might focus on a specific culture or a broad representation of society. Ex. City of God (2002), some of Spike Lee's best movies .

"Get that chicken!"

Religious drama.

The religious sub-genre is similar to the previous categories in that it focuses on the questions and inherent drama derived from religious situations and has the ability to incorporate supernatural events. Ex. The Passion of the Christ (2004), Silence (2013).

A docudrama takes real-life accounts and recreates them in a way that attempts to accurately represent events while also realizing the dramatic potential of those events. Docudramas are held to a higher standard of accuracy (not quality) than historical accounts or memoirs . Ex. Captain Phillips (2013), 127 Hours (2010).

EXPERIMENTAL MOVIE GENRE LIST

The experimental genre is often defined by the idea that the work of art and entertainment does not fit into a particular genre or sub-genre, and is intended as such. Experimental art can completely forego a cohesive narrative in exchange for an emotional response or nothing at all. 

Un Chien Andalou — Experimental Cinema Genre

Surrealism cannot be stylistically defined, and this is the point of the sub-genre itself. The intention of surrealist art is to act as an activity to broaden horizons, either of oneself or of others. Surrealist art often uses irrational imagery to activate the subconscious mind. Ex. Eraserhead (1977), 8 ½ (1963).

The absurdist sub-genre focuses on characters who experience situations that suggest there is no central purpose to life. Another way to frame it is a set of experiences that catalyze a descent into nihilism. Ex.  The Exterminating Angel (1962), Brazil (1985).

LIST OF FANTASY MOVIE GENRES

The fantasy genre is defined by both circumstance and setting inside a fictional universe with an unrealistic set of natural laws. The possibilities of fantasy are nearly endless, but the movies will often be inspired by human myths.

The genre often adheres to general human psychology and societal behavior while incorporating non-scientific concepts like magic, mythical creatures, and supernatural elements. 

Fantasy Genre Supercut

Contemporary fantasy.

A contemporary fantasy story introduces elements of fantasy into or around a world that closely resembles the time period when it was conceived. Urban fantasy can serve as contemporary fantasy but must take place in an urban setting whereas contemporary fantasy can be set anywhere that resembles the corresponding time period. Ex. Harry Potter  series (2001-2011), The Chronicles of Narnia (2005).

Urban Fantasy

An urban fantasy is a story introduces elements of fantasy and is set entirely in an urban environment. The urban environment can be real, fictional, modern, or inspired by history, but the story must take place and deal with concepts and themes related to an urban environment. Ex.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) (1997), Supernatural (TV) (2005).

Dark Fantasy

A dark fantasy is a story where elements of fantasy are introduced into a hostile and frightening world. If a significant portion of the story takes place in a world that has a range of circumstances, mood , and tone it would most likely be categorized as a high fantasy or general fantasy. Ex. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Solomon Kane (2009). 

High Fantasy

High fantasy can also be referred to as epic fantasy, and introduces elements of fantasy in a fictional setting, and will include romance, battles, and mythical creatures. High fantasy is the fantasy genre equivalent of a historical epic or a science fiction space opera. Ex. The Lord of the Rings (2001), Game of Thrones (2011). 

The Lord of the Rings  •  The Battle of Minas Tirith

A myth is defined by a story that often plays a fundamental role in the development of a society, which may include the origin story for humanity and existence. Often this will include characters that are gods, demigods, and supernatural humans. As noted by Joseph Campbell theory on The Hero's Journey , myths have similar characteristics despite an apparent lack of influence, which gives a myth the ability to be universally accepted. Ex. Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Monkey King (2014).

Historical Movie Genre List

The historical genre can be split into two sections. One deals with accurate representations of historical accounts which can include biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. The other section is made up of fictional movies that are placed inside an accurate depiction of a historical setting. 

The accuracy of a historical story is measured against historical accounts, not fact, as there can never be a perfectly factual account of any event without first-hand experience. 

Historical Event

The historical event genre focuses on a story that creates a dramatized depiction of an event that exists in popular accounts of history. This is different from a biography in that it focuses on an event. Ex. Apollo 13 (1995) , Lincoln (2012) 

A biography (or biopic ) is a story that details the life and is told by someone other than the subject.

What makes a good biopic movie?

A biography will often span a large portion of the subject's life, but in some rare cases, it may focus on the time period where that person’s life had the greatest effect on history and society. Ex. A Beautiful Mind (2001), Catch Me If You Can (2002) 

Historical Epic

A historical epic is the dramatized account of a large scale event that has an attached historical account. They often feature battles, romance, and journeys, and will commonly revise history or provide assumptions that fill in gaps in the account of the historical event. Ex. Ben-Hur (1959) , Troy (2004) 

Historical Fiction

Historical fiction takes place during a historical time period, and will often take a more liberal approach to representing history for the sake of drama and entertainment. Historical fiction may use real-life events and people to build context, but they’re meant to be accepted as a supposition rather than serve as an accurate historical account. Ex. Spartacus  (1960) ,  Titanic  (1997) 

Period Piece

The difference between a period piece and historical fiction is slight, but the main difference is a general omission or a lack of necessity for real-life characters or events to provide context. Period pieces are merely defined by taking place in, and accurately depicting the time period as opposed to specific lives, events, or accounts. Ex.  The Age of Innocence   (1993) ,  Barry Lyndon  (1975)

Alternate History

Alternate history is defined by the rewriting of historical events for the sake of speculative outcomes. These movies commonly focus on important, highly influential moments that often lead to alternate futures. Some of these movies may even include supernatural elements. Ex.  The Man in the High Castle   (2015),   Inglourious Basterds   (2009)

Horror sub-genres

The horror genre is centered upon depicting terrifying or macabre events for the sake of entertainment. A thriller might tease the possibility of a terrible event, whereas a horror film will deliver all throughout the film. The best horror movies are designed to get the heart pumping and to show us a glimpse of the unknown. 

A ghost movie uses the spirit or soul of a deceased creature to introduce elements of horror. These movies can take place in any time period and are only required to evoke terror through the use of ghosts. Ex. The Frighteners (1996) , The Others (2001)

A monster movie uses a deformed or supernatural creature or set of creatures, to introduce elements of horror. These movies can also take place in any time period or setting, and their only real requirement is that the antagonist is can be categorized as a monster. Ex. The Babadook   (2014),   Pumpkinhead (1988)

A werewolf movie introduces elements of horror through the use of a human or set of humans that transform into a wolf-like creatures. Sometimes these werewolves have the ability to shape-shift at will, but in other cases, their transformation is dictated by a full moon. The only requirement is the use of the werewolf as the antagonist . Ex. An American Werewolf in London (1981), The Wolfman (1941) are just some of the best werewolf movies ever made.

A vampire movie introduces elements of horror through the use of undead, immortal creatures that drink blood. They can be set in any time and place and must only use vampires as the antagonist. Some vampire movies feature vampires as the protagonist, but this is often used to build sympathy rather than as a device for terror. Ex. Near Dark (1987) is one of the best '80s vampire movies while Nosferatu (1922) is one of the best vampire movies of all time.

Different Movie Genres  •  Near Dark

Occult movies are defined by an extension of pure reason and use paranormal themes to introduce elements of horror. Occult literally translates into “hidden from view” and involves the study of a deeper spiritual reality that extends scientific observation. Ex. Hereditary (2018),   Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

A slasher story introduces elements of horror through an antagonist or set of antagonists who stalk and murder a group of people, most commonly through the use of a blade or a sharp weapon. The slasher movie is so engrained in our movie culture, even non-slasher movies use some of the same techniques and tropes. Ex. Halloween (1978) , The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

A splatter story introduces elements of horror by focusing on the vulnerability of the human body, and an emphasis on gore. Splatter movies often involve torture and attempt to present gore as an art form. Ex. Day of the Dead (1985) , Jigoku (1960)

Found Footage

Found footage can be used for any genre, but it is most commonly used in horror and features footage that appears to be an existing and informal recording of events with the purpose of simulating real-life horrific events. Ex. The Blair Witch Project (1999) , V/H/S (2012)

The zombie movie has roots all the way back to the '30s but it didn't really kick into high gear until the late 1960s. The general plot of the best zombie movies involves a group of characters trying to survive in a world overrun by zombies. The specific cause for the event ranges from infectious disease to experimental drugs gone wrong. Ex. Night of the Living Dead (1968),  28 Days Later (2002)

Types of Romance Movies

The romance genre is defined by intimate relationships. Sometimes these movies can have a darker twist, but the idea is to lean on the natural conflict derived from the pursuit of intimacy and love.  

Romance Drama

The romance-drama sub-genre is defined by the conflict generated from a  romantic relationship. What makes a romance-drama different from a romantic-thriller is both the source of the drama but also the intentions and motivations that drive each character’s perspective. Ex.  Revolutionary Road (2008) , Blue Valentine (2010) 

Romance Thriller

The romance-thriller sub-genre is defined by a suspenseful story that includes and is most likely based around a romantic relationship. Some romantic thrillers can divert into psychological thrillers where the relationship is used to manipulate, but most focus on the characters attempting to make it out of events so that they may be together. Ex. The Saint (1997) , Unfaithful (2002) 

The Saint Trailer

Period romance.

A period-romance story is defined by the setting and can include and incorporate other romance sub-genres. The setting must be a historical time period, and often will adhere to the societal norms of the specific time period, though some movies have taken a more revisionist approach. Ex. Pride & Prejudice (2005) , Jane Eyre (2011)

List of Sci-Fi Genres

Science fiction movies are defined by a mixture of speculation and science. While fantasy will explain through or make use of magic and mysticism, science fiction will use the changes and trajectory of technology and science. Science fiction will often incorporate space, biology, energy, time, and any other observable science. Most of James Cameron's best movies lean heavily on science fiction.

Post-Apocalyptic

Post-apocalyptic movies are based around the occurrence, effects, and struggle generated by an apocalyptic event. While a dystopian story may incorporate a large war or apocalyptic event in its narrative history, it will include a centralized government that was formed after the event. Apocalyptic movies will not have a centralized government but may feature smaller societies and tribes as part of the story. Ex. 12 Monkeys (1995) , 28 Days Later (2002) 

The utopian genre is defined by the creator’s view of an idyllic world since each person has a unique view of what they deem to be the absence of struggle and incident, but generally, themes included in the movies are peace, harmony, and a world without hunger or homelessness. In the past, utopian movies have been tied to satire because the nature of a story is often conflict, and a utopian society is viewed as an unrealistic concept. Ex. Gattaca (1997),   Tomorrowland (2015)

A dystopian story is one that features a world or society that serves as a contradiction to an idyllic world. Often there is a centralized and oppressive government or religion that dictates the value of citizens on a dehumanizing level, and may or may not incorporate a destructive event that drove the creation of that centralized institution. Ex.  Children of Men  (2006) , Equilibrium (2002) 

The cyberpunk sub-genre is defined by a mixture of a desperate society oversaturated with the crime that takes place in a high tech world that includes cybernetic organisms, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. Ex. Blade Runner (1982),   Elysium (2013) are just two of the best cyberpunk movies . 

The steampunk sub-genre is inspired by technology created during the 19th century and the industrial revolution and may be set in a speculative future, alternate universe, or revision of the 1800s. Ex. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) , Mortal Engines (2018)  

Tech noir is similar to dystopian but defined by technology as the main source behind humanity's struggle and partial downfall. There is no requirement for a centralized government, and the only true aspect that places a story in this category is that technology threatens our reality. Ex. The Terminator (1984)

Space Opera

A space opera is defined by a mixture of space warfare, adventure, and romance. The genre got its name from similarities to “soap operas” and “horse operas” due to their collective connection to melodrama. The term “space opera” has no connection to the music of any kind. Ex. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) , The Fifth Element (1997) 

Contemporary

A contemporary science fiction story is set in the actual time period of its conception and introduces some form of a theoretical technology or scientific concept to serve as the story’s main source of conflict. This is different from tech-noir both due to scale and a strict time period. Ex. Ex Machina (2014) , Arrival (2016)

A military science fiction story is defined by a strict focus on the military conflict in a speculative or future setting. While other movies may include space warfare, a military science fiction story will be limited to themes and events directly tied to military service and battle. Ex. Starship Troopers (1997),   Aliens (1986)

Thriller Movie Categories

A thriller story is mostly about the emotional purpose, which is to elicit strong emotions, mostly dealing with generating suspense and anxiety. No matter what the specific plot, the best thrillers get your heart racing.

Psychological

A psychological thriller focuses and emphasizes the unstable psychological state of the characters inside the story. Often there is a mysterious set of circumstances, and a paranoia, warranted or otherwise, that catalyzes extreme actions from the characters. Many of Darren Aronofsky's best movies explore the dark depths inside the broken psyche of his protagonists. Ex.  Gone Girl (2014),  Memento  (2000)

A mystery story can often be connected to the crime genre, but may not involve or use law enforcement or the justice system as the main characters or backdrop for the story. A mystery story is defined by the plot, and both the character’s and the viewer’s relationship with the motivations and reality behind the events that occur.

If you've seen any of M. Night Shyamalan's movies , you know how mystery plays a part. Ex.  Prisoners  (2013),  The Gift  (2015)

M. Night Shyamalan's Directing Style

The techno-thriller sub-genre is defined by a conflict that takes place for or through Various forms of technology. What makes a techno-thriller different from various action sub-genres is the level of detail paid toward the underlying technical aspects of the technology and its effects. 

Some consider the definition of film noir to more of a style than a genre, because there is no requirement to be connected to a crime. There is, however, a natural overlap between style and genre in the best Film Noir movies . The central theme behind the noir sub-genre is a psychic imbalance that leads to self-hatred, aggression, or sociopathy. Recently, Neo-Noir movies have modified these themes to the modern day. 

Western Movie sub-genres

Westerns are defined by their setting and time period. The story needs to take place in the American West, which begins as far east as Missouri and extends to the Pacific ocean. They’re set during the 19th century, and will often feature horse riding, military expansion, violent and non-violent interaction with Native American tribes, the creation of railways, gunfights, and technology created during the industrial revolution. 

Neo-Westerns Explained  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Epic western.

The idea of an epic western is to emphasize and incorporate many if not all of the western genre elements, but on a grand scale, and also use the backdrop of large scale real-life events to frame your story. 

Empire Western

These movies follow a protagonist or a group of protagonists as they forge a large scale business based on natural resources and land. It can also follow the creation of the railroad, or large scale settlement. 

Marshal Western

A marshal western is where we follow a lawman as they attempt to track down, apprehend, and punish a criminal or group of gangsters.

Tombstone Trailer

Outlaw western.

An outlaw western is where we follow a criminal or group of criminals as they attempt crimes and evade the law. Often, these movies will portray the outlaws in a somewhat favorable manner.

Revenge Western

This genre is defined by a singular goal and will incorporate the elements of the western genre while the protagonist seeks revenge. 

Revisionist Western

A revisionist western challenges and often aims to disprove the notions propped up by traditional westerns. Early westerns often had their own agenda, and revisionist westerns attempt to dissolve and cast aside a commonly one-sided genre.

Spaghetti Western

The Spaghetti Western genre was named such because the films were initially made in Italy or produced by Italian filmmakers. Because these films are defined by their ‘heritage’ they can also fall into many of the other western genres as long as they are Italian built. Here are our picks for the best Spaghetti Westerns of all time .

Movie Genre List

Musicals originated as stage plays, but they soon became a favorite for many film directors and have even made their way into television. Musicals can incorporate any other genre, but they incorporate characters who sing songs and perform dance numbers.

La La Land  •  Another Day of Sun

War movie genre.

The war genre has a few debatable definitions, but we’re going to try to be as straightforward and impartial as humanly possible. Movies in the war genre center around large scale conflicts between opposing forces inside a universe that shares the same natural laws as our own.

War movies can be historical accounts, fictionalized events, or future speculations that incorporate civilian interaction, political interaction, and espionage that takes place alongside a large scale, violent conflict. Some of the best WWII movies include all of those elements.

Saving Private Ryan Trailer

They are not intended to act strictly as a form of entertainment, but rather to create a deep sense of empathy toward the reality of war. Movies in the war genre may romanticize aspects of military action and camaraderie, but the purpose is to convey the reality that war brings. 

They can be set in any time period or setting, but the central theme and bulk of the content must incorporate war to remain in this genre.

Learn how to write a screenplay

Now that you have a better idea of movie categories and the various film and television genres, why not start writing your own story. Read up on How to Write a Screenplay.  We take you through the steps necessary to create a professionally structured and formatted screenplay. 

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Part I: Construction

2. What Is Genre and How Is It Determined?

Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language defines genre as “a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.” 5

In other words, genre categorizes movies. Categorizing movies makes it easier for the viewer to discover what he or she likes and will want to see. Putting a movie into a particular genre or category does not diminish the quality of the movie by assuming that if it can be put into a genre, the movie is ordinary and lacks originality and creativity.

Genre consists of four elements or parts: character, story, plot and setting. An equation for remembering the genre is: S tory ( A ction) + P lot + C haracter + Se tting = G enre. This becomes an easy way to remember the elements of a genre.

The above elements of story, plot, setting, and character equal a specific category of movie. These elements are discussed regarding how their variations create a different category of movie.

Some genres may be as general as comedy but do not have sub-genres like comedy. The sub-genres of comedy differ from one another based on the fluctuations of the characters and the story.

Other genres are crime, war, Westerns, spy, adventure, science fiction, horror, fantasy, biography, and mystery. This is why this chapter is longer than the others because of the discussion of these variations.

Drama can be considered a genre, even though some critics do not consider it a genre because it is too general. If the movie elements are serious and cannot fit into a more limited genre, then it can be considered a drama.

Categorizing a movie indirectly assists in shaping the characters and the story of the movie. The shaping determines the plot and best setting to use.

Movies often have genres that overlap, such as adventure in a spy movie, or crime in a science fiction movie. But one genre is predominant.

Other movie labels cannot be considered genres. Film noir, thrillers, and action movies are not actually genres but a director’s style, which will be discussed in a later chapter. They are considered director’s style because their characteristics include cinematography and editing, which are not among the four elements that make up a genre. These labels reflect or accentuate the movie genre rather than defining the genre.

Likewise, musicals and animation are not considered genres but rather “treatments” as to how a particular movie genre is told, even though people, over generations, refer to these types of movies as genres.

You have to be very specific in the discussion of movie terminology, sticking within the particular definition of the terms. Some people will say that genres are labels that are given to stock movies, stating that these movies are routine. Being labeled in a genre is not a negative action.

Movies have their own personalities. Each movie is different. Having a movie labeled in a genre assists people to find a particular movie that they may be interested in watching. Many people like a specific genre or two and will only watch movies in those genres.

What People Like the Most about a Movie

People will state that a particular movie had a good plot or an intriguing story. What people are actually referring to is that they enjoyed the characters, the problems/conflict the characters got into, and how the characters got out of the problems and conflict.

People love a movie because they like to watch characters/people. How many people do you know who like to go to the mall, plaza, or beach and state that they like to people watch? How many people are nosey neighbors because they like to watch what is going on with the people around them?

People may like to watch crime movies or Westerns. They like characters within this particular type of story because of the amount of action or the time period setting. People may like Westerns because they wish they lived in the 19th century because it was considered a simpler time.

Let the Genres Begin

We will begin to discuss the different genres, and even the sub-genres, for certain genre types. I will give a hypothetical example of each so you will begin to see how different genres are formed.

Keep in mind with movie genre, it is the characters that make the movie, and this term is obvious enough that no explanation is needed.

The story is the situation that the characters are in and try to get out of, accomplish, conquer, or overcome. The story has a beginning, middle, and end. More discussion about those will be given in Chapter Three.

The plot is the outline or how the story is told. Remember when people state that they did not like the plot? What they are referring to is that they did not like the story. I will be referring to this concept over and over again throughout the book.

There are only a limited number of plots as the plot is a general outline for a story, like revenge. A particular plot describes how a story will begin, develop, and end. This type of story will have a different format than a plot such as man against nature or man versus the government.

In addition, as we progress through genres, we want to examine how the genre elements change.

You will be able to see that the background and actions of the characters change as the type of stories are different. The setting is dependent upon the story, but the plot remains the same.

I want to stress that we are going through the different genres so character and story development can be seen for each of the genres rather than just giving a general overview of the term genre. I want you to see how only certain elements are contained in a genre, and other elements outside of character, story, plot, and setting are not part of determining a genre.

Comedy Genre

We begin by discussing one of the most popular, general, and complicated genres—comedy.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines comedy simply as “a play, movie, television program, novel, etc., that is meant to make people laugh.” 6 We will discuss comedy in a little more detail than that.

Everybody likes a comedy because everybody likes to laugh and feel good. People like to watch a comedy after a bad day, because once the movie has ended, you can deal with the negativity of the day easier. This is why even horrendous comedy movies can end up making a profit.

The characters and story for a comedy hinge on three areas: the unexpected, the unusual, and repetition. These three areas will generally make people laugh. Generally, a comedy will have a happy ending. Even though some people will deny it, everybody likes a happy ending because it makes them feel good. This is why comedies are so popular.

The complicated part of the comedy genre is that there are different types or sub-genres of comedy; depending upon how outrageous and impossible the characters and story are in the movie. Keep in mind that the plot is general, and the setting can be set in any time or any place.

We will discuss the comedy genre in terms of the different sub-genres of comedies and how the characters and story vary per sub-genre.

Comedies run a gamut, ranging from very physical to nonsensical to subtle to dark. We will discuss the sub-genres in that order, using the same hypothetical example but varying it to show how the different comedy sub-genres will change the characters’ personalities and actions and the story.

The sub-genres of comedy are slapstick, farce, satire, and dark. Any other genres are a variation of these four types. Comedy is actually a variation of physical action and ridicule. The only exception is screwball comedy.

Screwball comedy has many different traits that are outside of a genre. Screwball comedy, because it existed during the Great Depression, contains class conflict between the middle and lower classes and the upper class, along with other peculiarities that only existed during that time period.

Finally, “chick flicks” are generally comedy movies that star women. The Urban Dictionary defines chick flicks as “A film that indulges in the hopes and dreams of women and/or girls and has a happy, fuzzy, ridiculously unrealistic ending.” No doubt the concept of chick flicks goes back to what was previously mentioned; people like a particular type of movie because of the characters in the movie.

Slapstick Comedy

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines slapstick as comedy that involves physical action (such as falling down or hitting people). 7 Slapstick comedy, because of the physical action, which becomes extreme at times, has unrealistic characters in an unbelievable story or possibly a story linked together by episodes of the main character’s/protagonist’s life.

The plot is an inner conflict that builds and ends with these various comedic episodes. The setting can be any time or place that best exemplifies the comic antics that the characters go through.

Let’s take a look at an example that demonstrates these elements.

Jack is down on his luck. He helps a girl, Suzie, whose car broke down near where Jack works. He helps her, and then she leaves, but he cannot get her out of his mind.

Then he sees her in one of his classes. He is afraid to talk to her though. Every time he tries to go up to her, he either stumbles and falls or gets involved with helping someone with disastrous consequences. The last time someone asked him to hold onto one of the ropes of the theatre rigging system where the backdrops were attached, too many stage weights attached to the rigging resulted in Jack flying into the air because he did not let go of the rope.

As luck always has it in a slapstick comedy, Suzie is still driving the old broken down car. She breaks down again in almost the same locations as last time. Jack swallowed what little pride he had left, and went to help her. He got her car started, but she did not drive away immediately after getting it fixed but stayed to talk to Jack. They talk, kiss, and accidentally turn the outside sprinkler system on, getting soaking wet in the romantic conclusion.

From this example, you can see that slapstick comedy is all about the characters and the episodic situations that they get into, resulting in physical comedy. The plot is inner conflict where Jack, the protagonist, wants to turn his life around. This then becomes the story. The story has a climax between Jack and Suzie. The setting is a college campus.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines farce as “a funny play or movie about ridiculous situations and events.” 8

Plot has more prominence in farce than in slapstick because there is a satirical story. In other words, the story concerns a topic that is ridiculed in an extreme way. We can adjust the last example quite easily to demonstrate this.

Jack and Suzie are college students, and Alec is a well-known actor coming to the campus to play a role in the theatrical production at the college. This event has been arranged so the college theatre department can make money. Jack takes a dislike to Alec, but Suzie finds him fascinating. Alec finds himself fascinating. Slapstick is shown by the over-the-top acting that Alec does.

Jack has a difficult time wondering why Alec is famous. Suzie soon finds disenchantment with Alec because he is only concerned about himself. Jack and Suzie and the other theatre majors decide to take the actions of the play to the extreme to humiliate and humble Alec.

In a water scene, where Alec is supposed to pantomime having water thrown on him, real water is used. This drives Alec into a hysterical rage, and he chases Jack and Suzie on stage, off the stage, around the theatre, and out the theatre doors. Alec winds up accidently knocking himself unconscious. Jack states that the most natural acting that Alec has done is being knocked out.

Next, Jack develops a hair-brained scheme so the theatre department can make money. Jack and Suzie make a list of the wealthiest men and women in the area. They invite as many of these wealthy people in the area to participate in an auction. There will be five male winners and five female winners. The prize is that they win Jack and Suzie for a day to act as their slaves.

You can see that a farce has more of a story than slapstick comedy. The plot has an inner conflict of the protagonists, Jack and Suzie, needing money. This creates a story where college theatre students try outrageous ways to make money to save the theatre department. The story ridicules colleges, actors, and theatres in general. The actions of the characters are very slapstick with physical comedy throughout the movie.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines satire as “a way of using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, bad, etc.: humor that shows the weaknesses or bad qualities of a person, government, society, etc.” 9

Satire is subtler than farce or slapstick in the actions of the characters. The plot develops an inner conflict, but the story is more realistic and may, at times, not even appear to be a comedy.

In this example, the setting can remain as a college campus.

Jack and Suzie, once again, are college students. Alec, though, is the instructor, who has a drinking problem, and he is directing a class that Jack and Suzie have to take as a requirement of their theatre major. Alec tries to convince the students that there is no right or wrong way to direct, act, or design. In his mind, theatre is all done with emotion. If it feels right, then do it. In order to help them understand and develop their talents as directors, Alec gives the same answer to any question Jack and Suzie ask: “If it feels right, then do it.”

Jack struggles to try and comprehend what Alec’s statement means. He does not understand why he has to go through four years of college if he just has to recognize what feels right. Jack asks Alec for more of a discussion on what feels right. Alec then tells him, “You’ll know.” This frustrates Jack even more because it does not take four years in college to put to use nine words that do not mean anything specific in regard to studying theatre. He questions the college administration as to why they are paying so much for Alec. The college administration retorts that Alec is one of the best in his field. Jack states that Alec teaches absolutely nothing of any value. The administration states, “That shows how good he is; you do not even realize the education you are receiving.”

Defeated, Jack goes to see Suzie, his last hope. Suzie tells him not to be too quick to judge. Suzie states that she believes she understands what Alec is driving at with his ideas. Suzie tries to demonstrate the statements that Alec has mentioned. After a few hours Suzie becomes frustrated and states the both of them must go to see Alec.

After two hours with Alec, Jack and Suzie are delirious. Being delirious, they finally fathom what Alec means. They both run out of Alec’s house and down the street shouting, “We have identified what it is!”

From this discussion of the characters and story, physical actions do not enter as a predominant element that they do in straight slapstick or farce. The satire is an obvious ridicule of theatre as a major and the type of people in theatre.

A more subtle satire would be Jack and Suzie acting as a clique and by being prima donnas. They mock a new theatre major, Alec, who wants to do a good job. Alec starts to develop his talent under strenuous and often humorous situations with consequences to the amazement of Jack and Suzie. But then he realizes what he has to give up for it. He quits for his own self-respect.

The above are two demonstrations of satire.

The first example, depending on the treatment, could become either a farce, if Jack’s, Suzie’s, or Alec’s actions become too outrageous, exaggerated, and over-the-top, or it could become a satire. The line of demarcation between farce and satire are, as with anything that is analytical, left up to an individual’s judgment. When does extreme satire become farce? A good way to judge farce or satire is how much unrealistic physical comedy is in the movie.

Dark Comedy or Black Comedy

Dictionary.com defines dark humor or black comedy as “in literature and drama, combining the morbid and grotesque with humor and farce to give a disturbing effect and convey the absurdity and cruelty of life.” 10 11

Dark humor and black comedy are terms that make fun of or ridicule taboo topics like death. The characters are involved in a story that goes to the point of being grotesque and not being funny.

With this example of a college theatre as the setting, and the plot being the inner conflict of the main character, how can the characters and story become absurd, morbid, and grotesque when discussing the taboo topic of death? Quite easily actually!

Insecure about his acting ability and visibly showing this in public auditions, Jack does not obtain the role on stage that he desires, Henry V or “Hank 5,” which is Jack’s nickname for him. In order to relieve himself of his frustrations, Jack tortures and kills everyone who receives this part in the most brutally visual ways imaginable. He does this in hopes of eventually receiving this specific coveted role. Jack, though, is the only one who believes this role is so desirable and sought after.

Jack kills the first person who is given the role, Alec, by drawing and quartering him before he hangs him.

The second person to be given the role is Suzie, which really angers and infuriates Jack that a woman would get the role before him. This action adds absurdity to the story.

This is a dark humor movie rather than a serious movie because of the reasons, background, and extreme actions in the story. The characters act realistically based on their personalities, which are all unusual. The physical action is real so this scenario cannot be considered slapstick.

Screwball Comedy

This comedy sub-genre is named after a baseball pitch, the screwball, which was perfected by baseball pitcher Carl Hubbell in the 1930s. Screwball comedy only lasted from 1934, when the Great Depression was in full swing, to 1941, when World War II began.

Screwball comedy was based on reverse class snobbery where it is more noble to be poor than rich. The rich were portrayed as eccentric and wasteful fools. Romance is one of the key elements of screwball comedy. With the two classes of upper and lower or middle class working together, screwball comedies can be considered as recommending socialism. The story is a little different, but overall, it can be considered within the realm of satire because the current society was being ridiculed.

Screwball comedy also had the following attributes:

• The poor and middle class would go to the movies to see the rich get their comeuppance. This is why movies were one of the few industries of the period that made a profit. People felt a passion of hate toward the upper class because of the mess lower classes assumed the upper class made of the economy.
• Many of the most famous movie stars of the period appeared in screwball comedies.
• People went to the movies to see the elegant clothes, cars, and furniture, so they could wish they had those items.

Any referral to a movie as a screwball comedy after 1941 is inaccurate, even if it is a re-make of a movie released during the 1934-1941 period. A re-make does not have the same relevancy, power, or passion as the original movie.

A contemporary screwball-type comedy generally is fast paced with an eccentric character, but it does not have the class snobbery. Any class snobbery in the movie does not have the contemptable hatred toward the upper class as it did these movies during the Great Depression. The emotional rage cannot be duplicated.

Romantic Comedy

Dictionary.com defines romantic comedy as “a light and humorous movie, play, etc., whose central plot is a happy love story.” 12

Romantic comedy is contained in most comedies as a sub-story, such as The Front Page , which has an underlying romantic story of Hildy wanting to marry his fiancée and leave newspaper reporting. However, the overriding story of the movie concerns reporters and editors doing anything in order to get the story.

Comic romance is a big element in screwball comedy also, but other story lines are more dominant. Can you think of a movie that has the primary story line as being a romantic relationship? If you can, how did you like the movie?

Comedy Conclusion

Comedy is varied and complex. You can see how the stories, along with the personalities and actions of the characters, change, developing different sub-genres of the comedy being expressed. All comedy stems from either slapstick or satire.

Let’s move on to a new genre.

Crime Genre

Staying with the letter “C,” let’s move on to the crime genre.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines crime as “an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law” or more simply “a grave offense especially against morality.” 13 The definition gives us a lot to work with, so we will do our best to bring it into focus.

The first point is that every aspect of the crime genre is dramatic, so the elements are quite different than a comedy. The setting for crime genre can be any location in the world and any year, because crime is something that has always existed in society. We will try to narrow this down for our example.

The plot is an inner conflict for the criminal to succeed or for the “good guy” to succeed. The story is a series of developing incidents where the criminal or the “good guy” is the protagonist and a conflict has to be overcome. The characters develop from the story and plot.

Let’s demonstrate two examples with Jack being the protagonist in both situations. In the first situation, Jack is a criminal and the second one Jack is the “good guy.”

First situation: Jack is a nice, helpful individual at the beginning of the movie. He soon finds that he has to help a friend, Suzie, get out of a jam because she owes a lot of money to a gambling boss, Alec. Jack goes and begins to negotiate honestly in regard to paying Suzie’s debt. Alec laughs at him and is going to throw him out. Jack, even though he is a nice guy, has a very bad temper. This often is the situation in the crime genre. Jack becomes extremely angry with Alec laughing at him, and he kills Alec.

Alec’s men come in and Jack tells them he is their new boss. The men don’t like it, but they reserve any action for a later time. Suzie likes the new Jack and wants to be his girl. Suzie is aroused by the violence in Jack and cannot keep her hands off him.

Jack soon becomes more successful than Alec ever was, but he begins to become too egotistical. With his ego getting in the way, Jack makes a mistake when trying to take over a gambling casino. Jack is killed and the men kill Suzie. The most jealous, vindictive, right-hand man in the gang takes over the gambling empire.

Stories in the crime genre are often about people seeking power. Usually, the criminals want control over the city where the story takes place. Generally, they want to be in charge of the drug trade, gambling, liquor (depending upon the year), or they want to rise up in the family or gang. There are always periods of violent action with the protagonist trying to reach his/her goal.

Second situation: Jack is a police detective in a large city like New York City or Los Angeles. Jack is a hardworking, honest detective. He is dedicated to his job and his partner, Alec. Jack spends most of his free time with Alec and Alec’s family. Alec is murdered. Even though he wasn’t put on the case, because they were partners and friends, Jack spends his free time investigating who murdered Alec. During his investigation he meets Suzie. Suzie knew Alec and considered him a friend. Suzie asks if she can help with looking into the murder. Jack, after some convincing, agrees.

Suzie and Jack start to become close during the investigation, and Jack falls in love with her. This is often a foreshadowing as to how the story is going to end. After a few dead ends and blocked paths in the investigation, Jack picks up some information that leads him down an unsuspected path. Jack finds that Suzie was a little more than a friend to Alec, so Suzie has an ulterior motive for assisting Jack. Jack discovers that Suzie murdered Alec and was going to kill Jack, too. Jack arrests Suzie for Alec’s murder.

These are the elements and formats of the crime genre. The crime can be different than murder. Crimes encompass a wide variety of different actions. The main characters do not have to be crime bosses or police detectives, but they generally have a similar background. Very seldom do they lead a life like a factory worker or office employee. This is one reason why the crime genre is so popular. People want to watch characters that lead exciting lives different from theirs.

The stories in the crime genre are similar to the aforementioned two examples where the crime is more than a speeding ticket and provides an interesting and exciting story. The plot can be an inner conflict, once again, of the protagonist, and the setting is usually in the United States or Europe in modern times.

Western Genre

Because of the similarities between the Western and crime genres, I have included back-to-back discussions of the two genres.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Western simply as “of or relating to the American West.” 14 Keeping this in mind, we will begin by discussing the setting.

The setting provides the major difference between the crime genre and the Western genre. Instead of the characters and story occurring in the 1930s or the 1990s, the time for a Western is in the early to late 19th century or anytime through the 1820s to 1890s. Once the 20th century arrives, except for the beginning years, the feeling of the Old West is gone, which brings up the other aspect of the setting that defines the Western genre. The Western genre takes place in the West. Depending upon the year, the West could be Ohio in the 1820s, Missouri in the 1850s, or Nevada in the 1880s.

The main character or protagonist is an individualist, who rides into town for a specific reason, or he may run into trouble while in town, or he may be hired to do something like blaze a trail West. The characters and the stories are straightforward. The interest is the developing story and the action-filled problems that the protagonist faces as he tries to accomplish what he set out to do.

The plot can still be one of inner conflict as the protagonist tries to accomplish the specific goal, quell the trouble in town, or overcome the obstacles of nature as the main character blazes the trail West.

An example of the Western genre has Jack being the individualist, loner riding into town. He has come to town to avenge the death of his partner. Outside of the setting, the same type of character and story could be used in the crime genre. While Jack begins to ask questions about what happened to his partner, he falls into the middle of a range war; a typical Western story, between two ranches over the grazing rights of land. Alec owns the one ranch, and Suzie (a woman) owns the other, which is a rarity in the West.

Jack gets to know Suzie as his inquiries continue. He begins a relationship with her. During the relationship, Jack gives Suzie a helping hand in the range war. Alec is totally evil, underhanded, and despicable in his actions. Westerns, even more contemporary ones, have an outright bad person like Alec. You can see this in crime genre movies also.

Jack defeats Alec in the range war, and in the process, finds that Alec also killed Jack’s partner. In the Old West, there can only be one climax to the story. Jack and Alec shoot it out; Alec is killed, and Jack and Suzie fall in love.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines war as “a state or period of fighting between countries or groups.” 15 With this definition being direct, we can discuss the genre in the same manner. The war genre is straightforward because the movie is very limited in its parameters.

The setting and the year is very specific regarding the year and the location. If the movie takes place from the United States’ perspective, World War I would be from 1917 to 1918; World War II would be from 1941 to 1945; and the Korean Conflict, Vietnam War, Desert Storm, and other Middle East conflicts follow the same procedure. The locations would be an area where the war occurred or in the United States to concentrate on how the home front was coping.

The plot is the inner conflict with dealing with war. The characters and story are based on a battle, trying to obtain overall victory at some point of the war, dealing with losing, dealing with death, dealing with fighting, being a prisoner, or coping at the home front or a location where the fighting is not taking place.

World War II encompasses the war genre. Jack is a soldier, who is a married teacher with two children. He is drafted by the United States shortly after World War II started late in 1941. Jack was told by his wife, Suzie, not to volunteer for any extra missions so he could come home alive to his family when the war is over. Of course, this is not going to be true because a war movie has to have a daring mission.

After being in Europe for about a year and losing many battles, Jack becomes frustrated because he knows the war is not going to end soon. Suzie dreads each day because of the emptiness in her life without Jack. To her, each day never appears to end. She is stressed because she has a continuous challenge to make ends meet.

Jack and seven other men are given a chance to go on a dangerous mission to blow up a German stronghold and capture a high-ranking German officer. These men are asked to go on this mission because of their intelligence and personalities. If they succeed in this mission, the war will likely be over quicker than expected, because of the information they will receive from this German officer. Jack remembers that his wife told him never to volunteer, but he knows he only has once choice. He volunteers. Suzie gets a feeling of foreboding and is suddenly afraid something bad is going to happen. She starts to become distant to her friends and even her children.

Jack goes on the mission. Everything is timed perfectly. The fortress is blown up and the German officer is captured. However, the trip back to the Allied lines did not go as planned. Half the men are killed, Jack is wounded, and the German officer is killed.

Suzie’s feeling of foreboding becomes so great that, at one point, she passes out with anxiety. The Christmas holidays are near, and Suzie is persuaded to take the children to church. As the service begins, Jack walks into the church and joins Suzie and the children. The story ends happily, but with a cost. In order to give the story a more realistic feel, the protagonist is not totally successful with what he had set out to do.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines spy as “to watch secretly usually for hostile purposes” or “to search or look for intensively.” 16 I want to give two short definitions to emphasize the spy genre because it is a combination of watching and searching, but I do not want it to get confused with the next genre of adventure.

The spy genre sounds like it could cross over to the previous genres already discussed. But only the setting and the plot can be standard. The setting could be the same as the war, Western, or crime genres, but it does not make it a war, Western, or crime genre. You have to remember that the story makes the genre because it controls everything else.

In the spy genre, the main character generally works under an assumed identity in order to find something or destroy something of harm controlled by a nemesis. As in past genres, the plot is the inner conflict of the protagonist. In this situation, he or she has a strong inner conflict to succeed at what he or she is assigned to act upon.

Thus, if the movie has any of the aforementioned characteristics but takes place during World War II, the movie is primarily a spy movie rather than a war movie. Remember, the setting does not determine the genre but the story does. The story is interconnected to the characters and the plot. The setting helps add the must-needed background and specificity to the movie, but it is not as interconnected as the other three genres.

In recent times, a male of the strong virile type plays the protagonist spy. So, we will demonstrate that this does not always have to be that way in a movie. We will take a woman, named Suzie, who is the spy protagonist. We will set the example during World War II. Unlike Jack in the war genre discussion, Suzie is chosen because of her background in languages and her photographic memory, giving her the ability to memorize lists of facts immediately. She is requested to go behind enemy lines as a civilian and obtain data that will debilitate the enemy thus giving the Allies the advantage and shortening the war by possibly years.

In order to be able to do this, and to prepare her mentally for the task, she is set to train for three weeks with an Army officer named Jack. Jack is very skeptical that Suzie will be able to pull the task off. Jack states that it is not because she is a woman, but the movie viewers know that her being a woman is exactly the reason.

Jack begins a rigorous training program just to say that he told her so. However, Suzie really masters everything Jack throws at her. After about a week, Jack sees this and starts to admire her strength and fortitude. Jack makes the training less rigorous because he only trains her to get behind enemy lines, get back to the Allied lines, and how to mentally survive torture. By the end of the three weeks, they begin to fall in love with each other, and Jack feels he should accompany her, but his command says that is impossible.

The time has arrived for Suzie to go. The French underground has managed to get her a clerical job where she can do some travelling including going to Normandy. Rather abruptly, Suzie plans a trip to Normandy. She studies the land and is able to secretly catch a glimpse of German maps showing where their military strength is in and around Normandy. Suzie rushes and gets the information off to the Allies before she is captured by the Germans. The Allies receive Suzie’s information, but they cannot help Suzie. The Germans find her guilty of being a spy and she is executed.

Can you see the difference between this example and the war genre example? Both have the same setting of World War II, but the spy genre example has a non-soldier searching for secret information, while the war genre had a group of soldiers going on a mission that was not secret. The war mission was behind enemy lines and in the war zone where the fighting was occurring. The spy genre does not occur in the war zone where there was fighting.

Do you see the differences in the stories?

The spy story has a lot less emotion and love between the main characters. The spy story has more suspense as Suzie is hunting for information. She is becoming involved in several tight situations where she barely misses getting caught by the Nazis. The war genre story has the one climatic battle that the whole conflict was moving toward.

Most of the time these two genres do not become this similar but these two examples make it easier to see the differences in the two genres.

Adventure Genre

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines adventure as “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks” that is “an exciting or remarkable experience.” 17 From this definition, you can see that adventure is an action movie that overlaps with the spy genre with danger, risks, and excitement.

Both the adventure and spy genres can have exotic settings. The stories are normally about a person or group of people searching for something. During the journey of searching, dangerous situations are overcome by the main characters. The protagonist may end up getting involved in fighting to overcome social or moral injustices in the exotic location where he or she has journeyed.

The difference between this genre and the spy genre is, once again, the story. The spy genre has a story where something is searched for secretively, and the information itself contains secret information. This story has suspense based on timing and near misses.

The adventure genre’s suspense is found in the action and the chance that the protagonist may get killed without the espionage. The protagonist is an adventurer rather than a government employee.

Being bigger than life, the adventure genre contains a lot of explosive action throughout the movie. Remember that the story treatment, character background, and character development are big differentiations and distinctions that separate genres. The plot and the setting are also different between genres, and are reflective of the story and the types of characters.

Science Fiction Genre

Science fiction is linked to the previous genres of crime, Westerns, war, spy, and adventure by the basic theme. However, the genre elements are totally different.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines science fiction as “fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component.” 18 An example of science fiction is time travel, which has and is a popular topic.

Quite often, science fiction has a setting that takes place in the future. In this way, if the producer wants to comment on a particular problem in current society, the producer can set the problem in the future. The producer appears critical about the problem but not about the current society. The outcome of that problem, if it continues, shows how the future will look.

For science fiction, we can still stay with the plot of inner conflict, which can always be the plot, because a conflict is needed. The characters and the story can be the same as any other genre with variations, as we will demonstrate in the example.

In our example, Jack and Suzie, along with several hundred other people, are fed up with the crime and violence that exists where they live. No specific location is mentioned, so it can be anywhere in the world or universe.

In this movie, many of Jack and Suzies’ group are engineers who work endlessly to build several space ships that to travel to a new galaxy, away from the crime and chaos.  Researchers in this group toil endlessly to find a new galaxy that is livable for humans. Together they all dream of pioneering and developing this new world so there is no violence and everyone can live in harmony.

By seeing the people’s action of building space ships, the audience learns that the time is the future.

The space ships are finally finished and they are sent off. They find and arrive in the new world that is named New Earth. The people set up a colony and draft laws so there is no anarchy. Everything is great for two generations. The people live in harmony and enjoy each day to the utmost.

However, one day, someone is found dead and robbed. Everyone is left shocked. Because so much time has passed without violence, the police are unprepared. But they review the crime scene, and conclude that it was murder.

Since they have never investigated a murder, they  are unsure what should they do to find the murderer and how should they to go about doing it. They arrive at a procedure and find the murderer. The murder was an accident. The murderer was surprised as everyone else. The people realize a murder or accidental death can always happen, so the society has to be prepared and set up to handle it. Even though the story is fantastical in many ways, it can still make comments and raise questions about society and morality.

Science fiction genre, like any genre, can cross over at some point or points to another genre. This example crossed over to the crime genre. However, to determine the main genre, review the story, characters, plot, and setting together. In this situation, these elements are most geared toward the science fiction genre.

Fantasy Genre

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines fantasy as “something that is produced by the imagination: an idea about doing something that is far removed from normal reality.” 19

In other words, a fantasy movie has no limits. The setting could be anywhere at any time with characters who appear and act in any way the script writer wants. The story could be about anything. So let’s stick with one constant, the plot. The plot will be inner conflict.

According to Wikipedia, fantasy stays away from scientific and macabre story aspects, so it does not become a piece of science fiction or horror. You can see how all three genres: science fiction, fantasy, and horror are similar but different.

What would a fantasy example be like?

A group of misfits are given a task by a wizard to find the perfect person. They must do this in order to save their friend, who is terminally ill and will die shortly. The wizard tells them that their friend is not terminally ill but under an evil spell that he can break. The perfect person is the wizard’s fee for breaking the spell. The characters are Jack, Suzie, and Alec, who are misfits because they are the outcasts from their home village, which is in a fictional country. The wizard gives them a clue to look where no one has looked or would think of looking.

Jack, Suzie, and Alec think that the perfect place to find the perfect person is in a graveyard because nobody would think of looking there. But how would the perfect person appear in a graveyard? After searching through several cemeteries, they become frustrated because they find nothing unusual and do not know what the wizard was talking about. They finally find a cemetery where they can enter a new world that is built upon their imaginations. Using their imaginations mean, as they discuss a trait or physical appearance, they can build the person using their minds. What they imagine can become reality.

Using their imaginations, they begin to discuss what the perfect person would look like and act. What would the person’s personality be like? They cannot decide because the traits that they imagined as a perfect person are foreign to them. Finally, they start talking about themselves, and what they like and do not like.

After a lengthy conversation that continues for days, Suzie stands up and yells that she has the answer. She states they should make three lists of their best physical and mental traits. That will be the perfect person. The perfect person is within them as it is within all people. They compile the perfect person using their imaginations and take it to the wizard.

Suzie explains to the wizard with the assistance of Jack and Alec that the perfect person was within them as it is within all people. The wizard states that they found the answer to the clue. As such, they are also able to break the spell over their friend. The spell is broken, and the four leave and live happily ever after.

You are only limited by your imagination. A wonderful theme can come from any genre.

Horror Genre

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines horror as “the quality of something that causes feelings of fear, dread, and shock: the horrible or shocking quality or character of something.” A horror show is “something that is difficult to deal with or watch because it is so bad, unpleasant, etc.” 20

The setting regarding where the movie takes place can be instrumental in a horror movie. Many times, horror movies take place in a historical area with big, old houses that hold many secrets. Secrets provide the basis of a story as the house is supposedly haunted because something gruesome happened there many years ago. However, the setting may not be unusual, but it can be a typical small town or city just like the one where you live.

The plot, once again, is inner conflict. The main character, Suzie, inherits the house, and she is determined—to the point of becoming obsessed—to prove that there is no such thing as a haunted house. However, she takes her boyfriend, Jack, with her to the house. After they become frightened by unearthly occurrences in the house, Jack asks his friend, Alec, to join them at the house to find a solution to what is going on.

Alec states that in order to make it a clean, healthy house again, they have to discover the problem and solve it. In order to do this, Alec recommends doing a séance. The three of them enter a room late in the evening and try to contact a spirit to identify the problem. They find, at one point, that the house was owned by a slave trader or human trafficker. Down in the basement, many bodies were buried.

Suzie cannot stand thinking that a relative was a human trafficker and nothing can really be done to solve this problem. The house was owned by an evil man who is suffering in the spirit world because of his past actions. Jack thinks that the only cure to these past heinous actions is to burn the house down, which would cremate the bodies that were buried in the basement and possibly put them at peace.

Suzie does not agree with that action, but Alec agrees with Jack in order to find a cure for the haunting. Possibly, after the burning, Suzie can build a different house. Suzie starts to act in an irrational manner, like she is becoming her past relative, who was the slaver. Alec and Jack burn the house. Suzie becomes completely enraged and has to be restrained until the house is completely burned down.

Once the house has finished burning, Suzie no longer acts like she is possessed. The whole area becomes quiet. Suzie speculates that they just need drive away from it. The three of them drive away.

The horror genre brings fear, and fear generally brings thrills and suspense. With a suspenseful scene, people like to scare themselves. The theme can always be “search for the truth,” rather than “do not be afraid of the unknown.”

Drama Genre

If a movie does not fit in one of the aforementioned genre categories, then it is a drama.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines drama as “a play, movie, television show, or radio show that is about a serious subject and is not meant to make the audience laugh” and “a composition in verse or prose intended to portray life or character or to tell a story usually involving conflicts and emotions through action and dialogue.” 21

The four elements of the drama genre have to be serious, portray life, tell a story, and the characters have to have an inner conflict that brings out emotions at different times throughout the story. These are all points that we have been discussing with the other genres. The characters and the story are general, like everyday people and situations.

Somebody is dying, something has to be obtained, or something has to be accomplished are the three common stories for dramas. Jack is an accomplished musician, who is going to be playing at Carnegie Hall, and he finds out that he has a fatal illness after passing out during a rehearsal. Or, Jack lived in the slums and a teacher noticed something in him that could be cultivated. Jack becomes a renowned doctor, scientist, or mathematician. The movie covers Jack’s obstacles to achieve what is necessary for him to being on the road toward a renowned career.

Or, Suzie risks everything to find a cure for a disease that is killing many thousands of people on a Caribbean island. The viewer often knows what is going to happen but often the characters and their development is what makes a drama interesting.

The story is relatively simple, the plot is inner conflict, and the setting is inconsequential because the characters make the movie.

Did you find Cyrano de Bergerac to be a drama? Cyrano de Bergerac had a firm foundation in unrequited love, a very romantic element in the story. But Cyrano’s inner conflict of his feelings of inadequacies in his personal appearance, while being overconfident in other areas, present love in a dramatic genre.

Action, Thriller, Suspense Thriller, Biography, Film Noir, Neo Noir, and Mystery

Action, thriller, suspense-thriller, biography, film noir, neo noir, and mystery are terms that are often referred to as different genres. However, none of these are genres. They do not contain just the four basic elements of a genre—no matter how much people insist that they do. They contain the genre elements and other elements, like cinematography, that are not part of a genre.

Writers, educators, critics, historians, and others have stated that the above terms developed into being named a genre and that they can be accepted as a genre over time. How many of you heard or read the terms action genre, film noir genre, or suspense thriller genre? Just because they have been referred to by these terms, over the years, does not make them honorary genres. These terms, by themselves, still have the same meaning even if they have been named genres.

Most of these terms refer to specific cinematography when shooting the movie, or they refer to the way the movie was edited.

Action, thrillers, and suspense thrillers all have similar types of action in them. Adventure, spy, crime, war, and Westerns could all be action movies or thrillers or suspense thrillers. Action, thrillers, and suspense thrillers do not touch upon the four elements that make up a genre.

Film noir and neo noir are predominantly crime movies that have certain cinematography. They overlap both in the construction and production aspects of making a movie.

Film noir means “black film.” Film noir has many scenes occurring at night with many gritty, seedy city shots. The character types in film noir are loners and schemers, but they are reflective of the types of characters in crime movies.

Detour is a good example of film noir regarding the characters like Al and Vera. The voice-over narration of the protagonist describing the forward action, using black and white film, and many scenes occurring at night are examples of film noir. But voice-over narration, being in black and white, and a lot of the movie occurring at night does not determine the genre. The jaded characters, story, and plot of murder defines the movie as a member of the crime genre. The night scenes and voice-over narration are a directorial style. These decisions are characteristics that distinguish it as film noir.

Neo noir is the new noir for the later 20th and 21st centuries when most movies are made in color. The genres could be crime, science fiction, or drama but the cinematography is dark, gritty, and symbolic, similar in many respects to film noir.

Mystery refers to the way the story is shaped. Most mysteries are concerned with who stole something or who murdered someone. Most mysteries belong to the crime genre where the story and the editing keep the audience guessing until the final minutes of the movie.

Biography refers to a nonfiction movie that is about a historical or living person. The background, character, and setting of the movie may determine what other genre a biography might belong to. If the person is a war hero, the movie would be of the war genre; if the person was a criminal or detective, the movie would fit the crime genre, and so forth.

Documentary

Documentary, according to Dictionary.com , refers to movies and television features based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements. 22

Sheila Curran Bernard, 23 author of Documentary Storytelling , defines documentaries as:

Documentaries bring viewers into new worlds and experiences through the presentation of factual information about real people, places, and events, generally — but not always — portrayed through the use of actual images and artifacts. But factuality alone does not define documentary films; it’s what the filmmaker does with those factual elements, weaving them into an overall narrative that strives to be as compelling as it is truthful and is often greater than the sum of its parts.

From these two definitions, documentaries are a separate movie entity that is unto itself.

Final Thought

We covered a lot of area in discussing different genres. Even though genres are only considered labels for movies, the four elements of a genre are the basis of any movie. Besides categorizing, genres indirectly shape the movie’s characters and story.

Character, story, plot, and setting are how a movie is constructed. From this construction, the specific theme that is created by the screenwriter and the director can be realized and understood by the viewer.

The other chapters in the construction of a movie go into more detail and dissect these elements in order for a better understanding of the scope of these elements and how the theme of the movie is realized.

Further Viewing

With the completion of this chapter, the movies to watch that that are excellent examples of different genres are:

• It Happened One Night , 1934, directed by Frank Capra, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. This is an excellent example of screwball comedy. It is considered the first screwball comedy, and it won five Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
• They Were Expendable , 1945, directed by John Ford, starring Robert Montgomery and John Wayne. This is a good example of the war genre. It is set during the beginning of World War II and demonstrates how the United States lost the war with dignity.
• All About Eve , 1950, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, and George Sanders. This is an excellent example of the drama genre.
• Goldfinger , 1964, directed by Guy Hamilton, starring Sean Connery, Gert Fröbe, and Honor Blackman. This is an excellent example of the spy genre that became popular as well as the gadgets that came along with it.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark , 1981, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. This is a good example of the adventure genre.

Jack is a school teacher, which is a job he loves. He wants to be the best teacher possible and serve his students well. Because of his desire to serve his students, he has a disdain for the school administration when they want to cut back on the education process while serving themselves with excessive raises. In addition, Jack had a bad family life when growing up. He is rather cold to his mother because of his upbringing. His mother was domineering to him and his father died at an early age. Jack’s bad family life is a big reason why he became a teacher. He wanted to make sure his students were treated better in school than he was at home.

Based on the above introduction, what genre or genres could this movie idea be developed into?

5 Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, 591.

6 “Comedy,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comedy.

7 “Slapstick,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slapstick.

8 “Farce,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/farce.

9 “Satire,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/satire.

10 “Dark Humor,” Dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dark-humor?s=t.

11 “Black Comedy, Dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/black-comedy?s=t.

12 “Romantic Comedy,” Dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/romantic-comedy?s=t.

13 “Crime,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crime.html.

14 “Western,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/western.html.

15 “War,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war.html.

16 “Spy,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spy.

17 “Adventure,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adventure.

18 “Science Fiction,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science %20fiction.

19 “Fantasy,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fantasy.

20 “Horror,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horror.

21 “Drama,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drama.

22 “Movies,” Dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/movies?s=t.

23 Sheila Curran Bernard, “Documentary Storytelling: Creative Nonfiction on Screen,” 3rd ed., (Burlington: Taylor & Francis, 2011).

Exploring Movie Construction and Production Copyright © 2017 by John Reich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

100+ Movie Genres. The Definitive List, with Examples

Movie genres have evolved alongside the movie industry itself. In the early days of Hollywood filmmaking, the limited number of movie genres had distinct and clear definitions. It was easy to categorize releases based on their subject and style into specific movie genres.

Today, movie genres are more numerous and less rigid, with the emergence of hybrid and crossover movies. Filmmakers experiment with genre theory and play with audience expectations to tell stories in innovative ways.

Understanding movie genres is crucial in discussing movie theory and aids in comparing genre elements and the work of filmmakers during critical analysis of movies. We'll provide you with an introduction to movie genres and explain their significance before delving into a comprehensive list of movie genres, including important subgenres.

What are movie genres?

Film genres categorize a film based on content and style. They address what story is being told and how it's being told, impacting several elements:

Movies often blend genres, creating mixed or hybrid styles. The primary genre indicates the movie's main classification, while subgenres provide more specific distinctions or combine elements of different genres, like an action-thriller.

For example, a science-fiction thriller with horror elements in the style of a heist movie suggests a Sci-Fi setting, thriller-like suspense, horror-like shock, and a plot involving a specialized team executing a task. Such classifications help in understanding the movie's narrative style and thematic focus.

Why categorize movies into genres?

While a personal approach to sorting movies might be as simple as those seen and those yet to see, or liked versus disliked, this binary method overlooks many defining aspects of movies. Categorizing movies into genres provides a basic characterization and helps group similar movies together. This organization into basic film genres aids in navigating the vast landscape of cinema, offering a starting point for exploring different styles, themes, and storytelling techniques.

Movie genres aid viewers in discovering new films, particularly through browsing on streaming platforms. Critics utilize genres to compare movies and assess artistic elements like cinematography within genre contexts. Additionally, genres and subgenres enable broader discussions about the history and theory of moviemaking, enriching our understanding and appreciation of films.

Basic movie genres

From Hollywood's inception and the dawn of cinema, certain foundational genres have shaped the film industry. These film genres, originally rooted in live-action filmmaking, set the stage for storytelling through motion pictures. With the advent of advanced special effects and animation technology, new genres like animation emerged, expanding the cinematic landscape.

The big genre list: an overview of movie genres and subgenres

We've organized our movie genre list into a tree structure with major movie genres as branches, from which the subgenres branch off further. We'll walk you through each genre, highlighting their key features, must-watch titles, and standout filmmakers.

The action genre is all about excitement: think edge-of-your-seat chases, explosive stunts, and nail-biting danger. It's a realm where movies are defined by their high-energy scenes, often branching into subgenres like martial arts or military adventures.

Known for their big budgets, action films are where you'll find jaw-dropping explosions and intricate stunts. Directors like James Cameron, known for hits like "Terminator," along with John Woo, Michael Mann, Kathryn Bigelow, and Michael Bay, have mastered this thrilling genre.

In action cinema, there's always more to explore with its various subgenres and hybrids, each offering a unique flavor of adrenaline-pumping excitement. The action genre continues to evolve, consistently captivating audiences with its dynamic blend of spectacle and storytelling.

The action genre comprises several subgenres and hybrid genres:

Animation is a diverse movie genre, where the magic lies in bringing inanimate objects to life through various techniques, each forming a unique subgenre.

CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery): Dominating modern animation, CGI creates vibrant worlds through advanced computer rendering. These films, often significant in production time and cost, include classics like the Toy Story franchise, The Lego Movie , Wall-E , Ratatouille , Shrek , Frozen , Coco , and Luca .

Claymation and Stop Motion: This technique breathes life into objects through frame-by-frame adjustment in still photography. Claymation, a subset, uses clay-crafted characters and settings. Notable films include Chicken Run , Early Man , The Fantastic Mr. Fox , Isle of Dogs , and The Nightmare Before Christmas .

Cutout Animation: Once relying on physical cutouts, this style now often blends with CGI. Its distinct look is showcased in films like South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut and The Beatles - Yellow Submarine .

Traditional Drawn Animation: This classic style features hand-drawn frames and painted backgrounds, exemplified by early Disney films like Fantasia and Beauty and the Beast , as well as Studio Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro and Persepolis .

Live-Action Hybrid: These films mix real actors with animated elements, creating a unique crossover. Examples include Waltz with Bashir , Space Jam , Who Framed Roger Rabbit? , The Mask , Casper , Looney Tunes: Back in Action , the 1978 animated The Lord of the Rings , Waking Life , and A Scanner Darkly .

Puppet Animation: Utilizing various puppetry forms, from marionettes to shadow puppets, this subgenre includes films like Eraserhead , Labyrinth , Street of Crocodiles , The Muppet Christmas Carol , and Team America: World Police .

The comedy genre, with its wide range of humor, from simple dad jokes to sophisticated satire and dark wit, is one of the most versatile film genres. The comedy genre is a playground for creativity, offering filmmakers the flexibility to blend humor with other themes and styles.

Black or Dark Comedy: This subgenre tackles taboo topics like death or tragedy with humor. Examples of dark comedy movies include Dr. Strangelove , In Bruges , Parasite , and Fargo .

Buddy Comedy: Here, the comedy arises from the dynamics between two or more characters, whether they share a deep friendship or a love-hate relationship. It can blend with action or the Hangout genre, as seen in Dumb and Dumber and The Hangover .

Hangout Movies: These films focus on a group of characters whose interactions bring the laughs. They become almost like friends to the audience Examples include The Big Lebowski , Clerks , and The Breakfast Club .

Parody and Spoof: Parodies mock specific films, like Spaceballs does with Star Wars , while spoofs target entire movie genres, such as The Naked Gun with police movies and Scary Movie with the horror genre.

Prank Movies: These involve putting people in unexpected, often outrageous situations, typically without their knowledge. Borat and the Jackass series are key examples of prank comedy movies.

Satire: Satire humorously criticizes broader concepts or institutions, often through exaggeration. Examples include Natural Born Killers and Monty Python's Life of Brian , with mockumentaries like This is Spinal Tap using a documentary format for humor.

Slapstick Comedy: Originating in vaudeville, slapstick comedy relies on physical humor and gags, demonstrated by classics like Charlie Chaplin and The Three Stooges , and modern films like Ace Ventura and Home Alone .

Screwball Comedy: Evolving from slapstick, this romantic comedy subgenre often features a strong, quirky female lead challenging a male protagonist. Classic examples include It Happened One Night and The Philadelphia Story , with modern takes evident in films like She's Funny That Way .

The crime movie genre delves into the world of criminal activities, legal battles, and moral complexities. It explores themes from the classic good vs. evil to the gray areas of morality, often making heroes out of underdogs or even the 'bad guys' in gangster films.

Cop Movies: These focus on police protagonists, sometimes paired with partners, blending with buddy films. They can be action-packed or comedic, like Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon .

Crime Drama: This subgenre centers on legal proceedings and courtroom battles, often with a mix of detective work. Key examples include A Few Good Men and Erin Brockovich , where the climax often hinges on a pivotal court decision.

Crime Thriller: Combining crime with the intensity of a thriller, this subgenre can have psychological twists or action-packed revenge plots, as seen in John Wick and The Equalizer .

Detective and Whodunnit: Centered around an investigation, these films often feature an unlikely hero uncovering mysteries. Classics like L.A. Confidential and The Silence of the Lambs fall into this category, offering either a hidden perpetrator or a crime followed by an investigation.

Gangster Films: Focusing on organized crime, these movies showcase the life of gangs or the efforts to bring them down. Examples include GoodFellas and The Departed .

Hardboiled: A specific type of detective film, often set in the film noir era, featuring a cynical detective. Films like The Maltese Falcon and Chinatown exemplify this style.

Heist and Caper: These films revolve around elaborate plans like heists or prison breaks, blending humor and seriousness. They feature masterminds and complex plots, as seen in Ocean's Eleven and The Sting .

Documentary

Documentaries are the non-fiction storytellers of cinema, educating and informing through real-life events and facts. As a movie genre, they come in various styles and subgenres, each offering a unique perspective on the world.

Expository Documentary: These straightforward documentaries present information directly, often narrated, combining historical footage with modern interviews and expert insights. Notable examples include The Blue Planet , March of the Penguins , and An Inconvenient Truth .

Observational Documentary: Focusing on close, unobtrusive observation, these films offer a firsthand look at their subjects with minimal commentary. Examples are Hoop Dreams and The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun .

Poetic Documentary: More abstract, these films are like visual essays, expressing feelings and ideas through creative compositions. Films like Koyaanisqatsi and Voyage of Time fit this style.

Participatory Documentary: The filmmaker plays a role in the narrative, either through commentary or direct involvement. Michael Moore's works exemplify this style, as do films like Free Solo and Paris Is Burning .

Reflexive Documentary: These are personal investigations, often focusing on the filmmaker's discovery of the subject. Examples include Man with a Movie Camera and Biggie & Tupac .

Performative Documentary: Similar to participatory, these focus on subjective experiences and emotional responses, as seen in Bowling for Columbine and The Thin Blue Line .

Dramas, known for their deep exploration of conflict and emotions, truly shine in the drama genre, offering a vivid reflection of human experiences and complexities. They bring to life pivotal moments with a focus on authenticity and human nature, rather than relying on sensational action.

Docudrama: Merging drama with documentary, these films recreate real events with accuracy, like Sully and 127 Hours , providing a factual yet dramatic portrayal.

Melodrama: Aiming to evoke intense emotions, melodramas often place narrative above character development, and are known for their moral narratives, as seen in The Fault in Our Stars and Life is Beautiful .

Teen Drama: These films focus on the trials and tribulations of teenage life, capturing the essence of growing up, with examples like Virgin Suicides and Mid90s .

Medical Drama: Set in the world of healthcare, these dramas explore the lives, conflicts, and ethical dilemmas of medical professionals, as showcased in Bringing Out The Dead .

Legal Drama: Revolving around the legal arena, these dramas delve into the interactions and challenges within the legal system, with films like The Practice and The Firm .

Religious Drama: Tackling themes and conflicts arising from religion or supernatural events, these films often delve into deeper philosophical and spiritual issues, as seen in Silence and The Passion of the Christ .

Sports Drama: Centered on athletes, coaches, or teams, these films explore the dramatic world of sports and the personal struggles of those involved, with movies like Creed and The Blind Side .

Political Drama: Set against the backdrop of political intrigue, these dramas explore the lives and challenges of politicians, elections, and diplomacy, with films like Primary Colors and Argo .

Anthropological Drama: Focusing on human behavior and societal interactions, these films draw drama from real-life social dynamics, as depicted in City of God and In A Savage Land .

Philosophical Drama: Delving into existential themes and the human condition, these films tackle profound philosophical questions, as seen in The Fountain and Waking Life .

The fantasy genre, with its boundless imagination, stands out in the cinematic world. It brings to life the incredible, featuring fictional universes, magical elements, and mythical beings. This genre is a canvas for the extraordinary, where anything is possible, and the fantasy genre continually captivates audiences with its unique blend of escapism and wonder.

Contemporary and Urban Fantasy: This subgenre blends fantasy with modern settings. Urban fantasy specifically focuses on cities, often with supernatural beings like vampires or werewolves. Films like Meet Joe Black , Interview With The Vampire , and Ghostbusters are prime examples.

Epic Fantasy: Also known as high fantasy, this subgenre immerses viewers in fully-realized worlds, complete with rich lore and fantastical creatures. Examples include Harry Potter , The Lord Of The Rings , and Avatar .

Fairy Tale: These films range from traditional fairy tales to modern adaptations with magical elements and often a 'happily ever after' ending, such as The Princess Bride , Mary Poppins , and Cinderella .

Dark Fantasy: Combining real-world settings with menacing fantasy elements, this subgenre of the fantasy genre includes films like Pan's Labyrinth and A Monster Calls , where reality meets the hauntingly fantastical.

Among movie genres, the historical genre stands out for its blend of truth and fiction, taking viewers back in time to real or accurately depicted settings and eras.

Historical Film: These films can span various styles, from drama to action or romance. They often center around significant historical events, periods, or figures, providing context and storytelling that may not always be entirely factual. Examples include Apollo 13 , Lincoln , Ben-Hur , and Titanic .

Period Film: Similar to historical films but without the reliance on real-life characters, period dramas focus on specific time periods, prioritizing accurate depiction over factual narratives. Films like The Age of Innocence and Little Women are quintessential period films.

Alternate History: This subgenre creatively reimagines historical events, offering speculative twists on crucial moments in history. It can merge elements of fantasy and science fiction, as seen in Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood .

Biography (Biopic): Biopics tell the life story or a significant part of a historical figure, often dramatizing events for cinematic effect. While they aim to be informative, they sometimes take liberties with historical accuracy. Notable biopics include A Beautiful Mind , The Social Network , and Bohemian Rhapsody .

Within the diverse array of movie genres, the horror genre uniquely captivates with its blend of terrifying events, creatures, and stories. Horror films continually evolve, with filmmakers exploring new ways to unsettle and frighten audiences, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in this spine-chilling genre.

Ghost: In horror films featuring ghosts, spirits return from the afterlife to haunt, as seen in The Others , The Frighteners , and The Sixth Sense .

Zombie: Horror movies about zombies bring apocalyptic scenarios to life, with classics like Night Of The Living Dead , 28 Days Later , and the humorous take in Zombieland .

Werewolf: The transformation under the moonlight leads to thrilling werewolf tales in The Wolfman , American Werewolf , and Underworld .

Vampire: Long-fanged nocturnal creatures are central in vampire horror films, from the eerie Nosferatu to the comedic What We Do in the Shadows .

Monster: A category of horror movie for all other terrifying creatures, with movies like The Thing , Alien , and Chucky .

Slasher: A horror genre staple, featuring antagonists who terrorize communities, as seen in Psycho , Scream , and Halloween .

Splatter and Gore: Emphasizing the gruesome and bloody, films like Braindead and Hellraiser have defined this subgenre.

Body Horror: This type of horror movie concentrates on the grotesque aspects of the human body, offering unique frights in films like The Fly and The Human Centipede .

Folk Horror: Often set in rural areas, these films explore unknown terrors, with Children Of The Corn and Midsommar as examples.

Occult: Delving into hidden and paranormal horrors, this subgenre of the horror genre includes The Exorcist , Hereditary , and Rosemary's Baby .

Found Footage: Creating an illusion of reality, films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity use supposedly 'recovered' footage to enhance their scares.

Outbreak: Exploring global pandemics and diseases, movies like The Stand and Contagion tap into widespread fears of contagion and collapse.

Music Film and Musical

Musicals stand out for their unique blend of storytelling, song, and dance. When characters spontaneously burst into song, often accompanied by a chorus and elaborate dance numbers, you're watching a musical film. This movie genre ranges from adaptations of beloved Broadway shows to original creations filled with dazzling choreography and special effects. The music in these films isn't just for show; it's woven into the narrative, offering deeper insights into the characters, each with their own signature songs.

The genre's diversity is evident in its rich history, with classics like My Fair Lady and The Wizard of Oz , cult favorites like Rocky Horror Picture Show , timeless treasures like The Sound of Music , and modern hits including In The Heights , Mamma Mia! , Grease , Les Miserables , Chicago , and La La Land . Other notable examples span various approaches, such as Moonwalker , 8 Women , Pitch Perfect , The Muppets , and Sing Street .

The romance genre is particularly notable for exploring love, relationships, intimacy, and deep connections. Often intertwining with drama and comedy, romance movies are fundamentally about lovers, passion, and the journey of relationships. This movie genre, with its wide emotional spectrum and universal themes, continues to enchant and resonate with audiences worldwide.

Historical Romance: These films, set in distinct time periods, showcase how historical contexts influence the pursuit of love and relationships. Classics like Gone with the Wind , Titanic , and Doctor Zhivago exemplify this subgenre.

Regency Romance: A subset of historical romance set during the British Regency or the early 19th century, often focusing on the upper class. These films are known for their luxurious settings, elaborate costumes, and eloquent language, as seen in Emma , Persuasion , and Northanger Abbey .

Romantic Drama: Diving deeper into the complexities of relationships, the romantic drama explores themes of loss, separation, and infidelity, with films like Casablanca , The English Patient , and Marriage Story .

Romantic Comedy: Perhaps the most popular subgenre of the romance genre, the romantic comedy blends humor with heartwarming narratives, often leading to a happily ever after. Films like Some Like It Hot , Love Actually , and Notting Hill are beloved examples.

Chick Flick: While often marketed towards women, these romance movies have a broad appeal, characterized by dreamy narratives and emotional depth. Titles like Pretty Woman , Romeo + Juliet , and The Notebook are perfect for a night in with ice cream and tissues.

Fantasy Romance: Combining elements of fantasy with love stories, this subgenre sets epic romances against a backdrop of fantastical worlds, as seen in The Twilight Saga , Warm Bodies , and I Am Dragon .

Science Fiction

Science fiction, often shortened to Sci-Fi, is a film genre that has long fascinated viewers with its explorations of space, the speculative, and the future. Sci-fi movies delve into themes like advanced technology, artificial intelligence, outer space exploration, time travel, and alien life, often examining humanity's role in the universe.

Space Opera or Epic Sci-Fi: This subgenre of science fiction combines elements of comedy, romance, adventure, and space exploration, seen in epic sagas like Star Wars , The Fifth Element , and Dune .

Utopia: These films explore seemingly perfect societies that often hide darker truths or dystopian elements, prompting a need for change or revolution. Utopian sci-fi movies include Gattaca , Tomorrowland , and The Truman Show .

Dystopia: The flip side of utopia, dystopian films depict societies marked by struggle, oppression, and bleak futures, featuring centralized governments or AI dominance. Notable films include Blade Runner , The Matrix , and Mad Max .

Contemporary Sci-Fi: Set in the present or near future, this subgenre introduces a major science fiction element, like a groundbreaking scientific discovery or alien contact, into a familiar setting. Films such as Arrival and Ex Machina are prime examples.

Cyberpunk: This science fiction subgenre paints a picture of a high-tech, often grim future with themes of cybernetics, virtual reality, and AI, seen in Blade Runner 2049 and Minority Report .

Steampunk: A unique twist on cyberpunk, steampunk is set in the world of the 19th century, blending steam-powered technology with futuristic concepts, as seen in Howl's Moving Castle and Mortal Engines .

Thrillers are a diverse and engaging movie genre, captivating audiences with suspense, heightened emotions, and a sense of imminent danger. The thriller genre is all about the thrill of the chase, the tension of the unknown, and characters facing off against formidable opponents, whether they are concrete or abstract. The thriller genre excels in keeping viewers on the edge of their seats, often blending with other genres, leading to exciting hybrids like action-thrillers, adventure-thrillers, or fantasy-thrillers.

Psychological Thriller: Here, the focus is on the mental and emotional states of the characters. These films often involve mysterious circumstances, paranoia, and extreme actions, sometimes leading to murder. Films like Vertigo , Gone Girl , and Shutter Island are exemplary of this subgenre.

Mystery: Often centered around a crime or murder, mystery thrillers engage the audience in a quest for answers, without necessarily involving law enforcement. These films, like Knives Out and Memento , keep viewers on the edge of their seats, eager to unravel the mystery.

Film Noir: Characterized by its style as much as its content, film noir emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. These black-and-white films feature crime, moral ambiguity, stark lighting contrasts, narrative monologues, and femme fatales. Classics include Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard . Neo-noir, a modern iteration, maintains the style of film noir but adds complexity and modern elements, as seen in Pulp Fiction and Taxi Driver .

War movies, as a movie genre, are known for their depiction of large-scale conflicts and the realities of war, making the battlefield itself a central character or theme. These films often intersect with other genres like military action, historical drama, science fiction, and even the thriller genre, offering diverse storytelling perspectives and heightened emotional stakes. Action films, in particular, frequently draw inspiration from war movies, incorporating intense battle scenes and high-stakes scenarios.

Movies like 1917 and Dunkirk immerse viewers in the intensity of war, while Platoon and All Quiet On The Western Front explore the deeper aspects of conflict. The Thin Red Line and Pearl Harbor blend historical drama with the raw emotions of war. Films like Full Metal Jacket and Jarhead provide a closer look at the life of soldiers, and 300 showcases a blend of war with fantasy elements. Each of these films contributes to the rich and varied tapestry of the war movie genre, offering insights into the complexities and human experiences within the context of war.

Among the various film genres, the Western genre stands out with its distinct setting and time period, primarily focusing on the American West during the 19th century. This film genre is rich with elements like horse riding, cattle farming, military expansion, encounters with Native Americans, settlers' stories, railway construction, and, of course, the iconic gunfights and duels.

Classic Western movies like The Searchers , Stagecoach , and Red River showcase these elements beautifully. The Western genre often features outlaws and criminals, matched by marshals, lawmen, or bounty hunters, and is ripe with revenge plots and stories highlighting righteous protagonists. Revisionist Westerns aim to reinterpret the traditional narratives of the genre.

Spaghetti Westerns, so named for their Italian filmmaking roots or production in Italy, hold a special place in the Western genre. Some of the most acclaimed Westerns belong to this category, including Django , A Fistful of Dollars , and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly .

Modern Western movies bring fresh perspectives and filmmaking techniques to this historical Hollywood genre, revitalizing it with new storytelling methods while honoring its rich legacy. Films like Unforgiven , Dances with Wolves , and Django Unchained , along with No Country For Old Men and The Hateful Eight , demonstrate how the Western continues to evolve and captivate audiences.

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Film Genres

What are Film Genres?

Film genre, a term that signifies categorization within the cinematic universe, serves as a foundational concept in both film theory and industry. It encompasses the conventions, themes, and stylistic elements that distinguish different types of films, guiding audiences in their selections and filmmakers in their creations. This entry aims to explore the intricate world of film genres, tracing their historical development, examining major genres and their characteristics, and analyzing the role of genre in film production, marketing, and criticism. By delving into the evolution and future prospects of film genres, this article seeks to offer a comprehensive overview of this dynamic aspect of film studies.

Historical Development

The classification of films into genres dates back to the early days of cinema, evolving from literary and theatrical traditions. Initially, genres were identified based on settings and themes, which helped audiences select films that matched their interests. Over time, the concept of genre expanded, incorporating narrative structures, visual style, and mood. The 20th century witnessed the formalization of genre theory within film studies, with scholars like André Bazin and Rick Altman exploring genres’ roles in storytelling and cultural representation.

Technological advancements, such as the introduction of sound and color, alongside cultural shifts, significantly influenced genre evolution. The transition from silent to sound films, for example, gave rise to musicals and talkies, transforming audience expectations and experiences. Similarly, societal changes, reflected through genres, highlighted evolving themes and narratives, mirroring the zeitgeist of different eras.

Major Film Genres

Characterized by high energy, dynamic sequences, and often, a clear hero-versus-villain narrative, action films prioritize physical exertion and spectacle. Iconic films such as “Die Hard” and directors like James Cameron have become synonymous with the genre, pushing the boundaries of visual effects and narrative pacing.

Comedy films, ranging from slapstick to dark comedy , aim to provoke laughter and provide entertainment through humor. The genre has evolved over time, with early silent films focusing on physical comedy and modern comedies often blending wit with social commentary.

Drama films delve into the depth of human emotions, offering narratives that focus on character development and moral dilemmas. This genre encompasses a wide range of sub-genres, including historical dramas and legal dramas, providing a canvas for exploring complex relationships and societal issues.

Fantasy films transport audiences to realms of the fantastic and supernatural , drawing heavily on literature and mythology. They challenge the boundaries of reality, offering escapism through imaginative storytelling and visual spectacle.

Horror films seek to elicit fear and suspense, tapping into primal emotions through themes of the unknown and supernatural . Sub-genres such as slasher films , supernatural horror , and psychological horror cater to diverse tastes, each with its unique approach to terror.

Science Fiction

Science fiction , or sci-fi, explores futuristic themes and speculative technologies, often grounded in scientific principles. This genre examines the impact of science and technology on society, offering both cautionary tales and utopian visions of the future.

Documentary

Documentary films emphasize factual storytelling, aiming to educate or inform audiences about real-world subjects. From early educational films to contemporary narrative-driven documentaries, the genre has evolved to encompass a broad spectrum of styles and topics.

The Western genre epitomizes the American frontier, portraying the rugged landscape and the themes of exploration and lawlessness. Although its popularity has waned, modern reinterpretations continue to explore its enduring themes.

Musicals integrate music and narrative, evolving from stage to screen. This genre offers a unique form of storytelling, where songs and dance sequences propel the plot and express characters’ emotions.

The Role of Genre in Film Production and Marketing

Genre serves as a crucial tool for filmmakers and marketers, shaping the creative and promotional strategies behind films. It provides a framework within which directors can craft their narratives, ensuring that their work resonates with target audiences. For marketers, genre classification simplifies the promotion of films, enabling them to target specific audience segments effectively.

In production, understanding genre conventions allows filmmakers to play within or subvert expectations, creating works that are familiar yet innovative. Genres also influence budgeting and casting decisions, with certain genres, like action and fantasy , typically requiring more significant investments in special effects and star power.

Marketing campaigns leverage genre to highlight a film’s appeal, using trailers, posters, and media appearances to signal the film’s genre and attract its core audience. The success of a film often depends on how effectively it is positioned within its genre, making genre a critical consideration in both the creative and business aspects of filmmaking.

Genre Analysis and Criticism

Genre analysis in film studies employs various methodologies to dissect and understand the components and significance of different genres. Scholars often focus on narrative structures, thematic elements, visual style, and historical context to categorize and critique films. This analytical approach not only helps in understanding a genre’s conventions but also in examining how these conventions reflect and shape societal values and issues. For instance, the evolution of the horror genre from Gothic tales to contemporary psychological thrillers mirrors changes in societal fears and anxieties.

Criticism of genre classification points to its inherent limitations and stereotypes. Critics argue that strict genre categories can oversimplify the complexity of films and restrict creative expression. Furthermore, genre classifications can perpetuate stereotypes, especially in genres like the Western , which has been criticized for its portrayal of Native Americans, or action films, which often reinforce gender stereotypes. Despite these criticisms, genre remains a useful tool for both academic analysis and audience engagement, offering a lens through which to view the cultural implications of film.

The Evolution and Future of Film Genres

The landscape of film genres continues to evolve, influenced by global cinema, technological advancements, and changing audience tastes. The rise of global cinema has introduced audiences to new storytelling techniques and narratives, challenging traditional Western genre definitions. Films from Bollywood, Nollywood, and other non-Western film industries blend local cultural elements with universal themes, creating hybrid genres that appeal to global audiences.

Digital media and streaming platforms have also played a significant role in genre innovation. The accessibility of digital filming and distribution has lowered entry barriers for independent filmmakers, leading to the emergence of niche genres and subgenres. Streaming platforms, with their vast libraries and recommendation algorithms, have fostered an environment where diverse and unconventional genres can find an audience.

The future of film genres lies in the continual blurring of boundaries and the exploration of new thematic and narrative possibilities. As audiences become more sophisticated and globally connected, there is a growing appetite for films that defy traditional genre classifications. This trend towards genre blending and hybridization is likely to continue, with filmmakers experimenting with form and content to create unique cinematic experiences.

Predictions for new genres often focus on the integration of technology, both in film production and storytelling. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) offer new dimensions for immersive storytelling, potentially giving rise to genres that leverage these technologies to engage audiences in novel ways. Similarly, the increasing concern with environmental issues and technological ethics could inspire new genres focused on eco-thrillers or tech-noir , reflecting contemporary anxieties and speculative futures.

Key Takeaways

The exploration of film genres reveals a dynamic and evolving component of cinematic art. From the early categorizations based on settings and themes to the complex and hybrid genres of today, the concept of genre has been instrumental in shaping films and audience experiences. Despite criticisms of its limitations and stereotypes, genre analysis remains a valuable tool for understanding the cultural and societal implications of cinema.

As the film industry continues to evolve, so too will the concept of genre, adapting to new technologies, global influences, and changing societal values. The future of film genres is one of endless possibilities, promising continued innovation in storytelling and audience engagement. The ongoing significance of genre in film underscores its role not just as a means of categorization, but as a reflection of human experience and imagination.

The study of film genres offers a window into the complexities of cinema as an art form and a cultural artifact. As filmmakers and audiences alike navigate the ever-changing landscape of film, genre will remain a key framework through which to understand and appreciate the diverse tapestry of stories that cinema brings to life.

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7 Film Genre Theory and Contemporary Media: Description, Interpretation, Intermediality

Paul Young is director of film studies and assistant professor of English at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals: Media Fantasy Films from Radio to the Internet (2006) and is currently writing Mobilizing Pictures: Realism, Transformation, Early American Cinema. His article, “Telling Descriptions: Frank Norris's Kinetoscopic Naturalism and the Future of the Novel, 1899,” appeared in Modernism and Modernity (2007).

• Published: 18 September 2012
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This article studies film genre theory and provides a brief assessment of genre theory in the twenty-first century. It also attempts to plan a reasonable course for the future of genre studies across the various disciplines of media studies. It aims to show how the descriptive imperatives of genre criticism can be settled with the anthropological tasks of the present film genre theory. The article also explains how this intersects with the analysis of genre discourses.

Like Alex de Large from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), who appropriates Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” to fit his own needs, film theorists long ago snatched the lexicon of genre from literary theory in order to describe the subtypes of narrative film. Clearly, the value of this analogy has its limits; for one thing, film genre theorists are not dangerously psychotic (it says here). Nevertheless, our droogie Alex does offer an object lesson in the potential consequences of poaching a theory designed to analyze genres in a medium other than film. After withstanding the Ludovico Treatment, which conditions him to feel intense revulsion when classical music plays, Alex plugs his ears against an aural onslaught of his once-beloved Ludwig Van and attempts to “snuff it”—that is, to commit suicide by throwing himself out a third-story window. Now, at the turn of the cinema's third century, film genre theory seems desperate enough to attempt a defenestration of its own.

The problem is that genre theory has reached the limits of the premises we pinched from Aristotle and Northrop Frrye, but nevertheless refuses to give them up. Beginning in the mid-seventies, film theorists mined literary theory to describe film genres, the films that derive from them, and the expectations and interpretations of them that viewers (supposedly) share. But genre theory has become increasingly sore in precisely the spot that Rick Altman once called most “worthy of a good scratch”: the tautological nature of historical genre criticism. 1 To paraphrase Edward Buscombe, we cannot form a generic corpus without criteria, but we cannot articulate those criteria without assuming a corpus. 2

This paradox did not go unnoticed. In the seventies, a few scholars like Stephen Neale attempted to push beyond the limitations of textual taxonomy. Following the lead of the Birmingham School of cultural studies, Neale examined genre as an anthropological phenomenon as well as a textual one. 3 In this view, each film genre produced by a major film industry (Hollywood being the prime, and too often the only, example cited) can be broken down into a set of practices and negotiations that take place at specific points in the circuit of communication: production, reception, critique. Neale's work and the intensive theorization of the musical, the western, and film noir in the 1970s and 1980s generated stunning insights about how spectators’ genre knowledge not only assesses generic meaning but creates it. 4

But the anthropological turn did not put to rest the field's faith that, underneath all the social activity about genres lay the genres themselves, objectively discoverable and real. Contemporary film genre theory still dreads confronting the question that scholarship on the cultures of genre has rendered no less pertinent, and indeed more glaring than ever in our avoidance of it: could it be that genres as such do not actually exist—that all we have of film genres is our certainty, as critics, viewers, or filmmakers, that they are really out there somewhere, perhaps simply waiting in a Platonic heaven, along with perfect love and perfect geometric shapes, for us to discover their true natures once and for all?

In his magisterial book Film/Genre, Rick Altman attempted to answer this underexamined question, but his response is tinged with what I can only describe as definitive doubt. Written after years during which Altman faithfully interrogated the assumptions of every genre theorist he could find (including himself), Film/Genre argues that What We (Really) Talk About When We Talk About Genre is not textual types, conventions, myths, or rituals, but power—the critic's power to promote an agenda by demonstrating that a genre exists and identifying its conventions in a definitive way. 5 Description of a genre's “core” conventions drapes an aura of empirical certainty around genre theory, making it seem as though a film such as Stagecoach or The Searchers (John Ford, 1939, 1958) distinctly, homogeneously, and even definitively expresses a single genre. In addition, an emphasis on description elides the distinction between so-called historical genres (the types invented and reproduced by Hollywood via such discursive acts as dedicated production units and, of course, films) and critical genres (the types invented and reproduced by film critics via critical writing, edited essay collections, conference panels, and the like). Since, whether they admit to it or not, film critics tend to regard historical genres as more legitimate objects of study than critical ones, this elision works in the critics’ favor. Even the act of listing representative genres—say, for instance, the western, the women's melodrama of the 1940s, the musical—fronts an implicit claim that a genre called “the women's melodrama of the 1940s” is as legitimate as the two historical genres that bracket it. This critical tendency poses problems because it makes all genre description—the raison d'etre of genre theory as practiced by literary theorists—into a suspicious act, tainted by self-interest rather than the critical generosity that film genre theory has cultivated since the early 1970s.

If Altman is correct, not only about film genres but (as he contended) also about genres of drama, literary fiction, television, and presumably every other aesthetic and/or mass-cultural medium, then it seems that the clock of genre theory, to paraphrase the introduction to Altman's 1984 essay A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre,” has not only struck thirteen but has unwound its spring altogether. 6 Having pulled back the curtain of empirical certainty to reveal an all-too-corporeal wizard who decrees genres at will, Altman appeared to have brought the epoch of film genre theory to a close.

Grateful as we must be for Altman's enlightening and disturbing book, however, one can scarcely close the covers on Film/Genre without muttering, Not so fast.” Like any other discourse, from political ideology to familial mythology, “film genre” will not disappear simply because we refuse to believe in it. As a concept, genre still maintains a good deal of historical, material, and discursive force, not only in film criticism and theory but also in global film and video production, the blogosphere of media fandom (meaning the Internet sites, chat rooms, and journals dedicated to science fiction, Japanese anime, and the like), advertising, everyday conversations, and the shelving protocols through which Borders, Tower Records, and Blockbuster communicate their holdings to their customers. And “new” media studies fields such as ludology—the study of computer games and game play—have followed film studies’ early example of exploiting genre analysis to both invent and legitimate their disciplines.

The current stalemate between genre description and genre anthropology offers a unique opportunity to reconsider how genre theory might define a critical objective that is both less mystified in general, and more descriptive of the intermedial character of genres in the mass audiovisual media. In this essay, I combine a brief assessment of genre theory in the twenty-first century with an attempt to plot a plausible course for the future of genre studies across the media studies disciplines. I hope to demonstrate that the most pressing question I have already posed—How can we reconcile the descriptive imperatives of genre criticism with the anthropological tasks of current film genre theory?—intersects rather unexpectedly, and quite productively, with a question that the contemporary moment of digital media makes equally urgent: How can we analyze genre discourses in specific media today without slighting the myriad effects of media synergy on those discourses?

The earliest film genre critics in the United States used the idea of genre to defend high art from the encroachment of mass culture. 7 Unlike the singular, expressive works crafted by individual artists, commercial films were generated according to a template, allowing rapid dissemination and easy differentiation among the westerns and sex melodramas of the silent era, which were joined by musicals, gangster films, and other apparently inane or sordid genres with the coming of sound. To their harshest critics, film genres seemed to have been cranked out of factories like broadcloth or sausages. But by the late 1960s (and, one could argue, as early as the 1930s and 1940s in the writings of a few critics such as Robert Warshow), the new academic field of cinema studies had transformed genre into a much more positive critical framework, in which film genres became visible as signifying systems akin to language as described by Saussure, and ideology as analyzed by Althusser (and buttressed by Lacanian psychoanalysis). Far from simply junk culture, argued the new wave of genre critics, film genres participated in the construction of cultural myths about everything from nationalist ideology to class mobility and gender roles. They also provided a ritual space, the movie theater, in which those myths were collectively maintained, night after night and film after film.

In 1970, Edward Buscombe aligned film genre studies explicitly with the literary project of identifying genre's ideal forms. He even went so far as to borrow the terms “outer form” and “inner form” from Rene Wellek and Austin Warren's Theory of Literature, which allowed him to concretize the cues that prompt viewers to feel that they know a genre film when they see it. A barren Arizona landscape and other visible cues constitute the outer form of a western, for example, while such comparatively abstract conventions as plot (cowboy seeks revenge for death of family members), the stock relationships among stock characters (cowboy and schoolmarm, cowboy and Indians, cowboy and cattle rustlers), and themes (the “garden versus desert” dichotomy) constitute the inner form. 8

Obvious as this critical maneuver seems by the twenty-first century, Buscombe offered his contemporaries a novel and systematic way to approach film genre that mirrors empirical science in that it divides its attention between noumena and phenomena, essences and accidents. Thomas Schatz later defined the distinction between the ideal of a genre and the examples that seem to add up to that ideal as the distinction between film genres and genre films: “Whereas the genre exists as a sort of tacit ‘contract’ between filmmakers and audiences,” Schatz wrote, “the genre film is an actual event that honors such a contract. To discuss the Western genre is to address neither a single Western film nor even all Westerns, but rather that system of conventions which identifies Western films as such.” 9

Thus, while Howard Hawks's Red River (1948) may express the western genre, it is not identical to the genre itself. Rather, it manifests a subset of the conventions of outer and inner form. This subset is by nature far from complete, perhaps varying wildly from the viewer's expectations at certain points, but sufficient for the experienced viewer to recognize a genre, and take pleasure (or umbrage) at the film based on the degree to which it fulfills the viewer's cherished expectations. If the monster does not get destroyed at the end of a horror film, even in an obviously impermanent way that opens the door to a possible sequel, the audience will likely find the film unsatisfying or even irritating; genre filmmakers rarely stray too far from conventional forms of closure. But if, for example, the monster breaks with behaviors conventional for that type of monster and becomes even more terrifying thereby—as when a zombie suddenly breaks into a dead run in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002)—the audience is likely to be grateful, for while a sprinting zombie defies the precedent set by undead movie corpses since George A. Romero's original Night of the Living Dead (1968), it satisfies another precedent set by the most successful articulations of this particular body genre: it scares the hell out of viewers. 10

Here we come upon a contradiction, which Altman found worrisome in 1984, between the goals of syntax-focused critics who prefer small pools of “definitive” genre films with traditional plots, themes, and characterizations, and the goals of critics whose faith in semantic cues allows them to admit a much larger number of films to the canon. As an example of the distinction, consider Altaian's own thought experiment, which pits an optimistic semantic critic against an exclusionary syntactical critic, and ends (however accidentally) by giving the latter the last word: Diegetic songs do not automatically make Elvis movies count as mu-sicals! 11 Such critical confrontations must either stop at once for lack of a shared theory of what makes a genre film what it is, or bicker endlessly at cross-purposes. And yet, we cannot avoid such bickering if what genre theory expects to critique, analyze, and/or evaluate is texts —that is, genre films—and their relation to the film genres on which they rely and to which they contribute. We cannot avoid it, that is, unless we have recourse to a tertiary term (or terms) beyond semantics” and syntax,” a term outside” the outer form, exterior to the text, even to the genre with which the text wrestles.

Treating textual description as an end in itself mystifies the historical specificity of generic definitions by following Aristotle's example of discussing genre criticism as a taxonomic, even zoological pursuit. In this fantasized natural world of arts and letters, genres erupt spontaneously; it remains only for the critic to catalog them according to an enlightened protocol that accounts for similarities and differences. 12 As lions and bobcats share a genus but differ in species traits, so tragedy and epic each fall under the Aristotelian genus poetry” but differ mightily in particulars. Tragedy, for example, concentrates on character psychology, while epic throws its weight into depicting quasi-historical events in minute detail. Similarly, westerns and screwball comedies narrate their stories in similar ways, but distinguish themselves by semantics (the western's taciturn male hero and his long-suffering beloved; the screwball comedy's bickering couple) and syntactical conventions (the western heroine allows her hero to take care of the serious business of violence, while the screwball heroine perpetrates comic violence herself). Few readers would dispute the accuracy of these descriptions. But to a great extent, our acceptance of them is in itself genre criticism's greatest (and most embarrassing) victory over our analytical sensibilities. If we agree that these parenthetical comments portray accurately the genres I have named, we tacitly endorse the zoologist's view of genre, in which the ideal form precedes our discovery of it, and genre films themselves provide us with no more than Platonic accidents (such as the western-screwball hybrid Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959), which we might too easily “explain” by recourse to its auteur: Howard Hawks worked in both genres, so with Rio Bravo he is simply giving us two genres for the price of one).

In 1984, Altman sought to resolve the paradox by appealing to genre history to determine when and how a genre achieves a balance of semantics” and syntax” sufficient for audiences to recognize it. His attempt at balance, however, did not prevent Altman from nearly excluding The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) from his own corpus of musicals on the grounds that it breached its contract with the musical—and the musical's audience—by shunning the formation of a romantic couple. 13 In Film/Genre, he completed the about-face from such descriptive traps begun by his semantic/syntactic theory and his preliminary focus on genre history. Here Altman offered a semantic/syntactic/pragmatic theory” of genre that describes neither genre films nor film genres, but only the processes by which critics, producers, and other interpreters of genres arrive at their criteria and their reservoirs of films: “Each genre is simultaneously defined by multiple codes corresponding to the multiple groups who, by helping to define the genre, may be said to speak” the genre. When the diverse groups using the genre are considered together, genres appear as regulatory schemes facilitating the integration of diverse factions into a single social fabric.” 14 This is a brilliant redefinition of descriptive genre analysis: what he proposed to describe is genre-driven behavior, not genres themselves, because the latter exist only insofar as they are generated by the former.

Instead of rejoicing in his epistemological discovery, however, Altman looked on the results of his pragmatic investigation with equal parts cynicism and remorse. When he asserted that even the smallest group of viewers exerts remarkable force on genre discourses, he cast what some critics might call a moment of political possibility as a fall from grace, the disbandment of a universal community of genre viewers. His lost community of common bodily and social coherence” sounds more like a nostalgic fantasy than a description of actual, historical participants in the negotiation process that is film genre. 15 If genres have no stable identities, it seems, then generic communities are similarly doomed to a purgatory of flux: “Now all we have left is bodies facing in the same direction.” His tertiary term, changed from genre history to the history of genre interpretation, has collapsed under the weight of Altman's nostalgia for sing-along sessions around the family piano.

Nevertheless, Altman's semantic-syntactic-pragmatic approach scrapes a fundamental truth down to the bone for a new generation of theorists: genres cannot be located in” texts alone, as recognizable genetic patterns can be located in any cell of any organisms belonging to the same genus (a Latin root for “genre,” and, as Altman remarked, a misleading root in that it attributes natural, essential properties to cultural genres and their “evolution”). Instead, genres emerge from the descriptions of existing texts that producers, viewers, and critics produce on their own and in collaboration with one another. Even though the producers have greater power than the other groups to broadcast their generic definitions—that is, by airing their interpretations of a given genre through films, TV programs, music videos, and games—none of these groups has a greater claim to authority over a genre's description than the others. 16 Producers multiply genre cues for any given film in order to maximize their audiences; viewers collate and circulate their own sense of a genre's conventions to argue their superior status as interpreters; and critics buttress the importance of their central interests by proving” (or merely assuming) that a certain genre unquestionably exists, then defining its conventions, its history, and its ideological refraction of its historical moment based on that assumption.

And yet, description of the “old,” textual sort continues in other fields, including television studies and ludology. Its persistence suggests that genre description still serves some indispensable purpose. Indeed, typical labels of some kind seem, at least at first blush, more critically necessary than ever, as new types proliferate among both new and old media along with the new formats, new delivery systems, and indeed new media that change patterns of production, consumption, and—yes—the experience of mass-media genres in subtle but ultimately incalculable ways. I discovered firsthand how difficult it is to give up faith in the objective existence of genres when, while researching this essay, I went to the local Electronics Boutique to purchase a spectrum of PlayStation 2 (PS2) games. My goal was to take them home, play them, and use Altman's semantic-syntactic approach to “find” the different genres they represented. I quickly discovered that I had subconsciously planned my purchase based on generic categories the existence of which I assumed long before heading out to the mall: racing games, street-driving games, puzzle games, fighting games, space-battle games, first-person shooters, God games, and the like popped into my head so regularly as I looked around that I had to jot them down for fear I would forget them all. At this point I realized the trap in which I had landed, and wondered, surely genre study cannot do without such lists when developing analytic frameworks for emerging media forms. Inundation with unfamiliar media objects demands a search for similarities and differences among the various box images and descriptions. I made up these categories because they were useful to me at that moment, as I struggled to get my bearings in an unfamiliar mass-cultural universe. To break down this horizon of game experience into types in this way is to inch toward insights about what users expect from these myriad artifacts, and what the artifacts, in turn, expect of them.

So what is to be done, if genre theory cannot live on textual categorization alone but clearly cannot live without it? One tack I recommend as a beginning is to be wary of confusing the social negotiation of textual meaning with textual or generic essences. I made exactly this error when I walked into the game shop, though it turned out to be an instructive error, for it made me more aware of how quickly generic essentialism can insinuate itself into our understanding of new media products. In his collection The Medium of the Video Game, Mark J. P. Wolf had an Electronics Boutique moment of his own when he applied basic tenets of film genre analysis, particularly the essence-accidents distinction forwarded by Buscombe and Schatz, directly to video games. 17 The result is a list of categories that are by turns intuitive and infuriating. Wolf counted clear beginnings and clear endings as traits of narrative” games in some cases (adventure games, for example) but excluded from the narrative” category other games with what seem equally clear beginnings, endings, and developments over time (such as Pac-Man, with its goal to clear maze after maze of dots and avoid enemies whose speed and dexterity increase with each new maze, and its parallel goal—as important to my friends and me in the early 1980s as clearing yet another maze—of getting to the “cartoons” that appear every few screens as a reward for weary wrists). 18

The problem that such a taxonomy poses for video game genre studies is that Wolf prescribed genres in the guise of describing them, and thereby (accidentally) privileged a singular, unproblematized hermeneutic over all other possible definitions, systematic or otherwise. He thereby sidestepped the conservative consequences of his own intervention for future interpretations of the artifacts in question. Wolf lifted his theory from critical essays and books written more than two decades ago, without adjusting their findings in response to the differences between games and narrative films. The result is that he emphasized the importance of categorization as an end in itself over the player's generic experience of the games. 19 Even the film theorists most oriented by cultural studies find the certitude of taxonomy difficult to resist; Stephen Neale's more recent introductory text on Hollywood genres devoted nearly a third of its pages to descriptions of each “major” genre and its historical divergences from its classical definition. He thereby risked perpetuating assumptions about the natures of these genres that seem outdated and even quaint after more than three decades of intergeneric pastiche. 20 Altman's pragmatic approach demands that we ask of Neale and Wolf the same nagging questions: For whom does a text belong” in a genre? For whom does a genre equal a definite set of semantics and a consistent arrangement—a syntax—of those elements?

Now, asking these questions does not mean that we have to stop typifying films, games, TV programs, or other mass-media artifacts. It does mean, however, that we cannot exclude our own critical and theoretical acts of typification from anthropological scrutiny. Each analysis is merely one expression of genre knowledge among many, one that subverts the very idea of pure” genre categories (rather than strategic) as surely as does a horror-movie blogger, a midnight movie aficionado, or an author of Star Wars fiction for fellow writer-fans. Compare my knee-jerk, semantic-syntactic list of video game genres to one formulated by Sam Miller, a student in my undergraduate Film Theory course, in response to an e-mail that asked, “What are the major video game genres today?”:

When discussing genre in video games, I think it is important to distinguish between games where the player controls one character and games where the [player] controls multiple characters. I have separated my list that way.

Individual control Player as outlaw: Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto [series] Player as sportsman: Golf, Billiards, Cards Player as problem/puzzle solver: Tomb Raider Player as nurturer: Black and White, Lemmings Flight simulation: Microsoft's Flight Simulator Racing simulation: Grand Turismo, Nascar Player as part of team: Counterstrike, Team Fortress Player as part of online community (especially Role Playing): Everquest (fantasy), Sims (reality) Team control Player as General (Realtime): StarCraft, Command and Conquer; Historical General: Age of Empires, Lords of the Realm Player as coach of team: NBA Live, MLB Player as leader of military squad [in a single-player game]: Rainbow 6, Delta Force 21

Sam's corpuses differ from mine in that they reduce film studies’ cherished categories of syntax and semantics to near irrelevance. In their stead, Sam posits a taxonomy driven by a feature that makes video games technologically and textually distinct from film: not Wolf's somewhat indistinct category of interactivity, but rather the type of interface that allows the player to interact” with the game.

I will return to Sam's insight about the interface momentarily, but for now I want simply to recognize the analytical suppleness of Sam's taxonomy compared to the heuristic I applied at the Electronics Boutique, and to try to account for the superiority of the former. Knowing video games from the perspective of a longtime massively multiplayer (MMP) gamer (who currently identifies himself as retired”), Sam offers a heuristic that gets straight to the heart of the unique experiences of playing games that differ from one another in ways only a gamer (or a programmer) could identify so intuitively, and he thereby promises more complex insights into how game genre knowledge gets used than my cinema-bound methodology could have delivered. A document like Sam's exemplifies our chance to recast the search for genre's origins as an anthropological task. Mass-cultural genre theory has long claimed for viewers or listeners the status of cultural producers by dint of their position as a nexus where genre history and individual experience meet new genre texts in the present. This is a potent analytical idea in a time of increased, digitally driven synergy among the audiovisual media.

Rather than move directly on to discerning a grammar” for genres and how they work, following the structuralist-linguistic strain of textual criticism that Schatz employed in 1981, we might better expand on the unusually rich questions about genre reception that such an approach catalyzes. I would now like to concentrate not on what it is, exactly, about films or other media texts that Schatz recommends we appreciate,” but rather on the forms that the appreciation takes in the twenty-first century's audiovisual landscape.

On this count, we can learn much from Altman's previous attempts to reconcile divergent opinions about genres—not only their characteristics but also their historical development and the kinds of relationships they forge among producers, users, and other users. Altman argued in Film/Genre that neither semantic nor syntactic description, nor any combination thereof, benefits the critic unless she sacrifices the fool's errand of discovering an empirically certain description of a genre. His semantic-syntactic-pragmatic” approach, by contrast, attempts not to taxonomize texts, but to taxonomize genre taxonomists of all stripes—to describe the processes of description undertaken by distinct groups to will a genre into existence:

Instead of looking primarily down the chain of meaning towards texts, morphemes and phonemes, pragmatic analysis must constantly attend to the competition among multiple users that characterizes genres. … Always assuming multiple users of various sorts—not only various spectator groups, but producers, distributors, exhibitors, cultural agencies, and many others as well—pragmatics recognizes that some familiar patterns, such as genres, owe their very existence to that multiplicity. 22

If taxonomizing the taxonomizers is our goal, we can and probably should begin by scrutinizing ourselves—the critics—and our rather undistinguished history of using genre, to quote North by Northwest 's Roger Thornhill, like a flyswatter,” to distinguish ourselves as scientific witnesses to a phenomenon that swallows the proletariat in illusions of their own discerning tastes. No matter which group's definition of genre it addresses, the semantic-syntactic-pragmatic approach does not limit itself to recognizing when or where or who exercises the power. Instead, it taxonomizes taxonomy” as a meaning-making process . And it has the ability to investigate genre knowledge as a circulating idea by taking that idea's temperature at various points where genre happens”—that is, where users meet texts.

The more critics focus on industrial and/or consumer versions” of genre corpuses instead of attempting to form their own “definitive” canons, the greater the complexity with which they can model the interpretive matrices by which genre's users navigate their respective terrain. In film genre study, the emphasis on corpus construction has tended to dismiss generic hybridization as a marginal phenomenon. Television studies, however, has managed to learn from film studies’ mistakes and has instead produced meticulously researched accounts of how the network imperatives to link production and scheduling to the viewer demographics associated with different times of day generate the algorithms that distinguish sitcoms from variety shows, daytime soaps from prime-time soaps, and newscasts from news magazines. 23 Producers prefer diverse genres because they differentiate product, a crucial marketing tool when mass-cultural products resemble one another as closely as classical films do. Genre is just as crucial for television, considering that programs run all day and all night and cannot retain viewers unless channels, even specialized ones like Comedy Central, provide variations on a theme like comedy.” Comedy Central shows movies and reruns of sketch comedy shows, but it also produces its own lines of (outrageously comic) game shows (Distraction), (outrageously comic) news shows (The Daily Show and its spin-off punditry program), and (outrageously comic) cartoons like South Park . Cartoon Network shows reruns of Baby Looney Tunes, a numbingly innocuous show featuring infant versions of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Bros. characters, early in the morning, while Ed, Edd, and Eddy and Teen Titans spew nose-blowing humor and light, consequence-free violence in the early evening hours, leaving the once-canceled Fox network series Family Guy to find a new home among surrealistic and prurient recombinations of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons (Sealab 2021, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law) and bloody but sophisticated Japanese anime (Cowboy Bebop) that fill out the Adult Swim schedule.

Such distinctions also hold in cinema, where film genres are one means through which Hollywood hails, and constructs, distinct markets among its viewers. However, Altman has suggested that genres have always, and indeed only, operated for Hollywood producers as sets of cues that could be manipulated and intermingled at various textual levels—the film itself, publicity narratives and advertising copy, posters and other still images—in order to multiply its audiences, not to send restrictive signals to them about the conventions to which a film would adhere. He has found a number of examples of studios switching among conventional semantic and syntactical cues in the course of publicizing a single film: as a biopic, a tragic romance, an adventure story, a courtroom drama. Whereas corpus assembly tends to portray hybrid genre texts as oddities that nevertheless proliferate, Altman portrayed them as the beating heart of genre sensibility. For producers as they interpret genres, genre is not so much a body of films or even a stable syntax or code as it is a form of bait. Bits and pieces of various genres can be intermingled—and are—in order to make the dish palatable to all stomachs. The producers of Die Hard (John Tiernan, 1988), for example, may well have determined to multiply the film's generic references to appeal to the broadest possible spate of spectators. Following Altman's discussion of this producer's game,” students in my Film Genres course at the University of Missouri-Columbia, when given the assignment to choose one classic” Hollywood genre referred to by Die Hard and argue for its presence based on the semantic and syntactic conventions commonly identified with the genre, found references to the western, the screwball comedy, the women's film (which in this case assures its female viewers by proxy that they cannot have their careers and Bruce Willis, too), the horror film, and at least two or three others entangled together as densely as a root ball at the bottom of a houseplant that urgently needs to be repotted. 24

The proliferation of such newer media as the video game, however, and Hollywood's keen interest in attracting gamers to theaters and DVDs, has made the rules of the producer's game more difficult to predict, though the efforts to figure them out are made quite apparent by game adaptations like Mortal Kombat and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Final Fantasy, the video game, is more or less a swords-and-sorcery adventure game with connections to other adventure-puzzles as recent as the Myst series and as old as the text-based computer game from the 1980s, Adventure, and its visual counterpart on the old 4K (!) Atari 2600 game deck. But when Final Fantasy was adapted into a fully digitally animated film, its science fiction plot bore almost no resemblance to the game; only a few of the characters and the idea of spirits” were taken from game to movie. This interpretation reflects, among other things, Hollywood's marketing concerns: a film had to be made that would appeal to an audience broader than just the aficionados of the game. While video games regularly rake in more domestic gross than many films, the games cost as much as fifty to sixty dollars per unit when new, meaning that the audience need not be nearly as large as the required audience of a theatrically released film to be certified a hit.

Casting the translation of texts and genres across media as readings of those texts and genres brings us to the consumer's place in the negotiation of meaning. Specifically, what if genre criticism were to approach media themselves in generic terms—terms in which the user's genre recognition revolves around such issues as the modes of textual engagement specific to a given medium? To do so, it seems to me, points toward a solution to the problem that the Final Fantasy movie poses to genre theory: that is, how to account theoretically for, first, the calculated “overspill” of one medium's text into another medium in our particular era of corporate media synergy, and second, the determinant role played by genre in the conception and consumption of the products of that overspill. Such an approach would not preclude the study of traditional genres and the patterns of reception they court (or in this context, perhaps the term should be “subgenres”—the science fiction film as a subgenre of narrative film; the God game and first-person-shooter as subgenres of deck or PC games; and so on). But an intermedial notion of genre knowledge and its circulation would describe how media producers produce, media consumers consume, and media analysts analyze the pleasures, meanings, and ideologies that media products express and illuminate.

Tom Schatz's astute condensation of the intertextual dialectic of novelty and familiarity still holds for films, in which the arrangement of familiar semantics and syntax presumes a user” who engages these arrangements interpretively. The condensation sounds as clear, simple, and accurate now as it did in 1981, and runs like this: “As critics, we understand genre films because of their similarity with other films, but we appreciate them for their difference.” 25 But what if we were to rewrite this apothegm thus: “As multi-media users, we understand one medium's texts because of their similarity with another medium's texts, but we appreciate them for their difference”? Restating the question shifts the focus of genre theory toward what it means, for example, to view Harry Potter in one medium and play as Harry Potter in another. Such transfers of characters from acted events to modes of being represent the emergence of a distinct typology for the digital era, one that demands description as well as historicization.

The intermedia road is not the easy one, to be sure, because to take it the critic must force him- or herself to place into scare quotes the questions that tradition demands the genre theorist ask: What matters most to our ability to recognize and analyze genres, the outer form of characters, settings, and conventional objects, or the inner form of conventional plots and themes? Do genre films represent a social and community-building ritual comparable to the church-raising dance in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1947), or a tried-and-true delivery system for ideologies that serve social order and the film industry's capitalist interests equally well? And, in the first place, where do film genres—or any genres, for that matter—come from; what determines their patterns of development?

However, the semantic-syntactic-pragmatic approach does not limit itself to recognizing when or where or who exercises the power. It investigates genre knowledge and its circulation by taking that idea's temperature at various points where genre happens”—that is, where users meet texts. Where critics once mobilized genre to curse the lurid” forms of culture both perpetrated on and perpetuated by the demonized masses, it could also be mobilized in the other direction, redemptively, to refer to an entire medium, as Aristotle began the study of genres by isolating epic, lyric, and drama as types—types that we might now call aesthetic media. The tendency to lump all generic” production together as mindless reiteration of mindless conventions for mindless consumers has been translated into a less condemnatory, more critically productive strategy in the past, by proto-Birmingham School cultural critics who took an interest in the experiential contours of “popular art.” In 1916, Hugo Münsterberg, the prominent psychologist and philosopher who sneaked into movies at the risk of damaging his reputation, discovered in cinematic editing not the visual reproduction of outer reality” but a representation of space and time faithful to the inner reality” of attention and cognition as demonstrated by transitions from shot to reverse-shot, long shot to close-up, event to simultaneous event, and the like. 26

If we accept Altman's view that genre” refers to a site where textual and historical-cultural meanings are negotiated, we now need to consider each technological medium separately as a quasi-generic means of delivery, and consider “genre difference” to be (first and intermedially, though by no means for good and all) a matter of interfacing, of modes of consumption—between viewer and television program, player and video game, spectators and movies, phone user and downloadable Shrek 2 game for the cell phone. With the definition of such terms as “narrative” and even “textuality” in doubt among theorists of digital media, categories such as simulation and interactivity have come to envelop not only the imagination of new media but the sensibilities surrounding television, cinema, and popular music via the Web, iPod, and MP3 technologies, and streaming audio-video through DSL and cable connections. The forms spawned by these newer technologies depend, as Wolf makes clear, on interaction” of various kinds for their very substance as products; interface with the environment offered by the game centers the textual experience itself, making a discussion of consumption context” and genre knowledge—genre, in this case, meaning the video game medium—as central to any discussion of textual types and knowledge-appreciation contexts as Red River and Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) are to prior discussions of the western.

Not all theorists of video games, particularly those who refer to their field as ludology, agree with Wolf on this point. On the one hand, the ludologist Espen Aarseth, always concerned with defending the boundaries of his field from marauding hordes of literary and film critics, expressed deep frustration with how non-ludologists use the term interactive” to describe digital experiences. Interactivity is generally defined as that quality of games, hypertext, and other “ergodic” artifacts—which Aarseth defines as artifacts that (unlike written fiction) require what he calls nontrivial effort” on the reader's part to allow the reader to traverse the text”—which gives users the ability to manipulate those artifacts. For Aarseth, however, interactivity is no more than a sexy-sounding cipher that media studies scholars and hysterical digital utopians throw around instead of actually analyzing ergodic objects. 27 On the other hand, for gamers like Sam Miller and another Vanderbilt undergraduate, Michael Costello, interactivity refers to the spectrum of interfaces by which gamers appropriate and manipulate game worlds, and as such it denotes a crucial generic prompt. Michael goes so far as to claim that developers of new games take types of player-game interface, such as the massively multiplayer structure of Halo, more seriously as precedents to follow than they do semantic-syntactic types like the western, science fiction, and the like.

From this last perspective, a sports game like Electronic Arts's Madden NFL 2005 has more in common with a PC chess program than it does with an MMPG (massively multi-player game) like Halo for the Xbox, or a four-player PS2 science fiction game. Since Madden and computer chess base their game-play conventions and rules on games played in physical reality and do their best to replicate those experiences, both are simulations . And popular interfaces beget more games with similar interfaces, not necessarily similar iconography or plots. A popular science fiction MMPG spawns not more science fiction games but more MMPGs, in hopes of replicating (but not fully duplicating) the prior program's game-play experience (kinds of teamwork, modes of creating new spaces or new alliances, communication among players, status of avatars when players go off-line, etc.). Similarity and difference take on their most significant meanings from look-and-feel issues, game rules, and ways of entering” the game's world, not from semantics or even necessarily from syntax, at least if we define “syntax” in terms of recurrent plots (which MMPGs render nonlinear as far as the premises of the game allow, if not altogether unpredictable) or character traits and the relationships those traits generate (since individual players have a large degree of control over self-representation and behavior patterns, however much these elements might be overdetermined by a player's devotion to specific Star Wars characters, say, or such character types as “self-interested rogue with heart of gold,” “bold but vulnerable regent,” “wide-eyed idealist with enormous potential for heroic deeds,” etc.).

What genre theory could most productively do next, it seems to me, is re-purpose the semantic-syntactic-pragmatic approach to account for various kinds of borrowing across the institutional borders of textual production, address, and reception represented by individual media—cinema, broadcast TV, cable, prerecorded video, deck-bound video games, PC MMP games, and so forth. The benefit of doing so is to describe the intermedia character of genre knowledge, a historically important factor in genre discourses that nevertheless remains woefully undertheorized. This approach would recognize the overtly intermedia character of the contemporary processes by which critics, producers, and users typify audiovisual products without (ideally at least) overrepresenting or underrepresenting the discrete characteristics of each medium's products. Further investigation of video game genres is an obvious point of departure, because video games borrow genres from film and TV (science fiction, reality programming, televised football). The software suppliers for the mass-market game decks like the Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox cobble together new and distinct genres out of film genres like science fiction, war, and action movies with blinding speed and regularity. Both PC and Internet gaming and the wired versions of game-deck software (Xbox and PlayStation decks have had telephone and USB digital modem jacks installed for some time) also offer MMP games like Quest and Star Wars: Battlefront that expand the sharing of the two-to-four-player game-deck experience to the far corners of the Web. The universe of audiovisual genre has expanded along with the software lines available for digital gaming.

But what patterns do these forcible borrowings from other media—that is, interpretations of other media's texts—follow, if any? Here are three exemplary categories, which I posit as opening moves toward a description of the uses of genre in digital media discourse. Following the lead of Sam and Michael, the main categorical criterion is the type of interface between digital games and other media forms. Whereas gamers focus on the literal interface that gives the user access to the game, its world, and its rules of play, I am poaching the term interface” as a metaphor, a flexible heuristic that allows us to account for the distinct differences among video game producers’ remediation processes—that is, their processes of appropriating other media's forms. 28 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin characterized remediation as the representation of one medium in another” and argued that “remediation is a defining characteristic of the new digital media.” 29 However, if we reconsider remediation through the model of genre pragmatics, we must track a different quality of remediation than Bolter and Grusin do. While they assess various levels of remediation along an axis running between self-reflexive hypermediacy and hypermediated transparency, I propose a multiaxis model on which each distinct video game could be plotted as a point, perhaps reflecting its more or less narrative qualities, its more or less direct adaptations of another medium's genres, and its more or less literal adaptations of another medium's distinct properties —meaning modes of representation, modes of address, and, of course, modes of interface. While I do not have the space here to firm up these axes and begin plotting those points, I offer here three preliminary categories of adaptation that this “pragmatic-intermedial” approach to game genres allows us to see.

The first category I propose is direct adaptation of a specific property from one medium into another medium . When Fox licenses The Simpsons, its long-running cartoon sitcom, for a series of deck video games (Road Rage, Hit & Run) that allow the player to explore a virtual Springfield by car while running over its citizens (accidentally, of course), or elderly TV sitcoms and cop shows reappear as film franchises or one-offs (Mission: Impossible, The Brady Bunch, Starsky & Hutch), the parallel versions of the property share textual information and textual references. Nevertheless, each new expression of a text in a different medium differs from the others in that it requires distinct practices of consumption and use while borrowing such information as characterization and possible plot lines from the “first” version. Game adaptations of movies and television programs, as well as television adaptations of film properties, adapt their source texts in spotty ways that reflect the borrowing medium's conventional approaches to the semantics and syntax of the poached text's game, approaches that (it seems to me) have by now become generic, that is, conventions of syntax, themselves. Most games adapted from films focus on one or more action sequences or derive basic game premises from the movie in question, such as goals, geography, and laws of (meta)physics. In the Matrix Online MMPG, set after the death of Neo (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix: Revolutions, Neo's followers share his powers over time and space and carry on his battle against the machines.

The second category is indirect adaptation of a genre that originated in a different medium, such as when a video game borrows a premise, semantics, and/or syntax from a recognizable film or TV genre rather than a licensed property like The Matrix . Game designers and PR staffs mobilize generic iconography and other signifiers to beckon fans of a genre in one medium, such as western films, to accept its incarnation in another medium, like TV's Gunsmoke or Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Revolver for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox (2004). Programmers tend to adapt elements from the other medium's genre in playful ways that call attention to the semantic and syntactic conventions of that genre. Like most mass-market video games today, the original Tomb Raider game (Eidos, 1996) for the PlayStation 1, an adventure puzzle game that lifts its cave-and-archaeological-dig settings and its international intrigue master plot from action-adventure films like Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981), peppers two- to five-minute dramatic scenes (which the player cannot play, only watch) throughout the game play. These cinematics,” as they're called in the industry, perform at least two functions specific to electronic games: they provide context and information about the player's challenges and goals, and they carry on Pac-Mans tradition of giving the player a chance to catch his or her breath and adjust a carpal-tunnel brace.

But video game cinematics also invite players to mobilize their semantic and syntactic expectations about mainstream cinema in general. Lara Croft is as agile, smart, movie-star beautiful, and eager for challenges as any goal-driven Hollywood protagonist. She and the player receive her mission not from a written rule book like those that accompany Monopoly boards and Atari 2600 game cartridges from the early 1980s, but from a mysterious group of people with whom she clearly has a past. While receiving her assignment, Lara offers the player a few knowing glances using close-ups, a cinematic narration device that offers us visual omniscience and character identification while planting a mystery yet to be solved, thus holding our attention on the game's “plot” in high Hollywood style. The cinematic then cuts to a swirling “camera” movement that establishes a new setting, a snowy and isolated mountain range. At this point, the cinematic ends and the gamer begins, clumsily at first, to jog, climb, and shoot her way through a cavern teeming with wolves and bats. Like the standard Hollywood protagonist, Lara and the gamer have multiple goals to reach that are nonetheless bound together—in this case, finding the treasure and staying alive.

Frame enlargement from the opening cinematic of Red Dead Revolver for PlayStation 2 (Rockstar Games, 2004) (author's collection).

The implications of such subtle intermedial overlap for adapted-genre games are far from clear. Espen Aarseth and Markku Eskelinen have adamantly dismissed the possibility that games are narratives or even “texts” in the sense that literature and film studies attaches to these terms, and have more recently spoken out against discussing anything experienced “outside” the game, from other media's textual forms to everyday life, as if it affects players' experience of individual games in any way. 30 And yet it seems clear from Red Dead Revolver, puzzle-adventure games like Tomb Raider, and zombie first-person shooters like Silent Hill that adapted-genre games cannot tip their hats to specific borrowed genres via iconography (semantics) and plotlines (syntax) without also inviting the “old” medium's generic sensibility and the transduction of that sensibility into the experience of the game. These games literally banish cinematic storytelling elements to the cinematics and just as literally link players continuing gaming pleasure—that is, the game avatar's survival—to their skills at manipulating an interface structure of a certain kind rather than their ability to recall key scenes from A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964). Yet we cannot ignore the possibility that the same games invite gamers to let their generic expectations of, say, the western seep into the experience of game play. After all, Red Dead Revolver maintains western icons and character relations from start to finish, and returns again and again to western-styled cinematics that mark the return to a “genre movie” world as a reward for surviving the game levels.

My sense that players of such indirect adaptation games shift imaginatively between game play and film genre reverie would not please the ludologists, who base their distinction between “narrative, or “text, and “game on what the user does with a game at the moment of reading/using/consuming it, as opposed to what one does with a television program, a film, a book, or a digital hypertext novel. Granted, their sense of what one “does with media constructs is limited rather excruciatingly to one's immediate experience of those constructs, and describes those experiences only in immediate and literal terms; Eskelinen and Aarseth never discuss intermedia sensibility of games or other cybertexts without sniffing indignantly about the film and literature studies barbarians who stand at the gate of a field with intent to colonize. To a certain degree they are correct to note that film and literature theorists have barreled into game theory without accounting fully for fundamental differences in textuality and users engagement with those textualities. Theorists on either side of this debate, however, speak of the medium on the other side of the fence as if it were simpler, quainter, and indeed more vulgar than their own—much as social critics once looked down on all films as “generic” because they were films.

One such discussion of connotation centers on the bust of Lara Croft and the heterosexual male gaze it seems built to attract or construct (just as that bust is pieced together out of digital polygons). Eskelinen asserts that it gets the critic no closer to describing the experience of a video game just to notice this or that game's closeness in theme or visual content to another mass-cultural text, even if the “closeness” in question is provided by as vexed an icon as the impossibly proportioned, fetishistically attired female body. 31 Yet these writers come off sounding dismissive at best (such terms as “naive” and “fallacious” appear in their essays in reference to humanists even more often than such terms as “resisting” and “beating”) and hypocritical at worst. These media metacritics are perfectly willing and able to read “literary” critics' responses as “texts” with connotations and discursive functions much deeper than their authors will admit, but utterly unwilling to discuss anything but intentional determinants of meaning when discussing the modes of ergodic literature, games, and the like, not to mention their own written critiques of semiotics and narrative theory as applied by humanists to video games. 32

To be fair, film spectatorship theory began in earnest in the late 1960s by making idealist generalizations of a similar sort. I would go so far as to say we cannot ask adequate versions of metatextual, intermedia questions without examining and analyzing the game experience (in this case) extensively. And yet Aarseth undercuts terms like “interactivity” on syllogistic grounds rather than on grounds of cultural usefulness—as a descriptor that programmers, gamers, and theorists use to describe certain gaming experiences—and they know their own definitions well, because they use those definitions to communicate their gaming experiences, frustrations, and pleasures with one another. Here are a few remarks on those experiences, culled from Amazon.com's Red Dead Revolver sales site comments board:

Red Dead plays like an arcade shooter. You play as one of a few different characters, but mostly the main protagonist, Red. With a variety of weapons (which can be upgraded throughout the game) you take down waves of opposition in a number of gritty Western movie-style settings. A ghost town, a graveyard, up in the mountains, on a train, on a ranch, etc.… I felt Rockstar could have done much more with this title. There are times where you run around town between chapters with no real purpose. Let me get myself in trouble at the Saloon with a bar brawl, or end up in a Quickdraw shootout because I hit on some saucy barmaid that some other tough unwashed thug is interested in. 33 Taking place in the Wild West (and borrowing heavily from the types of movies of this time period), Red Dead Revolver allows us to do something most of us adults have always dreamt about as kids … walk in the shoes of a gunslinger. Best of all, we can still walk away in the same shape we were in before playing the game, and not full of holes. 34

Judging from these comments, historical definitions of “the western” as generic ideal have limited the spectrum of what can be thought about Red Dead Revolver by players and programmers alike! The reviews I cite above oscillate between interactive pleasures and cinematic ones, such as identifying with the cinematic western hero and expecting a greater number of iconic settings and standoffs, more immediately and fluidly than one can click a hypertext link. One wonders how long Aarseth will continue to tell users to stop processing their experiences as “interactivity because they re missing the point of the medium, and what he hopes to accomplish by doing so. As Henry Jenkins wrote in his critique of the “unduly polemical” ludologists, any critic who discusses the role (or lack thereof) of narrative in the video game must do more than pay lip service to game experience from the user's multimediated, multigenred experience as compared to the experience of narrative in (ideally) unilinear texts such as films and novels. She must focus not only on “whether games tell stories and were intended to do so by their programmers, but also on “whether narrative elements might enter games at a more localized level. In the “transmedia storytelling modes adopted by contemporary filmmakers and television producers as well as game designers, rather than “each individual work being self-sufficient, ““each work contribute[s] to a larger narrative economy.” 35

This idea brings us into my third category of intermedia generic textual interpretation/production, adaptations of other media's capabilities . As Aarseth noted, many digital media theorists writing in the 1990s assumed that digital media and interactivity transform the entire experience of media spectatorship. This becomes a problematic assumption when we consider how little the social and institutional parameters of many media experiences have changed over time. Digital projection of “films” in movie theaters neither promises nor delivers the kind of text-to-consumer relationship that video games and DVD movies foster with their consumers, namely, an interactive—or more precisely, ergodic—experience. 36 Nevertheless, the entrance of digital technologies into formerly analog consumption sites also opens an imaginative channel through which media users fantasize that the game transforms their access to the genre of the western film. The gamers I quote above, whose avatars sport ten-gallon hats and beard stubble, fantasize their Xboxes as interfaces to a wholly imaginary game-film experience, in which they both vicariously watch iconographically and syntactically “western” events, and actively perform themselves into the world of the western film genre—a world that is all representation and all simulation at the same time. 37

In the less ethereal regions of the digital age, privatized digital delivery systems for cinematic and televisual content, as well as for games of all sorts and for social communication, do materially change the social and spatial relations among media users and media content. Often they accomplish this feat simply by dint of the shifting levels of public or private consumption that digital media make available. Each new system—from the home DVD-CD player to its portable counterpart, from the continually upgraded home game deck to the portable Game Boy and its progeny, from the camera phone to the PDA with Web browser—may not deserve to be called a new medium in its own right, because each one borrows and cobbles together features that used to “belong” to the others. These newer media develop their own textual subtypes that might or might not be termed “genres” depending on how closely one associates “genre” with “stories and storytelling”: types of games, types of narratives, types of interactive experiences that seem ill suited to the label of “narrative” at all (including, but not limited to, blogs dedicated to topics like wrestling, film franchises, and politics; Webcam-centered “reality” sites that range from the performatively erotic to the hyperbolically mundane; hypertext narratives; interactive Flash cartoons), and types of cell phone downloads (ring tones, puzzle games, and the like).

As Bolter and Grusin argued, remediation runs in both directions—from “old media to “new, as when the media just mentioned recast familiar forms (games, stories, etc.) to broach the multimedia landscape, and from “new to “old, as producers for established media look to novel media genres and interfaces to attract their audiences anew. 38 “Reality” television series like Fear Factor and Supernanny seem so ordinary already, long after the premiere of Survivor, that it is easy to forget how much their creation appeals to our knowledge, whether firsthand or reported by other sources, of Webcam hookups over the World Wide Web. Both reality TV and quasi-docu-sitcoms like The Office and Fat Actress also fit the broadcasting and cable industries’ interest in hybridizing novel media experiences—not only Webcam voyeurism but also the Digital Video filmmaking revolution and its resurrection of “unsteadycam “as an acceptable “media noise”—with its own core genres. 39

Intermedial borrowings seem peculiarly obvious in current mass media at both the textual and generic levels because they happen so often and coincide so conspicuously with the release of new “genre” films. Spectacular films in which action and special effects take center screen inevitably generate directly adapted video game tie-ins, while a popular cycle of a specific Hollywood genre (such as science fiction in the late 1970s) incites development of indirect television adaptations (such as the original Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and the short-lived Buck Henry sitcom Quark, in which Richard Benjamin plays an interstellar garbage man 40 ). What is less obvious, thanks to film studies' reverence for stable definitions of genres, is that the borrowings follow the patterns of appropriation and (re)definition that Altman described as themselves generic; in other words, according to the semantic-syntactic-pragmatic approach, “genre” names the processes of definition undertaken by users at all levels of a media industry who value such definitions.

Altman's redefinition not only allows us to track the history of genres in a more rigorously materialist way; it also offers to cast new theoretical light on the migration of genres across media. Too many studies of the Hollywood western cite the dime novel as its extracinematic source but scarcely consider the much more difficult question of how a genre of the written word became a visual and later an audiovisual one in a medium with rules of representation and industrial imperatives all its own: “Even when a genre already exists in other media, the film genre of the same name cannot simply be borrowed from non-film sources[;] it must be recreated.” 41 Looked upon this way, a “borrowed” genre becomes more than simply an adaptation; it can be made visible as an intermedia contact point, ripe with clues about how this “re-creation” process alters the extracinematic genre in question just as each new western film, critical review, and “ordinary” viewer's response has the potential to shift, however subtly, the winds of the western's generic definition. The western became a recognizably consistent film type no earlier than 1906, despite the number of potted genre histories that claim Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903) as the unproblematic “smoking gun” film of the genre. Between 1903 and the end of the decade, as Charles Musser has amply demonstrated, the films that many historians and genre critics unproblematically call “westerns” actually rolled together “several unrelated genres” already recognized by American viewers and critics, such as the railway travel film and the crime film. 42

If genre theory—and genre theories of television, computer games, cell phone downloads, and new media yet to be developed—might avoid snuffing itself by focusing more tightly on the cultural processes of genre definition in general, and intermedial genre bending in particular, then my allusion to A Clockwork Orange at the beginning of this essay provides me here at its end with an allegory of a different sort: like Alex de Large dreaming of “ultra-violence” as he listens ecstatically to Beethoven, the historical interpreters of genre—genre theorists included—poach genres and amend them to serve their immediate needs, thus infusing them with unexpected connotations that hang tenaciously to the genres in their users memories without revamping utterly the structures, conventions, or meanings they had previously expressed. If users want to communicate about or through those genres over time, they cannot simply snuff themselves if new iterations of the genres appear monstrous to them. Instead, they must ask whether, how, and why the genres have dropped some conventions and picked up others—and also whether, how, and why their own experience, like Alex's after the Ludovico treatment, has changed their reactions to the very same products of those genres that they had once evaluated so differently. The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953) and The Searchers may not change from year to year; the score for Beethoven's Ninth and the rules and geography of Grand Theft Auto III remain constant. But our acquaintance with the genres to which they belong shifts with every new musical or western produced, every classical symphony heard for the first time, every new Grand Theft Auto sequel played, and played again, and again.

If we were to investigate the effects of media definitions on audiovisual artifacts that hop the fence between “old” media and “new” media with the same apparatus with which Altman advises us to approach the effects of genre definitions on new genre films and our thinking about them, we would gain a fresh anthropological perspective on intermedial adaptations. From this perspective, the noun “medium” names not a technology but rather the processes by which a definition of any given medium gets negotiated, and also the pivotal roles played by direct and indirect adaptations of one medium's genre by another medium altogether. Robert Rodriguez's film of Frank Miller's Sin City (2005), adapted from the latter's graphic novels and codirected by Miller, reminded me that fundamental questions about how elder genres make the jump into unfamiliar media have yet to be answered. Thanks to Rodriguez's home-cooked computer graphics and his fervor to re-create Miller's hyperstatic sensibilities as a graphic designer and cartoonist, Sin City translates comic book panels taken directly from Miller's books into dynamic but nearly immobile frames, composed of thickly rendered angles and stark contrasts among black, white, and the few primary colors (mostly red blood and the sickly skin of a mutated villain known as That Yellow Bastard). And yet this style of frame composition, which when rendered by Miller's pen infuses his pages with a dynamism rarely seen in comics, appears weirdly static when committed to (digital) film. In this diegetic universe of moving images that scarcely move, actors have no recourse to the expression of character motivation over time. They must rely instead on one facial expression and one bodily stance at a time, mirrors of the poses that Miller has already drawn onto his characters.

This is not to say that graphic novels and comic books have fewer modes of expression at their disposal, or that those modes are inferior to those available to the cinema. It is only to say that Sin City 's attempt at direct translation from one medium into another highlights with special clarity the potential of examining media's relationships to other media just as Altman recommended we examine relationships between genre films and film genres, as well as relationships among genres: with attention simultaneously paid to semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic expressions of a given medium's capabilities, its conventions of representation and address, and its limitations when compared with and contrasted to the medium from which it borrows a property or a generic sensibility. Following this train of thought, the film version of Sin City is a singular interpretation of “the graphic novel” using film; it is also, and at the same time, a singular interpretation of “the graphic novel film,” which differs from other adaptations of comic books, such as Batman, Spider-Man, and X-Men, in that it does not stop at imitating costumes, mise-en-scène, and plot and character points from the comics series in question; it appropriates, as literally as possible, the static character of the graphic novel's conventions of narrating stories with pictures.

If the logic of intermedial adaptation seems ungeneric, please recall that the pragmatic approach privileges the how of generic production over the what, that is, generic thinking and its results over generic product and its empirically verifiable textual parameters. Consider the parallel between the diverse possibilities of interpreting “The western” via westerns—the loping pace and poetic violence of My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946), the physical brutality and stylistic exaggeration of The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969), the cartoonish pastiche of moments from other westerns in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995)—and the equally diverse possibilities of interpreting “the graphic novel” via film. Particularly from the perspective of intermedia philosopher Friedrich Kittler, Sin City could be perceived as a failed experiment, because it attempts to translate the iconography and visual syntax of graphic novels directly and literally into filmed images, rather than transducing them for film. In other words, a “proper” cinematic transduction of the Sin City graphic novel, as opposed to Rodriguez's and Miller's attempt to translate it into a film, would squeeze from Miller's iconic drawings (such as a static image of a huge man emerging from a shattered tenement door with arms outstretched surrounded by the contorted bodies of policemen seemingly hanging in the air) a set of encoded, signified meanings (the huge man has broken his own door down with tremendous force, sending cops flying in every direction), which the filmmakers would have to determine how to express using moving images without sacrificing altogether the iconic qualities that make Miller's graphic novel unique, even among other graphic novels. 43

No one disagrees that “genre” refers not simply to rules, but to textual possibilities that find expression through the individual producer, consumer, or critic's engagement with a set of rules as that producer, consumer, or critic understands them . It is for this reason that I see the semantic-syntactic-pragmatic approach as particularly rich soil for the ludologists to cultivate in collaboration with film and media genre theorists. To do so would prod both camps to recognize the unique technological and discursive parameters of the other camp's central medium, and at the same time to obtain from genre theory's emphasis on “playing by/against the rules” a more generous sense of user play —the kinds of experimental, intermedia interpretation in which all media users engage, however subconsciously, while playing, viewing, reading, discussing, and making mass-media artifacts. Michel de Certeau hinted that games focus not merely on rules and play, but on the “relatability” of both rules and specific gaming events to other subjects. While games themselves provide a sketch of what tactical responses to socially implemented “necessities” can be thought in a given cultural moment (consider Monopoly, created during the Great Depression, and the discourses on poverty, wealth, and governmental economic intervention within which its players must operate), the relatability of games offers players countless opportunities to narrate the triumphs and failures of their game tactics—and, by extension, the vagaries of their social tactics—to one another with a high degree of social sanction and a low degree of risk. 44 Thinking through video games and genre knowledge gives media studies an enriched position from which to recognize how knowledge gets mobilized in such tactical ways, to appropriate mass-culture forms while subverting some of their intended meanings and ideological codes, in the cultures of “old” media. The kinds of knowledge that film and TV genres represent have always involved shared, ritualized interpretations of everything from science fiction to medical melodrama, beginning with mimeographed fanzines and conventions (perhaps most notably surrounding the Star Trek phenomenon as early as the series second season, when fans lobbied successfully for a third year of new episodes).

One might be tempted to claim that digital media have come to fulfill one of film genre theory's most utopian claims, derived from a combination of structural linguistics and the generous view of mass culture's political possibilities maintained by Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall: at last, it seems, mass media have caught up with the premise expressed by Schatz, Wright, and others that “genre” makes all media texts more or less interactive at both the informatic and sociological levels. At the informatic level (that is, the level of the user's engagement with a text or cybertext), the consumers of such otherwise “closed” narrative texts as novels, television series, films, and comic books bring their sense of a genre's conventions to bear on their evaluations and interpretations of these texts. At the sociological level, these consumers engage in extratextual conversations about texts based on generic codes, and arguably all such subjects imagine they belong to an interpretive community that shares their own foreknowledge, even if they never make contact with that community.

But it would be imprudent to proclaim that digital interactivity has come to destroy conventional film genre theory by fulfilling its most democratic wishes. Interactive media have much to teach theorists of genre in “non-interactive” media such as film and television, but text-centered genre theory also serves to remind us of the ideological dimension of genre's imagined communities. Choosing to watch or not watch films of a certain genre, after all, is not in itself equivalent to voting for it, nor do a video game's sales figures necessarily inspire producers to replicate the characterizations, visual style, plot arc, or political overtones of a viewer's favorite game. Realizing that essentialist and text-centered thinking about genre still carries a good deal of clout among users of all stripes also equips us to analyze the determinism that characterizes much theoretical writing about the future of digital media, in which digital artifacts limp along in relative disgrace because new media designers cannot manage to create characters or plot events compelling enough to make their users feel they are embedded in a familiarly satisfying media genre, such as the psychological novel or the classical narrative film. 45 I'm not being pejorative here, but rather pointing out how, like the atomized users who populate Altman's dystopia of contemporary genre culture, independent interpretive communities say the darnedest things, and those communities listen much more attentively to their own members than they do to the academics who “describe”—that is, prescribe—the textual conventions and readerly practices “proper” to a given genre or a given medium.

As a parting example, one that offers a glimpse of the diversity of forms through which ideas of genre get spoken, let me offer a synecdoche for what I began by calling Altman's “definitive doubt”—not to make you desperate enough to snuff it, but to pass along my impression of the irreverent richness of contemporary articulations of genericity. This game menu, which appears in the PS2/Xbox game Atari Anthology (2004), envisions an array of video game genres that span an entire galaxy. Genres and subgenres are represented by constellations of stars fashioned into stand-alone video arcade machines, starships, and other icons. Compared to “the musical” and “horror” in film or “soap opera” and “sitcom” in television, such categories as “Arcade Favorites,” “Mind Games” (which takes the form of a brain) and “Space” strike the old-school genre critic as lacking in consistent logic. What links arcade games except the places one plays them? Outlaw was an arcade game first, so why is it lumped into the “Action” category instead of “Arcade at Home”? Is checkers really a “mind game” compared to chess?

But like the capricious animal taxonomy from Jorge Luis Borges's “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins” as interpreted by Michel Foucault, these constellations provide an index of how differently genre is thought by video game cultures than by traditional genre theory. 46 Hobbled neither by film studies' theoretical precedents nor by the ontological assertions of the ludologists, such genre experts as programmers, critics, and gamers choose labels like “Arcade Favorites” that mark the social and geographical functions of game types. Surely these ideas about what genre is and how it works are as challenging and as rife with potential for analysis as any ideas articulated by retoolings of familiar semantics and syntax.

Frame enlargement from the opening menu of Atari Anthology for PlayStation 2 (Atari 2004) (author's collection).

Frame enlargement from secondary menu of Atari Anthology for PlayStation 2 (Atari 2004) (author's collection).

Even such a well-trod concept as “semantics” gains an unexpected valence in the Atari Anthology universe. By separating the grossly artifacted home games of the late 1970s from the sleeker “vector-graphics” arcade games of the same era (the space-rock-blasting Asteroids, the tank game Battlezone, the abstract shoot-'em-up Tempest), Atari Anthology pays lip service to the technological differences between home and arcade games even as it hails specific player groups: it invites the older audience to play the “home arcade” games out of nostalgia, while warning younger players that they may find their crudeness amusing or off-putting. It also invites users to participate in the continuing production of private and public space as distinct, and even to infuse memory with spatial history. By re-creating, blow for blow, game-play options and even game-cabinet art for Asteroids and Tempest, Atari Anthology returns me to the Westdale Mall arcade where I used to feed these machines quarters by the roll. The effect is as startling as passing a plate of madeleines past Proust's Marcel: I am there, teasing and being teased by my friends who spend more money and play better than I, with the difference being that I wonder now what we were really fighting about—class difference, social superiority, dexterity, or perhaps simply the opportunity to fight about something that did not involve parents, school, or adolescent romance. By grouping “Arcade Favorites” together, Atari Anthology has enabled me to revisit my experience of time period, social interaction, and public space and behavior between 1979 and 1982, one game at a time.

Atari Anthology 's historiographic, geographic zodiac of gaming history also allows us to recognize that, in digital media cultures, typification hinges on technological change and the culture's awareness of the social meanings of that change. Each year the video game industry trumpets the arrival of a new deck, a new format (handheld, Blackberry or similarly styled units that make the single-screen Game Boy Advance look like a transistor radio crossed with a bulky flip phone), or at the very least a new innovation (the bongo-drum controller for the GameCube's Donkey Konga, the dance pad user interface). Sales imperatives, such as the drive to invent new markets, provide the impetus for these changes more than the users collective desire for “better” experiences (more hyperreal in graphical or interactive terms), though the latter helps to both mask and fulfill the push of the former toward technological development.

The main menu from a similar anthology, Midway Arcade Treasures (2003), addresses the bad faith of this discourse of progress in a particularly telling way by portraying the exploration of video game history as an archaeological dig into the pyramids of Egypt. As an anthology of classic games from one of the most successful arcade game producers, Midway Arcade Treasures exploits this image to trumpet the superiority of the new home game decks over the “ancient” arcade machines that represented the state of the art in the early 1980s. In those hoary days of yore, cabinets the size of truncated pinball tables were required to shield vulnerable hardware from aggressive gamers; in the sleek and miniaturized present, twenty-four of those very games have been compressed onto a single DVD-ROM for use in a machine that runs $149.95 retail and is smaller and lighter than a laptop computer. The pseudo-historical account of gaming history portrayed by the menu of Treasures is “deployed, like games [themselves], in a space outside of and isolated from daily competition, that of the past, the marvelous, the original.” But such tales as the one this menu tells are “also, more discreetly, living museums” of the tactics that members of a culture use to get by in everyday life, “the benchmarks of an apprenticeship.” 47 Following Certeau's lead, we could productively translate Treasures 's conceit into a general statement on video game history that befits the Egyptomanic iconography of the menu: we live in a fabulous present of lifelike, three-dimensional video game worlds, yet can take nostalgic pleasure in archiving the technological past because, like archaeologists who dig up the tombs of long-dead pharaohs, we have nothing to fear from the past and everything to learn.

Frame enlargement from opening title of Midway Arcade Treasures for PlayStation 2 (Midway 2003) (author's collection).

My hope is that media theorists will take gamers' unique definitions of genre seriously, as signs of an experiential language of genre that is worth developing—a language that could be projected back onto the histories of genres in other mass audiovisual media in something more productive than merely analogical terms. The Atari Anthology 's vision of game icons twinkling in the cosmos presents a suggestive metaphor of “genre as a constellation: purely organic and “already there, “like the stars in the sky, and simultaneously a product of nothing more or less than interpretation. Theodor Adorno wrote that astrologists exploit the rational descriptions of the stars' positions and movements offered by a legitimately empirical science, astronomy, to grant themselves explanatory and predictive authority over the puny human individual: “A veneer of scientific rationality has been fused with blind acceptance of indemonstrable contentions and the spurious exaltation of the factual.” 48 Westerners have long perceived the Greco-Roman zodiac as a set of irrefutable and eternal shapes, and equally long ago left the pseudo-scientific “reading” of their meanings to soothsayers and newspaper columnists. The game-cabinet shapes of the Atari zodiac, however, remind us that the true nature of constellations is their contestability across cultures and even among individuals, who regularly attribute entirely different sets of animals, gods, and heroes to the star formations they see. The Atari zodiac models a galaxy of genre, to be sure, but it also makes visible an unexplored universe of genre theory, in all the triangulations among genres, and among diverse media, that genre communities employ to label their artifacts. The dialectical quality of this image borders on the diacritically sublime, for it articulates certainty and doubt, clarity and indistinctness, naturalness and artificiality all at once—sure signs that a genre, and a set of audiences eager to disassemble and reassemble it, wait nearby.

See Stephen Neale, Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1980). The “good scratch” metaphor comes from Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” (1984), in Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 216.

Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema” (1970), in Film Genre Reader III, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 14.

Neale, Genre .

For a few examples of varying proximity to Neale's blend of structural anthropology, semiotics, and Althusserian ideological theory, see the essays by Jim Collins, Richard Dyer, and Jane Feuer in Genre: The Musical, ed. Rick Altman (London: Routledge/BFI, 1980); Will Wright, Sixguns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); the revised edition of Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (London: BFI, 1980); and Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (London: Routledge, 1991).

Altman, Film/Genre, esp. chap. 5.

Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach,” 216.

See John G. Cawelti, “The Question of Popular Genres Revisited,” in In the Eye of the Beholder: Critical Perspectives in Popular Film and Television, ed. Gary R. Edgerton, Michael T. Marsden, and Jack Nachbar (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997), 70.

See Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre,” 13–19. Buscombe is much clearer about what he means by outer form than what he means by inner. Here I have borrowed Altman's (1984) distinction between genre semantics —the objects, people, sounds, and other nominative characteristics of a genre's universe—and genre syntax —the repeatable yet flexible systems of arrangement among semantic elements in space and time—in order to clarify the applicability of Buscombe's concepts.

Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 16.

For a discussion of “body genres” and the horror film's specific appeal to viewers' visceral expectations, see Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” in Grant, Film Genre Reader III, 141–149.

See Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach,” 217. Or consider how a semantically oriented critic who would call any film that features a spaceship “science fiction” might react when confronted by a critic from the more exclusive syntactical school, who might call films with spaceships in them “science fiction” only if their plots emphasize the joys of discovery in outer space over the terrors of the unknown. For an enlightening discussion of such a confrontation from the latter point of view, see Bruce F. Kawin, “Children of the Light” (1986), in Grant, Film Genre Reader III, 324–345.

Altman, Film/Genre, 21–22, 49, 101.

See Rick Altman, The American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 36.

14. Altman, Film/Genre, 208.

15. Ibid. , 205 .

“Genres begin as reading positions established by studio personnel acting as critics, and expressed through film-making conceived as an act of applied criticism.” Altman, Film/Genre, 44.

Mark J. P. Wolf, “Genre and the Video Game,” in The Medium of the Video Game, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 113–134.

This is not to say that Pac-Man tells a story (although the more generous narrative theories suggest it might), but rather to say that Wolf's very loose definition of “narrative” does not in itself offer the reader the means to form an opinion. At the very least, narrative analysis requires following the lead of the Russian formalists and like-minded theorists such as Tzvetan Todorov and Gerard Genette in distinguishing a narrative's story —the narrated events as the reader, viewer, or player assembles them from the text or artifact at hand—from its narration , or plot —the discursive acts performed by or through the artifact that communicate the story's events. For overviews of the debates on what constitutes narrative in film, see André Gaudreault, “Film, Narrative, Narration: The Cinema of the Lumière Brothers,” Early Film: Space-Frame-Narrative . Ed. Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker (London: British Film Institute, 1990) 68–75 in which the author argued that any “statement [that] relates … a real or fictitious action,” such as a given cinematic shot, is a narrative; and Tom Gunning, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), chap. 2.

Dudley Andrew doubts that genre “theory” counts as a theory at all, because (at least in its mid-seventies incarnation, as he described it then) its aim is to return to individual texts in order to evaluate them; unlike theories about the aesthetic nature of film, for example, genre theory seemed to have no end in itself. See Andrew, The Major Film Theories (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 4–5.

See Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), esp. “Major Genres,” 51–149. For an account of generic hybridization that follows up brilliantly on Fredric Jameson's “Nostalgia for the Present” argument about postmodern Hollywood, see Jim Collins, “Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity,” in Film Theory Goes to the Movies, ed. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins (New York: Routledge, 1993), 242–263. Film noir provides an excellent example of a critically productive “critical” genre that in its time forked the road of the gangster film into domestic melodrama, crime drama, police procedural, and others, all while attracting labels like “melodrama” from Variety, the New York Times, and other important organs of mainstream movie criticism—never the label given it by French critics of the 1940s. Film noir metamorphosed into a production genre only in the 1970s, after screenwriter and critic Paul Schrader consolidated the rising buzz of noir recognition into a key essay, “Notes on Film Noir ” (1972). Realizing the impossibility of taking a taxonomic view of this genre that was not one, James Naremore led off his indispensable book, More Than Night, with “the history of [the] idea” of film noir. See Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 9–39.

Sam Miller, private e-mail correspondence with the author, February 16, 2005. Used with permission.

Altman, Film/Genre, 210.

See, for example, Jane Feuer, “Genre Study and Television,” in Channels of Discourse, Revisited, ed. Robert C. Allen (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 138–159, and Susan Murray, “‘I Think We Need a New Name for It’: The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV,” in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 40–56.

On the Producer's Game and the “composite strategy” that Joel Silver undertook when planning the production of Die Hard, see Altman, Film/Genre, 47.

Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 36.

Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916), in Hugo Münsterberg on Film, ed. Allan Langdale (New York: Routledge, 2002), esp. 79–88.

Espen Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 47–51.

28. See Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 44–50 .

29. Ibid. , 45 .

Espen Aarseth, “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation,” in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 49–51; Markku Eskelinen, “Towards Computer Game Studies,” in Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, First Person, 36–38.

31. Aarseth, response to Stuart Moulthrop's online response to “Genre Trouble,” in Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, First Person, 49.

Evaluating “whether [semiotics] can provide a viable theoretical foundation for the study of cybernetic textuality,” Aarseth wrote that “[f]or semiotics, as for linguistics, texts are chains of signs and, therefore, linear by definition. … The new [ergodic, i.e., multilinear] constructions [such as hypertext narratives/experiences] consist of ‘interactive dynamic’ elements, a fact that renders traditional semiotic models and terminology, which were developed for objects that are mostly static, useless in their present, unmodified form” (Cybertext, 26). This syllogism, which exemplifies the argumentative logic employed throughout Cybertext, skips over not only the vigorous modifications made to semiotic definitions of “text” when applied (by Aarseth's bugbear Roland Barthes, for example) to the signifying processes of photographs and other nonlinear or quasilinear media objects, but also the attention semiotics traditionally pays to the nonlinear system of signification itself, in which icons, indexes, and symbols become more or less arbitrarily connected to concepts or signifieds through conventional use, use that ultimately depends on differences among symbols to ensure their discreteness from one another. It is difficult to imagine why, if Aarseth wished to wrest ergodic literature from semioticians for good, he did not address Ferdinand de Saussure's legacy for literary and media studies anywhere in Cybertext (he concentrated solely on the tenets of Charles Sanders Peirce, in similarly syllogistic fashion).

W. C. Bryant, customer review of Red Dead Revolver, 5 May 2004, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001ADAME/qid=1117038641/sr=1–1/ref=sr_1_1_etk-vg/002-5020132-6424819?v=glance&s=videogames&n=468642 , accessed 14 May 2005.

34. gAmE_bOi, customer review of Red Dead Revolver, 5 May 2004, in ibid. , 14 May 2005.

Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” in Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, First Person, 120, 121, 123.

John Belton, “Digital Cinema: A False Revolution” (2002), in Film Theory and Criticism, 6th ed., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 905–906.

For examinations of the material effects of collective fantasies about media on their use and development, see Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and Paul Young, The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals: Media Fantasy Films from Radio to the Internet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), introduction and chap. 1.

See Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, esp. 46–48.

Television shows like the now-canceled Talk Soup and VH1's more recent I Love the 90's and Best Week Ever provide a kind of user's guide to new television genres and subgenres for viewers uncertain about the conventions and expectations they foster. They also demonstrate that textuality is never the only thing at stake when media invoke and evoke genres. Genre typification tends, as do gender, class, and race stereotypes, to mobilize “proper” audiences for specific genres based on social prejudices. See Laurie Ouellette and Carolyn Anderson, “Reading the Talk Show: The Politics of Talk Soup ,” in Edgerton, Marsden, and Nachbar, In the Eye of the Beholder, 154. See also Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette, eds., Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2004).

“Quark,” Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077066/?fr=c210ZT1kZnx0dD0xfGZiPXV8cG49MHxxPXF1YXJrfG14PTIwfGxtPTUwMHxodG1sPTE_;fc=1;ft=20;fm=1 (1 July 2005).

41. Altman, Film/Genre, 35 .

42. Ibid. , 34–35. Altman's source here is Charles Musser, “The Travel Genre in 1903–1904: Moving Towards Fictional Narrative,” in Early Cinema: Space-Frame-Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker (London: British Film Institute, 1990), 123–132.

See Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, trans. Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens (1985; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 273–274.

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 1, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 21–24.

For a crucial opening move in this discussion of digital narrative's development into an art form commensurate with drama and literary fiction (with all the ideological underpinnings this art envy entails), see Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Free Press, 1997), esp. chap. 10. For a critique of Murray's work as “narrativistic colonialism,” see Espen Aarseth, “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation,” in Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, First Person, 45–55, esp. 49. For a discussion of “cinema envy” among game designers, see Young, The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals, chap. 5.

See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966; New York: Vintage, 1973), xv.

Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 22–23.

Theodor W. Adorno, “The Stars Down to Earth: The Los Angeles Times Astrology Column” (1952–53), in The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational Culture, 2nd ed., ed. Stephen Crook (New York: Routledge, 2001), 159.

Aarseth, Espen. “ Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation. ” Wardrip-Fruin, First Person, 45–55.

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Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999 .

Buscombe, Edward. “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema.” 1970. Grant, Film Genre Reader III, 12–26.

Cawelti, John G. “The Question of Popular Genres Revisited.” Edgerton, Marsden, and Nachbar, In the Eye of the Beholder, 67–84.

Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life . Vol. 1. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 .

Collins, Jim . “Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity.” Film Theory Goes to the Movies . Ed. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins. New York: Routledge, 1993 . 242–263.

Edgerton, Gary R., Michael T. Marsden, and Jack Nachbar, eds. In the Eye of the Beholder: Critical Perspectives in Popular Film and Television . Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997 .

Eskelinen, Markku. “Towards Computer Game Studies.” Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, First Person, 36–38.

Feuer, Jane. “Genre Study and Television.” Channels of Discourse, Revisited . Ed. Robert C. Allen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992 . 138–159.

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences . New York: Vintage, 1973 .

Gaudreault, André. “Film, Narrative, Narration: The Cinema of the Lumière Brothers,” Early Film: Space-Frame-Narrative . Ed. Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker. London: British Film Institute, 1990 .

Grant, Barry Keith, ed. Film Genre Reader III . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003 .

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan, First Person, 118–130.

Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. Women in Film Noir . 3rd ed. London: British Film Institute, 1999 .

Kawin, Bruce F. “Children of the Light.” Grant, Film Genre Reader III, 324–345.

Kittler, Friedrich A. Discourse Networks 1800/1900 . Trans. Michael Metteer with Chris Cullens. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990 .

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Murray, Susan . “‘I Think We Need a New Name for It’: The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV.” Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture . Ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette. New York: New York University Press, 2004 . 40–56.

Musser, Charles. “The Travel Genre in 1903–1904: Moving Toward Fictional Narrative.” Early Cinema: Space-Frame-Narrative . Ed. Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker. London: British Film Institute, 1990 . 123–132.

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———. Genre and Hollywood . London: Routledge, 2000 .

Ouellette, Laurie, and Carolyn Anderson. “Reading the Talk Show: The Politics of Talk Soup .” Edgerton, Marsden, and Nachbar, In the Eye of the Beholder , 149–165.

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The Feel-Good Film: A Case Study in Contemporary Genre Classification

2015, Quarterly Review of Film and Video

“Feel-good film” has become one of the most widespread typologies in popular discourses on cinema in recent years, but academic film studies has shown very little interest in the format, whether as a mode of classification or arouser of powerful feelings of emotional uplift among mass audiences. This essay is an exploration of historical usage of the “feel-good film” classification. Its aim is not to provide a rigorous definition of the feel-good film, nor to relate a history of the format itself; it is an exploration of the processes of film labeling, with a broader agenda of showing that conventional genre labels – of the kind that have attained broad scholarly acceptance – have been superseded, in many cases, by labels used popularly, the prevalence of which have not yet been fully appreciated by scholars. Opening with a short section exploring some of the problems and inconsistencies of film genre theory, the essay moves on to an exploration of the socio-political origins of the “feel-good” label in North America during the 1970s. It then traces critical usage (in newspapers and magazines, trade papers and other sources) of the feel-good film label from the late-1970s to the present, before considering its usage in Hollywood promotional discourses (such as trailers and movie posters).

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Home » Filmmaking » A Guide to the Basic Film Genres (and How to Use Them)

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A Guide to the Basic Film Genres (and How to Use Them)

Let’s look at genre theory, what it entails, and how to utilize genres with a bit more practicality and creativity in your own projects.

One of the few rare things that one can actually learn in film school is the simple trick of taking a step back to view something you already know—through a new, academic lens. As filmmakers and film fans, we already know about film genres. It wasn’t until one of the first film theory classes I took that I actually learned how to view, deconstruct, and understand something as seemingly innate as genre.

Understanding “genre theory” is both very simple and very complex. In general, we all know the basics. The Hobbit is a fantasy book. Star Trek is a sci-fi television show. When Harry Met Sally is a rom-com. So, what do all those genre names actually mean? And, what exactly are the writers, filmmakers, and storytellers really doing to work within and against these modes?

Here’s a brief introduction into how filmmakers can understand and use “genre theory.”

• What Are Film Genres?

Taking the word at its definition, genre is the “term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria.”

The term dates back to ancient Greek literature. But, for writers, artists, and filmmakers, it’s usually the simplest, most practical way to categorize different styles of stories and content. We see genres while scrolling through Netflix, giving us a rough idea of what the stories are like.

It’s important to understand, though, that what we consider film genres today are, more often than not, hardly pure film genres, as they were in the early days of film. The majority of content produced in the last several decades often includes genre hybrids, using the rules of genre theory to produce new, unique, and different stories.

• The Basic Film Genres

In the early days of cinema, genres were much more uniform and defined. Just as they were in literature and other forms of art and entertainment, people would go to the theater to watch a war film, a musical , or a comedy . The basic genres were well defined and included some of the following:

From there, you could dive a bit deeper. Sub-genres gave names and classifications to certain types of films within each genre. The “thriller” genre, for example, had the following sub-genres:

• Crime thriller
• Disaster thriller
• Psychological thriller
• Techno thriller

However, before we go over how to mix and match film genres, let’s go over some of the biggest and most notable.

• The Action Film Genre

One of the earliest film genres, the action genre, has close ties to classic strife and struggle narratives that you find across all manner of art and literature. With some of the earliest examples dating back to everything from historical war epics to some basic portrayals of dastardly train robberies, action films have been popular with cinema audiences since the very beginning.

It’s also one of our best examples of the evolution of our cinematic hero’s journey and the classic hero vs. villain narratives, which you’ll find across all genres.

Some of the main sub-genres include the following:

• War and military action
• Spy and espionage action
• Martial arts action
• Western shoot ‘em up action
• Action hybrid genres

You can read more about the evolution of the action genre, its many sub-genres and examples, and some tips for creating modern action films in our full action genre breakdown .

• The Comedy Film Genre

A favorite genre of film audiences young and old since the very beginning of cinema, the comedy genre has been a fun-loving, sophisticated, and innovative genre that’s delighted viewers. Some of the biggest names in the history of filmmaking include comedy genre pioneers—like Buster Keaton ,  Charlie Chaplin , and Lucille Ball —who made successful careers out of finding new and unique ways to make audiences laugh.

The comedy genre has also been one of the most flexible, as its roots have made their way into the very fabric of cinema and its many other genres. The art of warming a heart and bringing a smile to a viewer’s face will never get old, nor should we consider it anything but truly powerful.

• Slapstick comedy
• Screwball comedy
• Parody comedy
• Black comedy

You can explore the comedy genre in-depth in our full comedy genre breakdown .

• The Horror Film Genre

While the horror genre is sometimes considered a younger film genre, elements of horror have long been a bedrock of classic cinema, dating back to some of the earliest—and eeriest—days of filmmaking.

Examples like 1898’s Shinin No Sosei   ( Resurrection of a Corpse ) come to mind, as well as several early horror iterations across the globe that captured the imagination of an audience hungry for creepy, occult fun. Taking cues from classic horror literature, big name horror franchises (of sorts) like Dracula and Frankenstein have existed within cinema for decades.

However, it’s in the rise of newer horror genres featuring zombies, slashers, found footage, and haunted dolls that horror has really found its hold, from the 1970s into modern times.

Some of the main sub-genres include:

• Zombie horror
• Folk horror
• Body Horror
• Found footage Horror

If you’d like to explore a great deal more about the origins and modern portrayals of the horror film genre, check out our full horror genre breakdown .

• The Sci-Fi Film Genre

Science fiction is one of the most innovative of the cinematic super-genres . As far back as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment period, the development of what we call science today began influencing art and culture. It took it a while to fully integrate, and by the time the cinematic arts rolled around, audiences everywhere were ready to add “science fiction” to the types of genres they wanted to see.

Science fiction films are ostensibly about the future, when we’ve developed the technology to travel between stars, travel back in time, or pull off other technological marvels.

Of course, though, that notion is just an affectation. Science fiction stories take the social, cultural, political, and technological issues that we’re facing today and project them into a fictional future, where we can get a good look at them. Fear, awe, excitement, and hope are all hallmarks of the science fiction genre, which does a great job of showing its audiences what they aren’t noticing about their lives right now .

There are many sub-genres of science fiction, including the following:

• Science fantasy
• Space Opera

For a full write-up on the history and development of science fiction films (and how to make one of your own), see our filmmaker’s guide to science fiction .

• The Western Film Genre

The Western is rich film tradition that has its roots in the American fascination with its Western frontier. These stories have their roots in the period of American expansionism, when fantasies of the “untamed” West thrilled Americans living in ever-expanding cities along the eastern seaboard. Tales of grit, honor, bravery, and “justice” turned this misunderstood territory (already fully inhabited by Native Americans) into a myth of manifest destiny and the idea that Americans should conquer it simply because it’s there .

Full of melodramatic conflicts, simplistic systems of morality, and the idea of taming the wild, the Western introduced film fans to a new type of experience—the terrain itself was a type of character. It could challenge the heroes, boggle the mind, conceal hidden dangers, and otherwise present itself as a force to be reckoned with.

Not surprisingly, the Western film had to evolve in order to keep up with developing ideas about social equity, brutality against native peoples, and the disappearance of “untamed” territory, so there are a number of Western sub-genres, including the following:

• Spaghetti Westerns
• Space Westerns
• Singing cowboy Westerns
• Comedy Westerns
• Neo-westerns
• Acid Westerns
• Meat Pie Westerns
• Charro Westerns
• Dacoit Westerns
• Documentary Westerns

For a full exploration of the history and development of the Western—and what you need to know to make your own—see our field guide to the Western .

• The Romance Film Genre

Ah, what would the great cinema tradition be if it weren’t for the countless stories of love and courtship. Since the advent of the movie theater experience, cinema has long been a favored pastime for couples looking to escape into a world of romance.

Similar to the action and comedy genres, the romance genre has become a central force in pretty much every other film genre under the sun. (Try to think of the last mainstream blockbuster you went to that didn’t have a love story at its core.) Still, even as early cinema was filled with classic romance examples and many hybridizations like the “rom-com,” the genre has certainly shifted over the years. Nonetheless, it remains a hugely significant genre for filmmakers and film fans alike.

• Historical Romance
• Romantic Drama
• Romantic Comedy
• Chick Flick
• Paranormal Romance

For more information into how the romance film genre has shaped the history of cinema, check out our full romance genre breakdown .

• The Thriller Film Genre

Once a stylized niche genre, the thriller film has gone so mainstream that it might be time to change the genre’s name to Summer Blockbuster Event.

The thriller’s rise coincides with the rise of the spy and detective pulp novels of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s been one of the best cinematic vehicles for exploring the sometimes upsetting and underrepresented truths about our governments and society at large. Owing some of its biggest successes to famous filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock , and including some of our favorite characters like James Bond, the thriller has become a popular and important part of the cinema tradition.

• Conspiracy Thriller
• Crime Thriller
• Legal Thriller
• Spy Thriller
• Supernatural Thriller

If you’d like to look deeper into the thriller genre, its development, and the many ways you can subvert its sub-genres for your own projects, read our full thriller genre breakdown .

• The Fantasy Film Genre

There are a number of ways to define the fantasy film genre, but perhaps the simplest is the inclusion of magic. In a fantasy film, there is usually a system for performing superhuman feats, be it by casting spells, using magic items, or some other means.

Fantasy has been a part of cinematic history since its earliest days, beginning in 1896 with Alice Guy ‘s “ The Cabbage Fairy .” Fantasy stories themselves go back even further than that— The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of humanity’s oldest fantasy stories, dating back roughly 4,000 years.

There are several different sub-genres we can use to classify fantasy films:

• High fantasy
• Urban fantasy
• Sword and sorcery
• Dark fantasy
• Magical realism
• Portal fantasy
• Superhero fantasy

For a more detailed look at these sub-genres, check out our guide on all things fantasy .

• The Apocalypse Film Genre

The apocalypse film is another popular genre. On the surface, these movies are simply about the end of the world. Typically, there’s a natural disaster (or several), a looming astronomical threat, a rampaging monster, or a nuclear holocaust taking center stage. Surviving the deluge of special effects is the name of the game, and the budgets for these blockbusters are usually huge.

However, there’s more nuance to this seemingly destructive genre than you might think. The apocalypse is usually a metaphor of some kind. It divides families, it rolls back social progress, it reveals the fragility of human life—there are any number of things the apocalypse can be doing that we usually attribute to something else, like broken marriages, politics, or famine.

The most popular apocalypse films use this metaphor to their advantage, and we get to watch the protagonists overcome not only the pending global threat, but the threats to their home, family, and personal lives that they had been ignoring.

There are several sub-genres of the apocalypse film:

• Monster apocalypse
• Zombie apocalypse
• Invasion apocalypse
• Natural disaster
• Nuclear apocalypse

For more on this oft-misunderstood genre (and its sub-genres), check out “ The Filmmaker’s Guide to the Apocalypse .”

• The Martial Arts Film Genre

When you think of the martial arts film genre, you think of fights, and these films have left an indelible mark on the cinema. Many genres today rely on heavily choreographed fight scenes developed over months. We can thank the martial arts film, and Bruce’s Lee’s innovation of hiring actual martial artists, for these crowd-favorite fight scenes.

While it’s easy to think the martial arts film as simply about fighting, that would be an oversimplification. The martial arts film folds combat into its narratives, and it uses this conflict to tell stories that we don’t otherwise see in our favorite film genres. Every martial arts fight implies years of training, dedication, and work that the characters went through to prepare for exactly this moment . There is an intersection of lives and traditions that unfolds in a matter of seconds.

The martial arts film genre includes several sub-genres:

• The Kung Fu film
• The Wuxia film
• Karate films
• Action -comedy

For more on these different traditions and how they have shaped the martial arts film genre, check out “ The Life and Times of the Kung Fu Film .”

• The Sports Film Genre

If the martial arts film genre captures our fascination with combat, then the sports film captures our fascination with competition. We love a good underdog story, and the best sports films take us on a journey that charts a winner’s unlikely beginnings through the tremendous challenges they must overcome to become the best. Viewers will watch competitions of all kinds, from championship football matches to hot dog eating contests to how long people can stand and maintain contact with an automobile .

The stories in sports movies are often familiar—a champion prevails. But we like watching them over and over because they offer a thrill that we can’t find in any other genre.

Here are just a few of the sub-genres of sports films we all know and love—be sure to read our write-up on each one:

• Boxing films
• Hockey films
• Football films
• Baseball films
• Basketball films
• How to Use Film Genres

As the art of film evolved, more and more genres developed as filmmakers moved towards finding new and creative ways to subvert and combine them. Concepts like the “rom-com” appeared, combining the traditional genre elements of romance films and comedy films. Newer, more niche genres like the “road movie” and “disaster film” popped up alongside hybrid genres like “buddy cop” and “sci-fi western.”

By examining and mashing up genre theory, filmmakers have unlocked and combined different elements from disparate genres to create legendary results—like George Lucas ’s Star Wars , which combines science fiction, samurai, western, and war genres, to name a few. Some take it further—Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction glides between genres chapter by chapter.

Genre theory is still very much a part of how we view and create films. However, genres are also in the process of being completely radicalized. It’s up to you to not just consume, but also strive to understand what other movies are doing. Then, apply your own research and inclinations toward the genres you choose to work with in your projects.

For more genre theory and filmmaking tips and tricks, check out these articles:

• 7 Filmmaking Insights from Modern Film and Television
• Filmmaking Challenge: How to Create Foley for Stock Footage
• How “The Mandalorian” Got Feature Film Effects on a TV Budget
• The 2010s: The Biggest Filmmaking Moments of the Decade
• Roundup: Genre Filmmaking Tips and Tricks from the Filmmakers of Fantastic Fest

Cover image via Twentieth Century Fox .

Table of Contents

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The Experience of Cinema

Do genres in the cinema really exist and if so, can they be defined?

“Genres isn’t a word that pops up in every conversation about films or every review – but the idea is second nature to the movies and our awareness of them. Movies belong to genres much the way people belong to families or ethnic groups. Name one of the classic, bedrock genres – Western, comedy, musical, war film, gangster picture, science fiction, horror – and even the most casual moviegoer will come up with a mental image of it, partly visual, partly conceptual” (Richard T. Jameson, They Went Thataway , 1994, p. IX).

“The master image for genre criticism is the triangle composed of artist/film/audience. Genres may be defined as patterns/form/styles/structures which transcend individual films, and which supervise both their construction by the filmmaker, and their reading by an audience” (Tom Ryall, quoted by Stephen Neale, Genre , 1980, p. 7).

“…genre can be defined as a structural pattern which embodies a universal life pattern or myth in the materials of language… Genre is universal, basic to human perceptions of life” (John Cawelti, The Six-gun Mystique , 1975, p. 30).

As Barry Keith Grant writes in the introduction of his genre reader, “the work of defining film genres is surprisingly difficult and complex’” [1] because “…recognition of the importance of genre in the cinema is a relatively recent development….although chronologically it narrowly predates the early work of auteur criticism.” [2] Grant takes notice that until the late 1940s and early 1950s – when Robert Warshow and genre pioneer André Bazin wrote the first significant essays on film genre (about gangster movies and about the Western) – films were only distinguished by a phrase (for example, ‘a war movie’) “used as a convenient label to give one an idea of what the story was like, what to expect generally from a film.” [3] As before in literature, in painting and in other forms of art, “genre became a critical term, providing another conceptual framework for understanding movies.” [4] A genre classification can also double as a precise commercial study because it evokes certain audience expectations and therefore it allows one to establish classifications, comparisons, balance-sheets, valuations for the future and so on. Although it has been helpful for cinema studies, classifying films in accordance with their genre remains a difficult and risky endeavor because genre ‘impurity’ is by now, some twenty years after the solidification of genre study, a constant characteristic and a usual practice of the cinema as art and as industry.

In his anthology, Rick Altman observes that film classification by genre is the logical continuation of genre classification in literature: in this way, to divide an art into various categories is also to simplify a taunting subject matter by fixing points and giving some useful co-ordinates to the audience. [5]

Edward Buscombe also begins his essay, “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema,” by going back to literary genre theory: after having formulated three basic questions (the first invoked in my essay title), he wrote that “It seems sensible to start with a brief review of the history of genre criticism in literature, since it is in this context that certain problems [that is, questions about genres] first arise.” [6] Aristotle again is borrowed as the model who, for the first time in his Poetics , developed the notion that there are different kinds of literature. Summarising his essay, we can understand that for Buscombe a proper classification of films by genre does not yet exist, although the ones that we have remain useful. Analysing in detail the case of the Western, Barry K. Grant cites Buscombe, “Edward Buscombe next offers a partial solution to Tudor’s dilemma by theorizing a distinction, adapted from literary criticism, between a film’s “outer forms” (iconography) and “inner forms” (themes) and by discussing their relationship.” [7] Buscombe lists some examples of outer forms (starting from outdoors and indoors) and formal elements which distinguish the Western: for example, deserts, mountains, saloons, jails, ranch-houses and then clothes, tight jeans, black gloves, black hats, guns, colts and rifles, horses and so on. Then, Buscombe compares them with the inner form, that is to say the deep meaning of a film (the theme), or what the director may have wanted to express: and Buscombe observes that the inner form of a Western is, like the inner form of all films, the human element, the people. He writes “ Winchester 73 (Anthony Mann, 1950) is not about the gun, which is a mere connecting device to hold the story together. The film, like all films, is about people.” [8]

But returning to Buscombe’s distinction, one can say with some certainty that there are outer forms to distinguish one genre from another one; in fact, if we follow his theory – that all films are about people– then all films should be the same. So, in these terms, what is the difference, for example, between John Ford’s My Darling Clementine , Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai or George Lucas’ Star Wars? Evidently, we could track down the differences in the sets, costumes, props, dialogues, characters and so on. Otherwise, it is obvious that the scheme of these films is the scheme of a typical Western; but, at this point, is Homer’s Odyssey a Western as well? Probably yes, but probably no: it is epic narrative and there is surely truth in the idea that the Western is a variation (in terms of times, landscapes, characters) of the epic narrative (and not its contrary). As a matter of fact, Sergio Leone, the unquestioned maestro of Italian spaghetti-western (a genre within a genre), said that the greatest screenwriter of all time was Homer. Situations evolve, or are up-dated, but stereotypes –or, better yet, archetypes– always remain the same: the lonely and sometimes unknown hero, the gang of villains, the poor people, the attractive girl, bloody revenge, good versus evil, the final showdown, etc.

Obviously, as we can perceive by intuition, genre classification is a human convention to simplify and clarify the artistic production and the subsequent study of it. And so far as all conventions are created by human beings, it has its good qualities but its limits as well; for example since genre is often a guide to help an audience make a right choice, it can tend to over-simplify the substance of a film. For example, what is Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums? A comedy? Yes, indeed, the structure, characters and the director’s vision are those of a comedy, but the film is not only cheerful, weird and funny, it is also tragic, intelligently poignant, melancholic, adventurous, dramatic, moving and something else. In this sense it is comforting for a possible viewer to know that one film is, after all, a comedy; but, on the contrary, if this viewer desires and expects a comedy, will he/she be satisfied with The Royal Tenenbaums , a most unconventional and atypical comedy? So one can say that genres exist in the cinema, and they can be useful for commercial purposes, but an intelligent cinéphile (and a standard spectator as well) should not be too influenced in their choice and in their judgement about a film’s genre properties.

At the end of his essay, Buscombe talks about the Western but leaves open the question about other film genres: “And if the Western originates in history and is a response to it, what about the musical? Or the horror film? Can we possibly evolve a theory to fit them all?” [9] And to add to his dilemma: what about film noir?

This latter question is still more complex because, as Raymond Durgnat pointed out and then as Paul Schrader hit back in his splendid and lucid essay “Notes on Film Noir” (included in Grant’s anthology Film Genre Reader ),

Film noir is not a genre….It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film “noir”, as opposed to the possible variant of film “grey” or film “off-white.” Film noir is also a specific period of film history, like German expressionism or the French New Wave. In general, film noir refers to those Hollywood films of the forties and early fifties that portrayed the world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption.

Film noir is an extremely unwieldy period. It harks back to many previous periods: Warner’s thirties gangster films, the French “poetic realism” of Carné and Duvivier, Sternbergian melodrama, and ultimately German Expressionist crime films (Lang’s Mabuse cycle). Film noir can stretch at its outer limits from The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) to Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958), and most every dramatic Hollywood film from 1941 to 1953 contains some noir elements. There are also foreign off-shots of film noir, such as The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949), Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959) and Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1963).” [10]

Continuing his personal, very interesting inquiry, Schrader maintains that, “A film of urban nightlife is not necessarily a film noir, and a film noir need not necessarily concern crime and corruption. Since film noir is defined by tone rather than genre, it is almost impossible to argue one critic’s descriptive definition against another’s. How many noir elements does it take to make a film noir? Rather than haggle about definitions, I would rather attempt to reduce film noir to its primary colors (all shades of black), those cultural and stylistic elements to which any definition must return.” [11]

Evidently, Paul Schrader knows the film noir universe very well if we consider that he is instrumental (as screenplayer and director himself) in the rebirth of the noir style, obviously updated and revisited with a modern and metropolitan shading. If we think of films such as Taxi Driver , Hardcore , American Gigolo , Light Sleeper or Affliction , we can say, without too many qualms, that they are modern versions of typical film noir themes and styles, a kind of paraphrase: in fact, I would add that they draw their inspiration from Myth and the Epic form. Rather than accepting the conventional trait of the term ‘genre’ in relation to cinema Schrader suggests it may be more useful, as Buscombe did, to distinguish films by style and theme rather than genre. But since with film noir it is often the conventions that become popular, we tend to easily accept film genre classification.

In any matter, classification is also useful as a mirror of the society in which certain products were realised. For example, Paul Schrader begins his seminal essay on noir with this statement: “In 1946 French critics, seeing the American films they had missed during the war, noticed the new mood of cynicism, pessimism and darkness that had crept into the American cinema” (p. 169). Noir reflected the worrying and unstable World War II period: the loss of certainties, a climate of paranoia and claustrophobia, apprehension over the future, social agitations, post-War economic conditions, etc., but also of a certain hope that came with the growing independence women gained, the thrust towards progress, the passion for the past and present, etc.

However, critics often consider film noir as a genre because it is divided into such a great variety of important sub-genres which we would otherwise ignore: psychological noirs, fantasy noirs, gangster noirs, noirs with private eye, noirs with a dangerous and mortal ménage a trois , Black Widow noirs, detective noirs, the hard-boiled tradition, the pulp fiction tradition and so on. In this way, as Schrader suggests (pp. 175-177), we can only outline “a reservoir of film techniques…themes and casual elements.”

As Rick Altman demonstrates in his long essay, [13] the term ‘noir’ is a French term used for the first time in a series of articles written in 1946 by Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier, which borrowed the term from “the narratives of Gallimard’s proprietary ‘Série noire,’ a cycle of particularly bleak tales in the popular French roman policier (detective novel) genre.” In this way, those film that were simply called, at the beginning, ‘murder melodrama’ became, thanks to the French expression roman noir , film noir, where the term ‘noir’ was used, at first, “simply as a descriptive adjective defining film with a gloomy atmosphere.”

Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity , one of the greatest examples of film noir, was just a simple murder melodrama: but if we concur with Schrader’s classification, we immediately notice its noir elements (the charming dark lady, with a seductive little bracelet on her ankle; the man in the street who loses his mind over her and who tells us in voice over about the affair; the third man, that is her natural husband; the inevitable destiny; the spreading pessimism toward human beings and relationships; a modern, symbolic value given to money; an eternal chiaroscuro which pervades objects, sets and characters; a strong sense of death and moral and physical corruption. But we must consider that Double Indemnity is, after all, almost sixty years old; what about a recent example of film noir, where ‘contamination’ between genres is surely stronger and more definite? What about, for example, the Wachowski brothers’ Bound? Bound is a perfect example of genre contamination: indeed, the Wachowski brothers take a common 1940s noir plot and bring it up-to-date in terms of style and theme. If the moral is always the same (money makes the world go round), its presentation is completely different: in Bound there are two ‘dark’ lesbians who, at the end, survive and escape with the loot.

But it is also the graphic elements that amaze in Bound : the directors arrange voluptuous camera movements, fetishistic close-ups, acrobatic long-takes and an obsessive research for a choreographic mise-en-scene and art direction. Evidently, they also draw inspiration from David Lynch’s absurd touch and from Dario Argento’s voyeuristic visual talent (for example, the scene in which the camera rapidly follows the phone’s wire, bends included). If one also factors in the black humour and the intelligent irony which pervade the film, then what, exactly, is Bound? Simply a noir? Or is it a thriller, a parody, a detective movie or a black comedy as well? If we analyse the unnatural and hyper-realistic scene of the Mafia boss’ death, what should we deduce? But Bound , however exaggerated, affective, self-aware and self-gratified, is also ingenious and brilliant because, fundamentally, it re-invents the basic structure – or dare I say grammar – of a typical film noir. The Wachowski brothers don’t look for an exact reconstruction of the noir imaginary and universe as, for example, the Coen brothers have in some of their movies ( Blood Simple , The Man Who Wasn’t There ); instead they operate a redefinition of the genre, establishing its code, its rules and its peculiarities. We can now hazard a tentative response to the initial question proposed by Buscombe: genres do not really exist in the cinema, but it is useful and necessary —for critics and audiences— that they do. But if we accept their existence, we should not define them with utter precision. Which in the end is welcome because a rigidly radical classification, one which could theoretically or practically (industry and audience pressure) influence a director’s thought process, would condemn the cinema (or whatever form of art) to a mortal sterility. And we would cease to have such noir-like films as Bound , Affliction , Memento , ??Mulholland Drive??…

1 Barry K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre: Theory and Criticism , The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen, N.J. & London, 1977, page 1.

5 Rick Altman writes: ‘In many ways, the study of film genre is no more than an extension of literary genre study… Clearly, much that is said about film genre is simply borrowed from a long tradition (from Aristotle to Roland Barthes) of literary genre criticism’ ( Film/Genre , BFI Publishing, London, 1999, p. 13).

6 Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of a Genre in American Cinema,” Barry Keith Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986), pp. 11.

7 Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986, p. XIV .

8 Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema,” Barry Keith Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986), pp. 15.

9 Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema,” Barry Keith Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986), pp. 24.

10 Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir” Barry Keith Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986), pp. 169-170.

11 Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir” Barry Keith Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986), p. 170.

12 Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir” Barry Keith Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986), pp. 175-177.

13 Rick Altman, Film/Genre , BFI Publishing, London, 1999, pp. 60-61.

Bibliography

Rick Altman, Film/Genre , BFI Publishing, London, 1999.

Barry K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre , The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen, N.J. & London, 1977.

Barry K. Grant, Film Genre Reader , University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986

Cawelti, John. The Six-gun Mystique . Bowling Green Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975.

Jameson, Richard T. ed. They Went Thataway . ed.. San Francisco : Mercury House, c1994.

Kaplan, E.A. Looking for the Other , Routledge, New York & London, 1987

Kaplan, E.A. (ed.), Women in Film Noir , BFI Publishing, London, 1978

Morando Morandini, Dizionario dei film 1999, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1998

Neale, Stephen. Genre , BFI , 1980.

Roberto Donati (from Arezzo, Italy) graduated in Modern Literature and Film Studies from the University of Siena in Italy, and also studied in the UK (The University of Warwick). Donati’s first publication was a book on the theme of nostalgia in the films of Sergio Leone ( Sergio Leone. America e nostalgia , Falsopiano 2005), and he is in the process of writing his second book (on Douglas Sirk). As a professional journalist, he has written for publishing houses, newspapers, journals, and magazines on culture, film and literary topics. Donati has worked in the film industry in Los Angeles and is developing screenplays and documentary projects for television and cinema. As Demon #2, he greatly enjoyed slaughtering Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni in Dario Argento’s The Third Mother . He is a freaky blogger .

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