ONLINE MATERIAL ON FILM GENRE

note that these are in order of difficulty in terms of ideas


The Outlaw, What is Genre and How is it Used in Film
a simple account of film genre on a useful UGC site, Associated Content


Tim Dirks, Film Genres
Simple analyses of main genres


Karina Wilson, Horror Film History
A decade by decade guide to the development of the horror film genre.


James MacDowell, Safety, Danger, Dreams and Genre-worlds
Excellent article on very interesting UK film site, Alternate Takes, “providing film criticism that is in-depth, considered, challenging, yet accessible.” Article links genre with “safety” (in a known “genre-world”) – and the importance of a challenging of this safety (eg by genre mixing)


Alan Beck, Genre (academic)
Good discussion of academic theories of genre on site devoted in fact to radio drama (shows how powerful these film studies theories are)


Daniel Chandler, An Introduction to Genre Theory
Detailed, but good on how wobbly & fuzzy definitions of genre are


Knight, Deborah (1994): 'Making sense of genre'
“As Frank Kermode remarks, generic fictions encourage underreading. They are fictions of easy access, not usually the sort to make many demands on the reader’s or viewer’s breadth of cultural knowledge. However, generic fictions do make demands on the reader’s or viewer’s knowledge of other generic fictions, and the sorts of story patterns that are to be associated with the particular generic category of the text in question.” Difficult, but rewarding account of genres in general, using literary examples


Stuart Fischoff, Joe Antonio & Diane Lewis , 'Favourite Films and Film Genres As A Function of Race, Age, and Gender'
Analysing genre consumption in detailed demographic terms


Stephen Rowley, Generic Conventions and Genre Evolution
“Altman suggests a basic model of genre creation using these terms. He argues that genres start out with a set of semantic elements, and only achieve true genre status when they complete a process of evolving an accompanying syntax. Altman is intelligent enough to point out the limited scope of this interpretation. After all, the syntactic and semantic elements both continue to shift after this process is completed. Nevertheless, the idea makes sense” + hybrid genres. Difficult but rewarding