Introduction to Genre

Over that past few lessons of media studies, I have learned the importance and impact of genre. We have so far learnt the impact of genre on the audience within media and how different genres have different effects on the audience. For example; A "horror" movie will contain a lot of tension to keep the audience on edge not knowing whats going to happen next. Each genre has a different effect/impact on the audience. This creates audience preference (audience watching a certain film based on the impact of the film on the audience).

The audience play a massive role in the success of each genre. Due to statistics, the most popular film genre in North America by box office revenue, with a ticket sale of 39.35 billion USD from 1995 to 2015 is comedy. This is because the movie genre "comedy" creates a humorous and light-hearted impact on the audience and makes the audience come away with a very positive feeling because of the humour they have experienced. 

We have also learnt in the past couple of lessons that certain types of movie genres have a certain "syntax" or similar-recognizeable "patterns" or "themes" within them. For example; most crime and gangster films contain the "rise and fall" pattern. The "rise and fall" is a plot pattern in which you see the criminals rise to the top, the highlights and good experiences. You then see the sudden drop where the criminal looses everything and is on the verge of losing his life. By comparing these experiences together, the audience begins to unravel the mistakes and pot holes in the criminals actions. The effect of the "rise and fall" in the genre is to create tension and empathy. This usually answers all the questions of what happened (non-fiction). In conclusion, the "rise" escalates the audience and takes them towards the "climax" of the film and the "fall" is where everything come out of place in the plot and decreases the climax from the "rise" and keeps the audience on edge on what is going to happen next...

I have also researched and learnt about sub-genres. A sub-genre is a further division of the classification of movies within a genre. Sub-genres divide a genre into a group with similar patterns and characteristics. For example; A detective and mystery movie is a sub-genre of the crime and gangster genre . However, not all movies fall into a sub-genres. Some films break down the codes and conventions of fitting into one genre and combine to create their own genre. For example: rom/com is now its own genre as the codes and conventions of a romance movie and a comedy movie have been broken down and merged into one.