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__Genre readings extended.__

Vocabulary. Dominant ideology Fowler argues that 'genre makes possible the communication of content' (Fowler 1989: 215).

Sonia Livingstone argues that: 'if different genres result in different modes of text-reader interaction, these latter may result in different types of involvement...: critical or accepting, resisting or validating, casual or concentrated, apathetic or motivated' (Livingstone 1994: 253).

The idea of the Preferred Reading in cinema is the use of codes.

The conventions of cinema have been built through the [|hegemonic] [|ideologies] in society

for the audience to be trained to 'read' what they are watching. This is the appeal to a

passive audience, where after being tamed and trained, such productions no longer

critically engage the audience in critical thought or analysis. The audience passively

engages with what they see on a very surface level, as that is how they have been trained,

through the conventions of their society to consume.

Reading Against the Grain

2. Reading against the grain relies on a text-based approach to film criticism

that provides tools for interpreting ideological contradictions, conflicts between

multiple and competing discourses, and relations between spectators and the

popular films they watch. As such, a critical review of theories about reading

against the grain illustrates the strengths and the weaknesses, the objectives

and the impasses of feminist film criticism – both past and present. Certainly the assignment of a text to a genre influences how the text is read. Genre constrains the possible ways in which a text is interpreted, guiding readers of a text towards a preferred reading (which is normally in accordance with the dominant ideology) - though this is not to suggest that readers are prevented from 'reading against the grain' (Fiske 1987: 114, 117; Feuer 1992: 144; Buckingham 1993: 136).

. Genres offer an important way of framing texts which assists comprehension. Genre knowledge orientates competent readers of the genre towards appropriate attitudes, assumptions and expectations about a text which are useful in making sense of it.

Indeed, one way of defining genres is as 'a set of expectations' (Neale 1980: 51).

John Corner notes that 'genre is a principal factor in the directing of audience choice and of audience expectations... and in the organizing of the subsets of cultural competences and dispositions appropriate for watching, listening to and reading different kinds of thing' (Corner 1991: 276).

Recognition of a text as belonging to a particular genre can help, for instance, to enable judgements to be made about the 'reality status' of the text (most fundmentally whether it is fictional or non-fictional).

Assigning a text to a genre sets up initial expectations. Some of these may be challenged within individual texts (e.g. a detective film in which the murderer is revealed at the outset).

Competent readers of a genre are not generally confused when some of their initial expectations are not met - the framework of the genre can be seen as offering 'default' expectations which act as a starting point for interpretation rather than a straitjacket. However, challenging too many conventional expectations for the genre could threaten the integrity of the text.

Familiarity with a genre enables readers to generate feasible predictions about events in a narrative. Drawing on their knowledge of other texts within the same genre helps readers to sort salient from non-salient narrative information in an individual text

How to read genre 1. The Preferred Reading

3 The referential reading David Buckingham notes that:

As David Bordwell puts it, 'making referential sense of a film requires several acts of "framing" it: as a fiction, as a Hollywood movie, as a comedy, as a Steve Martin movie, as a "summer movie" and so on' (Bordwell 1989: 146)

The identification of a text as part of a genre (such as in a television listings magazine or a video rental shop's section titles) enables potential readers to decide whether it is likely to appeal to them. People seem to derive a variety of pleasures from reading texts within genres which are orientated towards entertainment. [|'Uses and gratifications'] research has identified many of these in relation to the mass media. Such potential pleasures vary according to genre, but they include the following.


 * One pleasure may simply be the recognition of the features of a particular genre because of our familiarity with it. Recognition of what is likely to be important (and what is not), derived from our knowledge of the genre, is necessary in order to follow a plot.
 * Genres may offer various emotional pleasures such as empathy and escapism - a feature which some theoretical commentaries seem to lose sight of. Aristotle, of course, acknowledged the special emotional responses which were linked to different genres. Deborah Knight notes that 'satisfaction is guaranteed with genre; the deferral of the inevitable provides the additional pleasure of prolonged anticipation' (Knight 1994).
 * 'Cognitive' satisfactions may be derived from problem-solving, testing hypotheses, making inferences (e.g. about the motivations and goals of characters) and making predictions about events. In relation to television, Nicholas Abercrombie suggests that 'part of the pleasure is knowing what the genre rules are, knowing that the programme has to solve problems in the genre framework, and wondering how it is going to do so' (Abercrombie 1996: 43). He adds that audiences derive pleasure from the way in which their expectations are finally realized (//ibid.//). There may be satisfactions both in finding our inferences and predictions to be correct and in being surprised when they are not (Knight 1994). The prediction of what will happen next is, of course, more central in some genres than others.
 * Steve Neale argues that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference' (Neale 1980: 48); there would be no pleasure without difference. René Wellek and Austin Warren comment that 'the totally familiar and repetitive pattern is boring; the totally novel form will be unintelligible - is indeed unthinkable' (Wellek & Warren 1963: 235). We may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated (Abercrombie 1996: 45). We may also enjoy the stretching of a genre in new directions and the consequent shifting of our expectations.
 * Making moral and emotional judgements on the actions of characters may also offer a particular pleasure (though Knight (1994) argues that 'generic fictions' themselves embody such judgements).
 * Other pleasures can be derived from sharing our experience of a genre with others within an 'interpretive community' which can be characterized by its familiarity with certain genres (see also Feuer 1992, 144).

ref> R. Chandler.http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre2.html Audience appeal
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 * [|Film Studies Genre Theory PowerPoint]

an essay on genre analysis

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