Given their prototypical nature, genre films and television programs are ideologically traditional — they reflect values constituting status quo, dominant institutional forces. This suggests the need for another approach in conducting genre analysis: analyzing the ways in which genres not only reflect ideological values, but also how they serve to position audiences in ways that are associated with the interests and agendas of dominant institutional forces creating genre texts. This entails analyzing, as Henry Giroux (1996) argues, “how privileged, dominant readings of such texts construct their power-sensitive meanings to generate particular subject positions that define for children specific notions of agency and its possibilities in society” (p. 100).

For example, using the problem/solution structure (see above), analysis of the law-and-order urban police detective can demonstrate that audiences are often positioned to believe that crime is best solved by violent control as a deterrent, as opposed to alternative approaches — reducing poverty, providing jobs, instituting drug prevention programs, or enhancing education. Moreover, such shows often invite audiences to position people of color as the “urban criminal” who needs to be controlled. Such readings should not entail political or pedagogical indoctrination, but should invite students to examine multiple, alternative interpretations that may or may not coincide with the institutionally desired subject positions.

Specific genres construct desired stances for certain targeted audiences. The so-called “family film” removes much of the violence and sexual content so that children and parents can view the film together. The “teen” film — romantic comedies, slasher horror, or coming-of-age films, as well as television drama series such as Dawson’s Creek — is designed to appeal to a potentially large adolescent audience. And various television shows position themselves to appeal to particular audiences with particular interests in fishing, home repair, travel, cooking, sports, music, art, religion, technology, etc., and construct their programs around audience’s familiarity with the conventions and discourses associated with examining and sharing information about that topic. For example, the evangelical television show mimics a church-like setting, often with a choir, a “minister,” and various guests who share testimonials about religious conversions.

In responding to the desired institutional stances, audiences evoke their own counter-stances. While females in soap opera fan clubs may organize themselves around a belief in the value of romantic attachment to males as being the most important value in life, they may also challenge the traditional norms of genres by creating their own alternative versions, reflecting their counter-values (see also module on media ethnography). As Henry Jenkins argues, audiences now operate in a new digitally-mediated participatory culture in which members of fan clubs and active Internet users with ready access to media texts can collect, archive, alter, and share media texts with others as part of their subcultural participation and identity as active audiences. For example, members of Star Trek fan clubs create their own versions of Star Trek programs in the form of edited videos or fanzine stories (Jenkins, 1992). These edited videos or fanzines might, for example, introduce homoerotic themes into the stories, such as Spock and Kirk engaging in a homosexual relationship. In constructing these virtual worlds, the Internet users and fan-club members are resisting or rejecting the discourses of bureaucratic management or traditional middle-class values to adopt alternative discourses of sexual desire and expression. Or, audiences may role-play performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which they mimic and parody culturally dominant discourses.

In a study of a group of communication studies graduate students who met weekly to watch television as a social event, John Fiske (1994) examined the group's responses to the situation comedy, Married... With Children, a Fox Network parody of family values with a focus on sexuality. These graduate students made intertextual references to a number of different groups’ competing discourses. One of these discourses was the network’s own discourse of merchandising. The program's advertisements for McDonald's or Nike were typically geared for an adolescent market whose members would enjoy watching a comedy about parents coping with adolescent problems. The students often purchased McDonald's hamburgers to eat during the viewing of the program, thereby commenting about or parodying these ads' discourse of merchandising. The students also made references to a "family values" discourse of religion employed by a conservative group whose objections to the “immoral” portrayal of sexuality on the program led them to launch a campaign to boycott companies who advertise on the program, creating a tension between a discourse of religion and a discourse of merchandising. Members of the group would note aspects of the program deemed to be potentially objectionable by this and other conservative organizations. The group also responded to the program's parody of discourses regarding romance and sex by referring to their own romantic and sexual relationships.

Students could also analyze how institutional forces use genres to create fantasy, idealized versions of how problems are solved, who solves the program, and the types of tools employed to solve the problem. For example, films about the Vietnam War — see The American War Library or vietnamwar.net — portray the “problem” either as a lack of military effort, determination, or patriotism in wanting to “win” the war (as in The Green Berets with John Wayne, a version of reality consistent with the western genres of “good” versus “evil” promoted by conservative, military institutional forces) or as a failure to understand the complexities of the Vietnam culture and civil war as in Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and The Deer Hunter. These alternative versions of the same “problem” reflect not only different ideological positions, but also different institutional agendas.

Module 7: Word document

Different Perspectives on Genre Study

Audience-based Approaches to Film/Television Genre Study

Critical/Ideological Analysis of Genres

The History and Evolution of Genres

Devising Genre-analysis Activities

Different Genre Types

Action/Adventure

The Western

Gangster/Crime

Detective/Film Noir

Comedy

Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Horror/Monster

Suspense Thriller/Spy/Heist

Soap Opera

The Talk Show

Sports

Game Shows/
Reality TV

Animation

Comics

Graphic Novels

Teaching Activity

References

Teaching activities on genre developed by students in CI5472, Spring, 2004