The Meaning of Genre

a. Primary Genre and Secondary Genre Scheme

Primary Genre Action Drama History Epic Fantasy Science-Fiction Horror Comedy Crime Musical Adventure War Western Secondary Genre Disaster Biography Detective Noir Film Melodrama Sport Vacation Roman Superhero Supernatural Spionase Thriller Primary genre is main genres that existed and popular since the developing of cinema in 1900-1930. 17 Every film at least contains one genre element of primary genre but literally a film is a combination of some genres. Not every primary genre is successful and popular from era to era. Genres like action, drama, comedy, horror, fantasy and science-fiction still popular until today. But genres like musical, history epic and western are more popular and successful in old time. Different with primary 17 Ibid., genre, secondary genre is always changing due to the development of primary genre. 18 Like primary genre, secondary genre has characteristics and are still known until now. Genres like detective, Noir, vacation are famous in old time. Meanwhile, genres such as thriller, disaster, spionase and superhero are still heroic in last two decades. D. Conventions of Genre Genre study in film is a study that conducting retoric research of texts or a series texts. The kind of hypothesis are based on how far the texts can or can not follow genre conventions. Those conventions maybe semiotic, narrative, or representational. The textual genre study at genre conventions through 6 category; setting, location, iconography, narrative events, characters, and plot structure. 19 While every film within any particular genre will incorporate sense of these elements, few genre films attempt to include every possible genre convention. 1. Setting The perfect setting is authentic setting. Setting has to convince audience that the film seems real and happen on location and time as film story context. In film production, planning and designing of setting is art director‘s job. A filmmaker either can use authentic setting as same as with the filmstory or can use artificial setting. Like in Titanic, the director, James Cameron reconstructed some interior and exterior 18 Ibid,. p. 21 19 Stokes. Op. Cit., p. 85