Cover Work

Unit 1: Introducing genre

. Genre is a critical tool, a concept that helps scholars to study films and filmaking, and audiences responses to film.
. Genres are not fixed
. We use genre to help us understand films and the processes of making them

Unit 2: Genre classification

. Genre is dynamic
. Genre is not a category with fixed criteria
. Repertoire of elements from which generic desciptions might be constucted. Iconography, style, setting, narrative, characters, themes.

Unit 3: Hollywood and genre

. Hollywood is a generic cinema, which is not quite the same as saying it is a cinema genres. Richard Maltby 1995
. In studying hollywood as a generic cinema it is useful to explore how genres develop over time.

Unit 4: Audience and genres
Pleasures of viewing: emotional. visceral, intellectual puzzles, counter culture attraction, counter reading of genre films, genre communities.
. The strongest defining elements of some genres are the emotional responses they are designed to inspire in the audience.

Unit 5: Stars and genres
. Film theorists like ellis 1992 and Dyer 1987 and 1998 have suggested ways in which audiences engage with stars and why they have become central to understanding of Hollywood cinema.
. Ellis states that stars hold a promise to audiences