Film and television genres

The concept of genre is a useful way of looking at how media texts are organised, categorised and consumed, and can be applied to both film and television. This unit describes genre as a complex situation that is at once enabled and limited by the related roles and practices of industry, critics and audiences. This understanding of genre is developed through three broad approaches: genre as industrial category, deals with issues of production, including commerce and authorship; genre as textual category, considers plots and structures; and genre as critical category, investigates issues of reception, audiences and institutions. In any one semester, this unit explores these questions with reference to a specific genre – such as, teen film, horror, science fiction – or selection of genres.