Genre in media and its importance

Genres in film play an important role in the way an audience will view a film and serve as the one of the main ways in which films can be categorised by analysts.

 The categorisation of a film will depend on the characteristic of that particular piece of media (setting and the conventions that it follows). This categorisation tries to refine the film to its simplest form so it can be properly explained to an audience. Though all films will fall under genres such as western, action, drama etc. There also exists sub genre which will give a more accurate definition of a particular film. Genre only really work like this to a limited degree as a lot of media products will not fall easily into one genre this results in many films and TV shows become “hybrid genres” which shows characteristics from multiple genres. The categorisation is just means in which people may simplify a media product to greater understand and communicate them with others but does this simplification reflect the product properly or is it just the easy/lazy way to analyse a product.

The genres themselves will depend on the how complex the social group analysing media products are, by this I mean there can be as little as five different genres to divide into for one group (Drama, Horror, Romance, Comedy, Action) whereas another group could have much more. The amount of genres can be infinite it all depends on the person analysing the media product and how they perceive each piece compared to someone else. For example a person may see the film “Rise of the planet of the apes” as an action film with the humans as the protagonists of film and how the apes took over this would contrast to someone who sees the film from a psychological pointy of view seeing Caesar as the protagonist and making notes of the themes of slavery and captivity. My point is a media product can only truly be put into a genre by a individual viewing the piece and their point of view can only apply to them, this shows genre categorisation as being a very personal thing.

Genre is also an essential to the media industry as a whole. From an advertising point of view if a film is not properly categorised they will not attract the desired audience to view their product and may lead to poor reception because they attracted people not looking for a film that follows certain codes and conventions. Although it will never be the case which a film will fall into only one category the industry must be accurate to a certain degree when using genre if their media product is to be successful. The way that the industry selects the genre will also influence the audiences perception of a product  if a person was told the film was thriller before viewing a film they are likely to see the product differently to the way they would have perceived the film if they were told they were viewing a action film.