'Genres tend to develop as audiences become bored with formulaic films.' Do you agree? Use specific examples in your answer.

Essay by beaufille_l June 2004

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Genres target specific audiences and help to structure marketing and promotion of the film. Genres tend to drive profit and merchandise. Genres can also structure careers for actors, and or directors. The narrative image present in a film is generated from general knowledge of genre and specific for knowledge of the film that the audience has. Barthes developed an idea about plaisir and jouissance, which is that generic expectations of the film are fulfilled and therefore produce pleasure for the audience or they are, disrupted which can also give the audience pleasure.

Genre is not static it changes over time and is a dynamic paradigm; this can be seen by studying two films from the horror genre; Frankenstein (1931, US, dir. James Whale) and Halloween (1978, US, dir. John Carpenter). Horror as a genre has derived from our human desire to see the gruesome, the ugly and the unimaginable. Through the development of this shocking and thrilling type of entertainment film makers have had the ability to present us with images, storylines and characters which in the real world we wouldn't want to know, but through cinematic techniques and narrative we thrive on it in this media form.

Horror films seem to have a natural progression as technology advances and as the values of society change because of the influences on the country, such as who is in power and whether the country is at war. The genre has to develop as society develops because if the films didn't change their values the audience would find that the films were no longer interesting as they wouldn't be able to relate to the issues raised in the film. The filmmakers want to attract the audience so that they can earn money and so they want to change the conventions of the...