Film Genre

Essay by johndoe099University, Bachelor's May 2010

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FILM1003

FILM GENRES

With reference to at least two of the films screened this semester, discuss the extent to which genres might evolve or develop over time in order to survive.

In the filmic medium, as in all medium's, genre is superficially defined as the categorization of film based upon its subject matter. Douglas Pye defines genre as the, "ways in which audience expectations and producers' commercial motivations form a commercial currency."� This means that films can be divided into categories that share similar conventions, however as time progresses, so does films' ability to manipulate and subvert genre types. The Western genre is perhaps the oldest and longest surviving in film history, particularly considering its easily adaptable conventions based in melodrama. However, it has indeed evolved and developed over time in order to endure this survival; a process of transformation, which has resulted in subversive revisions of the Western's form and conventions.

This essay will primarily discuss how the characteristic themes of the Western have evolved and developed through subjects of dichotomies of East/West, good/evil, the role of the protagonist, the role of the Native American and the use of and narrative and film structure from the time of classic Westerns, focusing on John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) to later revisionist Western - Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995).

The Western in many respects is "a nostalgic eulogy to the early days of the expansive, untamed American frontier (the borderline between civilization and the wilderness)."� Focused on the last part of the 19th Century around 1865- 1900, the Western is not so much a historical perspective on American history, but rather a reflection on society on the frontier and its values during that time. In Western films particularly, the East is portrayed as a corrupt, restrictive and institutionalized force threatening the Western...