This document discusses genre in media texts. It provides clues and examples of elements typically found in gangster films like car chases, urban settings, guns, and violence. Genre refers to the classification of media into groups with similar narrative structures, styles, and conventions. Iconography involves visual signs and actors associated with particular genres that audiences recognize. Genres appeal to audiences who enjoy familiar conventions and codes across different media texts. While genre can organize analysis, texts that subvert genres or are hybrids pose challenges to strict genre definitions.

1. Discuss: Are there any clues to the
genre?

2. What about now?
What are the
clues/signifiers? Discuss

3. What might you expect in a gangster
film?
• Car chases
• Urban settings
• Guns
• Mafia
• Heroes
• Corrupt police/politicians
• Villains
• Beautiful women
• Violence
• Italians
• Drugs (modern)

4. Genre
• Is the term used for the classification of media
texts into groups with similar characteristics
• Not just for films-for print based, TV and radio
texts too!
• They have common elements such as:
STYLE, NARRATIVE and STRUCTURE which are
used again and again to make up that
particular type of genre

5. Iconography
• The signs we associate with particular genres
• Any examples?
• There are also actors we associate with certain
genres?
• What about this man?

6. Genre and audience
• Audiences like repetition
• Audiences like repetition
• Audiences become familiar with the codes and
conventions of a genre (James Bond) and
therefore can relate to it
• It also saves time! We don’t have to get used to a
new set of conventions and codes every time we
consume a new text
• Television docu-soaps rely on audience’s
understanding of how both documentaries and
soap operas work-any examples?

7. Genre and Gender (tongue twister!)
• Do you agree that certain genres appeal to certain sexes?
• Discuss.
• Examples: Eastenders/action films or shows.
• The narrative outcomes of the above two examples are
different. Eastenders usually has a cliff hanger to promote
further viewing while the climatic end of a sporting fixture
or action film may appeal to men. How can we critique
this?
• Morley (1986) said that men disapproved of watching soap
operas or fiction as it was not ‘real life’ enough for them
and they prefer ‘serious’ TV such as sports/current affairs.
• He also stated that men do actually enjoy these types of
shows but they will not admit it!

8. Remember!
• We are not just talking about films and TV shows
• Think about the magazines you read-what do you
look forward to reading? In which order? Why?
• Do you read magazines from the same genre?
Why/why not?
• Are there similar products advertised in similar
magazines.
• Let’s look at two examples…

9. Media texts=profit!
Just as a high street
retailer needs to see
goods that people want
to buy, a media
producer has to create
texts that audiences
will want to consume.

10. Criticisms of genre
• If genre can be shifted or mocked then it is
hard to argue its value as an organising tool on
media analysis
• Are texts that don’t fit into genre better than
Audience
those that conform?
• Neale and Ryan proposed this:
The audience-producer-text triangle
of dependency.
Producer Text

11. • Grouping texts may not be ideal in the current
climate, but it is worth looking at genre as it
can give a great deal of information about
trends in popular culture-the western or sci-fi
films of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s
• It also helps us to recognise the constraints
upon producers of media texts

12. Finally: limitation of genre.
1. Genre can be subverted/multi
genre texts/hybrid texts
2. Too generalised-need for
subgenres
3. Limited application when it comes
to newspapers, magazines and
radio