I’m the kind of guy that thinks way too much about the details of any given thing. Whether it’s the interpersonal relationships of fictional doctors or determining how children are able to grow at expeditious rates under the influence of toy slime, my brain is constantly whirring and fizzing because I can’t just leave anything alone. You tell me it’s turtles all the way down and, by God, I believe you, but I’m going to need to count them and catalog them and determine just what kind of turtles they are, all the way down. This is a lot of lead in to tell you that I’ve been thinking a lot about genres and how exactly they work.
Because genres aren’t equal. If I tell you something is Science Fiction and I tell you something else is a Romance and I tell you something ELSE is a Drama, and then I tell you they’re all the same thing, I think we can agree that the categorization process needs a bit of clarification. (Points to the person who figures out what movie I’m talking about).
I think there are at least two different categories of Genre: Structure and Content. Real simple from the get go. There are certain Genres that inform the consumer about the Structure of the content, but don’t give a lot of detail about the Content itself. Let’s take Comedy. At first you might say to me, “Dylan you utter dipshit, that tells me that the movie, television show, or book in question is packed full with comedic Content” and I would respond with a withering look that lets you know I think your brain cavity is filled more with rat shit than brains.
Comedy isn’t about Content, it’s about Structure. You can make any Content comedic with the right Structure. It’s about balancing emotional tension with emotional release. It’s finding that specific rhythm in the dialog and nailing the emotional cadence of the scenes. Comedy, as a genre, is all about the structure of the thing. Horror is another Genre that feels like it’s telling you about content, when really it’s informing you all about the structure. As Stephen King has proven with his entire writing career, anything can be scary, it’s just how its presented to you.
Then we’ve got Genres that just inform as to content and don’t tell you jack all about the structure. Science Fiction, Western and Romance tells you all about the scenery, the trappings, the setting where the audience is going to be spending all of their time, but that time can be spent any which way. You want cowboys and scary? Bone Tomahawk. You want cowboys and chuckles? The Three Amigos. Wait, what about cowboys and hearts? Don’t worry, my friend, we’ve got Brokeback Mountain.
Occasionally, there are issues with how a genre is perceived. For example, Horror is thought of as relating to content, when, in reality, Horror specifically describes the Form of the story and how the audience’s emotional reactions are anticipated throughout. Comedy is another genre that deals just with Form, but is usually painted with whatever style of Comedy is popular at the time. For example, during the days of American Pie and Not Another Teen Movie, Comedy was often used a shorthand to describe a movie about teenagers being gross teenagers in humorous circumstances, rather than a broader idea of what Comedy is.
Structure and Content. Form and Flavor. Genre starts by being broken into categories that determine structure. Or maybe it’s the other way round. The order isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that our taxonomic system for classifying pop culture artwork is in disarray and that it needs some tweaking. I believe that the new classification system should start with the Genre that defines Form. That would be Drama, Comedy, Horror, etc. Then, from there, they should be further organized by Genres that delineate Content: Romance, Western, Science Fiction.
At that point, specialists may argue to the tedious degree about what kind of Romance a piece of art is, but I think the important starting point is beginning by sorting out the Genres into Content and Structure and then taking it from there.
Let me know your own opinions on my opinions on Genre.
-D-
dylancharles.net 