GENRE AND TEXT AND SUBTEXT

Genre refers to a kind of film. Some common genres are drama, comedy, melodrama which are defined relative to the kind of emotion or reaction they attempt to produce in the members of the audience. Other genres like Westerns, science fiction, and monster movies seem based on content.

Some people have argued that genre is an irrelevant term and the only questions should be about a specific film itself. If the concept has any value some say, it is only in terms of film business. People know that there are some kinds of films that they like to see and others that they don't. Some studios like to make films that will appeal to large masses (to maxumize profits) and avoid those that only a few people will go to see.

None the less, if you ask people what genres they like and what genres they don't like you are likely to get some answer which groups several films together. If you ask further why they like them,. you will start to find some statements about what those films share in common. To a large degree this is a question of semantics.

If, let us ay. that people go to see monster movies to be impressed with the monster and see the destruction the monster brings about, then the scenes which do that in the film will be those that the director will stress in the film. The term "scopophilia" is one used to desribe a person's desire to see something. For each genre there will be something that the person wants to see that typifies that genre, and hence their "scopophiliac drive" is directed at those things that attract them to that kind of (genre) film.

It is often the case that a director will make an effort to be impressive in opening and closing scenes of the film (where they first get the chance to impress you, and where they have a last chance to impress you). In addition the scene which full your scopophiliac drive will also be emphasized. These scene may often be referred to as "set pieces" or climaxes in the film. The climax or high point is defined relative to the story line (text) or often the underly theme or subtext.

So in a monster film, the first appearance of the monster is likely to be a "set peice" or something which will be important to the film In communication theory, a message is sent in a coded form from a sender to a receiver. In speaking, the sender is the person speaking, the receiver is the person listening, and the message is what is being sent:

	encoded
SENDER	================	RECEIVER
	message

In the example here, the message is encoded in some language (say English) and is sent through the medium of speech. If speaker and hearer know the code (the language in this case) the message can be understood.

In film, the situation remains the same, but the sender is the film maker, the receiver is the viewer or audience and the message is encoded in the language of film (hence the corse is called "The Language of Film 1" Pretty clever no?)

In film, instead of sounds and words, the image is carrying the message and the different ways the shot is taken (photography) and the different ways the shots are put together (editing) are the ways in which the language of film does its "grammar".

Now in art, it is not uncommon that the work of art has 2 different meanings. One of these is more or less on the surface, the other is underneath. The one on the surface is often called "the text" and is, in terms of movies, what you tell someone when they ask you what the film is about. The subtext is something more complex.

So in art there is a kind of double coding: there is the code that lets us understand the text and another one that gets us to the subtext. At the first level we understand the text, at the second the subtext. There are clues in the text to help us decode the more 'hidden" message of the subtext. The breaking of that code is called "hermeneutics" as opposed to deciphering (breaking a cipher) or decoding (breaking a code. A cioher refers technically to a letter for letter substitution, whereas a code refers to a word for word substiution. If I write IFMMN and you lower each letter by one, you get HELLO. That is deciphering. I fI say that "The whale entered the bay", and by that I mean "The submarine entered the bay", then I am dealing with a code.

Subtext often fall into 1 or more of the following 5 categories. They are often somewhat philosophical asking questions rather than giving answers. They are NOT simplistic statements like "It is better to be happy than sad" (Who says?)

1. socio-political (allocation of power. Class, race, gender, age, etc,)

2. religious (usually Judeao-Christian).

3. scientific/technological (questions about the ability of science and technology to deal with human wants and needs)

4. psycho-sexual (This is Hollywood remember?) Usually Freudian analysis of some aspect of behavior

5. reflexivity: the film comments on something about art (often film), audience interaction with art, the relationship between art and artist.

Click Frankenstein for the application of this to the 1931 film