Week Three: Genre

This week in class we focused on the different types of movie genres there are in film and movies today.  Three distinguished critics in film genre are Andre Bazin, Robert Warshow and Lawrence Alloway.  Although they are share the belief that “genres carried an intrinsic or significance, but each adopted a different way of thinking about this”.

Out of these three individuals, Bazin was in fact the more well-known “Pioneer” and I found that his views on the popularity of the Western-type movies with certain countries fascinating:

“What can there possibly be to interest Arabs, Hindus, Latins, Germans or Anglo-Saxon, among whom the western has had an uninterrupted success, about evocations of the birth of the United States of America, the struggle between Buffalo Bill and the Indians, the laying down of the railroad, of the Civil War!”. (Hutchings, 1995, p.61).

Bazin believes that there must be more to the succession of these films, other than the typical formal qualities – setting, objects and scenarios.  Like Bazin, I also believe that there is more to the genre of Western films other than the usual widespread landscape, men galloping on horses, gunfights and railroad chase scenes.  Westerns formal attributes are “simply signs or symbols of its profound reality, namely the myth”.  This mythical quality is in relation to the austere landscapes that these films are set in.

I chose to study the genre of slasher-horrors this week.  I watched Halloween and Scream and found both very similar in their own unique way.  Halloween is said to be one of the very first “true slasher-horror” films, changing the genre of horror movies at its time.

Re-watching this movie I noticed a few key features that make it successful.  The repetition of the “Mike Myers” tune always makes you suspect that he is close by or in hiding, watching one of his victims.  

I found myself extremely anticipated throughout the whole film and almost on the edge of my seat waiting to see him jump out at someone – especially moments where there is dead silence (pardon the pun).  Most of the action scenes in the films have the music going a lot faster which makes you anticipate him more.  I found myself gripped while noticing all of these key points in the movie and my heart racing to find out what happens.

Scream is viewed as a “slasher”; however, this film almost turned horror movies on its head as it is a parody towards all the cliché moments in this genre of movies.  I feel this was a good move as at this stage in movies, horrors from this category were becoming tiresome and far too predictable.  This is why I really enjoyed Scream when I first saw it.

Watching a clip near the beginning of the movie has a huge amount of well used clichés – alone in the house and the phone rings, locking doors and barricading the entry points, being watched while on the phone, falling over and being chased. This comes under Alloway's term of "iconography", which is analysing generic indentities in films:

"In this way we can indicate typical patterns of recurrence and change in popular films which can be traced better in terms of 'iconography' than in terms of individual creativity.  Indeed, the personal contribution of many directors can only be seen fully after typical iconographical elements have been identified".

This is true, especially in Scream, with the high amount of well known clichés and iconographical scenes which are almost "in-your-face" to the audience who can instantly relate to these types of scenes from previous viewed films.

I found it quite amusing that the main character is stroking the kitchen knife while discussing the movie “Halloween” to the caller (never mind the fact that she has no idea who it was and she was having a deep conversation with them!)

Although these movies are eighteen years apart from one another, they both portray the same qualities and ideas that make them a great movie within the genre of horror.

The questions that I have been thinking are, what makes a good slasher movie? Why does people love these types of movies and why are they so successful?

The majority of these styles of movies are very similar: main character in a calm and happy environment – usually a party scene, something then happens to disrupt the calm atmosphere (someone is killed), other characters are involved into the plot/friends of the main character, the problem the characters face is resolved (killed dies/captured) and the atmosphere fades back into a calm and relaxed state.  

However, horrors nowadays are sometimes quite different, where all of the characters are killed or there is some form of flip in the plot near the end.

In my opinion, I feel that these horrors are very successful as viewers like to pay into a cinema to be scared in a fantasy environment where they know themselves that they cannot be harmed.  I find myself in the cinema laughing at myself the fact that I am almost jumping out of the seat when there’s a “jumpy” moment in a horror.  

Most horrors nowadays – Paranormal Activity, Drag Me To Hell, Insidious, Sinister – all use these huge jumping moments to engage with the viewers and make them feel that they are there in the scene to make it more believable.

I really believe that this is what makes these movies extremely successful and what makes people want to pay into the cinema from hearing how scary it is from friends or by even watching the adverts on television.

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References:

Hutchings, P., 1995. Genre Theory and Criticism in Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich, eds., Approaches to Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.