Concept of Genre

The Key Concepts 

Representation: often pronounced in media as 're-presentation' as it means how the media can re-present something to convey there own message. An example of this would be if there was two opponents and how a certain news paper might present one better than the other opponent. Representation in genre would then be the 'stereotypes' which are conveyed for the audiences reassurance of the genre they are watching. An example of this could be if the audience is watching a western and the protagonist sherif has a star sherif badge on, a cowboy hat, brown leather boots and guns, as this is a stereotypical image of a sherif and the audience likes to know this as opposed to the sherif wearing something non suggestive of being a sherif.

Audience: Age, race, class, gender, ability and interest all come under this heading as all of these and many other things can be what the producers of a text can be aiming their work at. Age could typically be grouped on age rating which is seen on the cover of film and tv series packaging in a little symbol at the bottom of the cover. Gender is another as the audience is considered in everything produced, like whether there is a film with a protagonist that is male or female that could decide whether the film is aimed to an audience of either or if the genre of the film is a typical chick flick or rom com which is often thought as as a 'female' style of film or an action thriller which could stereotypical be aimed towards a 'male' audience.

Ideology: Is the ideas behind a media text, the secrete or not so secrete agenda of the producers. Images and words in media text are ways of defining social and culture issues which are all part of the ideology analysis of the film though out. An example of could be the samba the lion in the lion king in comparison to the hyenas. This is a good example as the ideology behind this is that the lions who are shown as the 'good guys' in the film use actors that have an American- English accent in comparison to the 'bad' hyenas who have ethnic accents. This is then Disney using ideology to show further that people with American-English accents are better people than those with a different ethnic accent which summarises ideas socially about the cultural issues in the world.

Language: Written, verbal, non verbal, visual are all ways of media language used for different effects and response in media texts. Print based media is used in news papers to present language which is appropriate to the messages they are trying to convey but also their audience who would typically be older than 16. Another example would be non verbal language such as body language, hand gestures ect which are used in films/ tv programs for emphasis on words said.

Institution: An institution is a profit based organisation that deal in the distribution and creation of advertising, entertainment and information service. These institutions are split into 5 main institutions: internet, film, newspapers, radio/broadcast and music. these all use genre to convey their own messages.

Narrative: A narrative is a 'story' or 'storyline'. However the difference between a 'Story' and a narrative is that the story is the substance like 'A and B meet, something happens and then order returns' and the narrative is the way the story relates 'once apon a time was a duck...'.