Genre
What
is Genre and Examples of Genre
What do we
mean when we talk about genres in film? A genre film is simply what
type of film it is, whether it is a war film, a sci-fi flick or a
period drama. Genres can be “classified according to subject
matter, style, period, national origin and a variety of other
criteria. “ (Giannetti, L. (1999): Understanding Movies, Prentice
Hall, New Jersey). In many cases, a film genre can have some
subgenres within itself.
One of the
greatest examples is the horror genre that has supernatural horror, a
subgenre that deals in ghouls, vampires, mythological creatures and
‘things that go bump in the night.’ Body horror, that which comes
from within a person’s body whether a virus that spreads from
person to person or from contamination in the city’s water supply
that sends a placid suburban village into a city of raving lunatics
who will absent-mindedly kill their family as in George Romero’s
The Crazies (1973).
Another
example is the western genre. When one thinks of a western film, we
automatically think of it being set “primarily in the latter half
of the 19th century in the American Old West, often centring on the
life of a nomadic cowboy or gunfighter” (Newman, Kim (1990): Wild
West Movies, Bloomsbury, London). They highlight the harshness of the
landscape - dry, dusty, arid landscapes and desolate mountains. The
towns themselves looking more like dishevelled shacks made out of
wood. The lone gunslinger fights and kills off those that the town
see as a nuisance to their society. When the lone gunslinger has
achieved what he has set out to do, he must leave town despite being
honoured by the town’s sheriff because he too may become a part of
the problem should he stay.
Science
Fiction or Sci-Fi is a genre that usually sets itself in the future
or a parallel universe that is much like our own. A huge amount of
sci-fi needs a good deal of suspension of disbelief however this is
offset by a possible scientific explanation that makes sense to the
viewer and the film can proceed. Classics of the sci-fi genre are
Blade Runner (Scott, R. 1981) a dystopian look into a future where
Deckard is forced into doing his old job of hunting down and
exterminating replicants who have become almost human but have a
short lifespan. The Anderson Tapes (Lumet, S. 1971), primarily a
crime film but had a sci-fi undertone of electronic surveillance that
has become much more prevalent in modern times.
Fantasy
Fantasy is
a genre that contains many supernatural and magical elements used in
a parallel universe. However it can be a very vague genre in itself
where the genres can blend into each other. One of these examples is
The Cassandra Cat (Jasny, V. 1963) a drama that mostly focuses on the
life of a teacher, named Robert, who is in conflict with the
bureaucratic nature that his superiors operate in. Life is changed
however when this mysterious travelling circus act come to town.
They hold
a magic show at night in front of an audience. Much of this includes
dancing shirts, cats appearing in mid-air and a lady floating from
the ground. For the magician’s next trick though, he motions that
when his assistant, Diana, takes off the cat’s glasses, it reveals
people’s true colours, so to speak. Red for lovers, yellow for
cheaters, blue for jealousy and grey for the average man or woman1
as a signifier that they have nothing to show for themselves. This
outrages the village and in a scene that’s reminiscent of The
Master and Margarita (Bulgakov, M. 1966) they go in search of the cat
in order to kill him for revealing their true nature in front of
everyone. Much of the film is then a process of Robert trying to
overcome the bureaucratic nature of school life coupled with his
yearning desire to be with Diana.
Another
film in the fantasy realm is Black Moon (Malle, L. 1975). The story
is set in a war torn battle of the sexes and our teenaged main
character Lily is trying to escape from it in her car. She escapes
into a secret country estate where she is greeted by Brother Lily and
Sister Lily and The Old Lady. Things are not what they seem; items
appear out of nowhere just as much as they disappear. The grass cries
when it has been stomped on and even as the unicorn says towards the
end of the film, things are “not even real.” 2So
there are a lot of psychological elements in what amounts to a coming
of age film. But all the elements are jumbled up and mixed together
to amount a very strange, unnerving mix of fantasy, coming of age and
psychological aspects that jar with the viewer.
Time
Bandits (Gilliam, T. 1981) is also a film that has a keen sense of
fantasy and uses it through the imagination of its leading character,
an 11 year old boy, Kevin, who is obsessed with history, particularly
that of the Ancient Greeks. In the night, while sleeping, he finds
that these dwarves have magically burst through his wardrobe.
Initially scared, Kevin hides away while he sees the dwarves ride off
into the forest where once his bedroom wall was. The next night,
Kevin is more prepared and fills a rucksack ready to go off and
follow the dwarves through a portal, via his wardrobe, into
Napoleonic times. Once there, Kevin and the dwarves find themselves
up against Evil who monitors their every movement.
It becomes
a drawn out process between Kevin and the dwarves and their fight
against Evil. Even though they outnumber Evil, the conventional use
of weaponry that they use is no match as Evil has underlying control
of the weapons that they used. Just as Evil is about to unleash his
super-power, he turns to stone and explodes to reveal the Supreme
Being who explains the true nature of the adventure as being a test
of his creation.
Critical
Voice
While all
three films are vastly different in their approach, they all use key
elements in showing how fantasy is filmed. In The Cassandra Cat, the
scene is shown with the magic show at half an hour into the film. It
was used as a way of getting round the restrictions that were imposed
on them by the Czech government. While the film had political
implications, the “magic” used in the film only really highlights
the forms of which humanity essentially are set.
Black Moon
takes another turn where the magic is implied in the psychological
state of mind of a young teenage girl as she goes through the
different stages of becoming a woman. The images appear more as
different stages of a weird dream where things don’t make sense.
And there can be nothing more “magical” than one’s own dreams,
in a sense. Essentially the film was set in the backdrop of the
second wave of feminism3
and as such would describe the early scenes in which men and women
are clothed in army uniforms and are at war with each other.
Time
Bandits might have more in common with Black Moon than The Cassandra
Cat. While Black Moon shows the struggle and reluctance of a teenage
girl to grow up, Time Bandits is essentially the story of a bored 11
year old boy who’s stifled by his vegetative parents4
and the story of the dwarves are an escape into his historically
intricate dreams where he gets to live out what he reads about
obsessively.
What wraps
all these films together however, apart from the use of magic, is
about the central character’s feeling that they are feeling
oppressed. In The Cassandra Cat, the teacher wants to inspire his
students to do more, to feel more than the sum of what they are but
constantly feels undermined by his secretary girlfriend and the
principal who, by implication, is having an affair with the
secretary.
Black Moon
shows how a teenage girl feels oppressed by the society in which she
lives in. The societal pressures in which she grows around is
something that she feels stifling. There is the idea that she is
supposed to grow up, find a partner, to settle down, marry and have
kids. Coupled with the rise of feminism at the time, there was also
an added pressure of being seen to take sides. It’s a classic
teenage rebel scenario, of not wanting to be labelled and judged for
what they do or don’t do. And as with Time Bandits, and The
Cassandra Cat to some extent, we retreat into the lead characters
dream world.
Despite
the many stylistic changes within cinema over the years, and within
the fantasy genre itself, the basic storylines don’t change that
much at all. There is always a lead character that is up against some
form of struggle whether from outside or from within and the steps
they face as they try to overcome these obstacles. Whether they use
sword and sorcery or by more peaceful means, fantasy incorporates all
these by the implied use of magic. You can meddle with the rules in
all manner of ways but essentially the story remains the same. And
long may it stay that way.
1
http://atomiccaravan.blogspot.ie/2012/03/cassandra-cat-1963.html
2
Quote from film
3
https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feminist-movement-breaking-down-barriers-women
4
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/18404/looking-back-at-terry-gilliams-time-bandits
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