Steve Neale (ed.),
Genre and Contemporary Hollywood.
London: British Film Institute, London, 2002.
ISBN: 0851708870
322 pp
£15.99 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by British Film Institute)

The publication of recent books on film genres evinces the popularity and applicability of the classificatory tool. [1]  However, this tool has changed somewhat since Todorov invoked science methodology in an attempt to find common structural elements across texts, so that a person, “[k]nowing the structure of a literary work,[…] ought to be able, given the knowledge of a single feature, to reconstruct all the rest”.[2] This attempt at objective classification on the basis of properties internal to the artefact was ineffective, although the theory of genre was not, as Steven Neale and others have shown before, and in this book.

This collection of essays, which revisits previously defined genres (section one) and identifies possible emerging genres (section two), enunciates again the flexibility of genre as an organising principle, as well as its relevance. The definition in this book restates Neale’s 1980 version:

Genre is itself a multi-faceted phenomenon. Genres can be approached from the point of view of the industry and its infrastructure, from the point of view of their aesthetic traditions, from the point of view of the broader socio-cultural environment upon which they draw and into which they feed, and from the point of view [of] audience understanding and response. (2)

The notion of genre is worthy of study simply because it is used by the industry as a means of classifying films, which is then used, in part, to organise audiences or otherwise market films. It is clear that anyone – such as a reviewer, academic or other interested person – could generate a genre group on the basis of common characteristics – of the film, audience, studio or some other element – and proceed to discuss or otherwise negotiate the film on that basis for some purpose.

Section one focuses on traditional genres and innovations within them. That these genres are constantly being defined, destroyed, and reconstituted is evinced by Sheldon Hall’s opening chapter on blockbusters. One might ask if this is a genre, and the affirmative answer exemplifies the thesis for generic classification: a particular film composition, marketed in a specific way – that changes over time – expensively produced, but still profitable based on projected returns, which are themselves based on films that have returned such profits in the immediate past. Here, immediately, we are confronted with a generic classification that is outside the classical pigeonholes of action/adventure, romantic comedy, science fiction and so on. The genre of “blockbuster” becomes a negotiable concept because films are made in this particular way, within this context.

Neale examines the history of the western, focusing on that period after 1970, when the western has been in decline. J.P. Telotte, writing outside his usual science fiction genre, examines the musical, whilst Andrew Tudor weaves the horror movie into a postmodern tapestry. Other traditional genres, the comedy and romantic comedy, are the subjects of essays by William Paul and Frank Krutnik respectively. Michael Hammond’s essay is more specific, unravelling the notion of “debt” in recent U.S. combat films. The debt is established when one soldier will risk all, including the lives of civilians, in recovering another soldier who has been separated and is in danger.

Other essays in this section deal with less mainstream notions of genre, in a similar mould to Hall’s opening essay. Roberta Pearson examines the continuities and discontinuities between four Shakespearean films of the 1990s with those of earlier times, and the elements that filmmakers and marketers highlight and construct in order to attract audiences, who otherwise might be unimpressed by films having “Shakespeare” in the title or publicity blurb.

The second section has to do with emerging genres, or new cycles in older genres. Tino Balio’s essay on production trends examines the generic output of studios in the last decade of the 20thcentury, from a perspective of costs and returns. Peter Kramer discusses the family and children’s film genre, which has been absent from the interests of academics but not absent from industry marketing nor from the classificatory system of the local video shop. Supporting Kramer’s thesis on genre, Kevin Sandler paraphrases Altman’s argument concerning genre as being determined by studio discourse, critics, and audiences – but this is not greatly different from Neale’s 1980 version: “[G]enres are not seen as forms of textual codifications, but as systems of orientations, expectation and conventions that circulate between industry, text and subject”.[3] Sandler discusses the R rating as a genre, through the discourses of the industry and by examining the framework of the film (approaching Todorov in this respect). Sandler’s research is important, given that R rated film is very popular, but almost taboo in academic discourse.

An essay by Steve Bailey and James Hay follows with an exhaustive account of teen films, at least from the 1980s, leaving for later researchers any comparison with the teen films that poured out of American International – for example – in the 1950s and 1960s. On the other hand, S. Craig Watkins examines the current output of other, similarly-orientated studios such as New Line Cinema in their production of the ghetto-action films, and the links with the “blaxploitation” films that emerged in the early 1970s. Whether film noir is a genre or a “style” sustains many arguments, but Peter Stansfield’s essay on John Thompson’s adapted novels simply works from the premise that noir is a genre. The film adaptations of the novels of another author, John Grisham, are the subject of Keith Bartlett’s essay on the legal thriller, which are, Bartlett argues, variations on the suspense thriller.

In contrast to all that has gone before, Dan Harries argues that film parodies in fact reconstitute filmic generic codes, “creating what might arguably be the most condensed and crystallised instances of a given film genre today”. Apart from his academic training, Harries was one of the first participants in developing the Internet Movie Database, giving him a great insight into the machinations of genre classification. In the last essay in this collection, Thomas Austin unpacks the various genres in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

This is a collection of well-written essays by some of the most erudite of writers on the subject. While some of the essays are not always on track, the majority are enjoyable and informative reading.

Errol Vieth
Central Queensland University.

Endnotes
[1] For example, Nick Browne (ed.), Refiguring American Film Genres: Theory and History, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998; Rick Altman, Film/Genre BFI, London, 1999; Wheeler Winston Dixon (ed.), Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2000; Steven Neale, Genre and Hollywood, Routledge, London, 2000.
[2] Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic, trans. Richard Howard, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 1973. p. 75.
[3] Stephen Neale, Genre, London: British Film Institute, 1980. p. 19.

Created on: Monday, 6 December 2004 | Last Updated: 7-Dec-04