Critical notes on Genre and Hollywood

Over the summer break, I studied a book called ‘Genre and Hollywood’ written by Steve Neale and I found many pages interesting and applied to my fantasy genre approach. Here are my findings from this resource, which I found useful.

Genres in cinemas tend to be focused on mainstream, commercial and Hollywood films. Barry Keith writes ‘Genre movies are those commercial feature films which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations’.

Genre theory
During the late 1960s and 1970s, genre began to establish itself within Britain and the U.S whilst studying Film studies. This engaged people to study popular cinema in a serious and positive approach. There are reviewers and critics (like James Agee, Manny Farber and Parker Tyler) who symbolise Hollywood film with sympathy, intelligence and insight. However, many intellectuals, critics and reviewers, who have been best at patronizing Hollywood and its films. As these films are commercially produced and aimed at a mass market, they focus on entertainment and fantasy rather than realism art and serious aesthetic qualities.

The popular culture (which is the mass market) marks a new term ‘generic’ within the film industry. This suggests ‘repetitive patterns, ingredients and formulae’, which ‘perceived by many cultural commentators not as the law of culture, but the law of market’.

‘Genres do not consist solely of films’. They allow audiences to bring expectations and a hypothesis to cinema and allows them to interact with the film whilst watching. This provides audiences ‘means of recognition and understanding. For example, whilst watching Harry Potter, I understand the particular actions that has taken place e.g. the battle with the dementors, the way the characters are dressed e.g. robes and witches hats, the way they look, speak and behave to each other e.g. romance between Harry and Cho and the Harry-Ron-Hermione friendship.
Genre offers anticipation.
New term learnt
“These systems of expectation and hypothesis involve a knowledge of, indeed they partly embody, various regimes of VERISIMILITUDE- various systems and forms of plausibility, motivation and belief. Verisimilitude means ‘probable‘, ‘plausible’ or ‘likely‘.”
Therefore, these establish the rules, norms and law of the fantasy genre. Therefore, the props such as artefacts and texts within these fantasy films tend to be ‘blatantly fictional’ or treated as such within our cultural. E.g Harry Potter contains the Prophecy balls.

I found a quote from Todorov’s work on ’the fantastic’, which I believe can be related to Harry Potter. (Click on left scan)

Fantasy genre can be seen to be suitable for “children or ’mindless’ ’irresponsible’ adults,” which view these films as escapism. These films often address themes of “adulthood and responsibility, childhood and infantile, and credulity, fantasy and belief”.

Also, John Ellis suggests a practise, which applies to my focus films, called the construction of a ’narrative image’. “An idea of the film is widely circulated and promoted.” The press, television and radio plays an important part in the narrative image as does word of mouth. However, we can not forget the industry’s publicity and marketing: distribution, exhibition and studio marketing departments.
“Genre is an important ingredient in any film’s narrative image.” This allows the generic framework for the marketing such as trailers, posters and stills. Also, the reviews offer verbal generic description and indicates the film’s status. The words cause anchorage to the iconography of the film.

Genres
I believe my focus films can be called hybrids as they belong to the fantasy genre but they have features from action/adventure and epic/spectaculars. Therefore, I searched under these categories in the book for any explanations towards the success.

Action/Adventures have many common characteristics in many films such as fights, chases and explosions, but there is also the state-of-the-art special effects, which emphasises stunts and performances.
Willis (1997) and Tasker point out the hero is often literally ’out of place’: “interestingly…the powerful white hero is a figure who operates in the margins, while in many senses continuing to represent dominance.”
Thomas Sobchack suggests the characters are important within this genre as ‘their patterns of action and character relationships display characteristics which clearly link them together and distinguish’. He continues “ a protagonist either has or develops great and special skills and overcomes obstacles in extraordinary situations to successfully achieve desired goal, usually the restitution of order to the world invoked by the narrative. The protagonists confront the human, natural, or supernatural powers that have improperly assumed control over the world and eventually defeat them”

Marchetti explains that plots in adventure allow “variations in tone, the inclusion of different locations and incidentally characters and moments of spectacle, generally involving fights, explosions, or other types of violence’.

Epics and spectacles was used to identify and sell films with ancient world settings and large scale films, which used new technologies, high production values.
Bowser notes the importance of battle scenes, large sets and extensive casts. She believes a big spectacle scenes have a great advantage from a moving camera exploring the depth of an enormous set and the powers of editing, allowing a variety of details to be shown.

It could be argued that the fantasy genre was made for the teenaged audience. The idea of rebellion and deviance acts as hallmarks of the teenaged culture. As Graff points out despite ‘striking legacies, images and myths to the contrary’, there are numerous ‘paths’ to growing up, not just one.
There is two quotes I found quite interesting in this section:
Page 123: “Since 1960, teenpics have been an industry staple, if not the dominant production strategy for theatrical movies”.
Page 123: “In the late 1960s and 1970s ‘youth movies’ drew much more on an image of counter-cultural rebellion than on an image of irresponsible juvenile delinquency.”
Page 124: Hollywood has been decisively ‘juvenalised (Doherty 1988: 235) not only do most Hollywood films aim to cater for a teenage audience, but directors and producers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have established a teen-friendly trend towards big-budget action, adventure and fantasy films.

The industry has faced many challenges and changes and this is why “exploitation” has been used. “Exploitation” refers to both the publicity techniques used to maximize a film’s commercial potential and to making of films which drew on topical, controversial or otherwise easily saleable subjects. The idea of magic, mythical creatures and weapons makes my focus films easy to sale fro the exhibitors and exhibitors. Since the studio era, exhibitors have been ‘crying out’ for films to show, preferably films with exploitable potential, and films which would appeal to those still going to the cinema on a regular basis. So, the idea of the fantasy franchise must have been a god-sent miracle to boost cinema admissions and to keep the cinema going alive.