IB Film Studies

The Fantasy Genre

In this lesson we are going to complete a generic analysis of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) del Toro

Sound easy? Well it is! Genre analysis is done in three steps.

1 Define the corpus.

That is, agree on a group of films that you think are ‘pure’ example of the genre.  So in this instance think of three Fantasy movies / franchises. So:

1. Lord of the Rings
2. Harry Potter
3. Shrek

2 Decide what features of those films are conventional in terms of their genre.

This means agreeing on a Repertoire of Elements, which are similar across the corpus and indeed necessary for a film to be given a genre label. In this case ‘A Fantasy Film’.

• That means agreeing some ball park rules or a conventional features. A theorist Nick Lacey gave these broad topics to focus your discussion.

Use this document:

Here is my analysis of the fantasy genre

3 Analyse the text (Pan’s Labyrinth)

Once you’ve agreed on those conventions / rules, you need to consider how far our set text,  Pan’s Labyrinth, is similar and/or different compared to those conventional features.

TASK

1. We will use this group slideshow to analyse the genre and our film.
2. In pairs or groups of three you will work on one slide.
   1. Find images from one or two of the films, agreed to be pure fantasy films, that illustrate the convention.
   2. Find images of how far Pan’s Labyrinth follows those conventional rules.

So, after all that, the question is…

‘How far does Pan’s Labyrinth use, develop and challenge the convention of the fantasy film genre?’

Reflective Journal

1. Embed the class slide show into a new page called ‘Pan’s Labyrinth – Genre Analysis’
2. Bullet-point 3-5 conventional features of Pan’s Labyrinth.
3. Bullet-point 3-5 features of the Pan’s Labyrinth that are different of seem to draw on other genres.