The Super Hero Film We have explored the princess archetype in Pan’s Labyrinth now we are going to explore another archetype, the (Super) Hero. We are going to analyse the genre and the narrative. We are also going to try and understand how the social, political, historical contexts echo and resonate in that film. First […]
Posts in the Genre category:
The Archetypes in Film (Heroes and Villains)
Archetypes in literature are fundamental or prototypical characters that are used in stories. They have recurred in literature and art since the earliest writing. They personify universal patterns of human behaviour. Film uses and reuses archetypes in various forms and with varying degrees of nuance, between realism and hyperbole. In this exploration of Batman the […]
Genre Analysis of Pan’s Labyrinth
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 […]
The Problem with Genre
What? Genre, a problem…? You may be thinking that, ‘If films follow the same generic blueprint (repertoire of elements), why aren’t all genre films exactly the same? Genre films tend to change, tend to evolve. In fact some theorists suggest that genre follow cycles: they are born, become popular, are overused and become predictable (even […]
Genre & The Repertoire of Elements
Genre is like a cake… When you make a cake you follow a recipe, in films the recipe is called the repertoire of elements. Most cakes use the same basic ingredients, same as in a genre film, these same ingredients are called generic conventions. ‘Genre is similarity and difference’ – Altman This deceptively simple idea […]