After completing my exam yesterday, I realized something,
when I write about something I'm interested in, I can't stop!
Doesn't stop in exams neither it seems...==
Basically, in my exam, I pretty much wrote a short lit review..lol..
Hope it's enough to get me at least 20 out of 25 marks... *Prays*
So, Hybridization.
Before we can talk about Hybridization, first, we have to talk about Genre.
What
is genre? According to the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural
Literacy (2010), "Genre is a classification of any media texts into a
category or type."
When we talk about media text, it brings us to
what Steve Neale said, that mainstream genre is basically a 'text of
pleasure'. This 'text of pleasure' is to bring pleasure and to satisfy
the wants and needs of the public as adhering to the Uses and
Gratifications theory.
Everyone who is mildly familiar with this
theory knows that it is all about bringing pleasure to the public, and
you bring pleasure to the public by giving them what they want. Genres
are a way of accomplishing this. By grouping a few conventions into a
film and calling it a Genre, the viewers get to choose their
preferences. For example, someone who does not like cowboys and horses and
dust and sand in their screens will avoid Western movies, while those
who like blood and screaming and adrenaline pumping music will choose to
watch Thrillers.
In my personal opinion, what constitutes as
"genres" can be quite subjective, especially to the audience. When they
watch a film or a video, they generate their own perceptions about what
constitutes a genre. Many people sometimes have difficulties with
Thrillers and Horror (*raises hand* Me Me!!!). Those who have a low
tolerance for scary details and monsters or suggestive horrific features
jumping out of them from beind trees or buildings or doors or bushes or
lampposts or dustbins or trailers, etc, will no doubt have the same
view as I do. Anything that is scary or suggestively scary is Horror.
Moving back to a professional view, as the spectators watch more
genre movies, they will start to form expectations and hypothesizes
about them (Neale). They will expect there to be songs and dances in
Musicals and that there will only be one survivor in a Horror movie. As
Neale says, every film adds to the corpus (of films) and expands the
horizons of expectations of viewers. Therefore, with every movie we
watch, we build more expectations and learn how to predict the ending of
the film easier and faster, which leads us to a very dangerous place,
Boredom!
Why would you even care to watch a new film if you already know how it's going to end?
Hence,
with our growing expectations and impatience, film makers are being
forced to be creative. As Neale said, differentiation is essential. Mere
repetition will not attract audience.
To overcome this problem, film makers have turned to Hybrid Genres.
Nowadays,
genre is surviving due to hybridization (Altman). Although hybrid
genres are not a new idea, according to Hancock, it has been around
longer than we think. He says that there are no 'pure genres' in
Hollywood as most films base their plot around the romantic
love-orientated genre whilst blending in with other genres. Some
examples of this theory are the films Avatar (Sci-Fi + Action +
Romance), Titanic (Disaster + Historical+ Romance), Pearl Harbor
(Disaster + Historical + Romance), Iron Man (Action + Sci-Fi + Romance).
Other
hybrid genres include Gattaca (Film Noir + Sci-Fi), Robocop (Sci-Fi +
Western), 27 Dresses (Comedy + Romance), Dark City (Film Noir + Sci-Fi),
Matrix (Sci-Fi + Action). (Ok, I know there's a lot of Sci-Fi in my
examples. No, I'm not really a Sci-Fi fanatic, I just happen to stumble
upon them. :P)
This basically proves that what you see in the cinemas nowadays are basically hybrids. And this works!
By
borrowing conventions of a few genres and mixing them together to
create hybrids, film makers have successfully once again retained the
attention of the viewers. Not only that, they have successfully drawn
more people to watch their movies. As mentioned before, spectators
choose what to watch by choosing genres. In the case of mixed genres,
more people with different tastes are attracted to the same movie. For
instance, those who dislike Sci-Fi but who love Film Noir will still be
attracted to Dark City.
By evolving, genre has conformed to Steve
Neale's concept of "genre as a process", which suggests that genres must
continuously differentiate itself to fulfill the pleasure of the
public, and fulfill the pleasure of the public it has.
Well, I'm off to watch The Matrix now! (Sci-Fi + Action + Romance)
(Hmm....I guess Sci-Fi might just be my genre after all...lols..)
Miao!
