Ch07 Film Television Genres

Module Film television genres Objectives In completing this module you will be able to understand and apply different approaches for analyzing genre formalist audience analysis and ideological understand the history and evolution of advertising and the forces shaping that history devise different genre analysis activities for use in the classroom understand and analysis characteristics of different types of genres for the genres described in this module present specific characteristics of specific genres not necessarily included in this module to your peers There are a wide range of different types of film genres detective action adventure mystery science fiction horror gangster romance comedy musical comedy animation detective spy thriller as well as specific television genres game show prime-time drama sports broadcast soap opera musical medical drama news pro-wrestling reality-television talk-show It is often difficult to identify a particular movie or television show as a primary example of a particular genre because a movie or show may contain elements reflecting different genres The television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer contains elements of science fiction horror action-adventure and comedy For links to different genres of television shows http www specialweb com tv shows html A genre may also have its own original format invented for or original to a movie or show Creeber While genres are not original format is a production category with relatively rigid boundaries that are difficult to transgress without coming up with a new format p For example certain talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show or wrestling shows exploit the format of live television the spontaneity of unpredictable action that occurs when a show is broadcast live Google film genres http directory google com Top Arts Movies Genres JahSonic com film genres http www jahsonic com FilmGenre html Science Daily Encyclopedia film genres http www sciencedaily com encyclopedia list of movie genres The Free Dictionary film genres http encyclopedia thefreedictionary com Film Genres Moviegoods film genres http www moviegoods com dyn browseCategory asp mgaid goto film genre OVRAW Film Genres OVKEY film genre OVMTC standard For a film genre curriculum Film Education Genres http www filmeducation org secondary concept filmandgenre docs frameset html Dan Chandler an overview of genre approaches to media http www aber ac uk media Documents intgenre intgenre html Different Perspectives on Genre Study There are several different perspectives on studying film television genres perspectives that draw on the different critical approaches described in Module Each of these critical approaches provides a different way of studying genres Formalist structuralist Approach A formalist structuralist perspective focuses primarily on identifying both the prototypical semantic building blocks of a text and syntax of how a particular text interacts with a particular cultural context Altman Semantic Components The semantic components of a particular genre roles settings imagery plot themes values assumptions are what filmmakers draw on to construct a genre text - roles roles of hero heroine sidekick alien monster criminal cowboy mentor detective femme fatale villain talk-show host etc As part of these roles gender roles are often portrayed in stereotypical ways as parodied in the short film Battle of the Sexes http www ifilm com ifilm media player html fid lid refsite rcid prn it pop sid - settings the prototypical setting or world associated with a genre for example - western wide open vistas of the Western plains dessert the small-town - gangster dark urban back-street settings - soap opera indoor upper-middle class setting - spy-thriller exotic often urban international setting - science-fiction futuristic worlds - game shows large studios with lavish prizes displayed - imagery certain prototypical archetypal images black evil vs white good or symbols the sheriff s badge water as initiation associated with a setting or world - plot storyline predictable narrative sequences of events for example in a crime drama the problem solution structure -What is the typical problem --crime -Who solves the problem --the tough cop -With what means --violence -Towards what end --show that crime doesn't pay - themes value assumptions reflected in the text - What's the problem --We live in a crime-ridden-world - Who solves the problem Cops who need to be tough - By what means tools do they solve the problem -- Eye for an eye tooth for a tooth - For what larger thematic reason --Criminals need to be locked up Syntactic components The syntactic perspective examines the particular arrangements between these building blocks the ways in which a filmmaker has structured a text Altman Altman cites the example of semantic components of the western as consisting of the open natural setting the cowboy sheriff and the values of the wild west A syntactic perspective focuses more on the relationships between the elements of culture versus nature frontier versus civilization community versus individual and future versus past The semantic perspective is more applicable to generalizations about large number of films that share similar components The syntactic perspective is more applicable to explaining how these components work to create meaning Focusing on both perspectives helps Altman deal with the range of different examples that could be loosely associated with a particular genre and the challenge of generalizing about a particular genre text Drawing on both perspective also helps recognize that the semantic components of different genres often overlap as they evolve He illustrates this with the science fiction genre At first defined only by a relatively stable science fiction semantics the genre first began borrowing the syntactic relationships previously established by the horror film only to move in recent years increasingly toward the syntax of the western By maintaining simultaneous descriptions according to both parameters we are not likely to fall into the trap of equating Star Wars George Lucus with the western as numerous recent critics have done even though it shares certain syntactic patterns with that genre p There is also a major tension in genre analysis between the conventional familiar formulaic texts and new forms of genre that challenge the old As Henry Jenkins http web mit edu fms www faculty henry genre html notes genre texts contain both invention novel experimentation with the form--and convention the familiar aspects of the form A genre is a kind of work suggesting an exercise in classification but genres are also formulas that artists draw upon for the production of artworks and conventions that enable consumers to make sense of new works based on their knowledge of previous works in the same category Genres should not be understood as rules or restrictions so much as enabling mechanisms that allow popular culture to be easily consumed and broadly appreciated All works are born from a mixture of invention and convention A work that is pure invention is unlikely to be fully understood or appreciated a work that is pure convention is likely to be boring and uninteresting Popular aesthetics centers around this effort then to reach the right balance between invention and convention Audience-based Approaches An audience-based approach assumes that the meaning of a genre lies in the audiences application of their own knowledge of the conventions of genre-construction Rather than assuming that a movie or program must be a certain type this approach posits that a movie or program is a certain type depending on the particular conventions audiences apply to a text Given their background knowledge and attitudes one audience may perceive a movie as an action adventure film while another audience may perceive it as a horror film This approach emphasizes the processes of applying genre-knowledge conventions as central to constructing the meaning of a genre It assumes that audiences acquire more sophisticated knowledge of these conventions through increased experience in viewing a genre These conventions include audiences use of their genre know-how to - predict story outcomes based on applying knowledge of prototypical storylines for example predicting that at the end of a romantic comedy differences plaguing a couple s relationship will be resolved or predicting that a detective will sort through conflicting clues to solve a murder - identify the symbolic meaning of images techniques or characters practices for example knowing that images of black or darkness in film noir or a gangster film represents evil that suddenly breaking into song in the musical is a familiar if not unrealistic technique or that the sidekick figure is often attuned to the local environment or world in ways that assist the hero - infer the function or role of the setting or context to explain characters actions for example knowing that the eerie noise or music in a horror movie is signaling the potential for something dire will occur or knowing that the live-audience setting for the talk show serves to enhance the talk-show host s sense of performing for both a live and a television audience Audiences also enjoy complex variations of traditional genres which invite them to apply their know-how to interpret a film or program particularly when they are faced with deviations from the prototypical genre The degree to which audiences construct their own meaning of genre texts is evident in television program fan clubs whose members demonstrate their expertise and knowledge about the conventions of a program through on-line exchanges http www fandom tv Moreover the experience of genre texts is akin to a ritual-like experience associated with folklore and myth that functions in ways that reify audiences own cultural beliefs and attitudes Schatz Rather than simply focusing on the components of the Western in adopting an audience-based perspective students would examine the Western more as a cultural and social myth that served to define and perpetuate Hollywood representations of the American West At the same time novel variations of a genre challenge audiences presuppositions about prototypical genre development and roles In the following four-minute clip professor director Bette Gordon argues that contemporary films attempt to do more than simply entertain they also seek to challenge audiences to grapple with their own values http www columbia edu cu news media betteGordon index html An audience-based approach also attempts to examine how and why certain genres have an appeal for certain audiences in certain cultural periods For example in the early seventies the outlaw-couple gangster films Bonnie and Clyde Badlands Thieves Like Us and The Sugarland Express held an appeal to a young audience disenchanted with what they termed the establishment Grant Critical Ideological Analysis of Genres Given their prototypical nature genre films and television programs are ideologically traditional they reflect values constituting status quo dominant institutional forces This suggests the need for another approach in conducting genre analysis analyzing the ways in which genres not only reflect ideological values but also how they serve to position audiences in ways that are associated with the interests and agendas of dominant institutional forces creating genre texts This entails analyzing as Henry Giroux argues how privileged dominant readings of such texts construct their power-sensitive meanings to generate particular subject positions that define for children specific notions of agency and its possibilities in society p For example using the problem solution structure see above analysis of the law-and-order urban police detective can demonstrate that audiences are often positioned to believe that crime is best solved by violent control as a deterrent as opposed to alternative approaches reducing poverty providing jobs instituting drug prevention programs or enhancing education Moreover such shows often invite audiences to position people of color as the urban criminal who needs to be controlled Such readings should not entail political or pedagogical indoctrination but should invite students to examine multiple alternative interpretations that may or may not coincide with the institutionally-desired subject positions Specific genres construct desired stances for certain targeted audiences The so-called family film http www startribune com stories html removes much of the violence and sexual content so that children and parents can view the film together The teen film romantic comedies slasher horror or coming-of-age films as well as television drama series such as Dawson s Creek is designed to appeal to a potentially large adolescent audience And various television shows position themselves to appeal to particular audiences with particular interests in fishing home repair travel cooking sports music art religion technology etc and construct their programs around audience s familiarity with the conventions and discourses associated with examining and sharing information about that topic For example the evangelical television show mimics a church-like setting often with a choir a minister and various guests who share testimonials about religious conversions In responding to the desired institutional stances audiences evoke their own counter-stances While females in soap opera fan clubs may organize themselves around a belief in the value of romantic attachment to males as being the most important value in life they may also challenge the traditional norms of genres by creating their own alternative versions reflecting their counter-values see also module on media ethnography As Henry Jenkins argues http web mit edu fms www faculty henry collective intelligence html audiences now operate in a new digitally-mediated participatory culture in which members of fan clubs and active Internet users with ready access to media texts can collect archive alter and share media texts with others as part of their subcultural participation and identity as active audiences For example members of Star Trek fan clubs create their own versions of Star Trek programs in the form of edited videos or fanzine stories Jenkins These edited videos or fanzines might for example introduce homoerotic themes into the stories such as Spock and Kirk engaging in a homosexual relationship In constructing these virtual worlds the Internet users and fan-club members are resisting or rejecting the discourses of bureaucratic management or traditional middle-class values to adopt alternative discourses of sexual desire and expression Or audiences may role-play performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in which they mimic and parody culturally-dominant discourses In a study of a group of communication studies graduate students who met weekly to watch television as a social event John Fiske examined the group's responses to the situation comedy Married With Children a Fox Network parody of family values with a focus on sexuality These graduate students made intertextual references to a number of different groups competing discourses One of these discourses was the network s own discourse of merchandising The program's advertisements for McDonald's or Nike were typically geared for an adolescent market whose members would enjoy watching a comedy about parents coping with adolescent problems The students often purchased McDonald's hamburgers to eat during the viewing of the program thereby commenting about or parodying these ads' discourse of merchandising The students also made references to a family values discourse of religion employed by a conservative group whose objections to the immoral portrayal of sexuality on the program led them to launch a campaign to boycott companies who advertise on the program creating a tension between a discourse of religion and a discourse of merchandising Members of the group would note aspects of the program deemed to be potentially objectionable by this and other conservative organizations The group also responded to the program's parody of discourses regarding romance and sex by referring to their own romantic and sexual relationships Students could also analyze how institutional forces use genres to create fantasy idealized versions of how problems are solved who solves the program and the types of tools employed to solve the problem For example films about the Vietnam War http members aol com warlib viet htm http www vietnamwar net vwfilms vwfilms htm portray the problem either as a lack of military effort determination or patriotism in wanting to win the war as in The Green Berets with John Wayne a version of reality consistent with the western genres of good versus evil promoted by conservative military institutional forces or as a failure to understand the complexities of the Vietnam culture and civil war as in Apocalypse Now Born on the Fourth of July Full Metal Jacket Platoon and The Deer Hunter These alternative versions of the same problem reflect not only different ideological positions but also different institutional agendas The History and Evolution of Genres Genre analysis also includes understanding the evolution of a genre over time Genres change and develop because of changes in the culture or historical period in which the genre is being produced The Western solo hero who was popular in the s and s evolved into the group of heroes in the s and s with Rawhide and Bonanza shows that reflected a shift in the workplace to that of the group in the corporation or company during that time And with the increasing interest in urban crime and international espionage in the s and s the Western was replaced by the police detective and the spy thriller genres Genres also gain popularity with certain audiences who seek out these genres given the historical or cultural forces operating in a certain period During the Great Depression audiences flocked to movie houses to view Hollywood romantic comedies as a way of escaping the grim realities of everyday lives characterized by poverty and deprivation The nature of the threat in science fiction movies also shifts to reflect changes in fears or threats facing societies During the s and s Americans expressed racial fears as manifested in the rise of the Klu Klux Klan and in the film King Kong During the s with the increased production of films and the control of media conglomerates over the types of films being made an increasing number of formulaic genre films were produced Film studios needed to attract large audiences in order to make a return profit on the millions they invested in high-production special-effects films so they turned to safe familiar genres and sequels As Wheeler Dixon argues What audiences today desire more than ever before is more of the same and studios scared to death by rising production and distribution costs are equally loathe to strike out in new generic directions Keep audiences satisfied strive to maintain narrative closure at all costs and keep within the bounds of heterotopic romance no matter what genre one is ostensibly working in Yet at the same time the studios must present these old fables in seductive new clothing with high budgets major stars lavish sets and if the genre demands it unremitting action to disguise the secondhand nature of the contemporary genre film p Film versus television genres There are some important differences between film and television genres Film genres see list below tend to be more general for example the western action adventure comedy horror science fiction etc while television genres see list below are often specialized for example cooking shows sports-talk shows children s animation etc A film that is representative of a certain film genre also tends to be self-enclosed the conflicts are often resolved within the film even with film sequels In contrast a television genre program tends to be part of a serial in which a storyline may continue and develop or characters may evolve across different programs List of film genres http dir yahoo com Entertainment Movies and Film Genres http www angelfire com al icia genres html http www moviegoods com dyn browseCategory asp mgaid goto film genre http www imdb com Sections Genres types all http www filmsite org List of television genres http uk dir yahoo com News and Media Television Genres http dmoz org Arts Television Programs http news siteseek com dir News Television Genres Resources readings on film television genres http www ryerson ca mgroup tvcrit html http www amelie-themovie com Genres index html For further reading on film television genres Altman R Film genre London British Film Institute Browne N Ed Refiguring American film genres History and theory Berkeley CA University of California Press Creeber G Miller T Tulloch J Eds The Television Genre Book London British Film Institute Dixon W Film genre New critical essays Albany State University of New York Press Elsaesser T Buckland W Studying contemporary American films A guide to movie analysis London Arnold Fischer L Cinematernity Film motherhood genre Princeton N J Princeton University Press Grodal T Moving pictures A new theory of film genres feelings and cognition New York Oxford University Press Grant B K Ed Film genre reader III Austin TX University of Texas Press Mittell J Genre and television From cop shows to cartoons in American culture New York Routledge Neale S Genre and Hollywood New York Routledge Neale S Ed Genre and contemporary Hollywood London British Film Institute Strong J Dowd G Stevenson L Genre Media meaning and definitions Bristol UK Intellect Devising Genre-analysis Activities For one or more of the different genre types create your own genre-analysis activities webquests or units In doing so you need to work both deductively and inductively You need to provide students with some background theory in terms of the roles settings storylines themes and value assumptions unique to each genre At the same time you need to draw on their prior knowledge of and experience with films or programs associated with a specific genre so that they are connecting the theory to their own experiences And once you have modeled your own analysis of genre features across different films or programs you can then turn to them to have them construct their own connections In devising activities webquests or units on genres consider including the following - illustrative examples of the different components of a genre using URL links to clips of the different components For a site with clips from different genres http www ifilm com ifilm all movies html - strategies for inductively defining similarities or patterns across these different examples so that students are making valid generalizations about genre components - analysis of the representations of gender class race age region cultures and social practices typically found in genres for example how Native Americans were represented in the Western see module on media representations - analysis of the problem solution structure in terms of the nature of the problem who solves the problem how the problem is solved and the final resolution of the problem - awareness of how students draw on their own beliefs and attitudes to construct the meaning of genres You can surface these beliefs and attitudes by having them reflect on the value assumptions associated with the problem solution structure For example in the police detective genre the hero must often resort to violence to cope with violent crime an eye for an eye tooth for a tooth morality Do students subscribe to such a value assumption What are reasons why they do or do not subscribe to this value assumption given their beliefs and attitudes - understanding the history and evolution of a genre particularly in terms of how changes in the genre reflected changes in audiences beliefs and attitudes across different decades - creation of students own abstracts of genres that one might find in a TV guide genre story scripts parodies of a genre or a video Imovie production Doing this activity allows students to demonstrate their familiarity with certain genre conventions DIFFERENT GENRE TYPES There are numerous web-based resources for studying about different film television genres One of the best is Tim Dirks web site http www filmsite org which provides extensive information about a wide range of different genres Action adventure Action adventure films typically involve high-budget portrayals of main characters engaged in a series of dramatic dangerous events involving narrow escapes fights or rescues all filmed in a face-paced style that keeps audiences wondering if the hero or heroine will make it out alive at the end of the film In films such as Twister Titanic Jurassic Park Tomorrow Never Dies Armageddon the Die Hard series Lethal Weapon series Terminator there is a lot of hyperbolic sensationalized violence that mirrors the violence found in computer games During the s films within this genre such as Last Action Hero Face Off Con Air and Snake Eyes reflected a more postmodern direction towards interrogating the often mindless action of the genre itself Welsh Action adventure films http www filmsite org actionfilms html http www filmsite org adventurefilms html http www imdb com Sections Genres Action top adventure films http www imdb com Charts Votes adventure Cop action films http www crimeculture com Contents sCopFilms html Action adventure TV shows http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Action http entertainment lycos com television guide action index asp Action films tend to be geared more for adolescents and adults and adventure films tend to be geared more for children but there are a lot of exceptions There are also a number of subgenres in this category for example disaster spy thriller espionage historical episodes military jungle wilderness exploration martial arts treasure hunters vigilante and mythic adventure http dir yahoo com Entertainment Movies and Film Titles Action and Adventure One of the most important subgenres is the road movie as in Bonnie Clyde Thieves Like Us Easy Rider The Wild Ones Bad Lands Grapes of Wrath The Wizard of Oz True Romance Two-Lane Blacktop Convoy Wild at Heart Two for the Road Grapes of Wrath Kalifornia Pow Wow Highway Sugarland Express Natural Born Killers Rain Man Smoke Signals and O Brother Where Art Thou http www hackwriters com roadone htm http www lib berkeley edu MRC roadmovies html http directory google com Top Arts Movies Genres Road Movies In these movies characters attempt to escape what they believe are the constraints and limits of society to attempt to discover and experience new forms of freedom on the road In some cases they are attempting to escape the law or are on a crime spree The launch out on a quest in which they encounter as did the heroes of fantasy quests various challenges and adventures They also begin to discover things about themselves The appeal of the road movie reflects the larger cultural need to explore uncharted new territories as a way of redefining one s identity the idea of the West as a place in which one could start over as a new person Thelma and Louise was an important film in that it challenged the male-dominated nature of the genre by portraying the road quest of two female heroines These subgenres reflect and draw on other genres including police detective adventure fantasy science fiction video animation games For example the martial arts films of Bruce Lee Jackie Chan as well as The Karate Kid films Sidekicks Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mortal Kombat The Matrix Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon contain elements of a these different subgenres Desser In some cases certain actors have become associated with this genre creating their own action-hero role prototype in addition to Lee and Chan actors Arnold Schwarzenegger Clint Eastwood Harrison Ford Mel Gibson Dwayne The Rock Johnson Chuck Norris Steve McQueen Sylvester Stallone Jean-Claude Van Damme John Wayne Bruce Willis Charles Bronson Charlton Heston and actresses Sandra Bullock Ashley Judd and Michelle Yeoh Action adventure films also tend to spawn sequels such as the series that began with Raiders of the Lost Ark leading to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or the Tarzan adventure films Tarzan the Ape Man Tarzan and His Mate Tarzan Escapes Tarzan Finds a Son Tarzan's Secret Treasure and Tarzan's New York Adventure Media Awareness Network The Blockbuster Movie http www media-awareness ca english resources educational lessons secondary movies blockbuster movie cfm Disaster Online disaster films http disasteronline tripod com About Action Adventure films http actionadventure about com The Action Kings http www geocities com theactionkings Webquest Titanic An Unsinkable Disaster http www vordingbg-gym dk km titanic assignments htm For further reading Inness S Action chicks New images of tough women in popular culture New York Palgrave King G Spectacular narratives Hollywood in the age of the blockbuster New York I B Tauris Osgerby B Gough-Yates G Eds Action TV Tough guys smooth operators and foxy chicks New York Routledge Tasker Y Spectacular bodies Gender genre and the action cinema New York Routledge The Western Western http dir yahoo com Entertainment Movies and Film Genres Westerns http www filmsite org westernfilms html http www imdb com Sections Genres Western http www lewestern com films such as High Noon Stagecoach Red River The Magnificent Seven or Unforgiven and television shows such as Bonanza Gunsmoke Have Gun Will Travel Johnny Ringo The Lone Ranger The Annie Oakley Show The Roy Rogers Dale Evans Show Dr Quinn Medicine Woman Rawhide Sky King or The Young Riders is no longer as popular as it was in the s to s However it is perhaps one of the most definitive of all genres in terms of consistent adherence to the cowboy hero role and the value assumptions associated with the small western-town setting of the last half of the th century The cowboy hero was typically an outsider who was not tied down to the town or women family He rarely she would be brought in to deal with the problem bank robbery cattle rustling murder etc because the local sheriff and or townspeople were not able to or lacked the expertise to deal with the problem This portrayal of the outsider who was not part of the system as the agent best able to cope with the problem reflected an ideology of individualism that Ronald Reagan himself a former actor in Westerns evoked in running for President as the outsider who would clean up and reduce the Washington bureaucracy The settings for the Western were often wide-open vistas and landscapes that conveyed the idea of the American West as free and without constraints for individual development and exploitation again reflecting the ideology of individualism http www imagesjournal com issue infocus western htm This American cultural emphasis on the individual white male hero who expresses his power through his skills with guns contrasts with the Japanese Samurai films in which the hero is made up of a collective group designed to protect society without the use of guns a reflection of the Japanese cultural value on collective as opposed to individual action The Hollywood version of the Japanese film The Seven Samurai The Magnificent Seven emphasizes the individual characters roles to a greater degree than in the Japanese film for example portraying the psychological difficulties of a character who no longer can draw his gun as quickly as he could in the past dramatized by his inability to kill a fly crawling across a table While there were a few female western heroes Dale Evans Annie Oakley most of the western heroes were male females were stereotyped as the rancher s daughter with whom the hero had a fleeting relationship before he rode off into the sunset the sophisticated woman from the East or the local saloon proprietor Kitty in Gunsmoke As with the helpless townspeople the hero was perceived as the powerful male who could save the female when faced with difficulties for a -minute film see The Cowboy and the Ballerina http www readthewest com WesternFilms interviewIsham html Native Americans were typically stereotyped as savage enemies who needed to be conquered or destroyed as impediments to white western expansion While the film Dances with Wolves portrays Native Americans in a more complex light the film still privileges a white male perspective on Native American tribal culture Later Western films of the s by Sam Peckinpah and spaghetti i e Western Italian director Sergio Leone emphasized more violent action-packed story elements During the s more complex portrayals of the western hero occurred in films such as Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller in which the seemingly powerful male is challenged by an even stronger and smarter female More recent Westerns such as Unforgiven have introduced heroes who are more conflicted about the eye-for-an-eye values of the traditional Western perhaps reflecting Post-Cold War ambiguities Webquest Western http curry edschool virginia edu go edis fall webquests student smelvillekrebs home html For further reading Buscombe E R Eds Back in the saddle again New essays on the western London British Film Institute Cawelti J The six-gun mystique sequel New York Popular Press Sauders J The western genre New York Wallflower Press Slotkin B Gunfighter nation The myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America Norman OK University of Oklahoma Press Walker J Ed Westerns Films through history New York Routledge Gangster Crime The gangster crime film portraying the rise and usually fall of the gangster criminal became popular during the s and s with films such as Little Caesar and Scarface reflecting audiences fascination with figures who such as Gatsby in The Great Gatsby achieved financial success consistent with the American dream but did so through illegal means http www geocities com mikemckiernan http www filmsite org crimefilms html http www imdb com Sections Genres Crime http www stungunresources com s crime gangster html Audiences adopted an ambiguous stance towards these characters they admired their willingness to work hard to achieve success consistent with a rags to riches scenario often through defeating rival gang members but were repulsed by their use of violence and crime to achieve their goals The audience also knows the hero is ultimately fated to die or go to prison given the prevailing value that crime doesn t pay This ambiguous stance reflects some of the basic contradictions in American culture regarding what constitutes success as defined in terms of financial success and power or as defined in terms of ethical or moral integrity During the s after the Hays Production Code Office objected to the glorification of crime gangster films focused more on the destruction of the gangster by detective gang-fighter heroes The gangster criminal activity from the s to s was associated with bootlegging racketeering theft and bank robbery as portrayed in Bonnie and Clyde in Then during the s to the s the gangster film portrayed the ways in which the gangster operated through alternative more institutionalized criminal activities associated with drugs extortion prostitution and gambling operations as portrayed in Godfather I II III Goodfellas Miller s Crossing Billy Bathgate Bugsy Casino Prizzi's Honor Donnie Brasco and Reservoir Dogs More recently films such as Pulp Fiction Miller's Crossing The Usual Suspects Fargo and Jackie Brown and the television series The Sopranos reflect a more ironic postmodern stance towards crime combining comic and psychological elements with portrayal of crime The setting for the gangster film has typically been dark urban worlds One of Martin Scorsese s early films Mean Streets portrayed the world of small-time petty gangsters who congregated in pool halls and bars of lower Manhattan One primary reason that the film noir films of the s such as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep were often gangster crime films was that the world of those films is often portrayed through the images of dark back-alley urban worlds The role of darkness as associated with criminal activity was reflected in the opening scenes of both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II In those scenes there are large outdoor parties in which guests are enjoying themselves scenes bathed in a bright whiteness These out-front party scenes are contrasted with dark back-room dealing with The Godfather main characters played by Marlon Brando and Al Pacino granting favors or ordering executions As with the gangster audiences adopt ambiguous stances towards the characters in these films admiring their resistance of constraints but recognizing that they are not entirely above the law Crimeculture crime film genre http www crimeculture com Contents CrimeFilms- html Bibliography on Gangster films http www lib berkeley edu MRC gangsterbib html For further reading Hardy P Ed The Overlook film encyclopedia The gangster film New York Overlook Press Leitch T Crime films New York Cambridge University Press Mason F American gangster cinema From Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction New York Palgrave Munby J Public enemies Public heroes Screening the gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil Chicago University of Chicago Press Rafter N Shots in the mirror Crime films and society New York Oxford University Press Shadoian J Dreams dead ends The American gangster film New York Oxford University Press Detective Film Noir The detective film-noir genre http www thrillingdetective com http www filmsite org mysteryfilms html focuses on the problem of the violation of the law determining reasons for the violation identifying possible violators relying on informants and evidence coping with mishaps and false leads revealing the actual violator and restoring a sense of equilibrium Miller The s and s film noir genre portrayed the often corrupt world of The Maltese Falcon The Big Sleep Double Indemnity The Killers Notorious The Postman Always Rings Twice Key Largo The Lady From Shanghai The Third Man Sunset Boulevard The Big Heat Lady in the Lake and The Lady from Shanghai based on detective novels by such writers as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler These films usually made in black and white with low lighting interior settings and inventive camera techniques conveyed a sense of bleak cynical pessimism that the institutions of law and order are themselves corrupt More recent films such as Chinatown The Long Goodbye and L A Confidential make nostalgic references to these films particularly in terms of highlighting the corruption of the system The police detective crime television shows http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Dramas Cop Shows http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Cop Shows http www thrillingdetective com trivia detlinks html such as Dragnet Baretta C S I Crime Scene Investigation Cagney and Lacey Hill Street Blues Homicide Law Order Miami Vice Prime Suspect Poirot Inspector Morse and NYPD Blue develop the main character of the detective in more detail across the series so that audiences establish a relationship with the character The detective film noir genre focuses on the character of the often cynical worldly detective figure Sherlock Holmes Sam Spade Charlie Chan Philip Marlowe as well as the detectives who appear on PBS s Mystery Theater Hercule Poirot Miss Marple Adam Dalgliesh Inspector Morse Brother Cadfael Ross Tanner Chief Inspector Jane Tennison Hetty Wainsthrop Dave Creegan and Cordelia Gray http www pbs org wgbh mystery detectives index html see also http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Mystery PBS Teaching Guide The Hound of the Baskervilles http www pbs org wgbh masterpiece hound tguide html These detective heroes are often complex figures whose identity is often interchangeable with that of the criminal The thin line between the detective and the criminal was portrayed by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry series in which the detective resorts to violence to achieve his goals In addition to the detective hero there is typically a sidekick who as in the Western lacks the deductive skill of the hero but who often has access to insider information useful to the hero There is particularly in film noir the figure of the beautiful but duplicitous femme fatale who manipulates the hero into actions that benefit her often at the hero s expense More recent films such as The Last Seduction Red Rock West and Croupier explore new themes of deception morality reflecting a post-Vietnam War perspective related to violence and crime MysteryNet http www mysterynet com tvmovies Pamela Green Sherlock Holmes Teaching English through Detective Fiction http www yale edu ynhti curriculum units x html British Film Institute Ghost Stories on Film http www bfi org uk education resources teaching secondary ghoststories Christopher Ingham The Murder Mystery http www lessontutor com ci html Webquest Who Killed William Robinson an historical mystery http web uvic ca history-robinson Webquest Write an historical mystery http dina tripod com mywebquest index htm For further reading Miller R Mystery A celebration stalking public television's greatest sleuths New York Bay Books Muller E Dark city The lost world of film noir Boston St Martin s Press Spicer A Film noir New York Longman Comedy Comedy has been one of the most consistently appealing genres Comedy films http www filmsite org comedyfilms html http www imdb com Sections Genres Comedy http www phatnav com wiki wiki phtml title Comedy film Television comedies http entertainment lycos com television guide comedies index asp http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Comedies http www transparencynow com tablesitcom htm http www comedy-zone net zones filmtv htm http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Comedy Sitcoms http www museum tv archives etv C htmlC comedydomes comedydomes htm American Film Institute s funniest films http www AFI com tv pdf laughs pdf There are a number of different comedy subgenres that vary according to differences in the comic techniques employed Mime Early film comedy that emerged in the silent film era focused on non-verbal pantomime in which exaggeration and physical dexterity functioned as comic elements Early stars of this genre were Charlie Chaplin Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton In Charlie Chaplin s films he typically employed sight gags to ridicule and challenge social norms particularly the pretentiousness of the powerful For example in The Rink he literally runs circles around his opponent portrayed as a clumsy bully As such he represented the little guy in society who is able to use his skills to assert his own power With the development of sound Chaplin turned to more serious movies often raising tough questions about social values Slapstick Slapstick involves blatant overt physical pranks slipping on a banana peel or attempting to carry a piano up steep stairs as evident in the early films of Abbott and Costello Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges and then later films with Jerry Lewis the Pink Panther series and Jim Carrey which added verbal repartee Also much of animation such as the Road Runner films consists of physical slapstick Parody satire Films by Woody Allen Mel Brooks and the Marx Brothers as well as Saturday Night Live engage in parody or ridicule of institutions traditional social norms and other genres In the Woody Allen films such as Bananas Sleeper Annie Hall Manhattan Zelig The Purple Rose of Cairo Hannah and Her Sisters Husbands and Wives and Bullets Over Broadway Allen uses witty dialogue to mimic and parody different discourses of therapy religion business sports and academia For example a character who in standing in line with Allen outside a movie theater employs pretentious academic language to discuss a film Television shows such as Rowan and Martin s Laugh-In The Smothers Brothers Monty Python s Flying Circus Beavis and Butthead and Saturday Night Live consist of sketches ridiculing a range of topics including various television genres The parody form itself http www fact-index com p pa parody html Parody films http www inetfilm com movies parody parody html Woody Allen sites http www geocities com SunsetStrip Club woody html http members tripod com bestfilms woody htm http www rdmandesigns co uk woodycompendium framed htm http en wikipedia org wiki Woody Allen http www sensesofcinema com contents directors allen html http www imdb com name nm Webquest Mock Marlowe http homepage mac com sltvandoren Mock Marlowe html Situation comedy Television situation comedies have made up a large bulk of prime-time television since the s with shows such as I Love Lucy The Honeymooners The Phil Silvers Show Father Knows Best The Dick Van Dyke Show The Ossie and Harriet Show My Three Sons and the later shows Cheers Frasier the Beverly Hillbillies All in the Family The Mary Tyler Moore Show The Cosby Show Murphy Brown Ellen Family Ties The Jeffersons Roseanne Married With Children Seinfield Absolutely Fabulous Frasier Friends Home Improvement The Simpsons Mad About You South Park King of the Hill Sports Night Ed and Sex and the City In the typical comedy storyline there is a movement from equilibrium to disequilibrium back to equilibrium Consistent with classical theater comedies of Shakespeare Moliere and Wilde equilibrium is disrupted when characters are confused about each other s true intentions or their actual status in society In The I Love Lucy Show Lucy was often caught up in schemes that led to difficulties with Ricky Coping with these challenges creates further confusions and disruptions However the confusions and mixed identities are eventually straightened out leading to a happy ending in which challenges to institutional equilibrium are mitigated and society is restored This means that comedy entails more than just humor it also represents a basic stance towards institutions As Northrop Fyre argued comedy celebrates the restoration of society in contrast to tragedy which challenges society The roles in comedy are typically one-dimensional prototypes as opposed to tragic characters who are complex and contradictory There is often a buffoon who is oblivious to what s going on the straight man who serves as an audience for the main character s comic lines the trickster who creates pranks and the wise elder who straightens out problems or issues leading to resolution In the s programs such as Ozzie and Harriet Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best portrayed fathers as omniscient central but one-dimensional white-middle class figures In the s and s All in the Family Sanford and Son and The Cosby Show portrayed fathers and mothers a somewhat more realistically Producer Norman Lear in All in The Family portrayed Archie Bunker as a conservative bigoted working-class father who is out of touch with changes in contemporary beliefs and attitudes towards class gender and race However many viewers actually perceived him in a positive light as defending their own conservative values Pungente O Malley And Bill Cosby had hoped that the portrayal of an idealized successful upper-middle class Black family on The Cosby Show would enhance race relations in the s However a study of black and white viewer response found quite different reactions from the two groups Jhally Lewis The Black audiences responded positively to the portrayal of intelligent independent Huxtable family members as challenging stereotypes of Blacks At the same time the program served to reify conservatives attitudes towards Blacks During the Reagan era of the s in which affirmative action civil rights and economic support for Blacks were being reduced the White audience perceived the program as evidence that Blacks were successful as an economic class and did not need further support They also assumed that if Blacks worked harder they could make it on their own as did the Huxtables Jhally Lewis In the s comedies such as Married With Children and Roseanne dealt more realistically with issues of sexuality gender and class identities Comedies often occur in two settings the family home or the workplace Hartley While earlier comedies of the s to s focused more on the family later comedies of the s and s focused more on the workplace to some degree the workplace became more of a site for family interpersonal conflicts Moreover programs such as Married With Children Roseanne and The Simpsons began to portray darker problematic aspects of family life that was never portrayed in the often Pollyannish idealized homes of early shows Pungente O Malley This raises the question as some critics have charged whether negative portrayals of the family on The Simpsons lead viewers to assume a more negative perspective on the family in lived-world contexts Portrayals of work-place comedy focus on tensions associated with confusion between work-place and personal lives as well as challenges to status roles in the workplace Romantic comedy Romantic comedy films Groundhog Day My Best Friend s Wedding Four Weddings and a Funeral When Harry Met Sally Sixteen Candles Moonstruck Sleepless in Seattle Clueless Notting Hill and While You Were Sleeping remain one of the most popular genres since the heyday of the Hollywood studio system in the s to s that produced Some Like it Hot rated the funniest film on the AFI list In romantic comedy a couple is coping with challenges to their relationship for example lovers begin to suspect that the other person has not been faithful in the relationship In My Best Friend s Wedding the two main characters are convinced that they are not right for each other and their friends perpetuate that perspective However as in situation comedy the young couple discovers their true love for each other leading to a resolution and often marriage The underlying value assumption is that the traditional family love relationship is a viable institutional norm In a more serious form of the romantic comedy the female heroine initially engages in a stand-offish impersonal male who has difficulty knowing how to express his feelings for the heroine The heroine functions to bring out his more romantic emotional side so that by the end of the story the hero demonstrates or declares his love for the heroine This storyline is manifested in Dirty Dancing in which the strong-silent male returns at the end of the film to express his love for the heroine in a final dance scene A variation of this theme is the male lover who expresses himself through surrogate whom the heroine rejects for the true love Roxanne or who openly shares the process of learning to articulate his love as did the John Cusack character in High Fidelity The film and television adaptations of the Jane Austen novels Pride and Prejudice Sense and Sensibility and Emma and Clueless a modern adaptation of Emma demonstrate the th century origins of this romance storyline In contrast to romantic comedy in tragic romance films such as Love Story Fatal Attraction House of Mirth The Bridges of Madison County The English Patient The End of the Affair Titanic Romeo and Juliet and Jungle Fever the heroine hero seeks forbidden love thereby violating social norms associated with class race religion or family ties For Romeo and Juliet their love is more important than allegiances to their families In contrast to comedy they suffer for their violation of social norms and institutions serving to interrogate the conservative nature of institutions Ironic critical comedy There a number of comedy films including M A S H Dr Strangelove Men in Black Working Girl The Truman Show The Full Monty The Van Lost in America Broadcast News Raising Arizona Fargo Life is Beautiful and Pleasantville that contain comic elements but also raise larger questions about the break-down of institutions For example The Full Monty and Snapper portray the plight of unemployed blue-collar workers in Britain whose work is no longer valued in the new service information economy leading to depression family conflicts and attempted suicides To maintain their sense of dignity they create new forms of work creating a strip show running a mobile restaurant and playing in a band The comic element derives from the fact that the heroes the familiar skills were no longer applicable to operating in these new modes And films such as The Truman Show and Pleasantville raise questions about media constructions of reality and the blurred distinction between a media reality and a lived-world reality see also reality TV shows About Comedy Movies http comedymovies about com links to history of comedy films http faculty washington edu kgb complit links htm comedy Satire Screening Room http www geocities com Hollywood About Comedy TV sitcoms http primetimetv about com index htm Comedy Central cable TV show http www comedycentral com Screwball Comedy http www moderntimes com screwball links to situation comedy shows http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Comedy Sitcoms BBC sitcoms http www bbcamerica com genre comedy games comedy games jsp Dan Ryder We Ain t No Situation Comedy http seed mainecenter org application files packets PDF pdf Roy Stafford Getting the Joke Teaching the Comedy Film http www mediaed org uk posted documents comedyfilms pdf University of California Berkeley Bibliography on Television situation comedy http www lib berkeley edu MRC tvcomedy html For further reading Cavell S Pursuits of happiness The Hollywood comedy of remarriage Cambridge MA Harvard University Press Gehring W Parody as film genre Never give a saga an even break New York Greenwood Press Gehring W Romantic Vs screwball Comedy Charting the difference New York Rowman Littlefield Harries D Film parody London British Film Institute King G Film comedy New York Wallflower Pres Neale S Krutnik F Popular film and television comedy New York Routledge Rickman G Ed The film comedy reader New York Limelight Voytilla S Petri S Writing the comedy film Make 'em laugh New York Michael Wiese Productions Science Fiction Fantasy Science fiction and fantasy films television http dir yahoo com Entertainment Movies and Film Genres Science Fiction and Fantasy http www warwick ac uk pyrel index html http www magicdragon com UltimateSF movies html http www filmsite org sci-fifilms html http www-users cs york ac uk susan sf films http www sffworld com tvmovies http www sciflicks com http www scifilm org http www geocities com Hollywood Lot SF -movie html http members tripod com scifimoviepage index html http www scifimovies com Fantasy films http www filmsite org fantasyfilms html are related in that both involve audiences in the experience of alternative worlds and ways of thinking Through the experience of these alternative perspectives audiences may return to their lived-world experience with new alternative creative insights In both genres audiences need to be able to suspend their disbelief and momentarily enter into an alternative world without imposing their reality-bound assumptions the belief that this would never happen in the real world The fantasy genre focuses more on the mythic magical quest journey in which the good heroes confront various challenges associated with evil challenges that test their tenacity particularly in the final challenge In Leagues Under the Sea based on the Jules Verne novel Captain Nemo and his submarine crew journey to the depths of the ocean and face the giant squid In The Wizard of Oz the band of characters cope with different challenges culminating with the final confrontation with the Wizard Many of the fantasy heroes are loners or orphans who come out of obscurity to become heroes Scott In The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring Frodo Baggins lives alone in a rural village until he is summoned to lead a group to face a whole series of bizarre supernatural creatures and worlds each requiring him and his companions to out-wit the enemy in the land of Mordor In The Harry Potter series Harry is an orphan who lives with his abusive aunt and uncle Superman is a mild-mannered reporter until he is faced with the need to intervene to save someone Spiderman is an outsider high school student until he is transformed into Spiderman These loner outsider figures appeal to adolescent audiences who experience a related sense of being outsiders who imagine themselves as becoming heroic As A O Scott notes For all their ancient and futuristic trappings fantasy stories speak directly to the condition of contemporary male adolescence and they offer a Utopian solution to the anxiety and dislocation that are part of the pyschic landscape of youth Freaks become heroes The confusing issue of sex is kept at a safe distance romantic considerations are ancillary to the fight against evil and to the cameraderie of warriors But ultimately whatever fellowship he may have found along the way the hero's quest is solitary his triumph an allegory of the personal fulfillment that is in the real world both a birthright and a mirage Scott also notes that the appeal of fantasy is based on the nostalgic conservative desire for the restoration of innocence and goodness in a world perceived as cynical corrupt evil and complex Fantasy worlds revolve around simplistic binary distinctions between to good versus evil in which the good ultimately triumphs And Scott notes the hero triumphs not through greater physical prowess but through his knowledge of specific details outwitting the enemy Again this focus on knowledge appeals to the outside nerd who has acquired detailed seemingly useless knowledge and fantasy lore This appeal is socially manifested in audience participation in fan clubs http dir yahoo com Entertainment Movies and Film Titles Science Fiction and Fantasy Space Battles Star Wars Fan Clubs http directory google com Top Arts Television Programs Science Fiction and Fantasy Star Trek Fan Clubs in which knowledge about the particular fantasy establishes one s identity in these clubs through participation on fan chat rooms fanzines and conventions see also media ethnography In his study of Trekkies Henry Jenkins found that members of Star Trek fan clubs actively engaged in assuming Star Trek roles sharing artifacts and creating their own edited video-tape versions of past shows Another essential element of fantasy is the role of magic as manifested magic transformations in which human characters are transformed into flying figures or assume special powers One of the reasons that fantasy works well as animated films as in Toy Story Shrek Monsters Inc Fantasia Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Fantasia Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Mulan is that animation as well as the use of computer special effects dramatically portray the transformation power of magic The adventure science-fiction film such as Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as Joseph Campbell demonstrates in his book The Power of Myth share with fantasy quest films the focus on mythic archetypal quest in this case Luke Skywater s search for the father represented by Darth Vader involving the traditional tension between good versus evil the encroaching power of the empire made up of the Jedi Knights the Jawas who trade androids and the Droids As in the horror genre there is a fascination with the unknown alien other portrayed in the science fiction genre as a threat to civilization as well an uneasy ambiguity associated with the idea that our own technological advances may serve to be destructive The nature of the alien has shifted with shifts in cultural attitudes and fears In the s fear of the presumed pervasive Communist threat was manifested in the fact that alien invaders were out there but invisible Other films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers challenged the cultural conformity associated with the s as did Fahrenheit in the s and A Clockwork Orange in the s With the rise of technological advances in the s s and s the threats took the forms of technology gone amok nuclear disasters mutant insects computer breakdowns skyscraper fires etc In the s the threat of environmental destruction epidemic diseases mind-control and genetic manipulation was reflected in films such as Monkeys Contact The Matrix and Gattaca For example in Gattaca the potential effects of genetic manipulation is examined in terms of a family having to decide to not genetically modify one of their sons Television science fiction fantasy series http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Science Fiction and Fantasy http www magicdragon com UltimateSF index html http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Science Fiction and Fantasy such as Star Trek Star Trek Generations Star Trek First Contact also involve space adventure conflicts with the other In this series the sidekick figure as in the Western Dr Spock is someone who can connect to the local culture of alien worlds providing Captain Kirk and his crew with useful information Science fiction films such as Outbreak Strange Days Monkeys Men in Black The Matrix and Minority Report and television series The Twilight Zone Dr Who and The X-Files examine larger issues of the effects of changes in science technology on society as well as unexplained paranormal psychological events time travel mind-control and alien abduction that elude scientific explanation In many cases the technological advances portrayed in science fiction films portend actual advances that later occur For a comparison of the technology portrayed in Stanley Kubrick s made in and the actual technology of see http www thetech org ds Science fiction film television often draws on the themes ideas and storylines of science fiction writers such as Ray Bradbury Isaac Asinov and Philip Dick For example Philip Dick s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was the basis for Blade Runner which portrays a cop who kills artificially created humans his story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale was the basis for Total Recall a story about a man who has an adventure on Mars implanted in his memories and his story The Minority Report was the basis for Minority Report about police use of precognitive mutants to arrest people before they commit crimes One important subgenre of science fiction fantasy is the computer video game which as Henry Jenkins argues http web mit edu fms www faculty henry pub complete html serves to transports its users into a different social realm or world Sci-fi Space http www scifispace com Sci-fi cable channel http www scifi com Science Fiction Movie Heaven http www shipofdreams net sfmovies Bright Lights science fiction film journal http www brightlightsfilm com scifi html Computer Crowsnest Science fiction site http www computercrowsnest com Courses in science fiction http www users muohio edu erlichrd courseinsf http www d umn edu cla faculty tbacig hmcl Webquest War of the Worlds Fear of Invasion http www itsco org webquest class janice Lorna Dils Science Fiction and the Future http www yale edu ynhti curriculum units x html Lesson plan Blade Runner http www ardecol ac-grenoble fr english brunner enbrplan htm Guy Walters Artificial Intelligence in the Cinema http www times-archive co uk news pages tim timaonaon html Suite Science Fiction and Society http www suite com welcome cfm sf and society University of California Berkeley library Bibliography on science fiction films http www lib berkeley edu MRC scifibib html Webquest Anthem A Utopian Society http projects edtech sandi net lewis anthem Webquest A Cyber-Science Magazine http projects edtech sandi net lewis anthem Webquest Spaceship Earth http homepages wmich edu c comrac spaceshipearth htm Webquest Frankenstein http www gowcsd com master ghs english propp frnkqust index htm Webquest Censorship and Fahrenheit http www mediaworkshop org humanities loonam Webquest Energy Quest http www geocities com brookwebquest For further reading Haber K Ed Exploring the Martix Visions of the cyber present Boston St Martin s Press King G Krzywinska T Science fiction cinema New York Wallflower Press Kuhn A Ed Alien zone II The spaces of science-fiction cinema London Verso Telotte J Science fiction film New York Cambridge University Press Tulloch J Jenkins H Science fiction audiences Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek New York Routledge Wagner J Lundeen J Deep space and sacred time Star Trek in the American mythos New York Praeger Webquest Fahrenheit Book Burning It s not Just Science Fiction http projects edtech sandi net roosevelt bookburning Horror Monster The horror monster film http www filmsite org horrorfilms html http www imdb com Sections Genres Horror Godzilla The Night of the Living Dead Silence of the Lambs Cape Fear The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Jaws The Shining Scream Scream I Know What You Did Last Summer The Blair Witch Project http www angelfire com al icia horror html http www horrormovies com flash home html and television series genre Buffy the Vampire Killer http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Horror http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Horror http directory google com Top Arts Television Programs Horror is one of the more popular genres with adolescents Horror monster films television programs revolve around the theme of a fear of death mortality or id sexuality which is manifested in the zombies creatures vampires Count Dracula Dracula s Home Page http www ucs mun ca emiller Webquest Dracula http www d umn edu lmillerc TeachingEnglishHomePage TeachingUnits web htm werewolves devils witches mutant insects and monsters who threaten to take over and destroy a family community or world The power of the genre as popularized by Stephen King s novels lies in its ability to create an initial sense of stability associated with a realistic portrayal of a familiar everyday world which an audience associates with their own world That initial sense of everyday stability is then disrupted by an attack that implies that we are all mortal and susceptible to destruction In The Night of the Living Dead an innocent couple is out driving in a rural area when suddenly the female is attacked by a group of zombies who have come back from the dead and need to destroy humans to survive The zombies represent not only potential destruction but also the loss of identity humanity associated with death In describing his own reaction to the film Barry Grant notes that he was shocked by the realization that the film was not simply about the zombies but that the zombies represented the average person including one of the characters Harry Cooper who is more interested in saving himself than helping save the other characters trapped in a house under attack by the zombies and particularly when the hero Ben is shot at the end by the sheriff and the posse because he is mistaken for one of the living dead The night of the living dead is not the evening of the film s narrative but the darkness in the human spirit brought about by the absence of compassion and understanding and second who the living dead really are not the lurching zombies but average folk like Harry Cooper the sheriff and his men and ultimately myself D H Lawrence once referred to those people who did not fully embrace what he perceived as the life principle as the living dead saying that they were both angels and devils at once vibrant and corrupt p Similarly in the Invasion of the Body Snatcher films the victims lose their sense of individuality and uniqueness associated with being human The theme of the loss of identity is associated with the issue of the creation of the human monster in Frankenstein and whether or not the created monster is human The mad scientist character who can create the monster links horror to the science fiction theme of the use of technology for destructive purposes One of the most important of the horror directors was Alfred Hitchcock whose films Psycho and The Birds employed innovative techniques to create a sense of horrific suspense in audiences More current horror monster slasher films such as Halloween and Friday the th employ less subtle graphic portrayals of murder and were marketed for adolescent audiences through sensationalized trailers and ads Films such as The Silence of the Lambs and The Blair Witch Project deal with some of the basic psychological aspects of horror involved in understanding motives associated with murder The Blair Witch Project creates a sense of everyday reality disrupted by murder through the use of quasi-documentary techniques of the hand-held camera to create a familiar home-movie context for audiences From an audience analysis perspective one issue associated with horror films is the presumed effects on viewers of viewing sensationalized violent horror film content on Since the inception of the genre critics have charged that violent sensationalized slasher horror films have a negative influence on adolescent audiences attitudes and behaviors related to violence However one question to raise about this critique is the extent to which contrary to critics moral panics about these adverse effects adolescent viewers are capable of constructing their own alternative meanings of these texts Henry Jenkins and his son discuss the topic of moral panics and responses to Buffy the Vampire Slayer in terms of differences in generational perspectives http web mit edu fms www faculty henry buffy html All Horror Movies http www allhorrormovies com Horror Film Compendium http www xmission com tyranist horror Classic Horror the history of horror http classic-horror com Dark Universe http dark-universe com The Chamber of Horrors http www chamberofhorrors m com House of Horrors http www houseofhorrors com Dark Webonline http www darkwebonline com ReelHorror http www reelhorror com Forever Horror http www michalak org fh Suite Horror films reviews http www suite com subjectheadings contents cfm Horror-Wood magazine http www horror-wood com University of California Berkeley Library Bibliography on horror films http www lib berkeley edu MRC horrorbib html Webquest Edgar Allan Poe Father of Horror http www geocities com educationplace poe wqpoe htm For further reading Gelder K The horror reader New York Routledge Grant B The dread of difference Gender and the horror film Austin TX University of Texas Press Jancovich M Horror The film reader New York Routledge Jones D Horror A thematic history in fiction and film London Arnold Skal D The monster show A cultural history of horror London Faber Faber Wells P The horror genre New York Wallflower Press Suspense Thriller Spy Heist A genre related to the action mystery detective and even horror film genre is the suspense thriller spy heist film featuring plots in which the audience is never quite sure if a main character will successfully escape being harmed or will succeed on a dangerous mission or in the case of the heist film pull off the heist http www filmsite org thrillerfilms html http www imdb com chart thriller http www bbc co uk films gateways genre thriller index shtml http movieweb com movies search php American Film Institute years of thriller films http gary appenzeller net AFI Thrills Y htm Alfred Hitchcock was the master of the suspense thriller He placed his characters as in North by Northwest or Rear Window in situations in which they are continually confronting death as their enemies seek to murder them Alfred Hitchcock sites http hitchcock tv http www mysterynet com hitchcock http www imdb com name nm http alfredhitchcock directorscut info en http www hitchcock nl eng htm http www tdfilm com Images material from Hitchcock films http www imagesjournal com issue infocus htm The spy genre involves a similar complication in which the spy is placed in dangerous situations in which his true identity as spy may be exposed The spy hero must also employ many of the nefarious techniques of the enemy to survive http www cia gov spy fi http www geocities com swcomer cloak and dagger One of the most familiar of the thriller spy genres is the James Bond movie series in which the James Bond character created by Ian Fleming was played by five different actors Sean Connery Dr No From Russia With Love Goldfinger Thunderball You Only Live Twice Diamonds Are Forever George Lazenby On Her Majesty's Secret Service Roger Moore Live and Let Die The Man With the Golden Gun The Spy Who Loved Me Moonraker For Your Eyes Only Octopussy A View to a Kill Timothy Dalton The Living Daylights License to Kill and Pierce Brosnan GoldenEye Tomorrow Never Dies The World is Not Enough What accounts for the popularity of the James Bond film series In a study of British viewers responses to these films during the Cold-War era of the s Bennett and Woollacott found that the Bond films evoked a stance that invited audiences to adopt a pro-Western anti-Communist masculine ideological stance consistent with the prevailing cultural attitudes during that period Thus the meaning and value of the action adventure genre film is not embedded within the film but resides in the larger cultural attitudes audiences bring to the film James Bond sites http www jamesbond com http movie-reviews colossus net bond html http www klast net bond filmlist html http www ianfleming org index shtml http home earthlink net atomic rom films htm http www ajb co uk The heist genre including films such as The Thomas Crown Affair The Italian Job Goodfellows The Killing The Score The Good Thief Oceans Snatch Three Kings The Way of the Gun Gone in Seconds Heist A Fish Called Wanda The Grifters Nine Queens Croupier The Hard Word Catch Me If You Can and Lock Stock and Smoking Barrels typically involve a gang s attempt to pull off a highly challenging robbery of extensive wealth or executing a forgery or art thief requiring a lot of careful planning In the actual heist itself there are often suspenseful moments in which it seems as if things will go awry which they sometimes do only to have the heist succeed but then once they acquire their wealth they are no longer satisfied because the thrill of pulling off the heist is behind them About movies The heist http actionadventure about com cs heistmovies index htm Other important thrillers include Steven Spielberg s Jaws and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation as well as Silence of the Lambs Speed The Usual Suspects The Sixth Sense and Memento Morehart P Charles Derry The suspense thriller City Beat http citybeat com - - getlit shtml Schneider K With violence if necessary Journal of Popular Film and Television http www findarticles com cf dls m p article jhtml For further reading Chapman J Licence to thrill New York Columbia University Press Cook K Wake in Fright New York Prion Books Cork J Scivally B James Bond The legacy New York Harry Adams D Abo M Bond girls are forever The women of James Bond New York Harry Adams Derry C The suspense thriller Films in the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock New York MacFarland Dougall A James Bond The secret world of New York Penguin Frank A Frank's The thriller film guide New York Batsford Hicks N Writing the thriller film The terror within New York Michael Wiese Productions Leigh J Nickens C Psycho Behind the scenes of the classic thriller New York Harmony Books McGilligan P Alfred Hitchcock A life in darkness and light New York Regan Books Rubin M Thrillers New York Cambridge University Press Rubin S The complete James Bond movie encyclopedia newly revised edition New York McGraw Hill Soap Opera The soap opera television genre http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Soap Operas http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Prime Time Soaps http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Soap Operas is best characterized by its ongoing open-ended serial narrative development that engages audiences with it s good and evil characters and emotional conflicts in ways that keeps them tuning in week after week One form of the genre consists of day-time soap opera All My Children Another World As The World Turns Bold and the Beautiful Coronation Street Days of Our Lives General Hospital Guiding Light One Life to Live Passions Sunset Beach and Young and the Restless In these shows the settings in earlier shows geared primarily for a female audience were interior contexts inhabited by upper-middle-class characters upscale homes condos doctors lawyers offices or expensive restaurants resorts These traditional contexts referred to gendered oppositions between the female as associated with the home personal matters talk and community and the male as associated with public activity work action and individualism More recently as audiences have broadened there are a wider variety of settings including exterior ones The primary emphasis in these shows is on subjective interpersonal conflicts associated with deception miscommunication infidelity greed jealously need for control power or revenge Dramatic events are built around talk arguments lies shouting matches gossip accusations false promises etc associated with a range of complex relationships within and across families and social networks Underlying these events is an ethical dilemma as to whether certain social norms have been violated norms that are continually being interrogated as society changes While there are a number of on-going subplots conflicts are never totally resolved given the on-going nature of the program in which audiences can tune in at any time and understand the story In the s and s some of these programs migrated to prime-time slots Peyton Place Dallas Twin Peaks and Dynasty followed by Beverly Hills The Colbys Falcon Crest Knots Landing Malibu Shores Melrose Place Pasadena Savannah Spyder Games Titans and Sex and the City in the s These often highly melodramatic programs continued to challenge traditional norms of behavior as did Beverly Hills and Melrose Place presenting prime-time discussions of sexuality and relationships that serve to attract new adolescent audiences to prime-time viewing An important component of soap opera is the highly active loyal audience base as manifested in the multitude of soap opera fan clubs http members aol com soaplinks index html http soaps about com cs fanclubs http www soapcentral com ps fanclubs php http www soapoperafan com These clubs function to provide information about episodes audiences may have missed as well as speculating about what may or should happen to characters Chat room discussions also focus on issues of the lack of realism ideological objections to story developments and analysis of the actors and actresses And they serve as a vicarious stimulus for discussing related issues in audiences own personal lives Analysis of soap opera audiences has moved away from the earlier assumption that the largely female audience adopted passive deluded stances Tulloch One of the important issues for audiences is the extent to which they accept soap opera portrayals as realistic versus fictional representations of everyday emotional relationships In an important study of audience response to Dallas Ian Ang posited that audiences responses are constituted by a structure of feeling in which emotions associated with movements between happiness and unhappiness is central to female audiences identification with characters More recent analyses of audiences responses have focused on the value of talk and gossip as important tools in females own lives Brown McKinley And issues of class may also shape audience responses Cheryl Reinertsen analyzed a group of her daughter s female friends weekly viewing of two television programs Beverly Hills and Melrose Place In responding to these programs the females evidenced a tension between vicariously experiencing the pleasure of romantic relationships and their middle-class achievement-oriented attitudes For example in one episode of a female college student becomes engaged to an older man The group shared their displeasure with her decision to become engaged She likes him just because he s rich She should stay in college She s too young Wait until her parents find out They will really be mad Reinertsen - These responses reflect a commitment to middle-class beliefs in the value of sacrificing immediate emotional needs in order to obtain economic success In examining the tensions between the discourses of romance and the discourses of achievement-orientation some of these females begin to reflect on how these discourses shaped their own responses to these programs TeachIt writing about soap operas http www teachit co uk index asp M A S Z S Webquest As Mt Olympus Turns http projects edtech sandi net kearny mythsoap British Film Institute Teaching Guide Soap Opera http www bfi org uk nationallibrary collections soaps soaps pdf For further reading Alexander L Cousens A Teaching TV soaps London British Film Institute Buckley E Rout N Eds The soap opera book Who s who in daytime drama New York Todd Publishers Fulton E Soap opera Boston St Martin s Press Hobson D Soap opera New York Polity Press Museum of Television Worlds without end The art and history of the soap opera New York Harry N Abrams Witebols J The soap opera paradigm Television programming and corporate priorities New York Rowman Littlefield The Talk Show The television talk show http directory google com Top Arts Television Programs Talk Shows http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Talk Shows http talkshows about com mlibrary htm http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Talk Shows http www interbridge com lineups html consists of four different subgenres the morning talk shows Today Show Good Morning America and the Early Show as well as CSPAN call-in talk shows the day-time talk some of which are characterized as tabloid or the confessional Shattuc talk show as well as courtroom shows on the air in Judge Judy Oprah Winfrey Judge Joe Brown Maury Povich Jerry Springer Divorce Court Montel Williams Live with Regis and Kelly Judge Mathis Texas Justice People's Court Judge Hatchett John Edward Jenny Jones Ricki Lake prime-time late-night talk show currently Larry King Live The Tonight Show with Jay Leno Late Show with David Letterman Late Night with Conan O'Brien The Charlie Rose Show and The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn political talk shows currently Crossfire The McLaughlin Group Meet the Press Face the Nation This Week Reliable Sources Capitol Gang CNN Sunday Morning Late Edition Both Sides Fox News Sunday and The Beltway Boys The morning and prime-time late shows retain a consistent format established by early hosts in the s through s for the morning shows Dave Garroway Arlene Francis Arthur Godfey Garry More Art Linkletter Merv Griffin Hugh Downs Ernie Kovacs Mike Douglas and for late shows Jack Paar Steve Allen Dick Cavett David Susskind Barbara Walters and Johnny Carson Bernard Timberg identifies five characteristics of this subgenre - the centrality of the host The program revolves around the host Larry King Jay Leno David Letterman Charlie Rose as the central figure of the program The host often has control over the show s content and guest selection The host is often supported by others Ed McMahon was Johnny Carson s straight man who laughed at his jokes and provided an immediate conversational audience The hosts often serve as commodities for their networks functioning to promote not only their shows but also the network itself and other products - the present-tense flow Even though the shows are pre-taped they are highly structured in ways that create the illusion that they are occurring live in present time for the viewer audience - varied modes of address The host is simultaneously addressing a range of different audiences the immediate audience on stage guests co-hosts or bandleader their studio audience and the viewer audience all in ways that serve to engage the viewer audience as the intimate you - the commodity function The show serves not only as an advertising vehicle but it also serves to promote the celebrities who appear on the show Stars of television programs on the same network often appear as guests to promote those network programs - structured spontaneity Despite the seemingly spontaneous nature of the program a large cast of writers producers celebrating agents and technical people construct a scripted semi-rehearsed production that adheres to time constraints and certain publicity messages they wish to convey Recently talk show hosts have functioned to provide their own versions of daily news events for their relatively younger audiences who may not be acquiring news from other sources The day-time tabloid confessional show such The Oprah Winfrey Show traditionally appealed to more of a female audience but more recently sensationalized shows such as The Jerry Springer Show has attracted an adolescent male audience These shows are often organized around particularly themes or topics often related to interpersonal conflicts health beauty and on the tabloid shows sex drugs and divorce Shattuc The increased popularity of courtroom shows dramatizes personal or family conflicts within a seemingly legal area These shows attempt to actively promote conflicts between participants often resulting in arguments taunts and physical fights They also engage audience members as players in these conflicts asking them to create alliances between the conflicting participants These shows focus on dramatic conflict between participants serve to overlap with the conflicts portrayed in soap opera see soap opera and reality television The confessional shows focus more on having participants articulate personal problems that are then addressed by an expert or by the host as a moral guide Shattuc The prevailing discourse of these shows is therapeutic the assumption that through talking-out issues and improving interpersonal relationships problems can be solved a discourse that masks the influence of institutional forces For example in an analysis of a series on racism on The Oprah Winfrey Show Janice Peck found that race was defined primarily in terms of interpersonal conflicts resulting in the admonition that if people simply treated each others as humans and improved their relationships racial conflict would be mitigated an analysis that frames racism as a matter of personal prejudice Favorite Talk Show Forum http bhalter tripod com Peter s Reviews of late night show topics http www petersreviews com latenite html Mittell J Television talk shows and cultural hierarchies Journal of Popular Film and Television http www findarticles com cf dls m p article jhtml For further reading Grindstaff L The money shot Trash class and the making of TV talk shows Chicago University of Chicago Press Shattuc J The talking cure TV talk shows and women New York Routledge Timberg B Television talk A history of the TV talk show Austin University of Texas Press The political talk show http www alltalkshows com sunday talk shows html often features competing political perspectives from what is described as the liberal and the conservative side in which participants argue with each other in a highly dramatic combative manner with little contextualization or development of ideas Deborah Tannen characterizes this as the argument culture in which one-upping one s opponents is valued more than enlightening an audience on an issue Moreover the guests who appear on Sunday morning talk shows generally represent status quo institutional perspectives and are largely white males One study by The White House Project of programs aired from January to June found the male guests outnumbered females by to between September and October the number of females guests dropped by Radio talk shows While this module on genres focuses primarily on film television genres there is also a strong link between the television and the radio talk show genre Radio talk shows http search yahoo com search p radio talk show http directory google com Top Arts Radio Formats Talk Radio Programs such as national National Public Radio programs Car Talk The Connection Sound Money Let s Talk Business Talk of the Nation Talk of the Nation Science Friday Splendid Table To the Best of Our Knowledge http www npr org about programs allnprprograms html as well as numerous local radio talk shows attract large audiences In contrast to most of television talk shows these shows particularly those on National Public Radio are often more substantive because they are not influenced by a visual format or by commercial forces At the same time the majority of commercial talk radio shows with hosts such as Rush Limbaugh Howard Stern G Gordan Liddy Dr Laura James Dobson and others reflect a popular appeal to a loyal conservative often male audience due to its reputation as what Henry Giroux describes as The bad boy of the communication industry Given the unrehearsed nature of talk it is less controlled and more open to the speaking the unspeakable Moreover the often spontaneous nature of its content along with it s appeal to audiences willing to believe that they have been excluded from mainstream media gives talk radio an outlaw status and popularity with often marginalized segments of the American public p These hosts assume power over the topics covered by screening calls so that deviant perspectives are excluded undermining the presumed balance required for broadcasters Programs that reflect a more liberal or populist perspective such as Hightower Radio on ABC radio have difficulty staying on the air When Disney purchased ABC they stopped supporting Hightower Radio and it went off the air Talk Radio News http talkradionews com Sports Television sports films about sports outdoors and sports talk shows constitute a major genre in terms of audience size particularly for championship sports coverage of the World Series Superbowl Final Four NBA championships Stanley Cup World Cup Triple Crown Indianapolis and golf tennis marathon track championships These sports championships many of which are annual events can be thought of as media events Dayan Katz in which the techniques commentary and promotion hype the broadcast as a special unusual event that we have all been waiting for For example coverage of the Super Bowl builds on its history by showing highlight clips of previous Super Bowls to create a sense of its prestige The Super Bowl functions as a social event in the lives of many Americans who structure parties around viewing of the game Television sports coverage combines two competing genre forms journalism that attempts to provide background information about players coaches policies contract negotiations and strategies and promotion that attempts to promote or dramatize sports in order to attract an audience Brookes This promotion often takes the form of building up conflict between opposing teams as well as using instant replays slow motion and computer graphics to visually dramatize the coverage The focus on promotion was evident in the NBC coverage of the Olympics which focused more on appealing to American audiences by covering primarily American athletes and by providing dramatic background biographical stories about these athletes a focus that sacrificed balanced journalistic coverage of the Olympics Sports coverage also emphasizes the personal side of players lives emphasizing how players or teams as the underdog have overcome adversities injuries racial sexist prejudice or down times to go on to become a star This theme of succeeding against all odds serves as the basis of sports films such as The Natural Hoosiers Raging Bull the Rocky films Major League White Boys Can t Jump and Remember the Titans What these films often do not portray is how various institutional forces and systems the media sports-equipment industry competitive high school college sports programs and false beliefs about making it in professional sports serve to define athletes experience Hoop Dreams http www finelinefeatures com hoop a documentary about two African-American high school basketball stars portrays the ways in which these students lives are shaped by these various systems One of the issues in media coverage of sports is how they portray instances of violent actions in which players may deliberately injure another player or when players are simply injured given the violent nature of certain sports Portrayals of violence are often excused or rationalized with a boys will be boys discourse of masculinity Media Awareness Network lesson Violence in sports http www media-awareness ca english resources educational lessons elementary violence violence in sports cfm A related issue concerns the coverage of females in sports media something alluded to in Module Females are often portrayed more in terms of their appearance and attractiveness as opposed to their athletic abilities while males are portrayed in terms of their physical skills and strength Much of this is due to the relatively high percentage of male reporters and commentators compared to female reporters and commentators resulting in a largely masculine discourse perspective on sports Education Media Foundation Playing Unfair The Media Image of the Female Athlete http www mediaed org videos MediaGenderAndDiversity PlayingUnfair Media Awareness Network lesson Media Coverage of Women and Women's Issues http www media-awareness ca english issues stereotyping women and girls women coverage cfm Women s Sports Foundation lots on links on coverage of women in sports http www womenssportsfoundation org cgi-bin iowa issues media index html Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport http education umn edu tuckercenter default html Game Face What Does the Female Athlete Look Like http www gamefaceonline org FemmeFan for female sports fans http www femmefan com Zine Girl Jocks Rule http www girljock com Lesson history of media coverage of women in sports http www riverdeep net current front women jhtml One of the important subgenres of television sports is professional wrestling http www wwe com http www nwa-wrestling com http www prowrestling com http dir yahoo com Entertainment Sports Entertainment Professional Wrestling Wrestlers a popular television genre particularly for adolescent males who often make their own backyard video versions that mimic the show From an audience perspective Henry Jenkins argues that the appeal of professional wrestling is that it builds on traditional melodramatic conflict between good versus evil in which working-class adolescent males identify with the good wrestler who seeks revenge against the chicanery and trickery of the bad wrestler who represents the traditional authoritative forces who seek to limit or control these males Jenkins also argues that the highly participatory nature of the audience role allows males to express their emotions in a safe manner Another subgenre is the outdoors television show http dmoz org Recreation Outdoors Television Shows http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Recreation and Sports Sports http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Recreation and Sports Outdoors related to providing useful information about hunting fishing camping hiking and gardening And a subgenre that supports the sports industry is the largely but not exclusively male sports talk show http www hbo com ontherecord http www timmccarver com http foxsports lycos com content view contentId While it draws on the daytime talk show format it differs from the often-therapeutic discourses of these shows by avoiding personal matters and focusing on sharing sports information or stats The shows also provide a lot of visual drama by replaying game highlights often for the purpose of promoting a team Much of the talk revolves around issues associated with a celebration of competitive spirit team-work There is also an important relationship between sports and advertising or promotions in which sports stars and teams are used in ads or use to promote certain products or events Media Awareness Network lesson Sports Personalities in Magazine Advertising http www media-awareness ca english resources educational lessons secondary advertising marketing sports ads cfm The New York Times Learning Network Clayton DeKorne Getting In the Game Exploring Interactive Relationships Between Television Shows and the Internet http www nytimes com learning teachers lessons thursday html searchpv learning lessons The New York Times Learning Network Abby Remer and Alison Zimbalist Kicking It Around Evaluating Perspectives on Women's World Cup Soccer A Language Arts Lesson http www nytimes com learning teachers lessons friday html searchpv learning lessons Webquest Extreme Sports http www longwood k ny us wmi wq werner index htm For further reading Baker A Boyd T Eds Out of bounds Sports media and the politics of identity Bloomington IN Indiana University Press Creedon P Ed Women media and sport Challenging gender values Thousand Oaks CA Sage Rowe D Rowen D Sport culture and the media The unruly trinity London Open University Press Smith R Play-by-play Radio television and big-time college sports Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press Sperber G Beer and circus How big-time college sports is crippling undergraduate education New York Owl Books Wenner L Ed Mediasport New York Routledge Whannel G Media sport stars Masculinities and moralities New York Routledge White G E Creating the national pastime Princeton Princeton University Press WEB SEARCH Game Shows Reality Television Game shows http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Game Shows http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Game Shows http directory google com Top Arts Television Programs Game Shows began in the s with shows such as The Question and The Big Payoff which ultimately went off the air due to scandals associated with providing contestants with answers the subject of the movie Quiz Show Between that time and the s some shows such a Wheel of Fortune What s My Lines Jeopardy Hollywood Squares To Tell the Truth or The Price is Right as well as shows such as The Newlywed Game Family Feud and The Dating Game continued to be aired but with the Who Wants to be a Millionaire initially aired in Britain and then by ABC in the six and one-half hours a week in the genre became the most watched of all television shows These shows cost little to produce and with shows such as Wheel of Fortune can uses prizes as one more mode of advertising products One of the appeals of the show is the idea associated with advertising employed to promote casino gambling state lotteries or horse racing is that anyone can win that someone can walk in off the street and win large sums of money This appeal reflects the larger cultural myth that anyone with a little luck can strike it rich as a primary goal in life This serves to further promote the larger consumerist capitalist discourse constituting commercial television in which winning in life entails acquiring consumer goods One of the key features similar to that of the talk show is the unpredictable liveness of the shows their sense of spontaneity surprise and improvisation which as Michael Skovmand makes it difficult to analyze the genre features of particular shows as shaped by a single organizing perspective One program may chronicle the fortunes of the heroic failure another the luck streak of the mediocre contestant There is no telling in advance because neither an absent auteur nor the host of the show wields a determining influence on the course of events p Skovmand argues that shows such as Wheel of Fortune are highly inclusive in that they are not based on exclusive competencies or expertise but rather on luck or chance associated with card games or bingo The underlying theme consistent with the anyone can win cultural myth is that everyone wins The drama of the program accentuated by audience participation revolves around the element of risk and luck associated with selecting the right answer This focus on getting the right answers also reflects myths about knowledge and schooling as primarily that of acquiring information The success of the highly popular Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire paralleled the emergence of the similarly competitive reality television shows http dmoz org Arts Television Programs Reality-Based http directory google com Top Arts Television Programs Reality-Based http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Reality Television http www realitytvlinks com http www realityblurred com realitytv in the late s such as Big Brother and Survivor These shows built on the earlier trauma TV quasi-documentary shows Rescue Real Life Heroes and America s Most Wanted which employ camcorder actual footage portrayal of real events first person narratives reconstruction of actual events and commentators voice-overs Dovey To this was added a game-like context in which participants were portrayed in a documentary format competing with each other and voting on who remains in the game While these shows lost some of their popularity after they remain popular for certain audiences who become engaged with the participants lives One reason for the popularity of these shows is that in contrast to drama shows they are relatively inexpensive to create They also involve a high level of conflict between participants which producers highlight in their editing of content to create some degree of drama Students could examine the ways in which these shows are shaped through editing techniques and the degree to which the shows portray the complexities of relationships and response to challenging situations Another subgenre of reality television involves placing people in difficult contexts in in a London house based on life in http www pbs org wnet house and in Frontier House in the in the American frontier of Montana http www pbs org wnet frontierhouse and showing them coping with the difficulties of life without contemporary amenities Underlying these shows is a basic assumption they are portraying reality in terms of the events portrayed people breaking down under the stress when in fact the reality portrayed is often highly edited staged events to show more dramatic moments of what in reality may be relatively uneventful lives These shows also assume that reality entails a highly competitive set of relationships between people a Darwinian survival of the fittest world in which there are always winners and losers Beth Rowen History of Reality TV http www infoplease com spot realitytv html Reality TV Channel http www realitychannel tv Reality TV Planet http www realitytvplanet com Reality World TV http www realityworldtv com Reality News Online http www realitynewsonline com cgi-bin ae pl Fans of Reality TV http www fansofrealitytv com Lesson The Reality of Reality TV http ltag tased edu au effectteach units English Realitytv realitytv print pdf For further reading Andrejevic M Reality TV The work of being watched New York Rowman Littlefield Balkin K Ed Reality TV New York Greenhaven Brenton S Cohen R Shooting people Adventures in reality TV London Verso Friedman J Ed Reality squared Televisual discourse on the real New Brunswick NJ Rutgers University Press Murray S Ouellette L Reality TV Remaking television culture New York New York University Press Smith M Wood A Survivor lessons Essays on communication and reality television New York McFarland Animation While animation as a film technique was discussed in Module it is also important to examine animation films and television programs as a genre http www imdb com Charts Votes animation http directory google com Top Arts Animation Movies Titles http directory google com Top Arts Animation Cartoons in which animals people birds trees plants and houses are transformed and personified as humans vice versa This emphasis on metamorphosis of images is a primary tool associated with the fairy tale fable literary genre on which many animation films are based Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Beauty and the Beast Pinocchio Bambi Aladdin Sleeping Beauty Cinderella The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan Many of the Disney versions of these stories reflect a consistent value orientation privileging a innocent idealized cultural model of the world For example The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh represents a highly sanitized version of the original stories in which the complexity of characterization the imaginative literary language and the high quality art work has been replaced by bland versions that wash out the realistic foreboding nature that lies at the heart of fairy tales and fables Many of the Disney animation films contain sexist and racist role representations In his analysis of these films Henry Giroux http www gseis ucla edu courses ed a Giroux Giroux html posits that the female main characters in The Little Mermaid Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas all adopt subordinate gender roles consistent with patriarchic values For example Ariel in The Little Mermaid gives up her voice in order to obtain legs so that she can pursue the handsome prince a literal and symbolic loss of agency for the purpose of romance In Beauty and the Beast Belle as does the heroine in romance novels and romantic comedy transforms the brutal beast into a caring male the dramatization of how the female s primary role is to solve the male s problem And in Pocahontas the Native American princess saves John Smith from being executed by her father another portrayal of a female defining herself primarily through relationship with a male Giroux also identifies instances of racist portrayals in Aladdin in which the villains have Arabic physical features and accents a reification of Edward Said Orientalism the Euro-American representation of the Arab world in deficit terms as foreign bizarre exotic mysterious quasi-barbaric and deceitful In The Lion King the evil lion Scar is portrayed as darker than the other lions While the royal family speaks in British accents the hyena storm troupers speak in Black dialect In all of this being white and male is assumed to be the privileged norm against which others are subordinated Giroux argues that this is consistent with the larger Disney corporate value system that appeals to a traditional white middle-class conservative American audience However contrary to the Disney films animation films such as Toy Story Toy Story Mononoke Hime Shrek Monsters Inc Waking Life and Who Framed Roger Rabbit employ creative techniques of the genre to explore alternative value perspectives Much of the Saturday morning cartoon television shows http dir yahoo com News and Media Television Shows Animation such as Scooby-Dee The Powerpuff Girls Jem Futurama Hey Arnold Batman are equally sexist and largely white The shows The Simpsons Beavis and Butt-Head South Park and King of the Hill reflect a more cynical irreverent stance on contemporary society As Douglas Kellner argues while critics blamed the characters on Beavis and Butt-Head as negative examples for adolescents the show derived from Wayne s World and other aspects of media culture is more of a critique of the economic decline of the working-class family the lack of educational and employment opportunities and contemporary media culture In contrast to Disney s idealized innocent version of American culture for Kellner the characters destructiveness reflects their hopelessness and alienation and shows the dead-end prospects for many working- class and middle-class youths Moreover the series also replicates the sort of violence that is so widespread in the media from heavy metal rock videos to TV entertainment and news Thurs the characters violence simply mirrors growing youth violence in a disintegrating society and allows the possibility of a diagnostic critique of the social situation of contemporary youth p Animation Journal http www animationjournal com For further reading Bruna K R Addicted to democracy South Park and the salutary effects of agitation Reflections of a ranting and raving South Park junkie Journal of Adolescent Adult Literacy http www readingonline org newliteracies lit index asp HREF newliteracies jaal - column med index html Irwin W Conard M Skoble A Eds The Simpsons and philosophy The d'oh of Homer New York Open Court Keslowtiz S The Simpsons and society An analysis of our favorite family and its influence in contemporary society New York Hat s Off Books Stabile C Harrison M Prime time animation Television animation and American culture New York Palgrave Wells P Understanding animation New York Routledge Williams R The animator's survival Kit A manual of methods principles and formulas for classical computer games stop motion and Internet animators London Faber Faber Comics Another important genre is that of the comic book http dir yahoo com Entertainment comics and animation comic books http dmoz org Arts Comics Teachers can have students study comics both in terms of the historical development of comics from early rise of the superhero figures of the s and s to the patriotic hero of the s to the censorship of the s which did little to undercut the rising popularity of comic books during that period http www geocities com SoHo hist htm http www comic-art com history htm http www dereksantos com comicpage comicpage html They can also examine the rise of some of the major comic books publishers DC Marvel Disney Archie Darkhouse Image Comics and how they each established their own unique style for example the Marvel comic book style of Spiderman DC Comics http www dccomics com Marvel Comics http www marvel com flash htm Disney Comics unofficial site http www wolfstad com dcw Darkhorse Comics http www darkhorse com Image Comics http www imagecomics com Archie Comics http www archiecomics com html Students can also examine databases of comics to examine historical trends in the shifting development of comics Michigan State University Library Comic book genres http www lib msu edu comics rri grri genre htm genres Grand Comic Book Database http www comics org The Comic Book Homepage http www geocities com SoHo index htm Comic Book Resources http www comicbookresources com Words and Pictures Virtual Museum http www wordsandpictures org index cfm James Branch Cabell Literacy Comic Arts Collection http www library vcu edu jbc speccoll comicbk html Michael Rhode Comics Research Bibliography http rpi edu bulloj comxbib html Comics Archive http my execpc com icicle main html New York City Comic Book Museum http www nyccomicbookmuseum org main htm Students can also study the artistic aspects of comic book design by analyzing the use of technical aspects of blocking shifting between blocks visual display lines dialogue balloons story summaries etc related to the development of storylines and characters If they do not have access to comics they can go online comic strips panels http dmoz org Arts Comics Comic Strips and Panels online comic books http dmoz org Arts Comics Online Comic Books Web Comics http www webcomics com They can then construct their own comic books using online resources fonts images http www idleworm com how index shtml http www members shaw ca creatingcomics artists html http www comicbookfonts com e env miAMMDkKuWsmdE E G home html link home html http www studiodae com whizbang html http www balloontales com index html http www polykarbon com http www hoboes com html Comics Creators http www blambot com http www mangaschool com Teachers can also consider integrating comics into the literature curriculum by selecting stories and characters from comics consistent with the themes or topics of a particular literature unit For a useful discussion of what aspects of comics appeals to students and how to help studentssee Robyn Hill The Secret Origin of Good Readers A Resource Book http www night-flight com secretorigin pdf online book Comics Worth Reading reviews http www comicsworthreading com Comic Books for Young Adults http ublib buffalo edu libraries units lml comics pages Girls in the Comics http www gnofn org jbourg grrls comix comix htm National Association of Comics Art Educators http www teachingcomics org The Comics Journal http www tcj com frontdesk about html Teachers Guide to Using Professional Cartoonists http cagle slate msn com teacher Study Guides Teaching Comics http www teachingcomics org studyguide php studyguides Steve Higgins Advocating Comics Broken Frontier http www brokenfrontier com columns advocatingcomics archive acfeb htm Comics blog http comics net For further reading Carrier D The aesthetics of comics University Park PA Pennsylvania State University Press Klock G How to read superhero comics and why New York Continuum Publishing McAllister M Sewell E Gordon I Eds Comics ideology New York Peter Lang McCloud S Understanding comics New York Perennial Morice D Poetry comics New York Teachers Writers Collaborative Varnum R Gibbons C The language of comics Word and image Oxford MS University Press of Mississippi Versaci R How comic books can change the way our students see literature One teacher's perspective English Journal - http www teachingcomics org curriculum perspective php Wright B Comic book nation The transformation of youth culture in America Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press Graphic Novels Related to the comic book is the graphic novel whose popularity in the past years has increased dramatically Probably the best known graphic novel is Art Spiegelman's MAUS which portrays the world of a Polish Jewish ghetto during World War II in a comic format Art Spiegelman's MAUS Working-Through The Trauma of the Holocaust http jefferson village virginia edu holocaust spiegelman html The graphic novel combines the visual material of comic books with the novel form and they tend to be written for more of an adolescent audience although a lot of graphic novels are popular with upper elementary school students In describing the differences in audience Keir Graff noted I ve developed a simple system that will avoid offending even the most condescending comic-book cognoscenti if it s clearly for children such as Casper the Friendly Ghost use comic book with confidence for anything else use graphic novel You may receive a smug correction explaining why Daniel Clowes -Ball is a comic but his Ghost World is a graphic novel aficionados are a notoriously detail-oriented lot but you won t have erred by telling a fan his favorite form is just kid stuff And what the heck are manga Japanese comics noted for characters with big hair and big eyes In their home country they have fans of all ages and both genders Though the story sensibility is very different manga art has been infiltrating American pop culture for some time Even if you think you re not familiar with it you probably have seen some examples already think Pok mon Jessica Abel What is a Graphic Novel a visual introduction to the genre http www artbomb net comics introgn jsp Online graphic novels http www e-sheep com main shtml http www fantagraphics com comics comics html http www nbmpublishing com http www artbomb net home jsp Best Graphic Novels Reviewed http www rationalmagic com Comics Best html Best Graphic Novels http www bookfinder us review html School Library Journal Graphic Novels Roundup http www schoollibraryjournal com community Graphic Novels Roundup Gorman M August What Teens Want Graphic Novels you Can't Live Without School Library Journal http www schoollibraryjournal com index asp layout article articleid CA Examples of graphic novels Asamiya K Batman Child of Dreams Bendis B Ultimate Spider-Man Power and Responsibility Brennan M Electric Girl Busiek K Kurt Busiek's Astro City Life in the Big City Charlip R Fortunately Clowes D Ghost World Collins M Rayner R Road to Perdition David L Beetle Boy DeMatteis J M Barr G Brooklyn Dreams Dixon C Gorfinkel J Birds of Prey Eisner W A Contract with God and other Tenement Stories Eisner W City People Notebook Eisner W New York The Big City Ennis G Preacher Dixie Fried Fujishima K Oh My Goddess - -GODDESS Gaiman N Black Orchid Gaiman N Death The High Cost of Living Geary R The Mystery of Mary Rogers Giardino V A Jew in Communist Prague Adolescence Gonick L The Cartoon History of the Universe II Groening M Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror Spine-Tingling Spooktacular Hernandez G Palomar The Heartbreak Soup Stories Hosler J Clan Apis Inzana R Johnny Jihad Kafka F Kuper P Feiffer J Give It Up And Other Short Stories Kafka F The Metamorphosis Ed and illus by Peter Kuper Kim H My Sassy Girl Kiyama H F The Four Immigrants Manga Kubert J Yossel April A Story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Kudo K Mai the Psychic Girl Kuper P Give it up And other stories Laird O L Jr Laird T N Bey E A Still I rise Laird R Still I Rise A Cartoon History of African Americans Loeb J Batman the Long Halloween Messner-Loebs W Kieth S Epicurus the Sage Millar M Ultimate X-Men The Tomorrow People Miller F Sin City Miller R Elektra Assessin Mills P Slaine The Homed God Miyazaki H Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind Perfect Collection Vol Moore A Promethea Book One Moore T Strangers in Paradise High School Morrison G Arkham Asylum Mueller J Oink Heaven s Butcher Nishiyama Y Harlem Beat No Petrie D Buffy the Vampire Slayer Ring of Fire Rabagliati M Paul Has a Summer Job Rall T Ross A Dini P Superman Peace on earth Sacco J The Fixer A Story from Sarajevo Sakai S Usagi Yojimbo Grasscutter Satrapi M Persepolis The Story of a Childhood Smith C Loki and Alex The Adventures of a Dog and His Best Friend Smith J Bone Out from Boneville Smith K Daredevil Visionaries Spiegelman A Kidd C Jack Cole and Plastic Man Takahashi R Ranma Volume I Thompson C Blankets Ware C Quimby the Mouse Watson A Geisha Wegman W Surprise Party Wegman W Little Red Riding Hood Wegman W My Town Weissman S White Flower Day Winick J Pedro Me Friendship Loss What I Learned Winick J The Adventures of Barry Ween Boy Genius Woodring J The Frank Book The Librarian's Guide to Anime and Manga http www koyagi com Libguide html Recommended Graphic Novels for Public Libraries http my voyager net sraiteri graphicnovels htm Graphic novel reviews http www geocities com SoHo Study graphic html http www rambles net gnovels html Manga Graphic Novels http www rightstuf com - - - catalogmgr jcfMPiWuflAy x Ip browse category No Flying No Tights teen reviews of graphic novels http www noflyingnotights com Webquest Net Force the uses of graphics on the Web based on graphics in comic books http www geocities com lukasaurus smith Chandler-Olcott K Mahar D Considering genre in the digital literacy classroom Reading Online teaching Anime genre forms http www readingonline org electronic elec index asp HREF hillinger index html For further reading Bruggeman L Zap whoosh kerplow Build high-quality graphic novel collections with impact School Library Journal January Crawford P A novel approach Using graphic novels to attract reluctant readers Library Media Connection - Eisner W Graphic storytelling and visual narrative New York Poorhouse Press Frey N Fisher D Using graphic novels Anime and the Internet in an urban high school English Journal - Gorman M Getting graphic Using graphic novels to promote literacy with preteens and teens Worthington Ohio Linworth Publishing - Gorman M November December Graphic novels and the curriculum connection Library Media Connection - Miller S Shoemaker J Eds Developing and promoting graphic novel collections New York Neal-Schuman Publishers Rothschild D A Graphic novels A bibliographic guide to book-length comics Englewood CO Libraries Unlimited Sabin R Comics comix graphic Novels A history Of comic art New York Phaidon Press Schwarz G E November Graphic novels for multiple literacies Journal of Adolescent Adult Literacy http www readingonline org newliteracies lit index asp HREF jaal - column index html Weiner S Beyond superheroes Comics get serious Library Journal http www libraryjournal com index asp layout articleArchive articleId CA display searchResults stt Weiner S Decandido K Eds The best graphic novels New York NBM Publishing Weiner S Couch C Eds The rise of the graphic novel New York NBM Publishing Teaching Activity Ask students to work in pairs to present a PowerPoint presentation on one particular film or television genre Do some research on a genre by going on the Web via Google type in name of genre or using the links in this module Summarize the key components of the genre in terms of the prototypical roles setting s language discourse typical storylines in terms of the problems issues dealt with crime who solves the problem the tough cop the means used to solve the problem violence and themes that crime doesn t pay and value assumptions eye for an eye tooth for a tooth Find a visual still clip from the Web or URL that contains a video clip trailers would be very useful go to the trailer sites http www apple com trailers http www darkhorizons com trailers php http www movie-list com http home real com src rg http www theater nl onstage html http www vidnet com http www hollywood com multimedia http uk imdb com Sections Trailers http www sonypictures com spe zones clip vault index html Prepare a summary in PowerPoint References Altman R A semantic syntactic approach to film genre In B K Grant Ed Film Genre Reader II pp - Austin University of Texas Press Ang I Watching Dallas Television and the melodramatic imagination New York Routledge Bennett T Woollacott J Bond and beyond The political career of a popular hero New York Methuen Brooks R Sport In G Creeber Ed The television genre book pp - London British Film Institute Brown M E Soap opera and women s talk Thousand Oaks CA Sage Creeber G ed The television genre book London British Film Institute Dayan D Katz E Media events The live broadcasting of history Cambridge MA Harvard University Press Desser D The martial arts film in the s In W Dixon ed Film genre New critical essays pp - Albany NY SUNY Press Dovey J Reality TV In G Creeber Ed The television genre book pp - London British Film Institute Fiske J Audiencing Cultural practice and cultural studies In N Denzin Y Lincoln Eds The handbook of qualitative research - Thousand Oaks CA Sage Giroux H The mouse that roared Disney and the end of innocence New York Rowman Littlefield Giroux H Fugitive cultures Race violence youth New York Routledge Graff K February References on the Web Graphic novels Booklist http www ala org ala booklist speciallists speciallistsandfeatures referenceonweb graphicnovels htm Grant B K Experience and meaning in genre films In B K Grant Ed Film Genre Reader II pp - Austin University of Texas Press Hartley J Situation comedy In G Creeber Ed The television genre book pp - London British Film Institute Jenkins H Textual poachers Television fans and participatory culture New York Routledge ever Jenkins H Never trust a snake WWF wrestling as masculine melodrama In A Barker T Boyd Eds Out of Bounds Sports Media and the Politics of Identity Bloonington IN Indiana University Press Kellner D Beavis and Butt-Head No future for postmodern youth In H Newcomb Ed Television The Critical View pp - New York Oxford University Press McKinley E G Beverly Hills Television gender and identity Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press Miller T The action series In G Creeber Ed The television genre book