Schatz hollywood genres

Running Header: THOMAS SCHATZ’S FILM GENRE AND GENRE FILM THOMAS SCHATZ’S FILM GENRE AND GENRE FILM Institutional Affiliation Date 1 THOMAS SCHATZ’S FILM GENRE AND GENRE FILM 2 Thomas Schatz provides a detailed analysis of the film genre and the genre film by focusing on the Hollywood genre, more specifically the contrasting genres of Western and Musical. According to him, film genres act as the meeting point between the studios and individual film and he encourages a structural and grammatical understanding of how stories and characters are constructed through genres. Schatz is drawn to the powers of the Hollywood studio system, which is broader and less personal. This argument is significant a contribution to contemporary debates about genres and ideology, particularly in its attention to communal meaning of film genres. (p.454) He explains that a genre film can be examined in terms of plot, setting, and character, which are its most fundamental narrative components. And this is the same to any story. In addition, each genre film has more than just a physical setting, as it incorporates a specific cultural context. Schatz, as an example, compares drama to genre film, where he says that drama establishes a community disturbed by conflict, while in genre film both the community and the conflict have been conventionalized. He further adds that “familiarity with any genre seems to depend less on recognizing a specific setting than on recognizing certain dramatic conflicts that we associate with specific patterns of action and character relationships” (p.455). Therefore, Schatz is able to develop a hypothesis, “the determining, identifying feature of a film genre is in its cultural context, its community of interrelated character types whose attitudes, values and actions flesh out dramatic conflicts inherent within that community.” Meaning that a film genre is based on more than just the physical setting, the individual character, or the visible traits in the context. THOMAS SCHATZ’S FILM GENRE AND GENRE FILM 3 He therefore goes ahead to define a generic community as more of a network of characters, actions, values, and attitudes, and less of a specific place. In addition, he explains that the status of each genre is enhanced by Hollywood’s studio production system because each generic context is orchestrated by specialized groups of people, e.g. directors, producers, sets etc. therefore, this Hollywood studio can be likened to a cultural community. One major concept that he expounds on is the concept of Iconography. Here, the focus is on the end product and the results of repetition of a popular film or story, which is narrative and visual coding.