you know that moment when you're
watching a movie and it's been really
captivating and you're getting
interested in the characters and a
little bit lost in the story when
something shifts and you can sense what
might happen next well in those moments
you might be experiencing what it's like
to recognize genre and genre is a term
frequently used to define the elements
that repeat themselves in similar kinds
of movies books television shows music
and more I like to define genre or genre
or genre Joel let's just go with the
genre genre is what some might call
typify dritt Oracle action and what that
means is that there are features that
repeat again and again over time with
few differences in part because
audiences expect certain things to
happen or because they want certain
kinds of experiences genre is the name
we use to describe the categories that
have developed over time for what we
read what we watch and what we listen to
and the kinds of genre that exists in
one culture at one time may not exist in
another culture at another time they're
constantly changing now the main kinds
of literary genre that you might want to
be familiar with are fiction poetry and
nonfiction but those are the biggest
categories that we can think of really
for example nonfiction encompasses
everything from a memoir to a biography
to an instruction manual all the kinds
of non-fiction writing the only thing
that ties them together is that they're
not made up and the same is true for
fiction and poetry too and when we read
poetry or prose fiction we as the
audience have some expectations as to
what should be included that is when we
read a fiction we expect the narrative
to be made up and when we read poetry we
expect that each line of a poem matched
with other lines in a particular way or
it might rhyme in the manner of a sonnet
or it might break rules of punctuation
or might simply take us through a lot of
figurative language in a very short
amount of time but those are the big
genre categories genre gets especially
interesting when we find even smaller
categories like action movies or
superhero action movies or parodied
superhero action movies so think of the
superhero genre this way is usually an
evil villain trying to do something
terrible
that the superhero is trying to going to
try and stop there's usually smaller
fight scenes throughout the movie and a
big fight scene at the end where the
superhero or group of superheroes
triumph often by using their superpowers
the reason I don't have to mention
spoiler alert is because I didn't give
away any of the plot and you all know
that superhero movies follow this
pattern that narrative pattern and all
the other ways that we can describe
other repeating features what makes up a
genre so what's more is that more than
one genre can exist at once think of
ant-man it's a superhero movie it's an
action movie it's a comedy and a parody
of other superhero movie parodies are
where we really see how genres work
after all the reason ant-man is funny
because it's making fun of our
expectations of what a superhero movie
should be it's making fun of the genre
of superhero movies we use these same
terms and descriptions to analyze
literary works works of nonfiction and
poetry too so if I want to understand
gothic novels like Frankenstein by Mary
Shelley or Dracula by Bram Stoker I'm
looking for literary features that they
share some of those features could be
similar kinds of characters plots
settings or themes is there a creepy
stranger in a cape is there danger
lurking in the shadows is there a
haunted castle are you encouraged to
think of the sinister side of humanity
if so you might be reading a gothic
novel so when I analyze genre and I'm
likely to compare and contrast those
features and try to understand how one
novel adheres the conventions of a
particular genre or breaks away from our
expectations it does something different
we can describe a genre by showing how
similar features are repeated and how
those features include most any of the
many literary terms that are featured in
other videos in this series for a gothic
novel we might see metaphors that
connect events to scary or dangerous
things we might see foreshadowing of
horrible events yet to come or we might
see a flashback there's something
terrifying that happened in the past and
that changes how characters action
depress all of these are features of a
particular genre
now one thing not to confuse with the
idea of a genre is that of a medium a
medium is the form in which something is
delivered so we might say that the
medium of a gothic novel is a printed
book or that the medium of a superhero
movie is that of film medium describes
the kind of technology that is used to
convey a story to us but doesn't
necessarily help us understand the genre
of what we're reading for watching
people often ask me is email genre of
writing and I respond by asking when
writing an email if we're required to
write in a particular way and for the
most part we're not an email you can
write a love letter you can write an
angry message to the company that sold
you a dodgy product or you can write a
poem email itself might suggest certain
kinds of writing for example you
probably shouldn't break up with someone
through email but it's a medium and that
can hold lots of different genres it
itself is not a job describing and
analyzing genre is a powerful way to
understand how narratives work in a
really useful way to make sense of the
stories and text that's around
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