Central to one of the most basic discussions in film studies is that of genre.
Individual movies don't exist in a bubble. They all have one or more assigned genres,
because humans like to organize and label all the little minutiae of existence.
So what is genre? What genre does Transformers even fall into, and how has Transformers...
transformed...genre?
I planned that.
So genre is both incredibly fluid and surprisingly rigid.
Genres are being created, changed, and redefined all the time.
A film might be produced and marketed as one genre,
but then might be retrofitted by history as falling into another.
An interesting example might be Frankenstein, which is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel,
but when the novel came out, we didn't have a term for it.
The term "genre" is also separate from the term "genre film,"
which most would consider the Transformers franchise to fall into.
The term "genre film" usually refers to speculative fiction, outside of traditional rooted adult dramas
and more in the vein of science fiction, fantasy, action, and adventure.
Genre films also kind of a subtle term for films that don't deserve awards.
Hollywood.
Genre as a blueprint for audience expectation can be considered a part of film language.
According to film historian Bill Nichols:
In that sense, genre is the most basic element of film language,
but these elements are more for marketing, for the filmmakers, and for the consumer,
rather than being a part of text and framing.
Elements for the genre of romantic comedy include fun light-hearted tone...
... a focus on the formation of the couple, and a happy ending.
Elements for the genre of horror include a perversion of domestic stability,
gruesome elements inserted into some form of status quo, and psychological manipulation.
Elements for the action genre include a fast pace and intense spectacle.
Elements for the science fiction genre include the use of speculative elements
to explore questions about technology, sociology, the future and the nature of humanity.
- What? - You don't get Christmas bonuses standin' around.
- You want those new teeth you saw in SkyMall? - It's my dream!
There are... debates as to whether or not Transformers can be considered science fiction.
- Name's Wheelie! Yeah... say my name! Say my name!
I did an informal poll on Twitter and I got a pretty wild variation of what genre the Transformers movies even fell under.
So how do we contextualize the genre of these films, or indeed any film,
and why do films even need to be contextualized in terms of genre outside of the demands of marketing?
According to the most recent edition of AS film studies:
So perhaps the most obvious answer to "Where does Transformers belong?" is science fiction.
There's a divide between so-called hard science fiction,
that is, science fiction based on technologies that are theoretically possible,
and soft science fiction, anything that involves technologies that are theoretically impossible,
or where the technology isn't really explained.
Given that Transformers isn't terribly concerned with realism,
I think it's safe to say that it is not hard science fiction.
Perhaps soft science fiction, or even science fantasy,
or perhaps Transformers is just straight fantasy.
In publishing, science fiction and fantasy tend to be lumped together,
which kind of bugs me, because they are generally quite different genres.
Fantasy is more seeking to mythologize.
Science fiction tends to look forward and explore anxieties and fears
relating to our shared future, and to technology.
The Transformers movies fall much more on the mythologizing side of the spectrum than the forward-looking side.
Hell, the fifth movie has King Arthur as a major plot point.
So, wouldn't that make them more fantastical?
The films are much more concerned with ideas like destiny and honor, such as it were,
and way less in how speculative elements affect our future and our shared humanity,
similar to what you would see in a film like Arrival or Blade Runner.
You could make the case for Transformers as science fantasy, more in the vein of Star Wars,
but that feels incomplete, too.
Let's look at something like Universal's The Mummy, which is on its third major iteration.
The first version of The Mummy, which starred Boris Karloff and was released in 1932,
would now be classified as horror.
But the 1999 remake, released in a wildly different time for a different market,
retained little of the horror element and was more of a fantasy/action/comedy.
And the new version would fall into the genre of...
God, I honestly have no idea what they were going for,
but I think the intent was more to lump it in with Transformers,
into this nascent genre of big-budget nostalgia-based action/fantasy/camp.
I don't know, you have a better name?
You could also make the case that directors are a genre,
because with certain directors come certain expectations.
Michael Bay is almost a genre unto himself.
And that helps people contextualize, or even excuse, the badness of his films.
And I cannot tell you how many times I've heard that defense of Michael Bay, like,
"It's Michael Bay, it's not supposed to be good." It's like... would you say that about food?
Like "Some food's just not supposed to taste good, okay, just eat it."
Let's look at an example of director-as-genre working against a movie's favor.
With Steven Spielberg's A.I., many people came away from the film
feeling the ending to be almost saccharine, typical Spielbergian.
But would people look at it that way if they saw it as a Kubrick film, which really, it was?
If you look at A.I. through the lens of Kubrick as auteur, the ending no longer seems so saccharine,
the outlook no longer so optimistic.
That shift in expectation and subversion of expectation alone
completely shifts how the viewer frames the movie.
- All the problems seem to have disappeared from his mommy's mind.
So without changing a single frame of the film, just looking at the film in the context of the Kubrick canon
rather than the Spielberg canon changes how the audience perceives the movie.
Movies with Mikey did a great in-depth look at this movie and you should check it out for more on this dynamic.
So genre is a part of film language because it helps the audience contextualize what they are seeing.
A part of that context is expectation, but important also is the subversion of expectation.
Genre films have to build on the language of previous genre films,
expand on it, subvert audience expectations, but not too much.
Without that subversion of genre, audiences will stop showing up
because they've seen this all before, and it's starting to feel stale.
This was basically what happpened to Disney movies after the '90s renaissance: The films got too repetitive.
But then when Disney tried to break from its mold and expand, it got alienating to their core audience.
Genres also have a life cycle.
In a recent episode of The Nerdwriter titled "Logan: Superhero Movies Get Old,"
Nerdwriter cites an essay written by John G. Cawelti
which uses Chinatown as its example of generic transformation in American film.
You should also take the time to check that out if you haven't.
But the basic takeaway here is that genre conventions eventually become so embedded
that genres must change; audiences either demand a greater complexity from the genre,
or the genre fades away.
Take Westerns, for example: The Western genre, as it once was, is dead.
Sure, you get the occasional send-up or homage,
but they do not fall into the genre of Western as it was once known.
And Westerns as the genre was once known won't ever come back,
because America's relationship with its own identity,
which at one point created an environment for Westerns to flourish, has changed.
In the heyday of the Western, a generally-whitewashed version of Manifest Destiny was what was known and accepted by most consumers.
The genre as a whole romanticized the exploitation, degradation, and genocide of indigenous Americans.
And you can cry foul at the PC Police trying to brainwash you,
"Cry me a river with your liberal tears snowflake,
I don't care about the plight of the Native Americans, they had to die,
so we could put, y'know, like, Cedar Point and Applebee's,
and a Buffalo Wild Wings, and a Cheesecake Factory on their ancestral homeland,
and I'm gonna watch all the Westerns I want!"
Most audiences are not so eager to consume that particular interpretation of the Old West anymore.
Audiences started to realize that there was something off about this romantic portrayal of the American West,
just like they realized there's something off with Gone with the Wind's romantic portrayal
of the American South, after the Civil Rights Movement.
Manifest Destiny and all its evils are baked into the genre,
and the genre lost its popularity when American expansionism lost its romance for audiences.
Obviously #notallaudiences,
but enough to mean it was no longer financially lucrative.
And that's part of what made Blazing Saddles so brilliant in its time.
Yes, this is Blazing Saddles praise number 452,263 on this channel.
Blazing Saddles not only touches on America's history of racial exploitation -
that's what the movie is about -
- Get up, boys, break's over.
through what Cowelti describes as burlesque,
Blazing Saddles lovingly destroyed the magic surrounding the genre.
[Farting]
[Another fart]
[Even louder fart]
Mel Brooks said that his Western parody came from a place of love, and that might be true,
but Blazing Saddles definitely helped kill the Western.
- Head them off at the pass? I hate that cliche!
And obviously it wasn't only the loss of the romance of the Western that killed it.
The genre began to be associated with old squares,
newer science fiction actioners and police procedurals replaced it in popularity,
a more global film market means the subject is less appealing to non-Americans,
all of these things contribute to the birth and death of genres.
That's why you don't really think of more recent films like There Will Be Blood and True Grit,
itself a remake of a Western, as Westerns.
They're more in the vein of historical fiction, and don't romanticize a bold, brave frontier history
in the manner typically associated with the Western genre.
So, Nerdwriter contends that Logan could be considered the product of exhaustion with superhero movies,
and I think that's true, but this genre that we're starting to feel so exhausted by,
I think it's bigger than superhero movies, and I think it's changing.
The creation of shared cinematic universes is creating something of a saturation point.
Superhero movies are moving away from hero-dom and more towards mythologizing.
So this new Mummy remake, everything Marvel and DC's putting out, even Transformers,
these movies all have much more in common with each other than with classic horror,
superheroes, or the science fiction that may have inspired them.
All of these are examples of generic transformation...
... or re-contextualization.
They may be inspired by niche genres, but I think what we're seeing instead is something new,
something that history will contextualize as separate from the genres that inspired them.
This new genre that's drawing elements from other, more niche genres
to create this sort of mainstream... Hydra.
And that's the thing about contextualization. Ultimately, that's history's job.
So, film historians of the future will doubtless give a name to this current era we are living in of...
... B.B.N.B.A.F.C...
Or, you know, like, film historian aliens that are trying to like, piece together
and figure out what our deal was as a civilization.
And yes, I'm pretty sure that the aliens trying to cobble together the remnants of our civilization
are going to have, like, huge nerds that care very much what genre the Transformers films fell into.
I am more sure that aliens have nerds than we will survive as a civiliza--
But as for what genre history will assign this period of film we are currently living through,
only history will tell.
Or alien nerds.