AustLit

'This dossier represents emerging writers from RMIT University’s undergraduate Film Genre course, as they explore ways that an individual film may use, knowingly play with or revise genre tropes, in the midst of other artistic, industrial and socio-historical factors. The ubiquity with which the idea of genre circulates in popular culture may potentially present a somewhat misleading picture of consensus that the course then problematises and unpacks over a semester. As Steve Neale points out, genre does not merely consist of a set of “conventions” used within films, but also “systems of expectation and hypothesis” among audience members. In turn, these genre expectations can be influenced by marketing materials and reviews. Films that were first marketed as one genre can be subsequently re-labelled as another genre by scholars and critics, or by the industry itself. In the contemporary era, streaming services frequently use multiple and sometimes “oddly specific” genre labels, in ways that challenge a dominant idea expressed by Rick Altman that “if it is not defined by the industry and recognized by the mass audience, then it cannot be a genre.  As such, while the repetition of recognisable codes and labels may be central to our understanding of genre, so too variation in how genre is used – by filmmakers, the film industry, and audiences – is also key to the genre system.' (Introduction)