Genre
Genre is any
form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic,
etc.) with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genre is most
popularly known as a category of literature, music,
or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or
visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic,
rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions
that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old
ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing
and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of
communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these
texts based on agreed upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may be
rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible.
Genre
began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose,
and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related
to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate
for tragedy, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the
assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best. In later
periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences
and creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of
unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a social state, in that
people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a
tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings.
Genre
suffers from the same ills of any classification system. Genre is to be
reassessed and scrutinized and to weigh works on their unique merit. It has
been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the
shorthand communication, as well as the tendency of genres to shift with public mores and
to reflect the zeitgeist. While the genre of storytelling has
been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of
the conventions, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of
an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of
the codes.
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