Class Two

As Chandler writes, while genres (particularly the 'small' genres such as Westerns, Horror works, Romantic-Comedies) are rather fluid and difficult to define, the field of 'genre studies' is one which we shouldn't try to define objectively, as a scientist might define a genus (though science has its own problems with these 'natural' classification). Instead, genre studies should
spend its time grappling with the 'why' and the 'how' rather than the 'what.' That is, 'if we are studying the way in which genre frames the reader's interpretation of a text then we would do well to focus on how readers identify genres rather than on theoetical distinctions.' Why and how the viewer/reader uses the Western, for example, rather than what defines the Western. And added to this is the suggestion that this turns on a critical relationship between the needs of the audience and the needs of the producer, a relationship which can tell us quite a bit about the needs of the culture at large.

More amusingly, watch the link to Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone...some of the finest lines the western has ever offered (and, as we will get to when we discuss 'Purpose' next week, it is a genre dominated by good lines).

I'll post the readings (more Chandler, some of the Foucalt listed here) later this week (let's say by Saturday morning at ten), as well as a response for next Wednesday. Enjoy the long weekend.