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LITR 4370
TRAGEDY
Midterm2 Samples 2015 (midterm2 assignment) Model Answers to Part 1. Genre Definition 2. |
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Part 1.
Continue genre
definition and example(s) from Midterm1:
Using the
Introduction to
Genres page, redevelop / revise and extend your "working definition" of
genre in all three categories (Subject / Audience, Formal, Narrative) and use them to analyze
the genre of your choice you began in Midterm1. Cite, explain, and analyze
two or more examples of
your genre from your reading, viewing, or listening experience and and 2 research sources from course website or beyond.
(total length: 6-8
paragraphs, 3+ double-spaced page equivalent)
Shelby Hollen
Comedy for all
personalities
For
decades there have been many different forms and styles of music, literature and
movies that have surfaced for the world to experience. These compositions are
categorized by their similarities and then all grouped under a word called
genre. I like to look and describe the word genre as if it were an umbrella. The
genre is the shaft, the different categories are the stretchers, and the ribs of
the umbrella separate the differences of the categories up. The canopy covers
the whole umbrella and symbolizes that just because something is in one category
doesn’t mean it cannot be a sub-category for another as well for example, a
romantic comedy.
When someone asks you what kind of
novel you’re reading or what kind of movie you are watching they are referring
to the subject genre. When people label the types of movies for example as a
chick flick they are putting the movie into a subject genre. However there can
be some confusion with subject genre. The distinction between subject matter and
audience can be confused (qtd. in White’s subject genre). However, this can also
be an example of the subject/audience identification. Both of these examples
would be categories that would go into the shaft of the umbrella analogue. The
part is the brain of the genres, it holds all the genre categories until they
are ready to be put out into the stretchers and ribs. Just like in the umbrella,
the shaft makes the connection with the rest of the components of the umbrella,
so does subject/audience identification. You can look at it as the shaft is the
connection and the ribs and stretchers are the audience it is reaching.
In formal genre
you are looking for the number and types of voices, there are three types of
representative genre. This would be an example of the ribs and stretchers in the
umbrella. Narrator genre you will have someone who is telling a story, this
person is usually speaking to the audience of viewers throughout the entire
movie or show. For example the TV show How I Met
Your Mother, Ted, the main character is telling
his children the story of how he met their mother, and the futuristic Ted is
talking to the audience the whole series. Dialogue is the most popular; this is
where two or more characters are speaking with each other while the viewers are
listening. The difference between dialogue and narrator is that the narrator is
talking to the viewers where the dialogue the viewers are watching the
conversations happen. Then we have Narrator plus dialogue, this is just a
combination of the first two example I just described, the TV show
Saved By The Bell is an
example of this, the characters are in dialogue with each other, but there are
certain parts where Zach Morris stops and talks to the viewers. No matter the
situation in which the narrator is speaking to the audience the narrator is like
the stretchers of the umbrella, and the ribs are the audience at this point. The
stretches either reaches out and talk to the ribs or they talk to each other.
Narrative genre
is the kind of story you are watching or reading about. This goes a little more
in depth about the story line, and is different for every genre. This would be
the canopy of the umbrella. It covers the umbrellas ribs filling it with the
specific types of genres. My most interested genre is Comedy, with that being
said the narrative genre usually starts off with a problem of some sort, and by
the end of the movie the problem has been resolved. However, there are many
different sub-genres of comedy and even though the problem has been solved it
does not mean you were not highly frustrated by the end.
There was a movie I saw a few years ago, it was a
dark comedy called Extract.
This movie was very funny, however it go to a point where I was wanting to yell
at the TV screen because the frustrations throughout the movie of the main
character continuously trying to get his life back together and just “blindly”
walks into conflicting situations that keep setting him back. However, even for
this dark comedy by the end of the movie his conflicts were resolved.
In the movie
The Ugly Truth
the main male character is shown as a male chauvinist but all the women just
fall all over him, except his colleague is looking for true love. The main male
character ends up showing her that all men are pigs and she might as well deal
with it if she wants to find love. This is exactly what Aristotle is talking
about when he says Comedy aims at representing men as worse (qtd. in White,
“Aristotle’s” par II). Another great example of comedy is American Pie; it is
crude humor but at the same time is not painful or destructive. Aristotle says
the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain (qtd. in White,
“Aristotle’s” par V), which is exactly the kind of humor
American Pie has, it is
funny for the audience watching because the things that are happening to the
actors in the film are so embarrassing and awkward, the viewers laugh because
they are glad it is not happening to them.
Definitions of genres are never black
and white. There are so many ways to describe a specific genre, especially
comedy. First off if I am going to give a definition for comedy the first thing
that comes to my mind is funny. However, a comedy can mean so much more than
just being funny. Plus you have so many sub-genres of comedy like, romantic
comedy, dark comedy, comedy thrillers, political comedies, stand-up comedy and
urban comedies; the list can go on and on. Yes at some capacity all of these are
funny, but some of them are emotional, frightening and gross. But I feel like
with comedy you generally get a happy/feel good feeling at the end because you
can always rely on the conflict to be solved.
Before taking this class I was under
the impression that the genre was more black and white. I have learned from this
class so far that the genre its definition is an ongoing process with a lot of
gray area in between.
Works Cited
How I Met Your
Mother. Perf. Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, and Cobie Smulders. CBS.
2005-2014. Television
Saved by the
Bell. Perf. Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, and Dustin Diamond. NBC
Productions. 1989-1993. Television
Extract. Dir.
Mike Judge. Perf. Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, and Ben Affleck. Ternion
Pictures. 2009. Film.
The Ugly Truth.
Dir. Robert Luketic. Perf. Katherine Heigl, Gerard Butler, and Bree
Turner. Lakeshore Entertainment. 2009. Film.
American Pie.
Dir. Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz. Perf. Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian
Nicholas. Universal Pictures. 1999. Film.
White, Craig.
“Aristotle’s Poetics.” Online posting. n.d. Course webpage Tragedy.
University of Houston-Clear Lake. 22 February 2015.
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/xcritsource/classical/AristotlePoetics.htm
“Genres.” Online
posting. n.d. Course webpage Tragedy. University of Houston-Clear
Lake. 22 February 2015.
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/G/genres.htm
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