Genre

• Steve Neale declares that 'genres are instances of repetition and difference' (Neale 1980, 48)
• Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre (Neale, 1980)
• Tzvetan Todorov argued that 'any instance of a genre will be necessarily different' (cited in Gledhill 1985 60) 

Lacey considers that there are a 'repertoire is elements' that work together to suggest genre and that these are a useful framework to use for analysis. 

Setting

Character

Narrative

Iconography

Style

But did not see genres as fixed but as dynamic and changing over time.

Fluid not fixed

• There are no 'rigid rules of inclusion and exclusion' (Gledhill 1985)
• 'Genre… are not discrete systems, considering of a fixed number of listable items' (Gledhill 1985)
• It is difficult to make clear cut distinctions between one genre and another: genres overlap, and there are 'mixed genres' such as comedy thrillers (Chandler 2000)

Burton suggests that each text in a given genre shares particular key elements to make up the generic formula, these include: protagonists, stock characters, plots and stock, situations, icons, background and decor, themes.

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1B answer: 

The media product that I am going to be writing about in relation to genre is my first one that I done in the first year, which is my film opening. The genre of this piece is 'romance' which was set around Christmas time, where I was able to be extremely creative with narrative, colour and props in order to conform to the theme of Christmas and genre of romance, in order for it to attract it's existing target audience. Steve Neal said that 'genres are instances of repetition and differences' which means that particular conventions of existing romance movies had to be featured and repeated in mine. For example, I used a female character as the protagonist, as females are the main target audience for the genre of romance, therefore enabling my media product to have the potential at being just as successful as previous ones through the use of the main character. I also used her as the narrator throughout the two minute film opening in order to tell the story of the flashbacks on screen.