Chapter 4: Genre and Narrative

Transmedial concepts

• Genre and narrative operate below the system of representation

• Both, genre and narrative, are transmedial concepts → meaning: they occur in different media

• They do shape meaning (e.g. difference if a story is a comedy or tragedy)

• Genre exist beyond literature in the narrow sense

  • Changes how people approach and consume texts of all kinds

• Narrative exist beyond literature in the narrow sense

• Construction narratives = a way for humans to make sense of the world

  • Often follow preexisting narrative patterns, grafting their own experiences onto culturally available templates

  • As a result these patterns determine to a certain degree how humans perceive the world and their own life

An intuitive understanding of genre

• Genre of a novel, subgenre like detective story, the thriller, the romance

• Genre can be found in books, films, series, etc

• It raises expectations about the content, the style and the effects of the stories advertised

• Genre goes beyond media

Definition by Merriam Webster:

• A genre is “a category of artistic, musical or literary compositions characterised by a particular style, form, or content.”

• Genre operates both on the level of content and on the level of form and style

• Genre can be defined by a set of characters (princess, dragon) or by the setting, or by the specific use of camera angles, editing and music. - It’s usually all of these things together.

Factual and fictional genres

• Definition is problematic, because genre does not only exist in the arts, as it is implied

• Genre are part of our everyday life, and therefore exist in the realm of the factual and the realm of the fictional

• Examples: recipes, assembly instructions, newspaper articles, or term papers

The term paper

• Rules and conventions of the term paper, or genre, have impact on the meaning fo the text one writes

• E.g. this lecture book includes only a few topics since it is an introduction

• “The conventions of any genre thus have an impact on how meaning is produced in any text that “belongs” to this genre.”

Impact on how we approach texts

• Usually we already have an idea about the genre before consuming it, and therefore naturally have expectations

• Changing genre changes the perception of the texts

Summary so far about genre

• “Genre is a set of conventional and highly organised constraints on the production and interpretation of meaning.”

• [the genre’s] structuring effects are productive of meaning: they shape and guide, in the way that a builder’s form gives shape to a pour of concrete, or a sculptor’s mould shapes and gives structure to its materials.”

• “Generic structure both enables and restricts meaning, and is a basic condition for meaning to take place.”

Genres restrict and guide

• Important is the proving of guidance that genre does

• It is giving structure for example (see term paper, intro, main part and conclusion)

• Knowing rules of the genre helps me approach and appreciate individual papers → i know what to expect and i have criteria to evaluate thor quality

Genres cut across different systems of representation or media

• Genre operates on a lower level than representation

• A system of representation or medium like language or film compromises many genres. At the same time, genres cut across different systems of representation or media.

  • A western can be a novel (that is, language), a film, a comic strip, or a musical. In this case, some elements - for example, the style and other formal aspects - will change depending on which medium we are dealing with.

Genres do not exist independently of the texts that make up a genre

• Cannot imagine them like boxes

• Need to think about genre and texts as being in a dynamic relationship

• The texts shape the genre

• “Genres are abstractions that come into being if there is a certain amount of texts that share a certain number of characteristics”

• Genres are culturally constructed and has 3 implications

  • Genres change over time (some develop, others disappear, new ones emerge)

  • Its wrong to say a text “belongs” to a genre, because then the genre would exist first and the texts second. (But the texts make genre up.)

  • A text can participate in mire than one genre; it can “belong” intp more than one box at the same time

Generic hybridity

• When a text participates in more than one genre

• A concept that will be encountered more often in Cultural Studies

• “Sometimes, different genres are of different importance at different points in the story.”

Example: the Hunger Games / Genre

• Participates in multiple genres

• Varying genres are of different importance in the novel and film

• Aimed predominantly at teenagers and slightly older → coming-of-age story , but also dystopian and a satire of TV

A shift in the hierarchy of genres

• In the film most attention was given to the fighting in the arena and the dystopian aspect of the story

• Romance and internal thoughts and feeling were given less attention

• “This shows the motivation of the filmmaker to make a shift in the hierarchy of genres in the film adaptation is motivated by commercial consideration.”

Genres are gendered

• Like many cultural phenomena, genres are gendered - and so are (to a lesser degree) media

• Predominantly female or male audience

• Assumptions of producers led by stereotypes

• A step further: reading is a female activity, going to the cinema a mire masculine one

• This effects the meaning of the film

Narrative

• As a lot in common with genre

• Operates at a level below the systems of representation

• Transmedial

• And has influence on the meaning

• Narrative = (at most basic level) the representation of a sequence of events that are casually connected

  • Events being linked by cause and effect

• Narrative can be known by the terms of “story” or “plot”

Narrative turn

• Narratives are given in the literary realm, but also in the factual realm

  • E.g. newspaper articles, doctors note after examination

• Narratives are ubiquitous, and are being studied by scholars from Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology or Political Science

• Linguistic turn = the insight that many cultural phenomena function like language and can be studied accordingly

  • Therefore also a narrative turn in the humanities and social sciences

The narrative construction of reality

• Jerome Bruner: “The Narrative Construction of reality”

  • World does not come to us in form of narratives

  • But humans construct narratives to make sense of the world and give meaning

• Meaning is not reflected by representation or narrative, but constructed in the process od representation, and construction of a narrative is a way to to this

The specific historical cultural context

• Different narratives construct different meanings

• There are dominant narratives / less-dominant ones

  • E.g. western narrative in the war in the ukraine

  • → the evaluation, who is “evil” and who “good” changes completely

• “The narrative construction of reality occurs in all existing cultures around the world, but, as the example shows, it os very often the specific historical cultural context that determines how a specific series of events will be narrated and thus understood.”

Cultural narrative

• “Like genres, cultural narratives do not exist independently pf thot concrete manifestations in individual texts that follow the same pattern and thus tell - on one level at least - the same story.”

• There tend to be multiple narratives, that are competing with each other (e.g. war in ukraine)

• Using narrative as an overarching concept to describe what we find across a large number of different texts

• Need to make clear, whether we talk about an individual text as a narrative or a larger cultural narrative that manifest itself in many texts

• Cultural narratives do not exist independently from individual texts, in which these narratives manifest themselves

Narrative templates

• Humans are not entirely free in which narratives they choose to tell

• Only able to draw on the narrative templates / narrative patterns that are available in their culture to make sense of experiences and events

• What templates are available and chosen has significant impact on how reality and thus meaning is constructed

From rags to riches

• Example of narrative template

• Popular in western world, especially USA

• Reason for success and upward mobility is not found in luck, fate, success, but in hard work, diligence and determination. Often only catering to the white male experience. → very western logic of individualism

Narratives are unconsciously and consciously constructed

• Very deeply ingrained in our culture, therefore we fall back on those templates unconsciously → we think that we only di articulating, when we are not

• Can be produced by, e.g. a vast propaganda machine, mostly with a certain result in mind

• We regard some narratives as reflecting of truth, and others as false/ fabricated

Discourse and narrative

• Discourse is much larger than narrative

• Discourse also includes practices, texts and statements

• Not every statement is a narrative

• Diametrically opposed discursive formations

The jeremiad

• Example of narrative

• Connected to Trumps “Make America Great Again”

• Originally a religious narrative popular among puritan settlers of New England

• It was “designed to join social criticism to spiritual renewal”

• Punishment by god were “corrective not destructive”

• Newer version: US needing a moral renewal to become again the greatest nation on earth

• Connected to the rags to riches

Strategic use of narratives

• Star-crossed lovers / Romeo and Juliet

• Example in The Hunger Games

• Struggle for narrative control

  • Defiance of Katniss and Peeta at the end of game one

  • The Capitol wanting them to tell a story of political rebellion

  • Katniss being portrayed as a lovesick girl

Narrative as an instrument of human cognition

• Narrative cannot be avoided

• Narratives can be constructed as conscious manipulation - to give specific spin to events

• There is no escaping narrative to make sense of (complex) events

• We draw on narrative templates without wanting to

• All narratives, no matter how factual, construct meaning