“We all know a genre when we see one,” (552) writes Rick Altman to convey the ambiguity of genre theory (while implicitly referencing Justice Stewart’s comment on whether Louis Malle’s Les Amants (1958) is pornographic or not – “I know it when I see it”).
Altman pinpoints at three contradictions within the existing literature of genre theory. Firstly, the way films are categorized into designated genres, namely, inclusive and exclusive lists. The former refers to when “tautological definition of the genre” (553) sets the standards for thinking about genre such as Western as “film[s] that takes place in the American West,” and the latter is those lists where the genre conventions are dissected from the films. In this sense, while one lacks detailed distinctions and presents a checklist for categorizing a film, the other picks quintessential examples and revolve the category around them – but it is not clear how that exclusive list has become the “quintessential” one: how film A is regarded as better at capturing the genre conventions and not film B, for instance, if we are not defining the genre from a pre-set understanding of motifs.
As inclusive and exclusive lists are the basis of these contradictions, it is better to present Altman’s intervention first and then show how it solves others. Briefly going over semantic and syntactic approaches, Altman takes Western as an example and presents various definitions for the genre. While some focuses on semantic elements such as “traits, attitudes, characters, shots, locations, sets, and the like” and defines Western in a set of spatial and temporal aspects the story sets in, others focus more on the “relationship linking lexical elements” (557) and argue that “vocabulary is . . . generated by this syntactic relationship, and not vice versa” (557). Altman’s intervention comes with Pennsylvania westerns: he asks if “these films construct plots and develop a frontier structure clearly derived from decades of western novels and films” but does not follow others in the genre spatially and temporally, are they considered westerns?
Altman’s formulation of semantic/syntactic argues that favouring one sort of definition over other creates the problem as these approaches are in fact complementary. Thus, the first contradiction is addressed by bringing “explanatory power” of the inclusive lists and structural focus of the exclusive ones as Altman states that “we need to recognize that not all genre films relate to their genre in the same way or to the same extent” (558). This takes us to the second contradiction, which is the semiotic approach’s failure to address the historical foundations of a genre. Altman proposes two ways for how a given genre emerges: “either a relatively stable set of semantic givens is developed through syntactic experimentation into a coherent and durable syntax, or an already existing syntax adopts a new set of semantic elements” (558). In this sense, instead of treating genres as Platonic categories, Altman considers them historically and accounts for the industry’s impact.
This is where the third, and final, contradiction Altman discusses comes into play: two strands of genre criticism, the ritual and the ideological approaches. Stemming from Levi-Strauss, the former emphasizes “on the mythical qualities of Hollywood genres” and the way the audience forms a ritual bound with the movies. In this sense, they argue, “by choosing the films it would patronize, the audience revealed its preferences and its beliefs, thus inducing Hollywood studios to produce films reflecting its desires” (555). The ideological approach, on the other hand, argues that the audience does not have the authorship power and they, in fact, “are manipulated by the business and political interests of Hollywood” (555). Altman states how two opposing camps of theory usually cite the same group of films to support their arguments because of “the fundamentally bivalent nature of any relatively stable generic syntax” (559). He thus argues that “Hollywood does not simply lend its voice to the public’s desires, nor does it simply manipulate the audience. On the contrary, most genres go through a period of accommodation during which the public’s desires are fitted to Hollywood’s priorities (and vice versa)” (559).
Then how do we distinguish between semantic and syntactic elements? Altman writes that we need to distinguish between “the primary, linguistic meaning of a text’s component parts and the secondary or textual meaning that those parts acquire through a structuring process internal to the text or to the genre. Within a single text, therefore, the same phenomenon may have more than one meaning depending on whether we consider it at the linguistic or textual level” (561).
Following Altman, the obvious destination for us would be discussing Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and David Milch’s Deadwood and comparing their different genre sensibilities. As they are different forms of storytelling, textual elements differ accordingly. However, a technical aspect of both stands out: as if addressing Anne Friedberg’s call for film studies to account for different screens, the TV series uses 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio while the film uses 4:3 aspect ratio. Both are outside of conventional cinematic aspect ratio (I mean for contemporary films since 4:3 is technically the Academy ratio), but it still is curious that the TV series opts for a widescreen considering that anamorphic formats (2:1 to 2.76:1) were first used by the industry to differentiate movie theatre screens from televisions. So, my questions are: What kind of difference does this make for our perception of genre conventions in both? Considering the character archetypes Deadwood employs in portraying women, for instance, does Meek’s Cutoff’s aspect ratio makes any difference if we are to consider Emily Tetherow as the protagonist of the film? Or more generally, what does Meek’s Cutoff’s choice of aspect ratio, among many others, tell in terms of storytelling in comparison to the epic ethos of westerns-at-large?
While the Academy ratio of 4:3 used by contemporary films for various reasons (stylistic concerns, to convey a sense of being trapped, authenticity for the setting) Reichardt’s aesthetic choice also brings to mind the question of realism (as a sort of revisionist-“Revisionist-western,” Meek’s Cutoff is more concerned with everyday reality than its genre counterparts, and not using a widescreen aspect ratio helps to give it a more “real” feeling as opposed to cinematic grandeur in terms of depicting vast, open spaces): Where the audience is positioned within the film? Or, in other words, how the suture works when a film chooses a more realistic approach of storytelling as opposed to established genre conventions? Moreover, how should we conceptualize the film’s realism considering the distinction Manovich makes between realism and photorealism (“the ability to fake not our perceptual and bodily experience of reality but only its photographic image” [791])? Are genres, in this sense, mere commercial storytelling styles? If so, as a film more concerned with day-to-day life, how could we position Meek’s Cutoff among other films we have seen this year? From a “genre perspective,” is it more close to, for instance, Stagecoach (1939) or 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007)?
Altman, Rick. 2009. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film .” In Film Theory and Criticism , edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 552-563. Oxford University Press.
Friedberg, Anne. 2009. “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change.” In Film Theory and Criticism, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 802-813. Oxford University Press.
Manovich, Lev. 2009. “From the Language of New Media.” In Film Theory and Criticism, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 777-794. Oxford University Press.