The Genre Cycle!Learning Objective/Kaupapa:1.Develop our understanding of changes in the horror genre so we can make informed connections and comparisons between texts that are different in time, culture and literary tradition, exploring their influence.2.Use a range of reading strategies to extract, infer from and apply information.

The value is….. RESPECTThe Competency is …..PARTICIPATING AND CONTRIBUTING

Homework – Complete the reading in the S drive folder entitled … and make an A4 revision card summarising the key ideas. ALWAYS DUE END OF DAY ON A WEDNESDAY!

Do Now/ Nā Mahi:

Read the extract and take notes summarising the main events in the history of horror.

Learning Objective/Kaupapa:1. Develop our understanding of changes in the horror genre so we can make informed connections and comparisons between texts that are different in time, culture and literary tradition, exploring their influence.2. Use a range of reading strategies to extract, infer from and apply information.

1.UNDERSTAND THE HISTORY OF GENRE SO WE CAN….• Look at texts from different times, cultures and film traditions.• Compare and contrast• Look at them in context – how they affect the world and how the world

affects them

2.Read actively when writing and using notes from a text.

What sort of reading strategies do you already know about?

Active reading. In pairs.1. Topic sentences give us clues.

As you read, highlight all the topic sentences.2. Key word selection.

Select between 3 and 6 key words in each paragraph.3. Summarise

Use bullet points, diagrams and symbols to summarise each paragraph when you complete each paragraph.4. Gloss

Create a glossary box where you write the words you need to look up in the dictionary for their meaning.

5. Think, Link and Shrink.Think about what you already know. How does this help you to understand the text? Write additional notes around your summary to help you

remember this useful previous knowledge is relevant. Link your ideas to other learning and to real examples and to the context of the text.Get rid of any information that is not relevant to shrink the amount of notes you take.

Tutorial Table

Ashleigh

Jasmine

Cheyenne

Kristal

Peer teachers

Alysha

Oscar

History of the Horror GenreGenre is a French word, meaning ‘type’, and is a technique used by institutions and audiences to engage with film texts successfully. Genre is a useful tool for Film Producers and Institutions as it enables them to successfully target an audience. Conversely, audiences find genre a useful tool as they can pick and choose the films that they would like to see and therefore the film should meet most of their expectations.

Hollywood, which uses a more economic and business like approach to film making, will make films within certain generic styles to attract and engage a wide audience to increase box office sales and profit. However, if genres become too repetitive, then audiences will stop watching particular ‘genre’ films, making them less successful for the Institutions. This is part of the Generic Cycle of Production, where different genres achieve popularity until they become exhausted, then fade, replaced by new generic mixes which will then become popular, but then fade and the cycle begins again.

However, some critics have argued that genre no longer exists and that you cannot categorise films due to a more fluid, post-modern approach to film making. This is true of many Independent film makers, such as British or European films who are more engaged in making more niche films for a smaller minority audience and are more interested in using cinema as a means of artistic expression, rather than a money making venture.

In relation to Horror films, which are a particular genre, there are many codes and conventions of the genre that are available for Institutions to choose from to create similar texts that will meet the expectations of an audience, but can also enable them to create differences within the genre to avoid repetition and a lack of interest from audiences who want to see similar texts, but with a sense of difference.

Horror films have gone through many different phases of change from their original beginnings. It has been argued that horror as a genre began from an art movement in the mid 1700s, where artists began to paint pictures of the darker, more macabre side of human nature, linked to images of demons, devils and evil creatures. This is many ways led Mary Shelley to write the first Gothic Horror masterpiece Frankenstein in 1815. This is turn led to many ghost stories published by Wilkie Collins and O. Henry in the late 1800s. In 1897, Bram Stoker published his infamous Gothic Vampire story, ‘Dracula’ and you could say, Horror was born as a popular genre in its own right. ‘Dracula’ was used as the source material for the famous German Gothic horror film, ‘Nosferatu’, which changed the face of cinema forever. Film versions of ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ were made in the 1930s, but the genre fell foul of repetitions and ripoffs until it faded away with the onset of World War Two. However, it did receive a revival in the 1950s with a more sci-fi twist with films like ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ and finished with the seminal Psychological Horror, cum slasher film ‘Psycho’ in 1960, directed by the indomitable, Alfred Hitchcock.

The genre again died out and was revived in the 1970s with a more demonic and satanic twist in films like ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Omen’ and subsequently, in 1978, John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ rebranded the textbook slasher film from Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ for a more teenage audience. The Teen Slasher was born and through the 1980s there was a plethora of what many called ‘Video Nasties’ which involved some horrific and grotesque stories that pushed the boundaries of decency and the genre itself until it again faded away. However, the genre did not remain dead for long as a more conscious, post-modern approach to the genre was taken in the mid 1990s, with the pastiche horror that is ‘Scream’ that used many existing conventions, but used reflexivity and exposed the very conventions they were copying within the narrative itself. This led to another explosion of teen slasher films like ‘I know what you did last summer’ and many more, until the genre exhausted itself again and was parodied by ‘Scary Movie 1-3’ and many more.

Example.

• 1930s - Dracula, Frankenstein movies• 1950s - Horror >> Sci-Fi – ‘Invasion of

body snatchers’

Example

• 1930s - Dracula, Frankenstein movies• 1950s - Horror >> Sci-Fi – ‘Invasion of

body snatchers’

Glossary• Pastiche – a film that imitates a previous film.

Different from parody because it celebrates rather than mocks the work it imitates.

• Parody – a film that mocks the film it imitates.

Example

• 1930s - Dracula, Frankenstein movies• 1950s - Horror >> Sci-Fi – ‘Invasion of

body snatchers’

Glossary• Pastiche – a film that imitates a previous film.

Different from parody because it celebrates rather than mocks the work it imitates.

• Parody – a film that mocks the film it imitates.

Body horror

Based on truth – Vlad the impaler

Links to Frankenstein

Links to Cold war and fear of invasion by Russians

Less media exposure

• In groups, identify the 5 most important ideas from the text.

Progress arrow

• I need to know what you still feel unsure about.

• Did we achieve the Learning Objective/ Kaupapa?

• How do we know?