Which genre is represented by this example

Britannica English: Translation of genre for Arabic Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Essential Meaning of genre. Full Definition of genre. Synonyms Did you know? Synonyms for genre Synonyms breed , class , description , feather , ilk , kidney , kind , like , manner , nature , order , sort , species , strain , stripe , type , variety Visit the Thesaurus for More. Did you know?

Examples of genre in a Sentence In genre fiction there is an implied contract between writer and reader that justice of a kind will be exacted; "good" may not always triumph over "evil," but the distinction between the two must be honored. Roberts , Newsweek , 2 Sept. Recent Examples on the Web The author is a legend in the genre , known for his popular book series like Goosebumps and Fear Street.

First Known Use of genre , in the meaning defined at sense 1. History and Etymology for genre French, from Middle French, kind, gender — more at gender. Learn More About genre. The story has a climax between Jack and Suzie. The setting is a college campus. Plot has more prominence in farce than in slapstick because there is a satirical story.

In other words, the story concerns a topic that is ridiculed in an extreme way. We can adjust the last example quite easily to demonstrate this. Jack and Suzie are college students, and Alec is a well-known actor coming to the campus to play a role in the theatrical production at the college.

This event has been arranged so the college theatre department can make money. Jack takes a dislike to Alec, but Suzie finds him fascinating. Alec finds himself fascinating. Slapstick is shown by the over-the-top acting that Alec does.

Jack has a difficult time wondering why Alec is famous. Suzie soon finds disenchantment with Alec because he is only concerned about himself. Jack and Suzie and the other theatre majors decide to take the actions of the play to the extreme to humiliate and humble Alec. In a water scene, where Alec is supposed to pantomime having water thrown on him, real water is used. This drives Alec into a hysterical rage, and he chases Jack and Suzie on stage, off the stage, around the theatre, and out the theatre doors.

Alec winds up accidently knocking himself unconscious. Jack states that the most natural acting that Alec has done is being knocked out. Next, Jack develops a hair-brained scheme so the theatre department can make money. Jack and Suzie make a list of the wealthiest men and women in the area.

They invite as many of these wealthy people in the area to participate in an auction. There will be five male winners and five female winners. The prize is that they win Jack and Suzie for a day to act as their slaves.

You can see that a farce has more of a story than slapstick comedy. The plot has an inner conflict of the protagonists, Jack and Suzie, needing money. This creates a story where college theatre students try outrageous ways to make money to save the theatre department.

The story ridicules colleges, actors, and theatres in general. The actions of the characters are very slapstick with physical comedy throughout the movie. Satire is subtler than farce or slapstick in the actions of the characters. The plot develops an inner conflict, but the story is more realistic and may, at times, not even appear to be a comedy.

Jack and Suzie, once again, are college students. Alec, though, is the instructor, who has a drinking problem, and he is directing a class that Jack and Suzie have to take as a requirement of their theatre major.

Alec tries to convince the students that there is no right or wrong way to direct, act, or design. In his mind, theatre is all done with emotion. If it feels right, then do it. He does not understand why he has to go through four years of college if he just has to recognize what feels right. Jack asks Alec for more of a discussion on what feels right. He questions the college administration as to why they are paying so much for Alec. The college administration retorts that Alec is one of the best in his field.

Jack states that Alec teaches absolutely nothing of any value. Defeated, Jack goes to see Suzie, his last hope. Suzie tells him not to be too quick to judge. Suzie states that she believes she understands what Alec is driving at with his ideas. Suzie tries to demonstrate the statements that Alec has mentioned. After a few hours Suzie becomes frustrated and states the both of them must go to see Alec.

After two hours with Alec, Jack and Suzie are delirious. Being delirious, they finally fathom what Alec means. From this discussion of the characters and story, physical actions do not enter as a predominant element that they do in straight slapstick or farce. The satire is an obvious ridicule of theatre as a major and the type of people in theatre. A more subtle satire would be Jack and Suzie acting as a clique and by being prima donnas.

They mock a new theatre major, Alec, who wants to do a good job. Alec starts to develop his talent under strenuous and often humorous situations with consequences to the amazement of Jack and Suzie.

But then he realizes what he has to give up for it. He quits for his own self-respect. When does extreme satire become farce? A good way to judge farce or satire is how much unrealistic physical comedy is in the movie. Dark humor and black comedy are terms that make fun of or ridicule taboo topics like death. The characters are involved in a story that goes to the point of being grotesque and not being funny.

With this example of a college theatre as the setting, and the plot being the inner conflict of the main character, how can the characters and story become absurd, morbid, and grotesque when discussing the taboo topic of death? Quite easily actually! In order to relieve himself of his frustrations, Jack tortures and kills everyone who receives this part in the most brutally visual ways imaginable. He does this in hopes of eventually receiving this specific coveted role. Jack, though, is the only one who believes this role is so desirable and sought after.

Jack kills the first person who is given the role, Alec, by drawing and quartering him before he hangs him. The second person to be given the role is Suzie, which really angers and infuriates Jack that a woman would get the role before him. This action adds absurdity to the story. This is a dark humor movie rather than a serious movie because of the reasons, background, and extreme actions in the story.

The characters act realistically based on their personalities, which are all unusual. The physical action is real so this scenario cannot be considered slapstick.

This comedy sub-genre is named after a baseball pitch, the screwball, which was perfected by baseball pitcher Carl Hubbell in the s. Screwball comedy only lasted from , when the Great Depression was in full swing, to , when World War II began. Screwball comedy was based on reverse class snobbery where it is more noble to be poor than rich. The rich were portrayed as eccentric and wasteful fools.

Romance is one of the key elements of screwball comedy. With the two classes of upper and lower or middle class working together, screwball comedies can be considered as recommending socialism.

The story is a little different, but overall, it can be considered within the realm of satire because the current society was being ridiculed. Any referral to a movie as a screwball comedy after is inaccurate, even if it is a re-make of a movie released during the period. A re-make does not have the same relevancy, power, or passion as the original movie. A contemporary screwball-type comedy generally is fast paced with an eccentric character, but it does not have the class snobbery. Any class snobbery in the movie does not have the contemptable hatred toward the upper class as it did these movies during the Great Depression.

The emotional rage cannot be duplicated. However, the overriding story of the movie concerns reporters and editors doing anything in order to get the story.

Comic romance is a big element in screwball comedy also, but other story lines are more dominant. Can you think of a movie that has the primary story line as being a romantic relationship? If you can, how did you like the movie? Comedy is varied and complex. You can see how the stories, along with the personalities and actions of the characters, change, developing different sub-genres of the comedy being expressed.

All comedy stems from either slapstick or satire. The first point is that every aspect of the crime genre is dramatic, so the elements are quite different than a comedy. The setting for crime genre can be any location in the world and any year, because crime is something that has always existed in society. We will try to narrow this down for our example.

The characters develop from the story and plot. First situation: Jack is a nice, helpful individual at the beginning of the movie. He soon finds that he has to help a friend, Suzie, get out of a jam because she owes a lot of money to a gambling boss, Alec. Alec laughs at him and is going to throw him out.

Jack, even though he is a nice guy, has a very bad temper. This often is the situation in the crime genre. Jack becomes extremely angry with Alec laughing at him, and he kills Alec. Suzie likes the new Jack and wants to be his girl. Suzie is aroused by the violence in Jack and cannot keep her hands off him. Jack soon becomes more successful than Alec ever was, but he begins to become too egotistical. With his ego getting in the way, Jack makes a mistake when trying to take over a gambling casino.

Jack is killed and the men kill Suzie. The most jealous, vindictive, right-hand man in the gang takes over the gambling empire. Stories in the crime genre are often about people seeking power.

Usually, the criminals want control over the city where the story takes place. Generally, they want to be in charge of the drug trade, gambling, liquor depending upon the year , or they want to rise up in the family or gang. Jack is a hardworking, honest detective.

He is dedicated to his job and his partner, Alec. Alec is murdered. During his investigation he meets Suzie. Suzie knew Alec and considered him a friend. Suzie asks if she can help with looking into the murder.

Jack, after some convincing, agrees. Suzie and Jack start to become close during the investigation, and Jack falls in love with her. This is often a foreshadowing as to how the story is going to end.

After a few dead ends and blocked paths in the investigation, Jack picks up some information that leads him down an unsuspected path. Jack finds that Suzie was a little more than a friend to Alec, so Suzie has an ulterior motive for assisting Jack. Jack discovers that Suzie murdered Alec and was going to kill Jack, too. These are the elements and formats of the crime genre. The crime can be different than murder. Crimes encompass a wide variety of different actions.

The main characters do not have to be crime bosses or police detectives, but they generally have a similar background. Very seldom do they lead a life like a factory worker or office employee. This is one reason why the crime genre is so popular.

People want to watch characters that lead exciting lives different from theirs. The stories in the crime genre are similar to the aforementioned two examples where the crime is more than a speeding ticket and provides an interesting and exciting story. The plot can be an inner conflict, once again, of the protagonist, and the setting is usually in the United States or Europe in modern times. Because of the similarities between the Western and crime genres, I have included back-to-back discussions of the two genres.

The setting provides the major difference between the crime genre and the Western genre. Instead of the characters and story occurring in the s or the s, the time for a Western is in the early to late 19th century or anytime through the s to s. Once the 20th century arrives, except for the beginning years, the feeling of the Old West is gone, which brings up the other aspect of the setting that defines the Western genre.

The Western genre takes place in the West. Depending upon the year, the West could be Ohio in the s, Missouri in the s, or Nevada in the s. The main character or protagonist is an individualist, who rides into town for a specific reason, or he may run into trouble while in town, or he may be hired to do something like blaze a trail West. The characters and the stories are straightforward. The interest is the developing story and the action-filled problems that the protagonist faces as he tries to accomplish what he set out to do.

The plot can still be one of inner conflict as the protagonist tries to accomplish the specific goal, quell the trouble in town, or overcome the obstacles of nature as the main character blazes the trail West. An example of the Western genre has Jack being the individualist, loner riding into town.

He has come to town to avenge the death of his partner. Outside of the setting, the same type of character and story could be used in the crime genre.

While Jack begins to ask questions about what happened to his partner, he falls into the middle of a range war; a typical Western story, between two ranches over the grazing rights of land.

Alec owns the one ranch, and Suzie a woman owns the other, which is a rarity in the West. Jack gets to know Suzie as his inquiries continue.

He begins a relationship with her. During the relationship, Jack gives Suzie a helping hand in the range war. Alec is totally evil, underhanded, and despicable in his actions. Westerns, even more contemporary ones, have an outright bad person like Alec.

You can see this in crime genre movies also. In the Old West, there can only be one climax to the story. Jack and Alec shoot it out; Alec is killed, and Jack and Suzie fall in love. The war genre is straightforward because the movie is very limited in its parameters. The setting and the year is very specific regarding the year and the location. The locations would be an area where the war occurred or in the United States to concentrate on how the home front was coping. The plot is the inner conflict with dealing with war.

The characters and story are based on a battle, trying to obtain overall victory at some point of the war, dealing with losing, dealing with death, dealing with fighting, being a prisoner, or coping at the home front or a location where the fighting is not taking place.

World War II encompasses the war genre. Jack is a soldier, who is a married teacher with two children. Jack was told by his wife, Suzie, not to volunteer for any extra missions so he could come home alive to his family when the war is over. Of course, this is not going to be true because a war movie has to have a daring mission. After being in Europe for about a year and losing many battles, Jack becomes frustrated because he knows the war is not going to end soon.

Suzie dreads each day because of the emptiness in her life without Jack. To her, each day never appears to end. She is stressed because she has a continuous challenge to make ends meet. Jack and seven other men are given a chance to go on a dangerous mission to blow up a German stronghold and capture a high-ranking German officer.

These men are asked to go on this mission because of their intelligence and personalities. If they succeed in this mission, the war will likely be over quicker than expected, because of the information they will receive from this German officer. Literature allows a person to step back in time and learn about life on Earth from the ones who walked before us.

We can gather a better understanding of culture and have a greater appreciation of them. We learn through the ways history is recorded, in the forms of manuscripts and through speech itself. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Skip to content Home Arts Which classical genre is represented by this example? Ben Davis March 21,