Introduction to Media - Genre

Genre is a French word meaning ‘sort’ or ‘type’. Genre helps us categorise media texts in a certain way.

If you asked someone what kind of movies they like best and they said “Comedies”, they would be naming a genre. Horror films, action movies and musicals are some other popular genres of film. Similarly, you might like specific types of music – rap, rock or classical music, for example – and dislike others. These are genres too.

The types or genres you like can tell people a lot about who you are and what your tastes are. Being a fan of a particular TV show, game or music artist might even be an important part of your identity, and could influence what you do, how you dress and who your friends are.

We recognise genres from lots of tiny rules that they use to meet our expectations – these rules are called conventions because they are based on what is conventional or normal for a certain style or genre. We expect a horror film to be scary, so it might have conventions like creepy places, darkness and a powerful supernatural villain. You probably don’t watch many westerns, but if you saw the start of a film where two cowboys rode into an old-style town, got off their horses and went into a bar with swinging half-doors, you would almost definitely be able to recognise what type of film it was.

Even programmes like the news have conventions to do with how the presenters dress, the language they use, the way the studio looks and the type of music used to introduce and close the show. Everything about the news will try to look factual, serious and important so that people are more likely to trust what is said. Compare this to the way your favourite Youtuber or TikTok creator might look, speak and behave and you can see that there are genre rules and conventions for these types of content too!