Genre is a fair pain in the hoop. It seems to be self-evident - a collection of art-works that share characteristics and can be usefully compared to each other, or against other genres - but I'm finding that the boundaries of genre ebb and flow, and are a bit more porous than I'd like.
S:
What is it that you'd like genre to be, then?
G:
I'd like it to be exactly what I said it was!
S:
So what's the problem, exactly?
G:
Mainly working out where a genre ends. Let's take comic books as an example.
S:
Can't we stick to theatre?
G:
Don't worry, I'll get to that in a bit. But: comic books are divided into 'Ages': the Golden, The Silver, the Bronze and a bunch of other ones, depending who you read. Roughly, these are historical periods - the fans came up with the divisions, not academics, and there's plenty of argument about when they begin and end. But the idea is that they represent, broadly, generic continuity. The features of a comic book published between 1938 and (probably) 1956 - the historical Golden Age - share certain qualities. It becomes possible to talk about Golden Age Aesthetics.
S:
If you get enough of these Golden Age comics, I suppose that you can identify the continuities and define these as their characteristics. From what I know about this period, I guess that means pro-social heroes (super-powered or not) who defend popular cultural values and are virtuous and patriotic. Then there are the villains, who embody evil in its various manifestations, a bit like the melodramatic villains of nineteenth century theatre or the baddie from a pantomime. What else have you got?
G:
I'd go full theatrical melodrama. An obsession with the problem of evil, and its resolution through symbolic, undivided characters. A preoccupation with modernity, either through the representation of the city and technology, or specific contemporary issues. Superman scrapping with Lex Luthor, a mad scientist; Batman and the Joker, a devilish expression of criminality; Captain America giving Hitler a slap. It's also full of caricatures, simplistic stereotypes. Frankly, it gets racist as soon as it has a non-Caucasian character.
S:
There are exceptions, though.
G:
Yes, but not many. Namor the Sub-Mariner is an anti-hero, a bit more conflicted. But these are anomalous, maybe hinting at an awareness of the tropes and an attempt to subvert them.
S:
Don't forget the excess of expression, the emotionalism!
G:
That comes with the melodrama obsession with evil and its symbolic characterisations.
S:
It's interesting that you are using one genre, theatrical melodrama, to describe another - The Golden Age.
G:
That's the second chapter of my PhD thesis, available soon.
S:
And any publishers reading, do get in touch!
G:
Having established the genre's definition, it becomes possible to compare it against other genres. In this case, it's Golden versus Silver Age.
S:
Or in the case of theatre, melodrama versus tragedy!
G:
Exactly. Genre is defined by its internal characteristic and in relation to other genres: what it is, and what it isn't.
S:
I don't see the problem.
G:
It's a question of scale. Let's shift seamlessly to discussing theatrical melodrama.
S:
Theatrical melodrama manifests as a genre in the nineteenth century, right? It's the first modern explosion of both a popular theatrical form and an expression of dramaturgy - that is to say, one that is interested in the whole experience and not merely the script.
G:
Yes, and this fits well with the idea that genres are limited to an historical period, a form of negotiation between the audience and the artists about what sort of stories get told, and how they are told.
S:
I know that melodrama was rescued from being an insult - meaning bad tragedy - by Peter Brooks when he established that it began in France, 1800. He looked at the work coming out of Paris in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, and did that comparison thing you mentioned. There has been a flurry of studies that trace melodrama's generic evolution across Europe and into the USA.
G:
Yep. But he then realised that the genre wasn't just bounded by medium - he spotted it in the novels of the late nineteenth century, Ben Singer picked it out in the cinema of the twentieth century, and I noticed it in Golden Age comics.
S:
And if a definition spreads through time and space and media... is it still a genre? Because while it might share the characteristics, do these emerge from the same set of audience expectations?
G:
Exactly! Brooks calls this a 'mode'. The mode is a genre when it goes ahistorical. I can spot melodrama in Greek tragedy - so does my old tutor at St Andrews, Elizabeth Craik.
S:
Is the problem that you don't know at what point something is a genre or a mode?
G:
Actually, now I have written this, I don't have a problem anymore.
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