Read and Respond: An Introduction to Genre Theory

After reading Daniel Chandler’s, “An Introduction to Genre Theory”, one begins to grasp what a genre means as a more advanced subject. Considering that throughout grade school students are taught the different genres of books and movies, non-fiction and fiction, romance dramas and romantic comedies, and they begin to associate the term genre of a way to classify subsets of topics. However, as Chandler goes more into depth about genres, a different side of the term is unearthed. We see how genre cannot be defined or categorized in one simple way or for only one group of materials, but how it is a very complex academic idea that tries to explain and group different forms of writing, media, etc. That is when I realized that this class would not teach me what exactly a genre is in a simple definition, but rather how to identify specific genre’s in different forms, how they evolve, and how to view them through different perspectives. One perspective is through purpose, or what specific group of people a genre is trying to attract, and how genre’s do not only have to be split between forms of writing or filming. For example, we see how many forms of media can be split by what a man or a woman might watch. It is said that men tend to favor more masculine forms of media, while women might favor more sensitive and emotional forms of media. It is appalling to see how many stereotypes then rise out of those specific genres and it is interesting to see how society is affected by the boundaries genres set us and how we also contribute to the confinement of certain genres according to gender.