By MAURO BAPTISTA*
Film theory perceives genres as processes, not as fixed and pre-established forms.
Introduction
The term genre has been used by both critics and film theory for decades. However, there is no consensus on its meaning, nor on its usefulness for the analysis. The term raises several questions: What is a genre? What are its constituent elements? What is the role of genre films within the film industry? How do genres originate ꟷ what causes them?
Like other concepts in film theory, the term genre comes from literary theory, which has led to a lot of confusion. As a methodological principle, we will limit ourselves to the study of genres in American cinema, despite the fact that the concept is universal and can be applied to cinematographies in other countries. Why this option? First, genre films originated in Hollywood and continue to be associated with cinema produced in the major studios; second, because it is in the United States that genres are most important among filmmakers, the public, the industry, and critics. Perhaps this is why most theoretical reflection on gender comes from the United States and the United Kingdom.
From a historical perspective, the notion of genre has evolved from definitions based on the location of thematic and structural elements to definitions that emphasize the importance of the relationship of these elements with the audience and the industry. Early essays on gender tended to think of the concept ahistorically. Genres were studied as fixed structures, isolated from the economic, social and cultural context. More recent works (such as those by Steve Neale in the 90s[I]) reject this conception of genre as a closed work, to think of the concept as an open work in continuous interaction with the public, the industry and the press.
The controversy over the meaning of the notion of gender arises from the existence of two meanings of the term: the popular one, the common sense one; and the theoretical and academic. The first is the pragmatic, loose and genre-broad version used by the industry, the public and the press to classify films. The second, specific to film analysis and theory, has a more specific meaning and tends to cover a smaller number of films. The pragmatic conception of genre leads to consider a wide list of films that correspond to a tautological definition of the concept ꟷ, for example, the western is a film set in the American West. The academic conception leads critics and theorists to define a limited list of films, which will be mentioned repeatedly because they represent the paradigm of a particular genre; example: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) in film noir; Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939) in western. Rick Altman points out that from this contradiction arises the problem of status relating to the theory and history of genres[ii]. Altman recalls that until the arrival of semiotics, generic terms and definitions were taken from the industry itself: the little existing theory tended to be confused with historical analysis[iii]. With the strong influence of semiotics on genre theory, critical and structuralist vocabulary has replaced common sense vocabulary. However, Altman claims that the contributions of Vladimir Propp, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Northrop Frye and Tzvetan Todorov were not fully productive because of the place that the semiotic project reserved for the study of genres. Altman points out that one of the most notable aspects of Saussure's theory of language is his emphasis on the impossibility of an isolated individual being able to make changes in a language.
“The stability of the linguistic community thus serves as justification for Saussure's primarily synchronic approach to language. When literary semioticians applied this linguistic model to problems of textual analysis, they never took into account the notion of the interpretive community implied in Saussure's linguistic community.[iv]".
According to Altman, this is the context in which we must consider the work of Propp, Lévi-Strauss, Todorov and other genre theorists. Without wanting to commit their systems to the historical notion of linguistic community, these thinkers exchanged the concept of linguistic community for the idea of generic context, as if the weight of several similar texts was enough to locate the meaning of a text, regardless of the existence of a specific audience. From the beginning, and by definition, the semiotic analysis of genres ignored history.
“Because they treated genres as the interpretive community, they were unable to realize the important role of genres in the practice of influencing the interpretive community.[v]. "
Therefore, semiotic analysis, instead of studying how Hollywood used genres to shorten the normal process of interpretation, assumed the ideological effect of Hollywood as a natural and ahistorical cause.
At this point, we must underline how this problem ꟷ ahistoricity, the analysis of genres out of context ꟷ still remains in the most advanced contemporary theories, which imagine the generic text in permanent negotiation between a specific production system and a specific audience. Our look at genres is still ahistorical and static.
Problems of gender theory
Andrew Tudor is an author who questions the theoretical usefulness of the genre as it is traditionally conceived by theory, by highlighting the difficulties that critics have in defining the term (recalling its previous origin in the industry and the public). Tudor recalls how, in some cases, the genre concept assumes the idea that if a film is a western forms part of a tradition, a set of conventions ꟷ themes, actions, elements[vi]. Another way of using the term, for example, horror movies, also presuppose certain themes or the idea of films that are intended to horrify; rather than defining gender by attributes, it is defined by intentions. For Tudor, both uses present several problems: in the first, and most common, the term appears redundant; in the second, there is an obvious difficulty in trying to isolate intentions. According to the author, almost all theorists and critics are trapped in a dilemma: they define a genre, let's say the western, based on the study of a group of films that cannot be called western until after analysis[vii]. If, for example, themes and conventions are the defining criteria of a western, first we must know what these characteristics are. However, we will only get to delimit the themes and conventions by studying a corpus of films previously defined as western.
“We are caught in a circle that first requires films to be isolated, for which a criterion is necessary, but the criterion must, in turn, arise from the common empirical features of films.[viii]".
According to Tudor, this empiricist dilemma has two solutions. The first is to classify the films according to an a priori defined criterion that will depend on the theoretical objective. This brings us to the first position where the genus term is redundant. The second is to reach a cultural consensus of what constitutes a western and then proceed to the detailed analysis. The latter is the root of most uses of the term genre ꟷ as the idea of conventions within a genre.
Tudor stresses that talking about a western it is talking about a common set of meanings in a culture. His argument leads him to assert that
“The crucial factors that distinguish a genre are not just inherent characteristics of films; they also depend on the particular culture in which they operate. (...) Gender is what we collectively think it is[ix]. "
It is for this reason that Tudor finds notions of genre potentially interesting for the study of the social and psychological interaction between filmmakers, film and audience; not for the immediate purposes of criticism. According to the author, to use the term genre in a deeper way, it is necessary to know clearly what the filmmakers mean when they make a film. western, that is, what is the relationship between an author and genre. If we want to talk about a director who breaks the rules of a genre, we must know these rules. By the way, talking about breaking the rules is meaningless if the audience itself does not know them well.
Contrary to most traditional approaches, Tudor thinks that the formation of a genre depends more on reception (the audience) than on enunciation (the films themselves). The argument with which he points out the fundamental dilemma of the concept of gender is totally logical, however it could be applied not only to gender but also to other categories and concepts that aim to classify and/or delimit groups of elements with common traits. The scope of the dilemma is much wider than film theory; it goes to the roots of the limitations of language and knowledge. As Welleck and Warren remember in Theory of Literature:
“The dilemma of the history of genres is the dilemma of all history: to discover the frame of reference (in this case, genre) we must study history; but we cannot study history without having in mind some frame of reference for selection.[X]. "
Another debatable point in Tudor's article is the two solutions to the dilemma: classifying films according to a defined criterion beforehand, which will depend on the theoretical objective; and reach a cultural consensus of what constitutes a western and then proceed to the detailed analysis. We did not find a substantial difference between both paths: both depart from the same principle of establishing a parameter beforehand before choosing the group of films to be studied. However, Tudor's essay is representative of the difficulties that the term genre generates and the lack of consensus on its usefulness. The article, published in 1973, is also a pioneer in the tendency to define the term not in a static, ahistorical way, but in the relation of films to audience and filmmakers.
Brief history of gender theory
Em The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema, Edward Buscombe makes a brief history of the concept of gender in literature, since it is in this art that the first theoretical problems arise. The idea that there are different types of literature, with different techniques and themes, was first developed by Aristotle. In poetics, Aristotle separates what he called poetry ꟷ what we call literature ꟷ into various categories such as tragedy, epic, lyric, and then concluded that tragedy was the highest form of poetry. By the Renaissance, Aristotle's ideas had become a rigid system of rules, and styles and forms were prescribed for each form. The best-known example is the rule of three dramatic units, the Aristotelian three acts. This codification extended into the neoclassical period of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, when literature was divided into even more categories, each with its own tone, form and theme. As a result of this quasi-mechanical and dictatorial approach, literary theory lost credibility, says Edward Buscombe.[xi].
With the romantic revolt against rules and traditions, the idea of literary categories, or genres, as they were later called, was greatly discredited. With a Chicago school known as Neo-Aristotelian, in the 1930s and 1940s attention was turned to the influence of forms and conventions already present. Neo-Aristotelians opposed the so-called New Criticism, who had repudiated any kind of historical approach to literature. The conception of this last school was that a literary work exists by itself and does not need external references, whether contemporary or historical. With the aim of rescuing literature from its isolation, neo-Aristotelians partially resurrected genre theory. But, according to Buscombe, they did not escape what has always been a source of confusion: Aristotle thought of literary types in two senses: first, literary types as a number of different groups of conventions that grew historically and developed in forms such as satire, lyric and tragedy; second, as a more fundamental division of literature into drama, epic, and lyric, corresponding to differences in the relationship between artist, themes, and audience
“More time has been spent in determining the nature and possibilities of these three modes of literature than in exploring the historical genres. As a result, little of this work is relevant to film, as these three modes (roughly corresponding to drama, fiction, and poetry) are equally present in film.[xii]".
Buscombe points out that many try to avoid the whole issue of gender because they think it will lead to the establishment of rules that will arbitrarily restrict artists' freedom to create what they want, or take away critics' freedom to talk about what they want. But if literary theory has generally been restrictive and normative, it need not be so: Aristotle's original intent was descriptive, not normative.
Despite the central role of genre films in the industry and the public, recognition of genre theory in film criticism was late, partly because of the problems generated in the literature, partly because of the heyday of auteur theory. The first significant essays on genre were Robert Warshow's articles on feature films. gangster e western ꟷ published in 1948 and 1954 ꟷ and the two articles by André Bazin on western on the decade. Therefore, chronologically, genre theory in cinema predates auteur theory, but it developed more slowly because it did not have the popularization that auteur theory had, created by French criticism linked to the New wave, and disseminated in the United States by Andrew Sarris.
Barry Keith Grant underscores how Bazin's and Warshow's articles paved the way for later work on gender. In his essay on films of gangster, Warshow intuits the dynamics of the genre and the pleasure it gives to the public, anticipating one of the most sophisticated areas of contemporary film theory: the role and position of the spectator in the construction of the cinematographic experience. Your observation that “the true city… produces only criminals; the imaginary city produces the gangster”, reveals an understanding of genres as systems of conventions structured according to cultural values, an idea close to what structuralists have more recently called the “deep structure” of myth[xiii]. Warshow's differentiation initiated the accepted separation of historical verisimilitude (different from history) and the study of genre.
In the sixties, a first semiotics ꟷ inspired by the works of Lévi-Strauss and Greimas ꟷ concentrated on the meaning of films (on history in Émile Benveniste's sense). A classic example of the union of this semiotic-structuralist instrument was the essay The Author Theory by Peter Wollen, which reviews the work of John Ford and Howard Hawks[xiv]. Wollen concluded that John Ford's work was superior to that of Howard Hawks through the study of binary thematic oppositions, which turned out to be more ambiguous and varied in Ford.
In the XNUMXs, interest in narrative film was fueled by a decade of auterism that championed American genre films ꟷ began to wane and film theory's concerns with form grew. Critics' interest shifted from the meaning of a film to the practice of meaning, from history to discourse (how the story is constructed). In 1972, Gérard Genette published Figures III[xv], a seminal work of literary narratology that works, with precision, formal problems of the construction of literary discourse previously discussed mainly by Henry James and Russian formalism. Genette's work laid the foundations for the emergence of filmic narratology ꟷ film theory that studies how the filmic story is constructed ꟷ which will have a significant development in the eighties and nineties.
Grant highlights how in the seventies the interest in filmic discourse led critics and theorists to focus their attention on films that broke in some way with the classic language of Hollywood ꟷ that Noel Burch called the institutional mode of representation. At the same time, there was a great interest in ideology in art ꟷ stimulated by the incorporation into the theory of thought of John Berger, Louis Althusser, Bertold Brecht, Sigmund Freud ꟷ which weakened the hypothesis that the understanding of a director and his work would provide the key to interpretation. The meaning now emerged from the conjunction of several discursive codes of the filmic text, of which the one belonging to the director was only one. This emphasis on meaning and ideology brought a renewed interest in classic narrative film, and consequently in genre films, generating a new theoretical perspective. The new approach felt that genres were far more than simple bourgeois illusionism, essentially conservative in theme and style. Genres were, above all, mythical buildings to be deconstructed. Now the study of genres was legitimized because it was useful for studying economic and historical contexts (conditions of production and consumption), mythical functions and conventions (semiotic codes and structural patterns), and the place of filmmakers in genres (the relationship between tradition and the individual author[xvi]).
In this line of research, called the ritual approach, we must highlight the work of John G. Cawelty in the study of genres in literature and cinema, with works such as The Six Gun Mistique[xvii] e Adventures, Mystery and Romance: Formulas Stories as Art and Popular Culture[xviii]. Cawelty analyzes popular genres through the term formula, which he defines as the synthesis of cultural mythology with archetypal story patterns. He prefers the term formula to that of gender, to avoid the confusion created by different conceptions of the latter concept. Cawelty's work pioneers the study of the positive role of the relationship of genres in literature and film with the audience and individual performers.
Thomas Schatz, in The structural influence: new directions in film genre, suggests three reasons for the theoretical interest in the second half of the seventies in Hollywood cinema: the excess of auterism 60s, the influence of semiotic and structuralist methodologies, and the natural inclination of critics to do an autopsy of the studio system once it had disappeared[xx]. This perspective shows a growing concern to study the Hollywood film as not only an aesthetic product, but also a cultural and industrial one.
Earlier, when speaking of the theoretical difficulties generated by the term gender, we referred to the dual use of the term, in different senses; one from industry, audiences and filmmakers; another of theory. The other difficulty in working with the concept is the coexistence, from the 70s onwards, of two irreconcilable approaches that present totally different views on the role of gender in culture and society. One is the 'culturalist' perspective, which we will call the ritual approach, which Cawelty pioneered. The other, less developed, is the ideological approach, which based on a Marxist-based theoretical framework, interprets genres as forms of popular entertainment that convey the conservative ideology of the dominant classes, and in cinema, the ideology of Hollywood.
4 – The ritual approach
Following the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the ritual approach focused on the mythic qualities of Hollywood genres and the audience's relationship to Hollywood films. This approach interpreted the industry's need for pleasure as the mechanism by which audiences chose the type of movies they wanted to watch. Through its choices, the audience revealed its preferences and beliefs and induced Hollywood to produce the films it wanted. Cinema offered, in addition to entertainment, a ritual, something similar to established religion. The ritual approach has the merit of considering the intensity of audiences with genre films and of stimulating the analysis of generic texts in a social and cultural context, broader than the simple analysis of the narrative. The notion of genre in this theory rests on two aspects: the function of genre films as secular myths and the contract assumed between filmmaker and spectator.
The ritual approach, which had a great development in the seventies, mainly in the United States, influenced historical analyzes of cinema and analysis in general. Historical studies like Movie Made America (Robert Sklar, 1976) and America in the Movies (Michael Wood, 1976), as well as gender studies such as American Film Genres (Stuart Kamisky, 1974), Sixguns and Society (Will Wright, 1975) and Beyond Formula (Stanley Solomon, 1976) has its conceptual center in the emphasis of the industrial and cultural context of Hollywood[xx].
For Schatz, the work of Will Wright, when analyzing the appeal of the western as a cultural ritual and studying its relationship with other genres, indicates the proper perspective to understand the popular success and cultural value of Hollywood movies. Wright underlines the importance of conventions in any commercial film, supported by studies in fields such as anthropology, mythology and linguistics. Schatz claims that
“The importance of these conventions is most pronounced, of course, in genre films, in those westerns, musicals and films by gangster in which a tactical contract has been established through the reciprocal study of the relationship between the audience and the public[xxx].
The contract represents for the audience contact with thematic, narrative and iconographic patterns that become, through exposure and familiarity, systems of defined expectations. It is this high level of audience familiarity with genre film and their indirect participation in its creation that lays the groundwork for authors who claim the study of film genres as a cultural ritual and grant it a status contemporary myth.
gender as ritual
Thomas Sobchack has a perspective of genre film as a conservative form, both in form and content, linked to a classical worldview: the genre film would provide the experience of an orderly world through a classical structure heir to the Poetics of Aristotle[xxiii]. According to Sobchack, the diverse plots of the genre film must be easy to recognize and pose the basic conflict of good versus evil; even if the plot is complicated, the viewer will always know which characters are bad and which are good, and will know who to identify with and for how long. In this way, the genre film offers a simple, closed, unambiguous world; a world where the characters easily know what actions to take to solve problems and find happiness. These characteristics facilitate the identification of the public; identification releases us from the everyday realism of our common life. Sobchack concludes that
“While we possibly live quiet lives of despair, genre film characters do not (…). They inhabit a world that is better than ours, a world where problems can be solved directly, in emotion, in action.” [xxiii].
For Sobchack, the cathartic potentials of genre films can be perceived in the way in which the tensions of the social and cultural paradoxes inherent in the human experience can be resolved. Cawelty claims, in The Six Gun Mistique, that an important function of the western it is cultural and defines ritual as a means of affirming certain basic cultural values, of resolving tensions and establishing continuity between present and past.
4.2 ꟷ Gender as a contemporary myth
The vision of the genre film as a contemporary folk fable leads us to study the relations between genres and myth. Theorists such as Cawelty and Jim Kitses recognize the importance of ritual and myth in the popular arts, and in Hollywood film in particular. But under the influence of Northrop Frye, both assume a definition of myth called by an aesthetic criterion ꟷ a classic definition. Cawelty stresses that for Frye myths are universal patterns of action and that this cannot exist in a medium like cinema, which is culturally specific in terms of images and ideology and therefore prefers to use the concept of formula[xxv]. For Northrop Frye myth is a vehicle for sacred and pantheistic content ꟷ is a classic definition that restricts the concept to stories about the gods. The author writes that the mythical world is not affected by the canons of verisimilitude, of the common experience of human beings.[xxiv]. It is interesting to note that Thomas Sobchack's conception of genre films is very similar to Frye's conception of myth.
Schatz prefers to define myth not as content but as structure and function.
“Myth is not defined by the repetition of some classic content or universal narrative: it is defined according to its function as a conceptual system that incorporates elements specific to the culture that realizes it”[xxv].
For Sobchack, genre films represent the conflict between the two basic poles of human behavior identified by Nietzsche in The Death of Tragedy: The Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian is the need to build a self that, as an individual, sets him apart from others. The Dionysian is the urge to submerge the self in a group, clan or family. According to the author, as the conflict between the individual and the community, between the anxiety and loneliness created by the freedom of self and the security of identification with the crowd, are very present in human life, it is not surprising to find this tension represented in genre films. The tension is universal and is present in other types of films, but it is in genre films that the struggle between the two poles will always be resolved in favor of the community. Sobchack seeks to legitimize genres by highlighting their kinship to classical art, and emphasizes that in classical thought, anything that debilitates conflicting emotions and purges them from the individual is considered socially benign. Formerly, says the author, work was done by religion; after the reforms of the French and American Revolutions, it has been communism and patriotic nationalism that have taken up the task in real life in the twentieth century.
“But the only XNUMXth-century art that has consistently represented the ritual reaffirmation of group values has been genre film” [xxviii].
For Schatz,
“considering the genre film as a folk tale grants it a mythic function that generates its unique structure, whose function is the ritualization of collective ideals, the celebration of temporarily resolved social and cultural conflicts and the cover-up of cultural conflicts that bother about the appearance of entertainment” [xxviii].
Analyzing the Hollywood film as a mythical expression of popular art should not lead to disregarding the characteristics of an eminently commercial medium; feature that affects the narrative and themes. The deification of actors and their identification with specific genres ꟷ like Humphrey Bogart in the film Black, John Wayne in western, Fred Astaire in the musical ꟷ is proof that Hollywood cinema offers a unique context for contemporary mythic expression. From this perspective, Edgard Morin developed his book called The Movie Stars:
“These semi-divinities, creatures of dreams resulting from the cinematographic spectacle, are studied here as a modern myth” [xxix].
Schatz suggests that perhaps what sets commercial cinema apart from traditional forms of ritual is the rapidly evolving trend of its popular narrative forms. According to him, the constant exposure of his narrative forms to an audience within a market society creates a demand for the new.
5 – The Ideological Approach
In the 70s, while the ritual approach attributed the authorial quality to the audience and, therefore, the big studios would only interpret the will of the population, the ideological approach demonstrated how audiences were manipulated by commercial and political interests in Hollywood.[xxx]. This perspective, which began in Cahiers du Cinema and moved quickly to magazines like Screen, JumpCut and others, joined a more general critique of the mass media carried out by the Frankfurt School. For this approach, genres are simply the structures within which Hollywood's rhetoric works. The ideological approach pays much more attention to the discursive aspects of films, and focuses on issues of representation and identification that have been left out of the ritual focus.
“Simplifying a bit, we can say that each genre is characterized by a specific type of lie, an untruth whose main trick is the ability to disguise itself as truth. Where the ritual approach sees Hollywood as responding to societal pressure and audience desires, the ideological approach asserts that Hollywood takes advantage of the spectator's energy and physical investment to move the audience to its own positions. [xxxii]
These two irreconcilable approaches developed in the 70s offer us the most grounded theoretical arsenals for studying genre films. We must find a common aspect to both approaches that allows us to analyze the Hollywood film in a broad cultural perspective, the objective of our initial thesis project ꟷ influenced by the ritual approach.
The ideological approach perceives genres as specific lies that reinforce the conservative ideology of the film industry and the ruling classes. Genders form part of a larger conservative discourse in Hollywood. Another perspective considers the genre film as a contemporary mythical ritual. The attempt to synthesize these apparently opposing positions can lay the groundwork for seeing genres not as isolated forms, but as related systems that exhibit similar characteristics. In this way, we could study the conceptual basis that unites each genre with the concept of genre in general.
Genres and Cycles
In a more contemporary theoretical perspective, genres are not perceived as isolated, homogeneous and continuous forms (ahistorical view), but subsystems that undergo periodic transformations. Hollywood's short-term plans, aimed at making a profit, lead the industry to capitalize on trends and structure films according to the cultural atmosphere. If the innovation succeeds, the industry repeats the formula; hence the importance of cycles. Cycles represent short-term attempts to rework a success, and the key to cyclical production, as well as generic production, is the interplay between repetition and difference.
Genres as processes
In 90s gender studies, such as those of Steve Neale, genders are understood as processes[xxxi]. These processes may be dominated by repetition, but they are marked by difference, variation and change. The procedural nature of genres manifests itself as an interaction between three levels: the level of expectations, the level of corpus generic, and the level of rules or forms that govern both[xxxii].
Each new genre is an addition to an existing generic corpus and implies a selection from the repertoire of generic elements available at any point in time. For this reason, it is so difficult to exhaustively list the elements of each genre, or to define them in a way that is not tautological.
In the book El Cine Negro, Carlos F. Heredero and Antonio Santamarina consider genres as an open and not closed space, inhabited by tensions that lead to the recognition that the boundaries between them are almost never as defined as I would like them to be a part of the critique[xxxv]. The authors recall that Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson[xxxiv] came to the conclusion that in the classic Hollywood era almost all films were hybrids, insofar as they tended to combine one type of plot generic with others. According to Steve Neale, it is possible that many apparently pure genres arose from the combination of previous generic elements. Therefore, the importance of historicizing the definitions and corpus generic.
In summary: the study of genres started from a theoretical arsenal created in the theory of literature and had, in the first instance, an ahistorical and fixed view of genres ꟷ their form and relationship with the audience. In the last two decades, film theory perceives genres as processes, not as fixed and pre-established forms. Genres form and change from the interrelation between filmmakers, audience, critics and the industry.
* Mauro Baptista is a filmmaker, theater director, writer and actor. He is currently professor of Directing and Scriptwriting at the Cinema and Audiovisual course at the State University of Paraná (UNESPAR).
Originally published in the magazine cinemas at the. 14, Nov-Dec 1998.
Notes
[I] Steve Neale “Questions of Genre”, Screen 31, number 1 (Spring 1990).
[ii] Rick Altman “A Semantic / Syntactic Approach to Film Genre”, in Barry Grant Keith (editor) Film Genre Reader II. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1995, page 27.
[iii] Rick Altman, work cited page 27.
[iv] Rick Altman, work cited page 28.
[v] Rick Altman, work cited page 28.
[vi] Andrew Tudor, “Genre,” in Bill Nichols (editor) Movies and Methods. University of California Press, Berkeley ꟷ Los Angeles ꟷ London, 1976, p.119.
[vii] Andrew Tudor, work cited, page 120.
[viii] Andrew Tudor, work cited, page 121.
[ix] Andrew Tudor, work cited, page 122.
[X] René Welleck and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956, page 260; quoted by Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema,” in Keith Grant, pages 12 and 13.
[xi] Edward Buscombe, work cited, page 11.
[xii] Edward Buscombe, work cited, page 12.
[xiii] Barry Keith Grant “Introduction”, cited work, page XV.
[xiv] Peter Wollen “The Auteur Theory”, in Signs and Meanings in the Cinema, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1972.
[xv] Gerard Genette, Figures III, The Threshold, Paris, 1972.
[xvi] Barry Keith Grant, work cited page XV.
[xvii] John G. Cawelty, The Six Gun Mistique. Bowling Green University Popular Press, Bowling Green-Ohio, 1970.
[xviii] John G. Cawelty, Adventures, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. University of Chicago Press, 1976.
[xx] Thomas Schatz, “The Structural Influence,” in Barry Keith Grant, work cited, page 91.
[xx] Thomas Schatz, work cited, page 91.
[xxx] Thomas Schatz, work cited, page 93.
[xxiii] Sobchack, Tomas Sobchack, “Genre Film: a Classical Experience,” in Barry Keith Grant, cited work, page 102.
[xxiii] Thomas Sobchack, in Barry Keith Grant, work cited, page 108.
[xxv] John G. Cawelty, The Six Gun Mistique, 1970, page 30.
[xxiv] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Cultrix, São Paulo, sd, p. 138.
[xxv] Thomas Schatz, work cited, page 95.
[xxviii] Thomas Sobchack, in Barry Keith Grant, work cited, page 109.
[xxviii] Thomas Schatz, work cited, page 97.
[xxix] Morin, Edgard. the movie stars. Horizonte Books, Lisbon, 1980.
[xxx] Rick Altman, work cited, page 29.
[xxxii] Rick Altman, work cited, page 29.
[xxxi] Steve Neale, work cited, page 170.
[xxxii] Steve Neale, work cited, page 170.
[xxxv] Carlos F. Heredero and Antonio Santamarina, The black cinema. Paidós, Barcelona-Buenos Aires- Mexico, 1996.
[xxxiv] David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. Columbia University Press, New York, 1985.
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