Genre

I am more and more convinced that literature is made up of works, genres, schools, discussions, problems, collective work in order to solve certain problems.

—Italo Calvino[1]

Genre as a model helps us understand both the benefits and pitfalls of grouping things together.

Noticing similarities helps us recognize patterns. Rigid classifications, however, can make unfamiliar combinations harder to appreciate.

Genre is an easy concept to grasp but a much harder one to apply. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is “a particular style or category of works of art; esp. a type of literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose.”[2]

To define the genre of an artistic work, we have to approach it from many different angles. Art critics use genre to describe categories of artworks, such as film noir, jazz, science fiction, and still life. Literature scholars use it to describe categories of text, such as biography, nonfiction, and newspaper editorial.[3] Early uses of the term, which we find in Aristotle’s Poetics, merely divided artistic creations that used words into large buckets like “drama” and “lyric poetry.” So, in this conception, a novel is a genre of writing product, and a mystery novel a genre of story.

The application of the term is thus by no means consistent. As Catharine Abell notes in a paper on genre, “Even as used by critics, the term may pick out categories that appear to classify works on the basis of such diverse features as setting, content, medium, effects, tone, budget, or origins.”[4]

These varied uses make genre imprecise, but still useful.

First, genres change and develop over time. What is horror today is not what was considered horror fifty years ago. Scholars Tzvetan Todorov and Richard M. Berrong write, “A new genre is always the transformation of one or several old genres: by inversion, by displacement, by combination”[5]—which is how we get the space opera or art deco.

Because genres are not static, they are, note Wendy Bishop and David Starkey, “shaped by social forces and by the expectations of different readers (or audiences) during different historical periods.”[6] Novels, for example, are a relatively new genre. The rise of their popularity in the eighteenth century coincided with the growth of a class of people who had both the money and time to spend on entertainment.

We can learn a lot about a society from the genre categories it uses. Blues music is very evocative of a certain time and place in American history, and many of the lyrics are an indirect (or sometimes direct) social commentary. Kabuki theater provides great insight into the cultural history of Japan. Tzvetan Todorov and Richard Berrong argue, “The existence of certain genres in a society and their absence in another reveal a central ideology and enable us to establish it with considerable certainty.”[7]

Humans enjoy categories. The Great Mental Models series is based on the idea of chunking information into models and using them to understand the world better. Chunking information—putting like with like—helps us identify patterns and absorb new information. In this same way, genres are useful to consumers of art. Musicologist Nolan Gasser argues that “genre classifications unquestionably serve a valuable purpose in our understanding of and interaction with music, as with all art forms…. Without genre labels, most of us would have a hard time deciding whether or not to attend a concert or, for that matter, know how to discuss our musical taste.”[8] Although genres are far from absolute in many cases, they allow us to make connections across a variety of categories. We understand both The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, as writings of manners, and Dawn of the Dead and Get Out as horror movies.

Genre helps us to narrow unlimited choices. In a world where seemingly everything ever created is available on demand in seconds, the number of options can overwhelm us (as well as the organizers of art). Picking a genre narrows our choices. If you’ve ever said to yourself, “I feel like watching a comedy tonight,” you’ve used genre to tell yourself what to avoid and, in the process, significantly narrowed your options.

Understanding the greater context that genre offers both helps us understand the particulars of the art and limits what we experience. “A work’s genre affects its evaluation because we evaluate works according to how well they perform the purposes for which they are produced,”[9] writes Catharine Abell. Knowing that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is meant to be a comedy means we look for the humor in a character called Bottom and don’t see that name as a tragedy.

We pick up on a work’s genre through both internal factors, such as the first scene in a movie being set on a spaceship, and external factors, like what the sign above the aisle in a bookstore says. In the words of literature professor Trudier Harris, “Genre is thus an umbrella concept that allows for many disparate, and often related, concepts to be conveniently divided and subdivided,”[10] defining the terms of engagement.

Each genre comes with a set of predictable conventions. Audiences anticipate these conventions when choosing to engage with a particular piece, whether it be a film, book, or painting. Writing specifically about music, Nolan Gasser says, “Hearing a genre label not only produces an instant impression about how a song or artist might sound; it also provides a code whereby artists and fans can build solidarity or division.”[11] It’s easy, though, to apply this thinking to all other arts. Genre is part of the contract between artist and audience.

Some artists feel that genre conventions are too binding and that they stifle creativity. If a romance always has to end happily, after a certain amount of turmoil, then how is an author meant to create something new, authentic, and different? The counterargument is that there are enough genres to cover everything, and a lot of room within each genre. Indeed, sometimes pushing at the boundaries of convention is what makes certain works of art so compelling. Theodor Adorno wrote, “The individual work that simply subordinates itself to a genre does not do justice to it. It is more fruitful if there is a conflict between them.”[12] One way to achieve this conflict is to combine multiple genres, as many works of art do: jazzy rock music, historical horror movies, punk ballet dances. Any combination you as an artist can imagine, you can try to execute. Plus, conventions come into play at different points. Even if you don’t want a happily-ever-after romance in your novel, you still need to follow certain conventions to be writing a novel. Freeform text without plot or character may test the boundary of what readers recognize as a novel.

Neil Gaiman explains, “Genre, it had always seemed to me, was a set of assumptions, a loose contract between the creator and the audience.”[13] The genre is the context in which you are operating. It allows us, as the audience, to understand what we’re engaging with. We notice patterns and place them in reference to art we’ve already experienced. When it comes to books, Gaiman says genre is the “points in a story a reader would feel cheated without.”[14] It’s easy to argue that this description applies to all art. Engagement with art is active; it’s a choice we make. Genre helps us make that choice so that we don’t feel cheated by the experience.

The last interesting aspect of genre is that, by labeling what something is, genre also tells us what something is not. Jacques Derrida claimed, “As soon as the word ‘genre’ is sounded, as soon as it is heard, as soon as one attempts to conceive it, a limit is drawn. And when a limit is established, norms and interdictions are not far behind.”[15] But right behind those imposed limits are artists who are deliberately flouting them: Go to see a zombie movie and end up in a Western. Pick up a novel and find yourself immersed in a memoir. Far from making genre irrelevant, art that steps over the lines helps us see those lines more clearly. “The fact that a work ‘disobeys’ its genre does not make the latter nonexistent; it is tempting to say quite the contrary is true…. The norm becomes visible—lives—only by its transgressions.”[16] And eventually, these transgressions can lead to a new genre. Rather than limiting artists, Gaiman suggests that “the advantage of genre as a creator is it gives you something to play to and play against.”[17]

Experiencing the creative interplay of genre can be rewarding for the audience, but it presupposes we understand genre in the first place. “Even when authors are madly mixing genres,” Wendy Bishop and David Starkey explain, “the frisson we feel as one type of writing is juxtaposed with another can only occur when we can identify the different genres.”[18] We don’t need to have all of our expectations met, but we do need to appreciate genre to enjoy when those expectations are being thwarted.