So this week’s been pretty introductory. We had a full blown crash course on genre and the whole tale behind it, from different point of views, academic, critical, and even just layman.

What makes a genre? We can find genre almost everywhere even outside the realm of films. Music for instance carries many various genres and sub genres (which is another layer to touch on maybe later in the semester), from old school classic rock to electronic dance music dub step, country folk music to big band swing…the list goes on. Genre helps one to categorise things in a neat and orderly fashion. Since the dawn of the human species, we tend to group stuff together base on certain characteristics, tropes, and traits. From primary school science, we were taught to categorise between living and non living things, plants and animals… I believe it might be in our DNA to create order and categories.

So film genres, what is it? Some say that it is a tool made up by the studios to sell films and that it doesn’t really exist, and if we were to go along with that, it just puts whatever I’ve mentioned above down the drain. There is definitely a need to categorise films, and even if it was intentionally or unintentionally created by the institution to make consumers buy more films, eventually genres will be created organically. We need something to refer to, something to make a reference and to gauge. But film genres are not very well distinct, it is fluid, it overlaps with one another in intricate twists and variation. Which, I believe, is why most of us elected to do this particular studio to see how genres overlap each other, and also distinct themselves from one another. Can’t wait to see how this semester and this studio unfolds as we explode genres week by week.