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Genre?

firefossil

firefossil

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What is or isn't a genre? Let me start off with a few questions to get the discussion going.
1: How do define genres? Is it about aesthetics, theme, plot structure, character archetypes, writing style, tone, or something else?
2: Is Star Wars Science Fiction or Science Fantasy? What about Star Trek? What about the inverse of Technological Fantasy?
3: How does '-punk' as a genre work? Are most -punk works just cyberpunk but with varying aesthetics?
4: Can you think of interesting genre/subgenre combinations that haven't been done before? What would it be like and why would it be worth doing?

Here's the wikipedia list of genres that isn't even vaguely compherensive or even coherent: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Fantasy, Historical, Historical Fiction, Horror, Magical Realism, Mystery, Paranoid, Philosophical, Political, Romance, Saga, Satire, Science Fiction, Slice of Life, Speculative, Thriller, Urban, Western.
 
It's a genre if everybody believes that everybody else believes that it's a genre.
 
firefossil said:
2: Is Star Wars Science Fiction or Science Fantasy? What about Star Trek? What about the inverse of Technological Fantasy?
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Star Wars is neither. It's space opera. Simply having advanced technology as compared to us does not make something science fiction. If it did, 40K would be science fiction.


firefossil said:
3: How does '-punk' as a genre work? Are most -punk works just cyberpunk but with varying aesthetics?
4: Can you think of interesting genre/subgenre combinations that haven't been done before? What would it be like and why would it be worth doing?
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There isn't a '-punk' genre. Or rather, the two major '-punk' genre's, steam and cyber, are wholly different. Steampunk tends to be more adventure-y, and it attempts to speculate how the culture of the past might be affected by the technology of the future.

Cyberpunk meanwhile deals with cynicism. The world is under the control of vast, uncaring corporate empires that are concerned with only profit, with technology causing a GREATER wealth divide and inequality.
 
Why not go the easy way?

Genre (/ˈʒɒ̃rə/, /ˈʒɒnrə/ or /ˈdʒɒnrə/; from French genre [ʒɑ̃ʁ(ə)], "kind" or "sort", from Latin genus (stem gener-), Greek γένος, génos) is any category of literature, music or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.
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Genres are nowhere near coherent enough to have an in-depth discussion of their innate characteristics the way individual works do. They are at best shorthand generalizations, at worst marketing ploys.
 
Genre is a marketing technique used by various art sales groups in an attempt to monetize the popularity of certain individual artists by promising, in a subtle manner, work almost exactly like that of those artists.

For example; cyberpunk is the genre of people who want to buy William Gibson or Neall Stephenson. Fantasy is the genre of people who want to buy Tolkien or Howard. Horror is the genre of people who want to buy Poe or Lovecraft.

Genre tends to either evolve, expand or be redefined when a new artists becomes successful enough. For example; space opera is the genre of people who want to buy Star Wars. It used to exist before Star Wars, but now is the genre of Star Wars.

In effect you know how people go to fanfiction.net and look at Twilight fanfiction or Harry Potter fanfiction to read basically more Twilight or Harry Potter. Genre is that, except with a thin shell of respectability because people who sell you art have to market it without explicitly saying "It's basically that thing by that guy you like!"

Except when they do. Which they do.

Often.
 
Its pretty telling that people often describe a proposed genre as 'like xyz', rather than 'has abc, talks about jfk, has people who do xyz'.

Fan-driven genre assignments seem to have become pretty absurd to me. It seems people just add keywords that they like (as discussed above) to the 'genre' of whatever they like. For instance, some tv shows are described as 'gritty military action science fiction drama adventure', which isn't a genre at all - it's a description. Perhaps people now work backwards: I identify as liking gritty drama. I thus feel a need to assign 'gritty' and 'drama' in some seemingly official way to anything and everything I like, to create order from chaos.

And the old chestnut about scifi and fantasy really illustrates the situation: they're often almost exactly the same. Lots of popular scifi - especially video games - is just fantasy (with ancient golden ages, gods, myth-cycles, and racism), and doesn't really spend much time exploring any social or cultural outcomes of scientific progress.

In my opinion, genres should be broad and relate to content much more than superficial style. It shouldn't be used to narrowly define a work.
 
I think it helps to see genre as a list of overlapping identifiers that can be used to categorize fiction.

Genre can be the type of action the story revolves around, like romance, adventure, war, etc.

Genre can be the feelings the story is meant to evoke in the audience, like horror, escapism, humor, etc.

Genre can also be things that describe the setting or aesthetics of the story, like science fiction, historical, suburban, etc.

Think of the way we tag blog posts, more or less. You have a long list of tagwords, and any given post can be tagged with any number of them.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Genre is a marketing technique used by various art sales groups in an attempt to monetize the popularity of certain individual artists by promising, in a subtle manner, work almost exactly like that of those artists.

For example; cyberpunk is the genre of people who want to buy William Gibson or Neall Stephenson. Fantasy is the genre of people who want to buy Tolkien or Howard. Horror is the genre of people who want to buy Poe or Lovecraft.

Genre tends to either evolve, expand or be redefined when a new artists becomes successful enough. For example; space opera is the genre of people who want to buy Star Wars. It used to exist before Star Wars, but now is the genre of Star Wars.

In effect you know how people go to fanfiction.net and look at Twilight fanfiction or Harry Potter fanfiction to read basically more Twilight or Harry Potter. Genre is that, except with a thin shell of respectability because people who sell you art have to market it without explicitly saying "It's basically that thing by that guy you like!"

Except when they do. Which they do.

Often.
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I had no idea it was possible to be edgy when dealing with abstract literary classifications. Well done.

If this were truly the case, you would see a lot fewer authors rebelling at the offensive thought that their "literature" be classified under a "genre fiction" label by critics and readers.

Genre is genre. Sure, they're arbitrary, artificial constructs, but they're still constructs, not meaningless marketing buzzwords. This is especially obvious when a work's actual genre and the genre stated for the purposes of its marketing work against one another. Categories of works which share characteristics and draw upon similar wells of inspiration are connected together, creating genres. Sometimes, this really sucks for you - see whenever something that is blatantly sci-fi gets classified as "speculative fiction" or the ever-vague, ever useful "literature" because the science-fiction word scares away your intended readers. Those get mocked, a lot, because people aren't morons and are capable of drawing connections between various works.

Genre are broad, fluctuating things, categories of fictional works which draw upon similar inspirations and themes, though often in very different fashions. I like the term of "conversation;" works between a single genre are often markedly different in tone or content, but nonetheless interact with the same source material in such a way that you can compare and contrast their attitude towards it and the different end products.

I think part of the problem with defining genre today is that we live in an era of atomization into "subgenres." Fantasy is most definitely a genre, but as it grows more and more popular and receives more entries, people feel the need to subdivide it into further subgenres, and this way lies madness: dark fantasy, high fantasy, low fantasy, epic fantasy, light fantasy, science-fantasy... This is the realm in which fandoms dwell, drawing arbitrary lines that hack through similarities and intertextuality with a chainsaw in the sake of creating more narrow, well-defined territories that are easier to grasp. Except, in truth, they are only "well-defined" in the mind of these fans, and in reality conflict and overlap with one another into an endless confusion of subgenres. Genre becomes useless.
 
firefossil said:
2: Is Star Wars Science Fiction or Science Fantasy? What about Star Trek? What about the inverse of Technological Fantasy?
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As others have said, Star Wars is space opera.
Star Trek (speaking about TOS and TNG, then ones I have watched), yes I would call it Science Fiction. Not because that the science part is any good, but rather because it's about " to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." That is, it shows a clear interest in the future, space and the strange things do be discovered. Compare this to the space operas' old (war) story retold in space trapping.
 
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Omicron said:
If this were truly the case, you would see a lot fewer authors rebelling at the offensive thought that their "literature" be classified under a "genre fiction" label by critics and readers.
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They rebel because being placed in the genre ghetto is the kiss of death for serious literary ambition. If you get type-cast on a particular genre your chances of getting a publisher to take a risk on a work outside that genre with your name on it are pretty low.

Genre is genre. Sure, they're arbitrary, artificial constructs, but they're still constructs, not meaningless marketing buzzwords.
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Just because its a marketing buzzword doesn't mean its meaningless. Genre is used as a signifier to say "This work is similar to that other work you like, therefore you may like it." That isn't meaningless at all. It is, in fact, full of meaning.

Genre are broad, fluctuating things, categories of fictional works which draw upon similar inspirations and themes, though often in very different fashions. I like the term of "conversation;" works between a single genre are often markedly different in tone or content, but nonetheless interact with the same source material in such a way that you can compare and contrast their attitude towards it and the different end products.
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Genre doesn't so much fluctuate as it diffuses. You typically start with an archetype (ie, the popular work which 'established' the genre) and things are measured by how close or far the work is from that archetype. You get far enough from the archetype and the work begins to spread into another genre. Fantasy, science fiction and horror are pretty famous for this.

A work doesn't have a genre. It has multiple genres. A work can be both sci-fi and horror, for example. The more influence it draws from one archetype or another the more likely it is to be classified as one or another.

Look at the debate about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Was it the first science fiction novel? Or was it just another horror novel? For most people its the latter though by any 'scholarly' review of the work it is clearly a science fiction novel based on the science of the time. But if you want to find a copy at your book store, you don't look in the sci-fi section. For another example from the other side take War of the Worlds. It's generally considered a science fiction novel, but in structure and themes it has more in common with a horror novel. Yet its called science fiction.
 
I kind of resent nerds who sneer at Margaret Atwood for not wanting A Handmaids Tale regarded as science fiction, because what the fuck do you expect her to do? She's trying to make a statement through her writing and getting slapped with the label can cause it to be shunned by the snobs who are still the audience she wants to reach. Because let's face it, for a long time there was a separate between serious lit and science fiction, the latter of which being seen as frivolous for a long time.

Sure, science fiction isn't actually frivolous bullshit. But the genre as a genre and the genre as marketing are two different things, and that was the perception of the genre stemming how the bulk of sci-fi marketed itself. That's part of the issue with the sci-fi and fantasy genres specifically, there were so dominated by crappy retellings of pulp and Tolkien without substance, that it was hard for people outside of the loop to see something unique and actually good as fantasy even if it's totally part of it from a genre standpoint.
 
Reveen said:
I kind of resent nerds who sneer at Margaret Atwood for not wanting A Handmaids Tale regarded as science fiction, because what the fuck do you expect her to do? She's trying to make a statement through her writing and getting slapped with the label can cause it to be shunned by the snobs who are still the audience she wants to reach. Because let's face it, for a long time there was a separate between serious lit and science fiction, the latter of which being seen as frivolous for a long time.

Sure, science fiction isn't actually frivolous bullshit. But the genre as a genre and the genre as marketing are two different things, and that was the perception of the genre stemming how the bulk of sci-fi marketed itself. That's part of the issue with the sci-fi and fantasy genres specifically, there were so dominated by crappy retellings of pulp and Tolkien without substance, that it was hard for people outside of the loop to see something unique and actually good as fantasy even if it's totally part of it from a genre standpoint.
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"Science-fiction is perceived as frivolous bullshit, and I am trying to make an important statement so I can't afford to be dismissed, so I will insist it not be classified as science-fiction" is something I can understand, sure. I understand her motives and can relate to them.

It's just that the compound effect of everybody thinking the same thing is keeping science-fiction down in the ghetto instead of giving it the seminal, important works it needs to one day be considered a legitimate genre.

I can't blame someone for not wanting to take a shot for the others, but I'll sneer at them, because they are definitely part of the problem, no matter how legitimate their motives.

Also I don't think the Atwood work raised in such discussion is generally A Handmaid's Tale.
 
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Omicron said:
It's just that the compound effect of everybody thinking the same thing is keeping science-fiction down in the ghetto instead of giving it the seminal, important works it needs to one day be considered a legitimate genre.
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That's not how it will go down, I'm certain. Much like video games, legitimacy for science fiction will come with time and generational change. It's just a matter of having a broad mass of people that accepts science fiction as a respectable genre. Science fiction has seen writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Jules Verne, films like 2001 and Blade Runner. It already has the stone-cold classics that are remembered for generations (note that I picked stuff with mainstream acceptance). There's not much beyond staying the course.
 
Reveen said:
I kind of resent nerds who sneer at Margaret Atwood for not wanting A Handmaids Tale regarded as science fiction, because what the fuck do you expect her to do? She's trying to make a statement through her writing and getting slapped with the label can cause it to be shunned by the snobs who are still the audience she wants to reach. Because let's face it, for a long time there was a separate between serious lit and science fiction, the latter of which being seen as frivolous for a long time.

Sure, science fiction isn't actually frivolous bullshit. But the genre as a genre and the genre as marketing are two different things, and that was the perception of the genre stemming how the bulk of sci-fi marketed itself. That's part of the issue with the sci-fi and fantasy genres specifically, there were so dominated by crappy retellings of pulp and Tolkien without substance, that it was hard for people outside of the loop to see something unique and actually good as fantasy even if it's totally part of it from a genre standpoint.
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Eh, when you make a statement like "I don't want this to be seen as science fiction" you're reinforcing the stereotype that science fiction is just pew pew lasers so I think some scorn is understandable for effectively selling out. But at the same time, everybody sells out in the entertainment business so it's really just a matter of figuring out how much of a sellout you're willing to be on a scale from Waterson to Aerosmith.
 
Omicron said:
It's just that the compound effect of everybody thinking the same thing is keeping science-fiction down in the ghetto instead of giving it the seminal, important works it needs to one day be considered a legitimate genre.
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Yeah, but it's not entirely those people's faults. They're just reacting to the image of the genre, which is driven by the market. Publishers focusing on shitty uh I mean pulp sci-fi adventures as they're the most profitable, slapping stupid-ass covers with stock elves and spaceships going zoom on the better works in the genre. Clannish behaviour from fans doesn't help either, putting out the "our stories are so much cooler than boring literature" line but then turning around and acting offended when the same literary scene doesn't take them seriously.

I mean, fuck. Look at the Sad Puppies debacle and how mucho f their rhetoric centred around wanting to preserved meaningless pulp sci-fi over books with homo agenda ideas. Some older sci-fi fans internalized this shit. SFF's image problems were just as much self-inflicted.
 
Trying to think of all the delineations and building blocks of genre. Expanding off my earlier post and Blake Hannon's:
Aesthetics=The literal content of the story. Sometimes superficial, sometimes heavily interlaced with other aspects.
Plot Structure=Is it a 3 act structure? Serial? What #-person perspective does it take and does it do multiple? Is it chronologically linear?
Content=What kind of action (romance, adventure, war, etc.) the story deals with and what kind of feelings it induces (horror, escapism, humor, etc.)
Theme=What the story is really about. Is it about alienation? Recovering from a loss? What messages exist in the work if any?
Tone=Is it idealistic or cynical, optimistic or pessimistic, serious or silly, etc etc.

Of course even these categories are questionable delineations themselves. My initial list (aesthetics, theme, plot structure, character archetypes, writing style, tone) and Blake Hannon's (action, evoked feelings, setting aesthetics) took different angles on what they did and didn't subdivide or combine.
 
I think Aesthetics is more about the imagery which the story invokes, rather than just being the content, myself.

The actual content of a given story would probably be better under a new category which I'm going to tentatively suggest should be called 'Narrative', IE the core sequence of events which occurs.

However, since we're looking at the 'Genre', rather than any specific story, the 'Narrative' is probably not something we want to really concern ourselves with here.
 
Vindictus said:
I think Aesthetics is more about the imagery which the story invokes, rather than just being the content, myself.
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By content I mean "they have plasma batteries and spaceships, not cannons and sailing ships". Both stories could be seeking to invoke the same "age of sail" imagery, its just that one of them has shifted the aesthetics from "age of sail" to "age of sail In Space!". But the content doesn't have to be superficial. Perhaps a speculative Sci Fi story could be looking at how a space-age civilization whose FTL tech naturally leads to long travel times, predictable and difficult to police paths, plus lots of space to hide could enable a new age of piracy, albeit with distinct differences from past piracy eras also due to aspects of the tech.

Or take Shakespeare's works. They can and have been adopted for varying time periods, because the original aesthetic wasn't essential to the plot... but once you start moving it too far, the presence or absence of various technologies and cultural ideas causes them to break down. I mean heck lots of stories just don't make sense in the modern era of cellphones. The content does matter in such cases, though some stories may simply ignore it because they care more about the aesthetic without regards to the inherent implications associated with the aesthetic and how it would affect the story.
 
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