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Flashcards in Genre: Transforming Genre Deck (9)
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1
Q

What are the common catalysts that spur on generic transformation of genre?

A

Technical changes, Industrial changes, Sociocultural changes

2
Q

What are examples of technical changes, industrial changes, and sociocultural changes in the western genre?

A
  • Technical: widescreen technologies
  • Industrial: dismantling of the studio system, change in conventions, lead to a more individual approach
  • Sociocultural: more violence to keep pace, changes in protagonist (women & black men became protagonists)
3
Q

Film genres allow for society to tell itself the same basic story over and over in an almost ritualistic fashion… what is this?

A

Myth

4
Q

What is Claude Lévi-Strauss known for?

A

Claude Lévi-Strauss was an anthropologist that studied myths that exist in society

5
Q

What genre has been changing the most overtime?

A

The Western genre - not noted for originality but for their deep structure shared with other films of the genre, meant for an audience familiar with it

6
Q

Claude Lévi-Strauss proposed the structure of myths to be what? And with what purpose?

A

Structure: binaristic
Purpose: “to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction”

6
Q

Western understood by mythical terms to possess binary oppositions such as what?

A

Individual/community, town/wilderness, order/anarchy

7
Q

Screwball understood by mythical terms possess binary oppositions such as what?

A

Man/woman, aversion/attraction, social norms/transgression of norms

8
Q

What conventions did the Western possess?

A

Visual, aural, technical: cowboy, horse, hat, gun, landscape, long and xl shots, widescreen, spurs, slow talking, abrupt bursts of gunfire, non diegetic music
Narrative: hero enters arena, hero eradicates threat to community, hero exits arena
Thematic: resolution of social order, masculinity, the law of the gun, the nature of honour, the doctrine of manifest destiny