Altman, A Semantic-Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.pdf

University of Texas Press

Society for Cinema & Media Studies

A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre

Author(s): Rick Altman

Source: Cinema Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Spring, 1984), pp. 6-18

Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225093

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A Semantic/Syntactic Approach To Film Genre

by Rick Altman

as these questionsmay seem, they

arealmostneverasked-let aloneanswered-inthefieldof cinemastudies.

Mostcomfortable

classics,

genre criticshavefeltlittleneedto reflect openly onthe assumptions

inthe seeminglyuncomplicated

worldof Hollywood

underly-

ing theirwork. Everything

seemsso clear. Why botherto theorize, American

to solve?We allknowa genre

whenwesee one.Scratch only whereit itches. According

asks, whenthereareno problems

pragmatism

to this view, genre

theory wouldbecalledfor only inthe unlikely event that knowledgeable

genre

is thento adjudicate

amongconflictingapproaches, not so much by dismissingunsatisfactory

positions, but by constructing

between

differing criticalclaimsandtheirfunctionwithina broaderculturalcontext.

Whereasthe French clearly view theory as a first principle, we Americans

tendto see it as a last resort, something

a modelwhichrevealsthe relationship

to turnto whenall else fails.

Evenin this limited, pragmatic view, wherebytheory is to be avoided

at all costs, thetimefor theory is nevertheless upon us. Theclockhasstruck

thirteen; wehadbestcallinthetheoreticians.

I notein thechoiceorextentof essentialcriticalterms.

Often, what appears ashesitation

Themore genre criticism

I read,

inthe terminology

of a single criticwillturn

whenstudies by twoor morecriticsare compared.

Now, it wouldbe one thing if thesecontradictions

were simply a matterof

fact. On the contrary, however, I suggest that these are not temporary

problems, boundto disappear

reflectconstitutiveweaknessesof cur-

rentnotionsof genre. Threecontradictions

as soonas wehavemoreinformation

or better

in particular

seem worthy of a

good scratch.

Whenwe establish

twoalternate groups of texts, eachcorre-

Rick Altman is associate professor of Film, French, and Comparative Literatureat the

University of Iowa. His book on the problems of genre criticism, history, and theory, as seen

through the musical, will soon be publishedby Indiana University Press.

Cinema Journal 23, No. 3, Spring

1984

Whatis a genre? Whichfilmsare genre films?Howdo we knowto

which genretheybelong? Asfundamental

critics disagreed onbasicissues.Thetaskof thetheorist

themore uncertainty

intoa clearcontradiction

analysts. Instead, theseuncertainties

the corpus of a genre we generally tend to do two

things at once, andthusestablish

to a simple, tautological definitionof the genre(e.g.,

western = filmthat takes place in the American West, or musical= filmwith

diegeticmusic). This inclusive list is the kindthat gets consecrated by generic

encyclopedias or checklists.On the other hand, we find critics, theoreticians,

and other arbitersof taste sticking to a familiarcanon which has little to do

with the broad, tautological definition. Here, the same films are mentioned

again and again, not only because they are well knownor particularly well

made, but because they somehowseem to represent the genre more fully and

faithfully than other apparently more tangential films. This exclusive list of

films generally occurs not in a dictionary context, but insteadin connection

with attempts to arrive at the overall meaning or structureof a genre. The

relativestatus of these alternate approaches to the constitutionof a generic

corpus may easily be sensed from the followingtypical conversation:

-I mean, whatdo you do with Elvis Presley films?You can hardly call them

musicals.

-Why not? They're loadedwith songs and they've got a narrativethat ties

the numbers together, don't they?

-Yeah, I suppose. I guess you'd have to call Fun in Acapulco a musical, but

it's sure no Singin' in the Rain. Now there's a real musical.

and excludedfrom that same corpus.

A second uncertainty is associated with the relative status of theory and

history in genre studies. Before semiotics came along, generic titles and

definitions were largely borrowed from the industry itself; what little generic

theory there was tended therefore to be confused with historical analysis. With

the heavy influence of semiotics on generic theory over the last two decades,

self-conscious critical vocabulary came to be systematically preferred to the

now suspect user vocabulary. The contribution of Propp, Levi-Strauss, Frye,

and Todorov to genre studies has not been uniformly productive, however,

because of the special place reserved for genre study within the semiotic

project. If structuralist critics systematically chose as object of their analysis

large groups of popular texts, it was in order to cover over a basic flaw in

the semiotic understanding of textual analysis. Now, one of the most striking

aspects of Saussure's theory of language is his emphasis on the inability of

any single individual to effect change within that language. The fixity of the

linguistic community thus serves as justification for Saussure's fundamentally

Cinema Journal 23, No. 3, Spring

1984

sponding to a differentnotionof corpus. Onthe one handwe have an unwieldy

listof texts corresponding

includedin a particulargenericcorpus

When is a musicalnot a musical?When it has Elvis Presley in it. What may

at first have seemed no more than an uncertainty on the part of the critical

community now clearly appears as a contradiction.Because there are two

competing notions of generic corpus on our critical scene, it is perfectly

possible for a filmto be simultaneously

synchronic approach to language. When literary semioticians applied this

linguistic model to problems of textual analysis, they never fully addressed

the notionof interpretive community implied by Saussure's linguistic commu-

nity. Preferring narrativeto narration, system to process, and histoire to

discours, the first semiotics ran headlong into a set of restrictionsand

contradictionsthat eventually spawned the more process-oriented second

semiotics. It is in this context that we must see the resolutelysynchronic

attempts of Propp, Levi-Strauss,Todorov, and many anotherinfluential genre

analyst.' Unwilling to compromise their sytems by the historicalnotion of

linguistic community, these theoreticians instead substituted the generic

contextfor the linguistic community, as if the weight of numerous"similar"

texts weresufficientto locatethe meaning of a text independently of a specific

audience. Far from being sensitive to concerns of history, semiotic genre

analysis was by definitionand from the start devoted to bypassinghistory.

Treatinggenres as neutral constructs, semioticiansof the sixties and early

seventies blindedus to the discursive power of generic formations.Because

they treated genres as the interpretive community, they were unable to

perceive the important role of genres in exercising influenceon the interpre-

tive community. Insteadof reflectingopenly on the way in which Hollywood

uses its genres to short-circuitthe normal interpretiveprocess, structuralist

critics plungedheadlong into the trap, taking Hollywood'sideological effect

for a naturalahistoricalcause.

Genres were always-and continue to be-treated as if they spring

full-blown from the head of Zeus. It is thus not surprising to find that even

the most advanced of current genre theories, those that see generic texts as

negotiating a relationship betweena specific productionsystem and a given

audience, still hold to a notion of genre that is fundamentally ahistoricalin

nature.2 More and more, however, as scholarscome to know the full range

of individual Hollywoodgenres, we are finding that genres are far from

exhibiting the homogeneity whichthis synchronicapproachposits. Whereas

one Hollywoodgenre may be borrowedwith little change from another

medium, a second genre may develop slowly, change constantly, and surge

recognizably before settling into a familiar pattern, while a third may go

through an extended series of paradigms, none of which may be claimedas

dominant.As long as Hollywood genres are conceivedas Platonic categories,

existing outsidethe flowof time, it willbe impossible to reconcile genre theory,

which has always accepted as given the timelessness of a characteristic

structure, and genre history, which has concentratedon chronicling the

develoment, deployment, and disappearance of this same structure.

A third contradictionlooms larger still, for it involvesthe two general

directionstaken by genre criticismas a whole over the last decade or two.

Following Levi-Strauss, a growing numberof critics throughout the seventies

dwelled on the mythical qualities of Hollywoodgenres, and thus on the

Cinema Journal 23, No. 3, Spring 1984

in the genre film experience thusreinforces

spectator expectations and desires.Far from being limitedto mere entertain-

ment, film-going offersa satisfactionmore akinto that associatedwithestab-

lished religion. Most openlychampionedby John Cawelti, this ritual approach

appears as well in books by Leo Braudy, Frank McConnell, Michael Wood,

Will Wright, and ThomasSchatz.3It has the merit not only of accounting

for the intensity of identification typical of American genre film audiences,

butit also encourages the placing of genre filmnarrativesintoan appropriate-

ly widercontext of narrative analysis.

Curiously, however, while the ritual approach was attributing ultimate

authorship to the audience, with the studios simply serving, for a price, the

national will, a parallel ideological approach was demonstrating howaudiences

are manipulated by the businessand political interestsof Hollywood. Starting

with Cahiers du cinema and moving rapidly to Screen, Jump Cut, and a

growing numberof journals, this view has recentlyjoined handswitha more

generalcritique of the mass mediaoffered by the FrankfurtSchool. Looked

at in this way, genres are simply the generalized, identifiablestructures

through which Hollywood's rhetoricflows. Far more attentive to discursive

concernsthan the ritual approach, whichremainsfaithfulto Levi-Straussin

emphasizing narrative systems, the ideological approach stresses questions of

representation and identification previously left aside. Simplifying a bit, we

might say that it characterizeseach individual genre as a specifictype of lie,

an untruthwhose most characteristicfeature is its ability to masquerade as

truth. Whereasthe ritual approach sees Hollywood as responding to societal

pressure andthus expressing audience desires, the ideologicalapproach claims

that Hollywood takes advantage of spectatorenergy and psychic investment

in order to lure the audience into Hollywood's own positions. The two are

irreducibly opposed, yet these irreconcilable arguments continueto represent

the most interesting and well defendedof recent approaches to Hollywood

genre film.

Here we have three problems whichI take not to be limitedto a single

schoolof criticismor to a singlegenre, but to be implicit in every major field

of current genre analysis. In nearly every argument about the limits of a

generic corpus, the opposition of an inclusive list to an exclusive canon

surfaces.Whenever genres are discussed, the divergent concernsof theorists

and historiansare increasingly obvious. And even when the topic is limited

to genretheory alone, no agreement can be foundbetweenthosewho propose

a ritual function for film genres and those who champion an ideological

Cinema Journal 23, No. 3, Spring

1984 9

audience'sritual relationship to genre film.The film industry's desireto please

and its need to attract consumerswas viewed as the mechanism whereby

spectators were actually able to designate the kind of films they wantedto

see. By choosing the films it would patronize, the audience revealed its

preferences and its beliefs, thus inducingHollywood studiosto produce films

reflecting its desires. Participation

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