NARRATIVE AND GENRE - Sage

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The significance of narrative and genre for the study of contemporarymedia can hardly be overestimated. Both are means by which the

world of human experience can be reconstructed, rearranged, andreimagined. As ways of organizing, framing, and directing experienceand knowledge and as industrial tools, these categories have been cen-tral to film and electronic media since the beginnings of these forms ofcommunication.

Although both concepts can and should be applied to the structuresof meaning in strictly “informative” or rhetorical works such as newsreports, documentary film and television, and advertisements, this chap-ter focuses primarily on the functions of narrative and genre in fictionalworks of film and television. When appropriate, however, attention willbe focused on other significant representational types. It is also impor-tant to note here that the focus of this chapter is on patterns generallyassociated with “Western” or “European” forms of narrative andgenre, though it will be important at times to take note of this culturalspecificity. Similarly, by way of introduction, it is equally significant torecognize that neither concept is founded in the creation, distribution,reception, or organized study of film and electronic media. Notions ofnarrative and genre are central to all forms of literature—and, in someinstances, even of other arts such as painting, music, and dance—and tothe study of those media as well. Indeed, drawing on this long historyof the uses of narrative and genre is necessary to fully understand thesignificance of these concepts for media studies.

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� Horace Newcomb

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For example, there is perhaps no better illustration of the fundamentalroles of narrative and genre than to notice their application in inter-personal communication grounded in human speech, in everydayexchanges with others. Ask of another any simple question, somethingsuch as, “What did you do last night?”

Answering such a question usually involves the making of a narra-tive. Certainly, no one would attempt to catalogue each action or everymoment of the lived sequence time indicated as “last night.” An appro-priate answer would select certain events, highlight some of thoseselected, use others as linking devices, and move toward a conclusion.Even if that conclusion were no more “conclusive” than “Nothing.I stayed at home,” a narrative would have been created, for “nothing”is an evaluative judgment and deletes all the things done there. It sug-gests other “something” alternatives that would have more significancefor the questioner, and in these immediate, potential comparisons, arange of responses is implied and embedded.

If, of course, the events were much more involving than “nothing”suggests, if they were organized in such a manner as to invoke suspense,or laughter, or disbelief, specific types of organization might be used. Inother words, the narrative might fall into a classification scheme—agenre. We might even suggest, for analytical purposes, that the ques-tion, “What did you do last night?” could itself constitute a specificgenre that we might call the “stories about last night” genre, whichwould be distinct from “what did you do last summer” or “what didyou do at school.”

In most social interaction, a certain value is placed on narrative andon those who create good narrative—variously defined as entertaining,or enlightening, or informing. The person who embellishes, who makesgood selections, who organizes, who draws us in, who allows us somesense of participation is important just for those skills. Our pleasure andour enlightenment is a part of life we appreciate.

Such simple examples suggest that the “work” done by narrative andgenre can be understood as a process of rearranging the world for imag-inative purposes. This imaginative activity occurs in at least two ways.First, the act of the one who answers the question, who selects eventsand orders them, is an imaginative action. Second, the one who listens,who anticipates, who believes or disbelieves, who laughs or fails tolaugh, who places herself or himself into the circumstances by thinkingsomething such as “I wouldn’t have done it that way” is also engagedin an imaginative process. This “freedom” to participate in the con-structed “worlds” of narrative and genre is perhaps one thing thatcontributes to definitions of being human. To “imagine” the future, orthe past, or other worlds, or actions forbidden—or bidden—by oursocieties, enables a potentially rich consideration of and commentary onthe actions we do perform.

This observation, however, requires central focus on yet anotheraspect of these two concepts that becomes significant for their study incontexts of contemporary media: The creation of narratives, as well astheir classification into genres, is never a “neutral” act. The one who


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answers our question, the one who selects which features of “last night”to emphasize, pass over, or even delete, has the power to direct ourattention, which also involves diverting our attention from other events.What if there are things the answerer, the narrator, wishes to hide fromus? What if there are things the answerer selects as important but thatfor us overlook something far more significant? Indeed, what if theanswerer is lying to us? Does it matter if the entire answer, the narra-tive account, is “made up”? Why and how is it that we value so highlythe fictional worlds that “entertain” us?

From such questions, and out of such basic aspects of social activity,great and trivial art, huge industries, and, in the views of many whostudy such matters, powerful social and cultural influences arise.Understanding the roles of narrative and genre in media studies, there-fore, requires rather precise study of those concepts and the wide rangeof approaches to them. Indeed, the study of these topics has producedan especially rich body of work related to expressive forms, a long his-tory of engagement with narrative and genre. As should be expected,different theories (and theorists), different questions, and analyticalstrategies have focused on different aspects of the topics. Rather thanseeing these as somehow more “right or wrong,” these variations canbe understood as an ongoing deliberation, a conversation of sorts, inwhich alternative perspectives enable a richer understanding, each offer-ing reshaping the others as it forges its own argument.

Structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s (1967) analysis of“binary oppositions,” for example, offers formulas for recognizing rela-tionships among features that have been used to examine both narrativeand genre. Folklorist Vladimir Propp (1968) argued that “all” narra-tives share certain common features serving similar purposes. These“functions,” he argued, might take varying shape in specific culturalcontexts but could, on close analysis, be found to serve different narra-tives in the same manner. Tzvetan Todorov (1977) focuses the analysisof narrative on the shifting states of social formations, beginning in sta-bility, moving through change, challenge, and instability, to arrive at analtered stable state “in the end.” Seymour Chatman’s (1978) study ofthe “branching” aspects of narrative, citing “nodal” points and move-ment away from and toward certain narrative events, offers yet anotherperspective.

Studies of genre are equally varied and suggestive of strategies foranalysis. Much of the discussion surrounding genre relates to the ideo-logical implications of shaping and organizing human experience insuch specific ways, in forms that seem to have both an ongoing appealto audiences and a sufficient resilience to be reshaped for social, cul-tural, or industrial change.

A key source in these explorations is Roland Barthes’s (1972)Mythologies, a work that has generated its own body of commentaryliterature applying and exploring basic concepts. Many other studiesfocus on specific forms, such as the musical (Altman, 1981; Feuer,1982), whereas others, such as Thomas Schatz’s (1981) HollywoodGenres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System, survey a range



♦♦ Narrative

A fundamental characteristic of narrative,as indicated above, is the arrangement ofevents in time. If we take as a central fea-ture of this arrangement the Aristoteliandictum that all narratives have beginnings,middles, and ends, we must recognize orestablish relations among these parts.

In Film Art: An Introduction, DavidBordwell and Kristin Thompson (1986) offera definition of narrative that suggests thesignificance of such an analytical approach:“A narrative is a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time andspace” (p. 83).

A central question in the study of narra-tive, then, and one that is a good startingpoint for narrative analysis, is, “Why did itstart here and end here?” A related question(or set of questions) asks, “Why are theevents in the narrative arranged in this spe-cific order?” What “causes” this narrativeto occur and perhaps orders the causal rela-tionship that follows? For analytical pur-poses, it is even helpful to ask, “What if?”What if the narrative had begun at anotherpoint, with another event contained withinthe narrative? What if the sequence hadbeen rearranged so that the audience wouldhave certain information at an earlier orlater point in the narrative?

Such questions emphasize the fact thatnarratives are constructs, relatively arbitraryarrangements designed to appeal to certaindesires or to shape certain responses. They

also remind us that in certain circumstances,the audience has knowledge of “whatmight happen” in the narrative and that thecreator(s) of the narrative can play uponexpectation, defeating or confirming it, apoint that becomes especially pertinent inthe discussion of genre that follows.

To understand and make use of the con-structed aspects of narrative, it is helpfulto follow the work of scholars who makedistinctions between story and plot (cf.Bordwell, 1985). In this distinction, thestory involves events as they happened andincludes all aspects of those events—as ineverything that happened “last night.” Theplot, however, is the selection and arrange-ment of certain events, using “story” as theraw material, the body of resource eventsfrom which to draw—and construct—thenarrative.

Clearly, one primary transformation ofstory into plot, of events into narrative,involves a reconstruction of time. In prosefiction, a writer might note the passage oftime with a simple phrase: “As wintersnows melted. . . .” Dramatic performanceson stage might suggest time passage withlighting changes, fades down and up. In thequasi-literary form of the radio drama, wehave a similar example with the classic linefrom narratives constructed for juvenilelisteners tuned to western adventures:“Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . . .”

With cinematic narratives, the range oftechnical devices for indicating altered time,for changing story into plot, is quite large.As with printed narratives, dates and times

of film types. Similarly, Horace Newcomb’s (1974) TV: The MostPopular Art examines a range of television genres.

In the apparently ever-expanding contexts of expressive culture, asnew media wrestle with and modify traditional forms, even as “older”media such as film and television continue to churn out familiarexamples, approaches to narrative and genre will require more preci-sion. But the fundamental concerns—how, including the technologicaland industrial aspects, are stories told and experienced—keep us mind-ful of the significance of these topics.



can appear on the screen: “December 7,1941.” In sound, film characters can speakof specific dates and times of day. Passageof days and weeks can be signified by suchclichéd techniques as the falling pages of acalendar or the churning wheels of a train.But more complicated alterations of timeappear with the use of “fades” and “dis-solves,” as on the stage, to indicate passageof time. When the screen goes to “black,”then fades into a new picture, we assumetime has passed even if we are viewing thesame people in the same location.

Flashbacks, also often indicated with adissolve technique or other visual manipula-tion on the screen, take us into the “past”and beg the narrative question of what thesepast events will contribute to the plot emerg-ing in this narrative. Parallel editing, how-ever, implies that the events we see in anarrative sequence are occurring at the sametime. We cut back and forth between events,having learned by experience that “realtime” has not passed in the interval taken toenact the other scenes. The term to cut, ofcourse, comes from the physical act of edit-ing film. Pieces of film are cut apart andglued together again to construct narratives.(This practice is now generally accom-plished electronically, with digital editingequipment that allows far more “efficient”selection processes from among a massiverange of options for assembling filmed ortaped content.) This physical capability tojuxtapose visual content focuses attentionon another aspect of the cinema, the abilityto create narrative from filmed imagesalone. Some makers and theorists of silentfilm (Eisenstein, 1949) considered this themost significant aspect of the new mediumand developed complex theories of narra-tion based completely on relations amongsegments of filmed content.

Equally as significant as time in narrativeis space. Again, literary narrative is quitecapable of constructing spaces in which theevents of a narrative occur. This is mostoften done with detailed description,though on occasion, a narrative may simplyrefer to a locale—“the desert,” “the shore.”

Obviously, narratives in film and televisionhave advantages here. The photographiccapabilities of these media are enhanced bythe use of lighting techniques to give spacesmore specific connotative meanings. Cameraplacement may limit or increase informa-tion available to the viewer. Design withinspace provides context for events that occurthere, and the movement of performers tospecific spaces may indicate a range of sig-nificance. Moreover, as we will see in thediscussion of genre, space may carry signif-icance for the meanings of the narrative inand of itself, as do the “wide open spaces”of a western or the tightly confined areaswithin a spaceship.

As with the sequence of events, the abil-ity to edit film into specific spatial relation-ships is central to narrative. A cluster ofconventional techniques blends events intovisual sequences that contribute to meaningmaking. With the “eye-line match,” thecamera first photographs a performer look-ing in a certain direction, then focuses onwhat the performer sees. By filming “onaxis,” spaces are maintained in specificrelation to one another, following the logicof conventional perspective. The familiar“shot-reverse-shot” or “over-the-shoulder”shot may maintain a conversation as if twopeople are speaking to one another in turn.

In point of fact, as this last example indi-cates, such uses of editing to construct thesense of a sequence are powerful devices.Films are almost always shot out of sequence.The last scene of a narrative could be thefirst to be filmed. Performers need not be inthe same room at the same time to carry ona conversation. The “listener,” who we seelooking “at the speaker,” is looking intoa camera. The “speaker” may perform thesame scene on a different day, lookinginto the camera now positioned from “theother side.”

No matter the technological limitations orcapabilities, however, no matter the con-struction or reconstruction of time or space,what happens within the most familiar cine-matic narratives generally focuses on humanexperiences, some far more developed than



others. These narratives often begin in astate variously described as “normal” or asin equilibrium. This state of affairs is thendisrupted by an event or events, and theremainder of the narrative is given over toevents leading to a changed state of affairsor to the reestablishment of equilibrium. Insome cases, the disruption of the “normal”results in the presentation of an enigma thatmust be solved or, at least, explained. Thesequence of events leading to this end stateis often a series of complications thatmust be confronted or overcome. Questionssurrounding the enigma are presented.Clues are hidden and discovered. The questis completed.

In most media narratives common in theWestern European American traditions, theattempts to complete the tasks set withinand defining the plot—attempts to resolvethe enigma, to reestablish equilibrium—become the responsibility of a central figure,often described as a “goal-oriented hero.”This individual, usually male, must over-come difficulties and reassume a central posi-tion to satisfactorily conclude the narrative.

Within such commonly figured narra-tives, then, the sequences of events, scenes,and actions most often follow a logic ofcause and effect. Each scene or sequencemay in itself involve a beginning, middle,and end, and analysis of these scenes andsequences is central to an analysis of thenarrative whole.

At this point, we come to a core issue forthe study of narrative: Who is the creator ofthe narrative? Whose narrative is being con-structed? A related question complicates thisproblem: Who is the narrator, and is the“narrator” the same as the “creator of thenarrative?” Here I have purposely avoidedthe term author to describe the creator ofthe narrative. The notion of authorship is initself a vexed topic and nowhere more prob-lematic than in the study of mass media suchas film and television. One school ofthought suggests that the director of a filmis, in some cases, its auteur. This term is var-iously used to suggest that the director has(a) created all elements of a film, from script

to final edit; (b) has final control over theseelements; or (c) has established the “vision”of the film and stamped her or his concepton the elements involved. Challenges to thisconcept of authorship point out the highlyindustrialized nature of most filmmaking,involving multiple tasks and proceduresthat are impossible to control. Still othercritiques argue that “authorship” is itself asociocultural construct, that artifacts suchas films or television programs are as muchculturally created as they are individually oreven collectively invented.

Neither side of this issue, however, quar-rels with the notion of, the existence of, a“narrator” for narrative. The point is thatthe narrator is the voice or perspectivewithin the narrative that guides the con-struction of the sequence of events, henceguiding the viewer’s knowledge and per-haps reactions to these events. In someinstances, the narrator is a performer, acharacter within the narrative. Indeed, oneof the clearest indications of the complexnature of narrative and narration occurs infilms such as Rashomon (directed by AkiraKurosawa, 1950), in which there are multi-ple narrators constructing the “same” nar-rative from different points of view—atechnique that leads inevitably to the factthat the same narrative is, in fact, many dif-ferent narratives and that this “external”philosophical observation is, in some sense,narrating the whole. More conventionalnarratives in which the narrator is clearlyidentified might be found in some instancesof the hard-boiled detective film, or in filmsnoir, where a central character “narrates”the film in the first person.

In a great many cases, however, theviewer’s perspective on a given narrative isakin to an omniscient view in which “we”look “into” the world of the narrative. Evenhere, however, our perspective is limited,focused, forced, and guided by what thecamera allows us to see and the sequence ofevents that constrains our knowledge. Wemay guess at what will happen—indeed,this is the source of much pleasure in narra-tive. We may do more than guess, relying



on cues within the film that match livedexperience or, as we shall see, more oftenmatch cues commonly found in other, sim-ilar films. In such cases, we may take plea-sure from the confirmation of our guesses,or we may be more involved preciselybecause we do not know what will happennext or because our expectations have beendefeated or channeled in new directions.

Among the most important features ofnarrative, then, and one of the factors thatmakes it useful and significant for humanexperience is its malleability. Narrativesmay, and often do, conform to patterns.But they may also suggest new patterns,new ways of considering the world, newperspectives on old topics.

♦♦ Implications of PreferredNarrative Structures

So familiar is narrative design that we oftentend to overlook its highly constructed—oneis tempted to say arbitrary—characteristicsand, more significantly, overlook the impli-cations of these specific features. But narra-tives also call for analysis of the factorsunderlying the specific formations describedhere. That is, the analysis must take intoaccount the medium in which the narrativeis created and the historical, social, andcultural circumstances surrounding thatmedium. Those circumstances would include,among other factors, the technological andeconomic resources available to the makersof narrative, the traditions of narrative con-struction associated with the “culture” inwhich it is produced, the expectations ofaudiences both within and outside of thatspecific cultural setting, and so on. Butbecause of our focus here on fictional narra-tives, the circumstances would also includethe intentions, capabilities, and resources ofmakers of narratives. For film and elec-tronic media, these circumstances are,historically, directly related to industrialorganization of a certain scale, and develop-ment of the “fiction film” or “fictional

television” offers a perspective on manyaspects of narration.

As Bordwell, Thompson, and Staiger(1985) suggest in The Classical HollywoodCinema: Film Style and Mode of Produc-tion to 1960, a key work on the history ofcinematic narrative strategies (among othertopics), nothing inherent in the inventionof technologies of the cinema required“movies” to develop in specific ways, intocertain familiar forms, or into specific nar-rative patterns. Nevertheless, they argue, bythe mid-nineteen-teens, American film espe-cially had narrowed into the structure view-ers around the world recognized as the“Hollywood” film.

For media studies, the implications ofthis historical development are profound.One of the most telling implications is thatfilms come to be associated primarily withentertainment. Once films are categorizedin this manner, and once they are then dis-tributed for profit, the entire process offilmmaking becomes highly industrialized.Industrialized filmmaking is expensive andpotentially quite profitable. But to be prof-itable, films must attract large numbers ofviewers. If certain narrative structures drawthose numbers to theaters but others donot, the profitable narrative structurescome to dominate the understanding ofwhat constitutes “a movie,” what it is to beentertained, what a cinematic narrative“is.” No matter the specific content or, aswe shall see, the specific genre, the conven-tional “Hollywood” film takes on thosecertain characteristics.

Thus, we can attend to the social, cul-tural, and ideological implications ofreliance on the goal-oriented hero, the typi-cal White male central character whoseactions, choices, and values guide usthrough the fictional world he centers. Wecan attend to the prominence of heterosex-ual romance as a structuring feature in theHollywood cinema, as well as the preva-lence of coupling or marriage as a conclud-ing moment in so many films. We canmark the subordinate roles of women inmost of these films. We can observe the



marginalization or demonization of membersof other racialized groups or ethnic groups.

But such observations only begin toaccount for the implications of the domi-nance of specific narrative structures. Otherfactors include the fact that the necessarysupport systems are brought into alignmentwith the preferred narrative. Buildings andlocations are constructed or designed toaccommodate these kinds of films. Equip-ment is invented, modified, and improvedto suit the form. Systems of distribution andexhibition must match the needs associatedwith particular film form.

Consider, for example, the expectationthat fictional filmed narratives will be of acertain predictable length, roughly 90 to120 minutes. We read of battles betweenstudios and directors over films that arelonger than this established criterion. Butthere is no factual reason for films to be ofthis length. Rather, it is the case that a filmof 100 minutes can usually be shown morefrequently in an evening, whereas filmslonger than 120 minutes would reduce thenumber of screenings in the social settingsthat have developed for the usual showingof films. Thus, even the notion of “going tothe movies” is determined, in part, by theintersection of economic interests andnarrative structures.

A similar implication can be attached tothe ways in which creative personnel learnto “make” movies in particular ways.Handbooks and instruction manuals teachthe Hollywood “three-act structure,” andsome go so far as to suggest page numbersin scripts as points at which certain types ofactions should occur. Executives, agents,producers, and directors anticipate suchstructures and may reject works created ondifferent patterns. If the “inciting incident”has not occurred at 25 to 30 minutes in thenarrative, the movie is deemed “unconven-tional.” When an unconventional narrativedoes become successful, it is often definedas an “art movie.”

This points to the fact, of course, thatdescribing the narrative structures of the“Hollywood cinema” barely scratches the

surface of potential narrative strategies.Films are made around the world with dif-ferent approaches to narrative. PopularIndian cinema regularly “disrupts” the cen-tral narrative with musical performances.In the classic Arabian narrative, AThousand and One Nights, stories withinstories connect in a variety of ways thatdo not fall easily into the conventions of“Western” narrative strategies. Multiplepoints of view, narratives within narratives,narratives that end ambiguously, in failure,without restoring equilibrium—all these arepossible. A primary concern for culturallybased analysis of narrative remains focusedon the degree to which “Hollywood cin-ema” has forced such culturally specificnarratives to the margins, even in their ownsocieties. Still, it is worth noting that eventhe narrator of the tales in A Thousand andOne Nights can be seen as a nearly classicexample of the “goal-oriented hero(ine),”who exemplifies what might be the task ofall narrative—to keep herself alive.

♦♦ Television Narrative

Though not immediately apparent, anotheralternative to classical Hollywood emergesin the structures of television narrative. Inthe earliest days of American television, afew plays written for television and per-formed live followed the more ambiguousstructures found in dramatic productionsfor the stage. And a great many performa-tive programs such as the variety show,stand-up comedy, the talk show, andchildren’s programs were interspersedthroughout the television schedule. Bothtypes of programming—single play andperformance—remain staple strategies inmany national contexts that are, unlike theU.S. system, unable to provide financialsupport for extended fictional narratives.

One factor distinguishing televisionnarrative from that of Hollywood film,however, resulted from the different eco-nomic structures underlying television.



Following the “broadcast model” developedfor commercial radio, American televisionwas planned as an advertising medium.Programs were designed not to “sell tickets”as were movies but to sell the attention ofviewers to advertisers. The larger the audi-ence, the higher the fees returned to produc-ing and distribution/exhibition entities.

Much of the power of such a model layin its domestic context. Although somealternatives such as “theater television”were considered, the medium quickly cameto be designed for viewing in the home.A second fundamental characteristic ofadvertiser-supported television was quicklyfound in its regularity—the schedule.Popular programs maintained long-runningplaces on the television schedule. New nar-ratives had to be created for the same per-formers week after week. This fact wasamong the most significant in the shift from“live” to “filmed” television. Although itwas nearly impossible to create an entirelynew “play” on such a demanding schedule,it was quite possible to film new materialfor weekly presentation. Adopting familiargenres such as westerns, mysteries, medicaland legal melodramas, and situation come-dies, writers could regularly create“episodes” for familiar characters. Theindustrial structures of American televisionquickly made necessary alterations in thepatterns of film production, and film stu-dios, major and minor, became “factories”for the production of television. Most earlyfictional television programs did, in fact,follow the classic structure—beginning,middle, end; goal-oriented hero; and equi-librium disturbed but restored in the “con-clusion.” Thus, each week, the centralrecurring character of a western woulddefeat the violent intruder, or the policedetective would solve the current crime.

The primary alternative to this narrativepattern was found in the fictions of “day-time television,” the soap opera. Originallydeveloped for radio, the soap opera wasdesigned to attract female listeners/viewers,and, as the nomenclature suggests, manyearly programs were produced by the

advertising agencies of their sponsoringdomestically identified products such assoap powders. These narratives were pro-grammed in short, usually 15-minute,episodes. But neither the story nor the plotwas concluded in a single episode. Indeed,the longest running soap opera, TheGuiding Light, began on radio in 1937 andcontinues on television at this time. Itfollows the lives of a group of families whoare now in multiple generations andhas appealed to multiple generations ofviewers, often also members of the samefamilies.

Although there were a few attempts tobring this continuing narrative structure totelevision, most significantly Peyton Place(1964–1969), it was not until the late-1970sthat more significant programming trendsadopted what is best referred to as serial nar-rative. Prior to this time, even with the lim-ited success of Peyton Place, conventionalwisdom throughout the television industrywas that audiences would not return to“unfinished” stories during prime time. Theprohibitions against the form often relied oncondescending and patronizing attitudestoward the female viewers of daytime televi-sion, and the term soap opera was appliedderisively to anything resembling serializa-tion in the more “male-oriented” prime-timeprogramming strategies.

With the astonishing success of mini-series such as Roots (1977), however, pro-grammers began to consider the possibilityof using the longer form as a means ofattracting viewers. Indeed, longer runningepisodic comedy series, such as The AndyGriffith Show or the later All in the Familyor The Mary Tyler Moore Show, alreadyexhibited aspects of seriality in the develop-ment of their characters, in references toprevious episodes, or in episodic plots thatflashed back to previous narrative moments.By the end of the 1970s, with successfullong-running programs such as Dallas andHill Street Blues, television producers andprogrammers acknowledged the drawingpower of stories and plots that could—atleast in theory—go on without end.



This very complexity, however, can beseen as an economic liability in the televi-sion industry. Much of the profit potentialfor television lies in the repeat program-ming of content. This is known as syndica-tion, the licensing, for a fee, of programs foruse by other programmers. Particularly forAmerican television, syndication providesthe capital reserves for production of manyhighly expensive programs, most of whichfail to attract viewers. A single successfulseries, however, can, when sold into syndi-cation, fund many failures, and productionorganizations rely on secondary use of thesesuccessful programs by other television sta-tions and networks and by programmers inother countries. But highly serialized seriesdo not syndicate well. New viewers oftensee one episode and fail to watch others,thus losing the thread of the narrative.

As a result, modified forms of serial nar-rative have been developed. I have referredto one version as the “cumulative narra-tive” (Newcomb, 1985). In this pattern,each episode of a television series can“stand alone.” That is, the plot is com-pleted within the allotted time. Yet it relieson and frequently makes specific referenceto aspects of character, motivation, andeven story that have occurred in previousepisodes. Regular viewers are rewardedwith the pleasure of remembering these ref-erences, understanding complexities risingfrom new character developments, and rec-ognizing the potential for future events andcharacterizations, whereas single-episodeviewers take pleasure in the full completionof a specific plot. The “cumulative narra-tive” might be said to encompass somethingof a meta-plot that extends over the entireseries, in a manner similar to, but distinctfrom, the fully serialized narrative.

Other series have come to rely on narra-tive arcs, plots completed within a fewepisodes, which allow the series to move onto another arc in subsequent episodes. Thesearc-driven narratives can be programmed aspackages and stand between full serializa-tion and cumulative narratives. Still otheroptions emerge with new programming

strategies developed for newer distributionsystems such as cable television. Clusters ofepisodes are programmed serially but not inan ongoing manner. A number of episodesappear on a semiregular basis, allowingprogrammers and promoters to promotethe next cluster by appealing to viewers toreturn months later to follow the exploits ofcharacters. The fact that programs such asThe Sopranos or Sex and the City are alsodistributed as video packages in rental out-lets attests to the fact that they appeal tospecific groups of viewers who may or maynot follow the programs on television at thetime of original programming.

Beyond the obvious economic advantageconstructed by having audiences returnweek after week to follow an ongoing nar-rative, serialization offers potential advan-tage to the creators of such fictions andpotential intensification of pleasure forviewers. Without the restriction of timeimposed in most movies, serial narrativesfor television have the opportunity toexplore events in a far more complicatedfashion. The consequences of actions canbe played out over weeks, even years inthe case of daytime soap opera. Choicesmade by characters return to haunt or torelieve them in later sequences of events.Relationships are allowed to become morecomplicated and complex. “Good charac-ters” can die, adding levels of emotionalreaction for viewers.

In most serial narratives, the psychologi-cal and emotional aspects of characters’lives also become a layer of story and plot.If professions—policeman, doctor, lawyer—dominated earlier television, serializationallows for plots drawing on the personal“lives” behind the professional perfor-mance. Moreover, because serial narra-tives usually focus on groups, on ensemblesof characters, the intertwining of relation-ships, both professional and personal,increases the potential for new story lines aswell as for complications among plots andstories.

As a result of these and many other fac-tors, the meaning and significance of events



can be enlarged and made more uncertain,more ambiguous. They suggest that serialnarrative in television is, in many ways,more like narration in novels, particularlythe long, often serialized novels of the 19thcentury. If we return to the notion that allnarratives potentially allow for imaginativecapability, for the possibility of consideringalternatives to our lived experience, theseserializations can be seen to serve far morethan escapist or economic ends. They allowviewers to engage the imaginative possibili-ties of choices in ways resembling thosemade in their own lives. And they suggestthat television narrative can, though often itdoes not, become one of the most complexand complicated narrative forms in humanexperience.

♦♦ Genre

Genres are systems of classification orgrouping. Traditional classifications ofexpressive culture originally grouped formsof presentation. Drama, poetry, and, later,the novel were listed as genres. Withindrama, tragic and comic further distin-guished among larger numbers of works,and within poetry, the epic, the lyric, andthe dramatic forms contained specificexamples. Clearly, in such large, generalcategories, only a small range of qualitiessufficed to “place” a work.

In more recent periods, however, genrehas taken on far more specific notions ofclassification, often focused on content.And even more significantly, genres aredefined by their conventions or repeated,expected, to-a-degree-predictable qualities.Among these, in addition to conventions ofcharacter, setting, costume, and action, areconventions of narrative. Indeed, it is possi-ble to see matters of character, setting, cos-tume, and action as aspects or, at least,specified modifications of narrative. Putanother way, certain narratives deal withsimilar topics and themes and employ simi-lar character types (often resembling one

another in physical features) to participatein similar types of actions and events (some-times occurring in similar spaces). Thesenarratives, then, can be classified asinstances of specific genres.

As more and more specific characteristicshave come to be noted, the concept of genrehas been more widely and generally applied.Thus, across media—from literature to filmto radio to television—patterned workssuch as the western, the mystery, the med-ical story, and the romance can all be con-sidered genres. Even within these categories,further classification is possible. Thus, wehave with the western the cavalry story, thetrail drive/cattle empire story, the gunfighterstory, and so on. Or within the detectivestory, we have the “English country house”story, the hard-boiled detective story, or thepolice procedural.

So common is this process of classifica-tion that it is possible to suggest that genresare completely arbitrary systems, createdby critics who “invent” patterns as much asthey discover them. This might be so insome instances of excessively fine-graineddistinction. But the assertion is belied by theuses made both by creators who workwithin generic patterns and industries, frompublishing to all forms of electronic media,which make use of them. Moreover, usersof these patterned works—readers andviewers—display extraordinary knowledgedependent on familiarity with significantaspects of classified characteristics of bodiesof work.

Despite any skill required, however,both the makers and users of expressiveworks defined as “generic” have facedforms of sociocultural denigration. Begin-ning in the late 18th century, genre workswere often considered inferior to distinc-tive, highly individualized, “unique” works.Increasingly, especially with the rise offorms of mechanical reproduction such asfilm, the former were considered “industri-alized” or “factory” works, whereas thelatter were considered “works of art.”

The counterview, that generically boundworks of expressive culture are valuable in



and of themselves, is eloquently expressedby Leo Braudy (1976) in The World in aFrame: What We See in Films:

Critics have ignored genre films becauseof their prejudice for the unique. Butwhy should art be restricted to works ofself-contained intensity, while manyother kinds of artistic experience are rel-egated to the closet of aesthetic pleasure,unfit for the daylight? Genre films, infact, arouse and complicate feelingsabout the self and society that more seri-ous films, because of their bias towardthe unique, may rarely touch. Withinfilm, the pleasures of originality and thepleasures of familiarity are at leastequally important. (p. 105)

It is precisely this play, the oscillationbetween originality and familiarity, and thepleasures and knowledges attendant to boththat make genre such a significant topic. Butthe relationship between originality andfamiliarity, between “product” and “art,”does also acknowledge both the industrial/economic and the cultural aspects of genre.This relationship is fundamental to the util-ity of the concept of genre for media studies.

From the perspective of the film and tele-vision industries, genres provide substantialeconomic benefits. The stories/plots—thenarratives—defining (and defined by) thegenre are (to an ever more complicateddegree) predictable. This enables producerswho fund, distribute, and schedule theworks to rely on an available pool of talentand technique. Writers who specialize inspecific genres can provide material in linewith the producers’ expectations. Similarlyspecialized directors are skilled in managingthe production process on tight schedulesand precise budgets. Actors, despite theirunwillingness to be typecast, are often iden-tified with specific roles or role types andplay to generic definitions. Locations can beused repeatedly or entire sets constructedfor use in multiple productions. Props, suchas costumes, weapons, vehicles, and deco-rations, can be purchased once with costs

amortized over many years and uses. In oneway, then, genres are best understood asexamples of industrial efficiency. It is this“assembly line” aspect that is often cited asevidence of qualitative inferiority. Addingto this evaluation is the factory-like use towhich generic content is put in program-ming mass media—from the designation ofthe “B movie” as the film following a moredistinctive feature on a double bill to thespecific time slots associated with the situa-tion comedy or the more “adult” action-adventure programs on television.

Related to this critique of generic worksis their popularity, the fact that audiencesrarely seem to tire of new versions of thesame patterns. But it is precisely this senseof the popular, of the continuing appeal ofcertain narrative patterns, that complicatesthe critique. How are we to account forthis response? What is the significance ofhighly patterned, familiar works for audi-ences/viewers and for the cultures and soci-eties in which they are manufactured andexperienced?

As the quote from Braudy (1976) sug-gests, genre films and television produc-tions are powerful forms of expression.This argument depends on the assumptionthat popularity with large numbers of view-ers rests, at least in part, in the fact thatgenres return to topics, issues, problems, andevents that are historically, socially, andculturally significant. Moreover, as ThomasSchatz (1981) argues throughout his workon American film, Hollywood Genres, thesocial and cultural issues addressed by spe-cific genres may be incapable of solution orresolution.

Thus, the western continually confronts aviolent past, replete with divisions groundedin “race,” class, and gender and played outin confrontations over territory, social con-trol, and authority. The hard-boiled detec-tive genre explores violent crime in an urbancontext, suggesting that contemporary divi-sions of class and gender, as well as issues ofpower and authority, remain as vexed as inthe past. Science fiction allows for explo-ration of a range of topics and is perhaps



less defined as a general category than insubgenres relating to technology, explo-ration, utopia, and dystopia. Social comediesin film and television explore interpersonalfoibles and provide affirming laughter asevidence that all can be right within certaindomestic or domestically inflected profes-sional contexts. In all these and in otherfamiliar genres, patterns of narrativeconstruction work toward conventionalconclusions.

And it is precisely these conventionalendings that open genres to a far more com-plex critique. In this view, popular genresare inherently conservative, preserving theideological status quo. In the western, cer-tain racialized stereotypes contribute to thecontinuation of racism. In the police proce-dural, dominant authoritarian perspectivesare solidified. In the situation comedy, tra-ditional gender roles are confirmed.

This is a serious critique, often con-firmed both by underlying story and narra-tively constructed plot. The key evidentiaryfactor in this analysis is the emphasis onrepeated elements within the genre.

The counter to this argument focuses ondifferences within instances of a genre, find-ing them equally as significant as the simi-larities in the broad pattern. This viewholds that genres offer a site for exploringalternatives to these views and sees the con-ventional endings as contrivances that can-not obliterate the conflict over social issuesthat constitutes the narrative itself.Recognizing genre as a site destabilizes themeanings conveyed. Instead of taking thefamiliar pattern at face value, emphasis isplaced on a struggle over meaning, on the“work” required to reach the conventionalending.

In this view, genre and narrative comeclose together and suggest more complexexplanations for the resilient “popularity”of generic productions. The industrialdemand for “familiar novelty,” for estab-lishing a relationship between the conven-tional patterns and the “inventions” ofmaterial that “fits” those patterns, suggeststhat creators can place newer versions of

old issues within the expected formulas.Genres remain popular, in part, becausethey are flexible, resilient. The fundamentalissues—authority, power, violence, relation-ships of gender, “race,” age, sexuality,“family,” and so on—remain present.Attitudes, behaviors, actions, choices—allavailable in alternative and imaginativeform—can be explored in wild variations ofnarrative within genre.

And finally, these aspects of genre andnarrative are again complicated by televi-sual practices. So dense and demanding isthe television schedule, requiring “new”material in increasing amounts, that almostall conventional aspects of genre havebecome open to experimentation. Thisprocess is best defined as genre blurring andcan be seen from the earliest days of tele-vision. A television western such as WagonTrain or Bonanza was as much a familymelodrama as a more conventional exampleof the genre. Even a program such as HaveGun, Will Travel, much more closelyaligned to the conventional western, usuallyfocused on specific social issues. And pro-grams such as All in the Family, from alater period, easily slid into noncomedicmoments of great poignancy.

The trend has continued, particularly inline with the increased use of serializationand ensemble casts discussed above.Allowing police personnel, lawyers, or doc-tors to have richly personal lives exploredin elaborately developed narratives shiftsemphasis away from the underlying socio-cultural “problem” that defined their“originating” genres. The result adds lay-ers of significance by examining a farlarger range of issues than those associatedspecifically with “establishing order,”“administering justice,” or “healing thesick.” But the same “personal” problemcontinues to be inflected by those firstassociations.

Tony Soprano may face the same prob-lems with his son as those faced earlier byBill Cosby. The two may even offer similaradvice for dealing with the problems, andthere may even be a comic overtone to



Soprano’s performance or something slightlyfierce in Cosby’s. But the generic supportunderlying each presentation and the elabo-rated narrative preceding the moment ulti-mately suggest differences within thesemoments. The result, as always withexpressive culture taken at large and com-paratively, suggests again that the signifi-cance of narrative and genre is thepermission granted to consider alternativesto our own states of being.

♦♦ Genre and Narrativein the Postnetwork Era

Despite these general patterns of develop-ment and application, however, despite theresilience of particular narrative strategiesand generic classification and discrimina-tion, the economic and social contexts oftelevision have in recent years shifted insuch a way as to alter the application ofthese analytical categories. Here it is impor-tant first to recognize that within frames ofthe development of broadcasting as ameans for presenting and experiencingforms of expressive culture, “programs”—the “content” of radio and television—wereoffered as segments in larger strategies ofdistribution. One of the most incisivedescriptions of this form of experience wasoffered by Raymond Williams (1974), whodescribed his experience of U.S. televisionas being caught up in the “flow” of broad-cast offerings. Although there have beenmany applications of and argumentsagainst the notion of television as a “flow”experience (notably, that viewers maywatch specific programs or genres, not theentire schedule), the concept remained aptas an abstraction of the communicativemodel for most of the history of broadcast-ing. Put another way, it was an apt descrip-tion of the model of broadcasting whenlimited to a small number of offerings, as inthe case of U.S. television with its threeover-the-air networks from the late 1940sthrough the mid-1980s.

If we describe this period and theexperience of it as “the network era,” how-ever, we must recognize that the coming ofmany more channels of distribution viacable and satellite television, compoundedby the use of devices such as remote controlswitchers, videocassette recorders, and dig-ital video recorders has placed us in the“postnetwork era.” Although televisionsurely continues to “flow” all around view-ers, indeed, in deeper and deeper eddies, theprocess of selection has become much morefragmented and segmented. In late 2002,for example, the portion of the audienceviewing television networks broadcastingprimarily over the air dropped below 50%for the first time. One result of this situa-tion is the difficulty faced by programmersof attracting and holding viewers, of mak-ing them stop and watch their programrather than another program.

To accomplish this attraction, creatorsof programs, program buyers, and programschedulers have resorted to strategies ofwhat John Thornton Caldwell (1995) refersto as “televisuality.” The strategies sodeveloped amount to a new set of genres,not distinguished so much by content, bycultural resonance or significance, butpurely by the grasp for distinction, for dif-ferentiation among the mass of materialavailable to viewers.

Caldwell (1995) offers five such cate-gories. “Boutique” television is distinguishedby its reliance on specific “designers,” usu-ally recognizable names from the world offilm production who have moved to televi-sion. Notable directors such as David Lynch(Twin Peaks) or Barry Levinson (Homicide:Life on the Street) are strong examples. The“Franchiser” category is reliant on newvideo and digital technologies to emphasizevisual surface and attach meaning to events.Here Caldwell cites events such as the GulfWar and the Los Angeles rebellion, eventsthat were almost instantly repackaged intodistinctive videographed images. Morerecently, we could cite the revisualizationsof the attacks on the World Trade Center.His “Loss Leader” category focuses on such



programs as the adaptations of well-knownnovels, usually as mini-series. These“major” television events can be heavilypromoted, pushed as special events forwhich audiences are to make specialarrangements for viewing. Although notprogrammed at the time of Caldwell’s writ-ing, we could include here the “event” pro-gramming of premium cable networks, suchas HBO’s The Sopranos, which, despite itsrelation to older genres, is programmed,packaged, and promoted as related to otherHBO programs rather than in terms ofspecific content—“It’s Not TV, It’s HBO.”

Caldwell’s final two categories—twotelevisual “genres”—are the closely related“Trash TV” and “Tabloid TV.” Trash TVis, in his words, made up of programs that“seek to overwhelm the viewer not withnarrative or history, but with physical stuffand frenetic action” (Caldwell, 1995,p. 193). His primary example is Pee-Wee’sPlayhouse. Tabloid television, drawing onits print heritage, offers “heavy emphasison pictorial stories and illustrative subjectmatter and an obsession with short, sensa-tional topics” (p. 224). These programs“exploit the only viable presentationalprocess left to them: the endless elabora-tion, dramatization, reiteration, and re-creation of some aberrant event or sensa-tional hook” (p. 224). As should be clearfrom the preceding discussion, both thesecategories have also been “serialized” intoextended “competitions” such as Survivorand Big Brother, and it is notable that “real-ity television” has become a highly success-ful genre, complete with its own plotpatterns, narrative structures, conventions,and character types. As with other genresinvented by individual creators, by “theindustry,” and by critics, “reality television”has already been divided into subgenres.

The developments Caldwell (1995)describes can be defined, as I have donehere, as new “genres,” or they can be seenas forms of modification, making use ofnewer technologies and techniques toemphasize certain qualities of older pro-gramming strategies. “Reality television,”

after all, relies heavily on familiar patternsof melodramas, often intensifying elementssuch as the “goal-oriented hero/heroine”and the significance of heterosexualromance. In either case, they indicate boththe utility and the problems of generic clas-sification, their potential for arbitraryapplication, and their use for comparativeanalytical purposes. It is doubtful that tele-vision creators and programmers, whocommonly use more traditional genericsystems of description to develop theirideas, will fall into comfortable use of cate-gories such as Caldwell’s. For analyticalpurposes, however, for the ability to thinkand write about the media without beingdrawn into “the industry’s” own purposes,studies such as his should point the way fora more distanced and perhaps more distinc-tive application of theories of narrative andgenre.

♦♦ References

Altman, R. (Ed.). (1981). Genre: The musical.London: Routledge.

Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. London: Cape.Bordwell, D. (1985). Narrative in the fiction

film. Madison: University of WisconsinPress.

Bordwell, D., & Thompson, K. (1986). Film art:An introduction. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Bordwell, D., Thompson, K., & Staiger, J.(1985). The classical Hollywood cinema:Film style and mode of production to 1960.New York: Columbia University Press.

Braudy, L. (1976). The world in a frame: Whatwe see in films. Garden City, NY: AnchorPress/Doubleday.

Caldwell, J. T. (1995). Televisuality: Style, crisis,and authority in American television. NewBrunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Chatman, S. (1978). Story and discourse:Narrative structure in fiction and film.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Eisenstein, S. (1949). Film form: Essays in filmtheory (J. Leyda, Ed. & Trans.). New York:Harcourt, Brace.



Feuer, J. (1982). The Hollywood musical.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1967). Structural anthropology(C. Jacobson & B. Grundfest Schoepf,Trans.). Garden City, NY: Anchor.

Newcomb, H. (1974). TV: The most popularart. Garden City, NY: Anchor.

Newcomb, H. (1985). Magnum: The cham-pagne of TV? Channels, 5(1), 23–26.

Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the folktale.Austin: University of Texas Press.

Schatz, T. (1981). Hollywood genres: Formulas,filmmaking, and the studio system.New York: Random House.

Todorov, T. (1977). The poetics of prose.Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technology andcultural form. London: Fontana.


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NARRATIVE AND GENRE - Sage