All this talk about genre in out FTC books has got me thinking. Here is a quote that I believe can help to clarify what I’m going to say: “When is a musical not a musical? When it has Elvis Presley in it” (Altman 681). 

And another one I just think is funny: “Genres were always – and continue to be – treated as if they spring full-blown from the head of Zeus” (Altman 682). 

So far it looks like all this talk about genre is a huge fight about semantic v. syntactic. Now I’m not going to say which is right or wrong. I have my own theory. I think that deep down, we all know innately what makes up a genre. Like the quote about Elvis. Okay, so his movies have lots of music in it. But we know those aren’t musicals. Musicals are like Singing in the Rain or Chicago or Newsies. And innately we all know this. I think it’s too difficult to try and list what belongs in a genre and then gauge films by some time of genre chart (think to the great scene in The Dead Poet’s Society where Robin Williams has the class rip out the first page of their textbooks, the one with the chart on it for gauging the poem’s greatness). Besides, movies almost always fall into more than one genre. A perfect example, and those of you who took 245 with Dr. C ought to remember this: Citizen Kane. It’s a biography… no, wait, it’s a mystery… no, wait, it’s a romantic comedy… a thriller… and the list goes on and on. To use a more contemporary example: the TV show Firefly (and it’s movie companion Serenity). It is quite obviously a Western. The Capitan, Mal Reynolds, is the perfect cowboy; stoic, troubled past, a desire to help people in need, an air of aimlessness, not always morally correct, never shows his true romantic interest. This list could be longer, but I think you get my point. He dresses the part, walks the walk, and talks the talk. Oh yeah… but this all takes place in the future, in SPACE. Does that mean it’s not a Western? In my mind: of course not. There’s both the semantic argument (cowboys, outlaws, desert-like atmosphere) and the syntactic (good v. evil). And when we see it we think Western. I don’t really think Sci Fi, although they are on a spaceship hopping from planet to planet.