CCT 300: Critical Analysis of Media

1. CCT 300:Critical Analysis of Media Class 3: Genre Analysis

2. Genre as Community • Similar people working on similar topics in a similar way • Distributed cognition and communities of practice • In postmodern world, these genres can become quite specific and localized (examples?)

3. Elements of Genre • Agre - various elements that define a genre • McCloud - examples from comics/graphic novels as specific genre

4. Breadth • Genre definitions can be narrowly or broadly construed • Differences between “all print material” and “political pamphlets of the 19th Century)

5. Breadth in Comics • “All sequential art” as broad definition, but not all that useful • Many subgenres of comics that themselves can be dissected (e.g., types of manga)

6. Genre, Audience and Activity • Genre implies community of practice and community of consumption • Specific media meets specific audience needs (e.g., reading pulp fiction vs. literature - done for different purposes and in different contexts

7. Comic Audience/Activity • Historical roots of comics - storytelling (e.g., hieroglyphics, temple art, stained glass) • Contemporary history - entertainment, largely child oriented (e.g., newspaper, superhero) • Emerging directions - more serious work (e.g., some newspaper strips, graphic novels, web comics)

8. Producer/Consumer Relationship • Producer and audience relationship important • One-to-many (mass) vs. decentralized (public) production • Feedback loops - immediacy and impact

9. Consuming comics • Creators create worlds and characters • Details filled in by reader (Gestalt principles, specifically closure) lead to engagement • Immediate feedback usually absent, although web comics change that

10. Genre as Grouped Objects • One instance does not a genre make - must be multiple examples for a category to have semantic value • Leverages precedents and expectations - norms and routines formed (and broken)

11. Comic Genres • McC - various subgenres in comics, with distinct idiomatic and structural forms • Social expectations can frustrate new efforts (e.g., comics as “kid lit” has constrained adult or serious exploration politically and culturally)

12. Genre Bending • Rules are not absolute • When rules are broken, interesting things happen • When rules are broken, it might be too interesting for the audience to accept

13. Comic Genre Bending • Alternative comic genres lead to new applications of craft beyond “men in tights” • Alternative comics can be forced underground due to violation of shared cultural norms, where it may even become more radical (e.g., 1950s censorship to alternative comics of R. Crumb and the like.)

14. Multiplicity of Genres • We are intuitively familiar with many genres • We act with multiple genres simultaneously without great confusion; can even integrate genres to create new forms of expression

15. Comics and multiplicity • Comics share relations to similar media (e.g., graphic novels of historical acts; movies made from graphic novel roots) • Integration of sense information - done figuratively in text-based comics, more potential for integration in web comics?

16. Genres are historical • Change in form evolves over time • Influences from inside (e.g., changes in craft, form, idiom) and outside (e.g., economics, regulation, other media)

17. Comic History • Comics emerging from “kid lit” to return to more serious pictographic communciation • New media = new forms and means of expression, new opportunities for distribution

18. Economics of Genre • Money makes the world go ‘round - and certainly does impact how media are structured and how genres evolve • Costs involved in maintaining producer/consumer community

19. Fixed and Marginal Costs • Fixed = infrastructural costs, without which genre cannot exist • Marginal = costs incurred as audience grows • Can apply to both production and consumption • McC - costs in distribution chain, changes with new technology

20. Specialization and Branding • Singular creators are rare, esp. in complex media • Collectively created media -> media branding • McC - “comic houses” and brand identity - and changes that emerge with more independent creators

21. Time, Duplication and Value • Value of media product often changes over time - some more than others • Duplication and its ease greatly influences value • McC - historical value of comics, the value and problems of sharing)

22. Next week… • Unpacking McCloud’s Understanding Comics in depth