GENRE

Genre does not rely simply on what's in a media text but also on the way it is put together (constructed). This can be important, for example, when distinguishing between a horror movie and a thriller, which can deal with similar subject matter, and look the same — lots of action set at night — but belong to separate genres (a horror film takes the audience into a supernatural place, where a thriller sticks to reality).

Genres are described as dynamic, i.e. the boundaries are constantly changing. Individual texts can challenge conventions, and defy certain parts of the usual genre categorisation — for instance, recent movies such as Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Knocked Up (all from the same producer, Judd Apatow) have redefined the romantic comedy genre, making the humour cruder, and telling stories from a male character's, rather than a female's perspective. Genre texts would get very boring and predictable if they all followed exactly the same conventions — no audiences would want to consume new ones, they would just keep on revisiting old favourites.

Her are example of two movies of different genres