AMERICAN FILM GENRES

There are certain stories we tell ourselves over and over and over, and many film genres are built around these stories.  This course examines Hollywood genre not only as a system of conventions but as a structure of feeling, a way of organizing fantasy, reproducing ideology, and sharing collective experience. They evolve with shifts in politics, technology, and taste, and each era’s films reveal something about how America imagines itself and grapples with its contradictions. We will engage a range of Hollywood genres, following their increasing self-reflexiveness, genre-bending and hybridity.  Our orientation will be formal as well as social and historical, as we identify codes, tropes and conventions of generic illusion and verisimilitude; the look and sound of different genres; genre and acting style; and different expressions of heroism. Genres will include: the romantic comedy, the western, superheroes, dystopian and “Indiewood” films, and television limited series.