More Notes on Mittell

Mittell, J. (2001). A cultural approach to television genre theory. Cinema Journal 40, No. 3, pp. 3-24.

For my paper, I may need to look at film and television genre separately. I want to keep a value structure for importing ideas into the classroom that includes usefulness and practicality.

"Even the most comprehensive discussion of television genre theory, Jane Feuer's essay in Channels of Discourse, ultimately concludes that genre analysis does not work as well as a paradigm for television as it has for film or literature."

Mittell identifies this essay as a first step toward a more comprehensive theory of genre for television. I need to see

1. what follows this work by him
2. and what other work cites this essay
   

Mittell identifies three traditional approaches to genre analysis:

1. definitional - looking for core elements
2. interpretation through a theoretical lens
3. historical - looking at how genres shift over time, "evolutionary dynamics"

He locates one main weakness in most genre analysis as the view of genre as a "textual attribute", a "component of text". Instead, he argues persuasively that genre is not intrinsic to texts, but that it is dependent upon intertextual connections. "Genres emerge only from the intertextual relations between multiple texts, resulting in a common category." He gives many examples, one being "The Great Train Robbery", which was originally classified as a crime film, and years later as a western. The text did not change, but the cultural discourse did and so the genre definitions shifted. He also notes that only some characteristics are used to define genre, for instance, we don't make generic differentiations between TV shows set in different cities, but we do differentiate between shows set in hospitals versus those set in police stations. We cannot understand genre by looking at sh0ws in isolation; we must look at the entire community that creates the genre - including the TV industry, fans, critics, etc. "...(T)exts themselves are insufficient to understand how genres are created, merge, evolve, or disappear. We need to look outside the texts to locate the range of sites in which genres operate, change, proliferate, and die out." (p. 7)

Genres are not timeless and unchanging. "We need to look beyond the text a the locus for genre and instead locate genres within the complex interrelations among texts, industries, audiences, and historical contexts." (p. 7) Analyzing texts is necessary, but insufficient for understanding genre.

Mittell brings in Foucault's "discursive practices" and situates this essay theoretically in line with poststructuralism.

Mittell says that to analyze genre, we need to look at "what audiences and industries say about genres, what terms and definitions circulate around any given instance of genre, and how specific cultural concepts are linked to particular genres." (p. 8) He advocates decentering the text. Instead of seeing the text as a stable object, he sees texts as "sites of discursive practice". (p. 9). He mentions mapping generic discourses. He also brings social situation and power into the discussion.

Mittell acknowledges previous work on genre as a discursive process and cites Rick Altman's book Film/Genre as the key work, described as his "influential textualist semantic/syntactic theory of genre". Mittell contrasts his work with Altman's, saying that Altman still remains too bounded by the text.

"Altman convincingly argues that the film industry promotes multiple genres around any single movie to maximize audience appeals." (p. 10). I need to look for this specifically in Altman's book. This is important to understanding genre, I think. It's also interesting to consider this in light of the parody videos on YouTube, like "Scary Mary", that repackage familiar movies in different genres.


"... genres work as discursive clusters..." p. 11

Mittell's definition of genre:

"... genres are categorical clusters of discursive processes that transect texts via their cultural interactions with industries, audiences, and broader contexts."

Mittell gives a case study in genre analysis using Michael Jackson's music videos, Billie Jean, Beat It, and Thriller. He outlines how traditional approaches might look at the texts, then how he proposes genre should be examined. In his example, he identifies many cultural influences on the work that are essential and are unaccounted for in any examination of genre that stops at the boundaries of the text.

Mittell concludes with five principles of cultural genre analysis:

1. Genre analysis should be specific to the medium, i.e. don't use film genre theory for TV
2. Genre studies must balance between the general and the specific.
3. History of genre should take discourses into account.
4. Genres have to be understood by looking at how they tie into to the larger culture.
5. Genres have to be understood within hierarchies of power within culture.