To What Extent Do the Audience and Producers Make Use of Genres in Encoding and Decoding Texts?

Media essay

To what extent do the audience and producers make use of genres in encoding and decoding texts?

Genre consists of key conventions that have been designed to create a particular reaction from the audience. For example, horror movies use conventions of sharp objects, the dark side of life, a monstrous figure and many more to create fright and panic to the audience. Producers have encoded these conventions as they have been a popular feature to horror films. Therefore conventions are the fundamentals that create a genre and will continue to be used, as they follow the audiences expectations.

All films provide the audience with a sense of escapism. Films entertain because the audience, are aware that the disruption to the equilibrium will reach equilibrium once the film has concluded. For example when an audience are watching a gangster genre they are unaware of the exact events that are going to occur, but have an idea due to the expected narrative from previous gangster films. This is because the audience are able to decode particular generic features that will reveal the basic narrative. Producers have encountered what the audience want to view in relation to any genre and therefore will continue producing films of a particular genre following the basic narrative with expected conventions.

However as all genres follow a basic narrative, producers have explored and changed certain conventions and created new generic and have tried to encode new meanings to the audience. This has created different subgenres within films, which is now able to target a different range of audience. It can be seen as an extension strategy, to allow the audience to be entertained throughout any genre watched. For example horror films were initially developed from a number of sources, like folktales with devilish characters, which craft and ghost stories. This is now the fundamental of all horror films as they are still able to create fear. One of the early horror films made in 1919 called Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, was based on a ghost like hypnotist therapist who calls pale skinned haunted murderer from his sleep. This film became very popular and brought horror film conventions to Hollywood. Looking at a post-1990 film The Sixth Sense, which is based on a young boy who can see dead people. It reflects that the use of the ghost has been modified since the early 90's and is still very popular within horror films today. Therefore the continued production of a horror genre appears to be endless and is always expanding. Overall producers have encoded a variety of texts and combined them into one. This creates sub genres and can target a mass.

When looking at the sub genres as mentioned before, a variety of audiences can be attracted, as they are able to decode different meanings. For example slasher films became very popular in the 80's and 90's with teenagers. For example scream can be seen as a slasher movie to attract a teenage audience as the use of sex, drugs, parties are all used. It allows teenagers to associate with these aspects and creates self - awareness and mass panic. If an adult audience were to watch scream, they would be aware and consider the self-awareness and mass panic factor. From this it can be seen that producers are prepared to alter the production of films to target different people within society.

Producers create films in which they think will be successful. For a producer to determine what successful