Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Genre Analysis: Horror

This week's assignment was to work in pairs putting together a presentation about one genre. My partner and I chose to talk about horror films: here's our presentation. The assignment was to discuss themes, typical roles, settings, value assumptions, etc. We came up with a number of sub-categories within the horror genre, including teenage slasher, horror-comedy, and torture porn... It was interesting to think about some of the recurring themes and values that crop up across these movies; for example, the good-verus-evil dichotomy, and the idea that the characters somehow cause their own problems...

The other part of our assignment was to develop an activity to teach about an example of a film or TV genre. Here are the instructions for my suggested activity:
Pick a genre that you do not usually like or watch for your analysis. Interview some of your fellow students and read online reviews to find out what fans of this genre like about it, common themes, etc. Based on this information, choose two examples of the genre to watch (two different films or episodes of two different TV shows) and write a review that includes discussions of the following topics (your review may be submitted in writing or as a video blog):
- why you do not or did not like this genre.
- why fans of this genre do like it.
- common themes found in this genre, including typical characters, settings, values, etc.
- how the two examples you watched were or were not representative of the genre, including brief synopses.
- whether watching examples of the genre did or did not change your opinions about it, and why.

1 comment:

  1. Wow - I just saw something on CNN Entertainment talking about torture porn, so talk about timely! The news anchors appeared simultaneously horrified and fascinated by the advent of this new genre. The movie they reviewed: Saw VI.

    Graphic, brutal and sadistic. What's amazing to me is that my 14 year old stepsister is allowed to watch that series.

    Think I will stick with Disney.

    By the way - great name for your blog. I totally got it when I first read the name ;)

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