Media - 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