Midterm paper (Genre vs. Built-In-Reaction)

Aaron Horak
10/15/09

Genre vs. Built In Reaction

If I asked a person off the street what their favorite movie or TV show was it wouldn’t take them long to tell me. They might say that it’s the movie 300 or the TV show Grey’s Anatomy or everything on the Discovery Channel. Every single person has a certain type of TV show or movie they love. So when they go and see a movie for the first time they usually expect a happy ending. Why is that? Why do people like certain types of movies?

Kyle Conway in his book Technology/Form and Dwight MacDonald in his book Against the American Grain talk about these things and about American entertainment industry in general. Kyle Conway will tell you that there are different “genres” of TV shows and movies and how they are important to the viewers and producers. Dwight MacDonald would say that these genres are nothing but the same old stuff we have seen a million times and now we have been instilled with a “built-in-reaction” to everything we watch because nothing is different it’s all identical.

Both have a very different take on the entertainment industry and how we as human beings entertain ourselves. I will describe how Conway would tell us that genre is important and how it is used by Hollywood and TV networks to satisfy their viewers and how MacDonald would disagree and say that genres only give us more of the same and how we already know what happens in the end. I will also show how even though both authors would disagree with each other on this issue, they both bring something to the table.

In Kyle Conway’s book Technology/Form he talks about “genre” and how it shapes movies and the TV experience for its viewers. Conway defines genre as “the categories we use to classify different types of programs. (‘Genre’ is French for ‘type’ or ‘kind’).”

Genre is very important to viewers of movies and TV. To list a few genres in movies there are action/adventure, children/family, comedy, documentary, drama, horror, romance, science fiction, etc the list is endless. Certain people like certain genres because they feel connected with those types of TV shows and movies at that point and time. Because human beings demand variety of genres the TV networks and Hollywood are more than happy to give them what they want.

Conway also gives us a glimpse into why the TV networks and Hollywood give us so many genres. Conway writes, “Genre serves as something like a tacit agreement between producers and viewers. Producing a new television program is a very expensive and therefore risky. Genre helps producers (and the networks they work for) limit their risk. If a program has proven that it can attract viewers, why not try to copy it and reproduce that success?” This is very true when it comes to cop dramas like Law and Order, NYPD Blue, CSI, Numb3rs, etc. when one show has success the networks copies it hoping it has the same success as the last show which is basically the same as the new one with different characters and a new setting.

Dwight MacDonald would look at genres of TV programs and movies as what he calls Massculture. MacDonald doesn’t give a certain definition of Massculture, but myself and others in my class would characterize it as homogeneous reproductions of culture, such as art, film, music, and distributing it to a mass audience. An example of culture to MacDonald would be anything by William Shakespeare; a popular play by Shakespeare is Romeo and Juliet. In 1996 Hollywood reproduced Romeo and Juliet into the Massculture version. They set the movie in modern day Los Angeles not in 14th century Verona and Mantua, Italy. It still had the same ending of Romeo killing himself because of Juliet’s faked death, but the movie was not the original drama that Shakespeare intended. This movie is not culture because Hollywood’s recreation is nothing like the real play.

MacDonald would look at genres and say that they possess what he calls the “built-in-reaction”. MacDonald quotes two authors Clement and Greenburg saying that the built-in-reaction “predigests art for the spectator and spares him effort, provides him with a shortcut to the pleasures of art that detours what is necessarily difficult in the genuine art.” MacDonald goes on, “because it includes that spectator’s reactions in the work itself of forcing him to make his own responses.” Basically MacDonald says that this quality of Massculture makes people know what’s coming next. We have all seen it in movies and TV programs before, in romantic comedies the guy gets the girl in the end, in horror movies the main character catches the murderer, in sport/dramas the team wins the championship, etc. This built-in-reaction happens all the time and there seems to be no end in sight.

Even though they would disagree on a lot of things I would say that Conway and MacDonald would agree that TV networks and Hollywood’s sole aim is to make money and stay in business as long as possible, that is why they usually don’t step out and take risks as often as both would like when making new movies and TV programs. I would also say that they would agree that people need to be individuals first and viewers second, but both would look at it a different way. Conway would say that different genres is one aspect that make human beings unique and why people should express themselves in any way possible to get what they want out of life. MacDonald would say that genres aren’t the way to be individuals, that genres brews conformity, that genres are fueling the Massculture and we need to get back to what he calls “High Culture” and by doing that we will become better human beings.

Looking back on the critiques of these two authors we found that MacDonald is a snob or thinks too highly of himself and his opinion, he contradicts himself, and has questionable taste in anything. I believe that MacDonald’s opinion on entertainment does have a valid point. That we do know what is going to happen next in a lot of instances of TV and movies, but that doesn’t mean that he can go around telling people that the certain things that they like are crap just because he thinks so. He can give his professional opinion, but then leave it at that. No one wants to listen to an old man talking about how Ludwig von Beethoven is more of a genius than Kanye West, everyone should know that.

Conway’s critiques were: not enough depth in some areas that he talked about, outdated strategies and had an unspoken favoring of participatory public in media. Now these critiques seem really mild compared to MacDonald’s and they are, because Conway really tried to take a stance on being in the middle of how genres are everywhere in entertainment today. He didn’t give his opinion throughout the whole book, even though some thought that he did. Conway really did a good job of giving examples that a college freshman or the parents of that student could understand. It was not a hard book to read, but it does give a lot of information for how short it is.

In conclusion genre is important to the viewers and producers of today’s entertainment and even though we know what’s going to happen in the end we as viewers still watch. Genre could be said that it is a quality of Massculture, but that doesn’t mean we have to eradicate it. Conway would say that genre helps us be individuals while MacDonald would say the opposite. So if you agree with Conway then you should keep watching your favorite genre.. If you agree with MacDonald you should stop going to movies and start going to William Shakespeare’s plays at the Globe Theatre in London.

Works Cited
Conway, Kyle. Technology/Form: An Introduction to Media and Cultural Studies. Grand Forks, ND: University of North Dakota Communication Program, 2009.

Macdonald, Dwight. “Masscult and Midcult.” Against the American Grain. New York: Random House, 1952.