Genre serves to create a set of expectations amongst an audience. Rick Altman suggested that genres "are not neutral categories, but rather ideological constructs that provide and enforce a pre-reading", whilst Thomas Schatz remarks "we might think of the film genre as a specific grammar or system of rules of expression and construction and the individual genre film as a manifestation of these rules". The challenge for filmmakers, therefore, is to make a film identifiable with its genre, yet to make a project distinct and original.
The following are usually covered from different aspects within separate genres:
- A recognisable protagonist
- An archetypal hero/villain - one which is so predictable that it holds the same values across genres
- Stock characters
- Plot/Stock situations
- An antihero
- Icons/iconography - Objects, Locations and Stars
- Background and decor
- Themes
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