Lexy Benge

Blandford
UWRT 1101-28
11/1/15
Genre Analysis
Genre is a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a
particular style, form, or content. There are a variety of genres within literary
compositions, but generally, they are all connected. For my genre analysis, I chose
movie genres which include comedy, romance and horror. Although all of these are
contrasting to one another, some aspects of the rhetorical triangle compare. Whether
its the same audience or same rhetor, movie genres have connections to one another.
In all three of these genres, the screen writer would be the rhetor. He or she has
the ultimate power over what is included in the movie and how the message is
portrayed. If the screen writer did not exist, there wouldnt even be a movie. The
audiences for each movie genre are different though. They are usually of the same age,
but certain genres are made for women and men.
The audience for romance movies can be categorized as teen girls to adults.
Teen girls are very hopeful for an eternal love and seek movies like this to help them
dream. I would say that adults do as well, because they understand the true meaning of
love and can relate to these movies. The message for romance movies is that true love
does exist and happy endings can happen in our every day lives. Love at first sight is a
lot more common than what we think and we are destined to find our soulmate.
Romance movies provide us with dreams of love while we sleep. The rhetorical situation

is to make the audience feel optimistic towards love. Depending on some movies, the
feeling provoked may be sad as well.
The audience for comedy movies is adults, seventeen and older as well. In
todays society, popular comedy movies are crude with derogatory language. Therefore,
I think it is appropriate to label the audience as young adults and older. The message
for comedy movies varies. In the famous movie Bridesmaids however, the message is
that over time friends can change but true best friends will be there for us until they pass
away. Comedy movies can have anywhere from a serious to a lighthearted message.
The rhetorical situation for comedy movies is to make you feel happy and relaxed.
When you watch a comedy movie, the rhetor wants you to kick back and laugh as much
as you can.
Out of the three genres I chose, horror is the genre that is talked about from a
time period before this one. The audience for horror movies is is much like comedy,
ages seventeen and older. Horror movies can have very graphic scenes that are
undoubtedly not suitable for children. Around the 1970s, the movies were not as violent,
but instead built up around suspense and the true feeling of horror. Horror movies in the
1970s are specifically meant to scare the audience. The message for horror movies is
that you should not trust anyone and you need to do the best you can to survive. For
example, in the movie Halloween from 1978, a girl was stabbed to death by her younger
brother. When he escaped from a mental institution people in his hometown had to fight
him to survive. The rhetorical situation for horror movies is to put you on the edge of
your seat and invoke a feeling of terror.

A similarity between all three of these movie genres is that women are generally
portrayed as dramatic and vulnerable. In the romance genre, women are portrayed as
desperate and devastated when they lose their significant other. This feeling of
devastation is overwhelmingly significant that it even affects the audience. Women
seem to be ones that fall weak to the man and follow him around like a lost puppy.
Therefore, they are seen as the damsel in distress and outrageously feminine. In
comedy movies, women are the ones who are made fun of for their dramatic nature. I
dont see them as necessarily vulnerable, but women are definitely ridiculed for being
dramatic. Finally, in horror movies, there is always that one dumb woman who dies first.
She is easy to attack since she is nave and her death is always dramatized.
Although genres have many different characteristics, they are all similar in many
ways. If we choose to dig deeper than just the surface, we can find those similarities.