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Three Incidents at the Border of Genre

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Three Incidents at the Border of Genre Grøgaard, Three Incidents at the Border of Genre Three Incidents at the Border of Genre The Journal of Media Innovations 3.2 (2016), 20-29. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5617/jmi.v3i2.2492 Stian Grøgaard © Stian Grøgaard 2016. Oslo National Academy of the Arts [email protected] ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION From a perspective of conceptual economy, rather perfection may indeed explain the resilience of the Everyone knows what genre is. The familiar con- than the specialized literature on genre, this text genre form. What remains is a vertical structure, cept promises easy access but is actually difficult discusses what genre divisions can do when ap- a model for which even the model example is a fall to handle. Spotting the difficulty will have to begin plied to cultural artifacts compared to other forms from grace. with the constancy of genre and why it is taken for of classification or typology. On which aspect of granted. Constancy provides a measure for new ex- the artifact is it rewarding for a concept of genre Keywords pressions and an order to which they can belong. to operate, and what is achieved when extending Applied aesthetics; Genre; Restrictive economy; Genre sub- Quite independent of genre theories, the concept of its use beyond traditional divisions in fine arts, lation; Art versus genre; Edvard Munch; Clint Eastwood; Bob genre displays a certain structure and extension – Hollywood movies and popular music? Are there Dylan. in short, a grammar. While a general outline of this restrictions inherent to the concept of genre it- grammar may be gained by conceptual analysis, the self, explicable in a grammar of the concept? The specifics must consult experience from, as always, a criteria unfolded by such a grammar seems to be limited number of genres. These are two sources of more technical than properly aesthetic, close to information, one analytical and the other syntheti- the ideal of perfection in traditional normative cal, and they had best not contradict each other. poetics. With one significant addition, the criteria The following general remarks do not comment are always too specific to allow for the perfect ex- upon the research literature on genre, with which I ample of genre. Perfection belongs to the law of shall claim no close acquaintance. Based on a mix the genre, not to the artifact enforcing the law. Im- of ignorance and fastidiousness concerning genre, The Journal of Media Innovations 3.2 (2016) 20 Grøgaard, Three Incidents at the Border of Genre the point is to evoke limits to a concept. Less than nologies as well. Media are not considered genre, mulas for proven success at the box office like mu- generalizing from experience, it is about holding a but there are genres that differentiate each medi- sical, thriller, horror, action, film noir or western all concept up to the test of experience. um. What is at issue here is a specificity initiated pass under the umbrella of genre movies. Laying out genre analytically and relying on a at the level of art practice itself that accounts for Earlier, traditional visual subjects were classi- consumer’s and sometimes a practitioner’s experi- genre division, rather than genre presenting itself fied according to a genre hierarchy, where the term ence with genre is an approach with no guarantees to each art form as a given condition. There is an “genre painting” came to occupy the bottom scale. and may be taken as an admonition to the practice end to genre’s suitability in ordering the practice Genre painting shows “daily life in its typical com- of genre theory. Any attempt to answer questions of art and the production of artifacts. Genre divi- monness,” and was a popular visual form from the put to genre in general will have to move forward sions extend beyond the arts, but there are limits to mid-18th century onwards with common people ab- with the help of examples, in this case, early mod- their application. This may be due to some sort of sorbed in modest activities with no asides, that is, ernist painting, a Hollywood movie, and almost grammar inherent to the concept of genre, where showing no awareness of the spectator. According contemporary popular music. These examples the grammar is different than the immanent law to Michael Fried (1998), absorption was challenged include: a well-known motif belonging to genre of each genre. What then is the difference between in early modernist painting – Manet’s Olympia painting in Edvard Munch’s The Sick Child from forms of art and genres of art, and is there some (1863) being a notable example – but was again 1886; a western, the quintessence of genre movies, similarity between genre divisions within each art absorbed by the medium itself in the painterly ab- for instance in an updated version like Unforgiven form? straction of high modernism. Olympia presents a (1992) by Clint Eastwood; and the recycling of tra- Genre is suited to classify music and its appli- nude woman, or rather a woman wearing only her ditional music genres as in the case of Bob Dylan’s cation can be extended to continuously new forms slippers, reclining on a bed. She looks out of the 1982 homage to the songster and virtuoso twelve- of expression. Since genre’s classification is open, it picture in the direction of the spectator, thereby string guitarist Blind Willie McTell. First, a few ten- cannot be applied normatively and in accordance bringing him (because it is preferably a male gaze) tative remarks on genre in general. with a vertical distribution of value. The same goes into the picture and thematizing the situation be- Classifying art forms is different than classify- for art forms where genre markers may be more fore the painting. Still, this threshold experience ing expressions that belong to each art form. Art is complex. In literature and film, according to the in modern art was based on a motif known to be not subdivided into genres of art, or for that matter, Store norske leksikon (1995), genre refers to both popular already in the Renaissance, termed “the genres of anything else. Genre division is internal formal and thematic markers. Epic, drama and lyr- mistress portrait” by art historians – a famous and to each form. This difference holds for media tech- ic are genres with each their own subgenres. For- probably model example for Manet being Titian’s The Journal of Media Innovations 3.2 (2016) 21 Grøgaard, Three Incidents at the Border of Genre Venus of Urbino from 1538. By the time of paint- cal, like burning crops or spending everything in a differences of discipline and the specific medium erly abstraction in the beginning of the 20th cen- vast display of consumption rather than storing for itself met with a similar fate and became vestiges tury, genre divisions had become non-scriptive and future needs, and is thus geared towards extinction of a superficial identification of what art was all a non-starter. rather than accumulation. There are concepts close about. At the same time, some allowance was made to a general economy, a free-for-all, which would for modern media like photography or film: these lose themselves at their fringes and give their se- are media still connected to ordinary communica- CONCEPTUAL ECONOMY crets away. Still, a sense of reserve or forlorn au- tion but disclosing a more complex relationship thority will cling to genre. Other typologies may be to art than traditional media like painting, whose There are functional limits to genre, which no ex- easier to let go to waste. identity is exclusively tied to art. The difference be- tension will undo. Descriptive uses of genre prom- There is little doubt as to what is prior, the tween art film and genre film is not just commer- ise a view from the outside, a pleasure so often in- genre or the artifacts belonging to a genre. It only cial. The identification of a genre film as art signals vited by extended concepts. appears as if genre comes first, and this appear- the wrong social reasons for it being art. The iden- Finding a common denominator for genre may ance is telling. New artifacts, if accepted as belong- tification of an art film as genre would likewise be extend these limits and miss the point of orthodoxy ing to a genre, appear to be possibilities already in deadly to its status as art. and exclusion, the normative view from within. demand by the genre. When not accepted, nothing From a perspective of conceptual economy, for Conversely, the multiplication of genres does not further happens because genre feeds on exclusion. instance, of a restricted versus a general economy change their conceptual economy. There are silent There have been instances where the artifact car- mentioned above, art and its exit from genre is less conditions difficult to express even when compar- ries genre markers but the exclusion ends up being interesting than cases of genre change or sublation ing a host of genre neighbors. To encounter genre mutual – genre excludes art and vice versa. A clean of genre. The question is whether there is a concep- on the level of conceptual economy means observ- exit from genre was effected in modern art. Genre tual economy in common for what is accepted, re- ing how its order comes about, is extended, revised motifs like the nude, landscape or still life lived on jected, or for that which creates a new genre. Hegel or eventually abandoned. Genre frames what Ba- simply as pretexts for painterly practice, the motifs describes this as the “immanent rhythm of concepts taille would call a restricted economy, and any con- themselves being insubstantial.
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