Classified by Genre: Rhetorical Genrefication in Cinema By © 2019 Carl Joseph Swanson M.A., Saint Louis University, 2013 B.L.S., University of Missouri-St. Louis, 2010 Submitted to the graduate degree program in Film and Media Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Chair: Catherine Preston Co-Chair: Joshua Miner Michael Baskett Ron Wilson Amy Devitt Date Defended: 26 April 2019 ii The dissertation committee for Carl Joseph Swanson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Classified by Genre: Rhetorical Genrefication in Cinema Chair: Catherine Preston Co-Chair: Joshua Miner Date Approved: 26 April 2019 iii Abstract This dissertation argues for a rethinking and expansion of film genre theory. As the variety of media exhibition platforms expands and as discourse about films permeates a greater number of communication media, the use of generic terms has never been more multiform or observable. Fundamental problems in the very conception of film genre have yet to be addressed adequately, and film genre study has carried on despite its untenable theoretical footing. Synthesizing pragmatic genre theory, constructivist film theory, Bourdieusian fan studies, and rhetorical genre studies, the dissertation aims to work through the radical implications of pragmatic genre theory and account for genres role in interpretation, evaluation, and rhetorical framing as part of broader, recurring social activities. This model rejects textualist and realist foundations for film genre; only pragmatic genre use can serve as a foundation for understanding film genres. From this perspective, the concept of genre is reconstructed according to its interpretive and rhetorical functions rather than a priori assumptions about the text or transtextual structures. Genres are not independent structures or relations among texts but performative speech acts about textual relationships and are functions of the rhetorical conditions of their use. This use is not only denotative, but connotative, as well, insofar as certain genre labels evoke aesthetic or moral judgments for certain users. This dissertation proposes the concept of meta-genres, or the sum total of textual and extra-textual attributes plus the evaluative valances a given user associates with a generic label. Meta-genres help guide interpretation and serve as a shorthand for evaluative judgments about certain kinds of films, and are thus central to the kinds of taste politics negotiated through film texts. The rhetorical conditions of genre use can be typified, and this dissertation adapts concepts and methods from the field of rhetorical genre studies to show that the film genre use is most readily observable through its uptake rhetorical genres. These iv rhetorical genres, in turn, index the social groups and recurring situations that they are called upon to meet. By studying examples like academic writing, popular press reviews, filmmaker interviews, internet message board comments, and digital media recommendation systems, one can identify how specific deployments of generic terms serve as a nexus of text, user, group, and social activities, and can develop a methodology for studying genre as use relative to those dimensions. v Acknowledgments This work would not have been possible without the continued support and guidance of my advisers, Dr. Catherine Preston and Dr. Joshua Miner, who recognized the extraordinary task I had set for myself in building theory. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Michael Baskett, Chair of the Department of Film and Media Studies, former Director of Graduate Studies, and my de facto adviser for my first couple years in the program. Each member of my dissertation committee deserves special thanks for her or his thoughtful feedback, and perhaps none more than Dr. Ron Wilson, especially in the early months when I pestered him with half-formed thoughts. I particularly want to thank my outside member, Dr. Amy Devitt from the English Department, for introducing me to the field of rhetorical genre studies and helping to navigate this project’s interdisciplinary challenges. Many friends and colleagues at KU and beyond helped by contributing feedback or just allowing me to bounce ideas off them. In particular, I want to thank Najmeh Moradiyan, Courtney Sanchez, Danyelle Green, Gwen Asbury, David Sutera, and Patrick Terry, as well as Tom Josephsohn, Paul Drago, Karl Wiederanders, and Rich Wagner. Thanks to E.E. Lawrence, Wyatt Phillips, and Mark Jancovich for their helpful correspondence. Special thanks to Shannon Blake Skelton for extensive draft comments and for inviting me to present chapters at two conference panels. Finally, I am forever indebted to my family for their unwavering love and encouragement on my journey from college dropout to Ph.D. I am perhaps most grateful to my amazing wife Ashleigh and our wonderful daughter Edith for their Herculean support, patience, and understanding. vi Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Get Out and the Stakes of Genre 2 1.2 Genre and Use 6 1.3 Generic Textualism and Generic Realism 10 1.4 Literature Review 15 1.5 Chapter Overview 23 2 Genre as Interpretive Schema and Rhetorical Frame 30 2.1 Genre as Interpretive Schema 30 2.1.1 Genre and Context 42 2.1.2 Academic Discourse, Interpretation, and Framing 46 2.1.3 American Film Cycles 50 2.2 Genre as Rhetorical Frame 64 2.2.1 Genre as Framing 68 2.2.2 Rhetorical Conditions 70 2.2.3 Genre Users 71 2.2.4 Torture Porn and “Spectacle Horror” 77 2.3 Chapter Conclusion 83 3 Meta-Genre and Social Action 84 3.1 Genre and Social Action 84 3.2 Meta-Genres 90 3.2.1 The Slasher Meta-Genre 98 3.3 Meta-Genre and Popular Discourse: 28 Days Later 108 vii 3.3.1 Filmmaker Discourse 109 3.3.2 Reddit and Fan Discourse 117 3.4 Chapter Conclusion 129 4 Rhetorical Genre and Film Genre Uptake 131 4.1 Rhetorical Genre Studies: Some Key Concepts 136 4.1.1 Rhetorical Genres and Rhetorical Genre Theory 139 4.1.2 Context of Culture 142 4.1.3 User Groups 144 4.1.4 Context of Genres 147 4.2 Rhetorical Genre, Film Criticism, and Historiography 152 4.3 Netflix and Film Genre Uptake 156 4.3.1 Netflix’s Recommender System 157 4.3.2 Netflix and Filmic Genres 163 4.3.3 Limits of Pragmatic Genre Theory 171 4.3.4 Constellated Communities vs. Rhetorical Genre User Groups 177 4.3.5 Netflix and Rhetorical Genrefication 183 4.4 Chapter Conclusion 191 5 Conclusion: Lingering Questions and Future Directions 193 5.1 Recap: Rhetorical Genrefication 193 5.2 Genre Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy 195 5.3 Rhetorical vs. Artistic Genres 199 5.3.1 Paracinema 208 5.3.2 Operationalism 210 viii 5.3.3 Documentary Mode 214 Appendix 219 Filmography 235 Works Cited 241 1 Introduction We have various kinds of lands, various forms of government, with estates and without them, imperial towns, a nobility of whom some are immediate, subjects of all different sorts, and a thousand other such things—to think for oneself, what good is it here? Not the slightest! What can the Philosoph do about it? Not the slightest! These are plain facts, things I must accept … as they are, unless I want to deform and ruin our German Empire. Johann Jakob Moser Neues teutsches Staatsrecht, 17761 Science fiction is what we point to when we say it. Damon Knight2 Johann Jakob Moser was an 18th century German lawyer and expert on the legal systems of the Holy Roman Empire. By Moser’s time the Empire was fragmented into a jigsaw puzzle of thousands of different political entities, some large territories with sophisticated administrations on the verge of modernizing, some rural properties with a nominal lord that wouldn’t cover an American county. Not only were the entities varied in size and wealth, but they each had unique legal standing and political relations. Some were subject to a local vassal, and some owed allegiance directly to the Emperor. Centuries of wars, treaties, marriages, alliances, largesse, and other ad hoc political actions had produced a hopeless tangle of inherited rights and privileges particular to a given principality and which frustrated the futile systematizing efforts of scholars like Moser. But Moser’s exasperation is coupled with and perhaps aggravated by the Empire’s 1 See Walker pp. 334-5. 2 See Knight p. 23 2 indispensability as a political entity. The Empire could not be reformed and maintain any semblance of its traditional core. In short, it worked. Not rationally or efficiently, but it worked well enough. Get Out and the Stakes of Genre As self-identified fans of one or another film genre we enjoy not only watching but also discussing our favorite films in the genre. It is likely we can posit some common generic features, explain away exceptions, cite canonical and liminal examples—all with more or less authority. It is likely also that we regularly discriminate between social situations in deciding when a detailed, complex account of a genre is appropriate and when we have other things to do. When we need to navigate a retail or library shelf or streaming interface to find a movie, to fill out a dating or social media profile, to interpret a poster or trailer, to make sense of a review, or to briefly describe a film to someone when we can’t or would rather not have a long conversation? In these latter cases, a genre is a crudely instrumental term, one that allows us to interact with manifold other texts and people as we go about our lives. Genre acts as something of a stop-gap in these situations, a term that allows us to talk about a corpus while deferring its inconsistencies and special cases in order to pursue some other activity.