genre film

Noun

genre film (countable and uncountable, plural genre films)

1. (countable) A film that was produced with the intent of strictly adhering to a specific genre by following tropes and standards set by previous films in that genre, such as science fiction, romance, comedy, horror, or film noir, with the existing audience knowing prior to watching the film that they are viewing a piece of art rather than something created to be sold.
   • But the general characteristics of the genre set limits on the individual genre film, which renders it simpler for the audience to follow.1991, Marcia Landy, Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Melodrama, →ISBN, page 473
   • Genre films may therefore contain a more accurate description and a more radical critique of the values of the society that produced them than can the serious film, which is so self-contemplative, so obsessed with its own aesthetic status, that it neglects its connection to the audience.2004, Thomas Schatz, Hollywood: Formal-aesthetic dimensions: authorship, genre and stardom, →ISBN
2. (uncountable) All such films, collectively.
   • While genre film tends to treat things as they are and avoids the trap of advocating them, exploitation film sensationalizes them.1998, Monique Guillory, Richard Green, Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure, →ISBN, page 241
   • While Dixon's views on the audience may not be to everybody's liking, it is hard not to agree with his assessment of genre film; science fiction film was most definitely entering a period of predictability.2009, Lincoln Geraghty, American Science Fiction Film and Television, →ISBN