Essay Question Plan3

(Jan 06b)- Recent developments in genre have included the emergence of parody, pastiche, and hybrid forms. Show how such developments have influenced the nature of media texts.

Parody- is the imitation of one media text by another for humour. E.g. 'Scary Movie'

Pastiche- a media text made up of pieces from other texts or an imitation of style.

Hybrid- a text that has more than one genre involved in it. E.g. romantic comedy.

Reasons:

• Expand cinema in all and showing genre are NOT FIXED but DYNAMIC.
• Gives producers more freedo to play around with scripts.
• Not as many restrictions in characters, settings, dialogue etc.
• Cross-media/ cross-genre experimentations. E.g. Eminem in the hockey mask and chainsaw.
• Intertextuality- historical slasher films compared to postmodern ones such as 'Scream' (Wes Craven, 1997)
• Pleasures for audiences to have intellectual knowledge and understanding. This also highlights a society of change and evolution to new media and new technology.

The whole idea of sequels and franchising have influenced the slasher genre for example in leaving their villians on a cliffhanger only to bring them back in sequels and make money off of their success.

Sequels of films such as:

• Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
• Friday 13th (Sean Cunningham, 1980)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)
• Scream (Wes Craven, 1997)

Characters franchised :

• Leatherface
• Freddy Krueger
• Jason