Genre: Continued

Jason Mittell-  Argues genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audiences and cultural practices as well.

• Industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Media producers use similar codes and conventions that often make cultural references. 
• Genre allows audiences to make choices about what products they want to consume through acceptance in order to fulfill a particular pleasure.

Rick Altman- Said genres offer audiences a 'set of pleasures' These pleasures include:

• Emotional Pleasures- These are when they generate a strong audience response.
• Visual Pleasures- This is a 'gut' response and are defined by how the films stylistic construction elicits a physical effect upon its audience. For example sadness.
• Intellectual Puzzles- This is pleasure from trying to solve or unravel a mystery or puzzle. The audience likes to decipher a plot or guess what will happen at the end.

Christian Metz- Suggests genres go through four stages:

• Experimental Stage
• Classic Stage
• Parody Stage
• Deconstruction Stage- This is where Hybrid genres come from, for example 'Cowboys and Aliens' they have combined both a western film and a sci-fi film.

Strengths of the Genre theory

1. Everyone uses it and understands it. Experts will use it to study media texts. 
2. The media uses it to develop and market texts.
3. Audiences use it to decide what texts to consume.
4. Producers, Audiences and Scholars makes genre a useful critical tool.
5. It can be applied across a wide range of texts.