Gunter Kress - Genre theory

"Kress is a leading theorist in the study of exploration of multimedia with its impact on communication in an increasingly judgemental and individual world."
This basically means that as he was born in 1940; he has seen vast technological advances over the years alongside monumental events that have happened over the centuries of his life.


Kress has a different way of thinking about genre in comparison to Metz as Kress defines genre as "A kind of text that desires its form from the structure of a (frequently repeated)social occasion, with its characteristics, participants and their purposes" (1988).

Kress wrote many things during the 80's yet one of his collaborations was with a man called Robert Hodge. Hodge and Kress came to the conclusion that 'Genres only exist in so far as social groups declares and enforces the rules that constitute them' (1988).


It was noted by Kress that text's allow us as an audience to take on the role that we are most comfortable with. This is also known as an instruction by a writer for an ideal reader although not all readers or ideals may fit into place. Within society certain assumptions and correlations are made, as an example if it looks like a film with suspense and gore or has horrific elements then it is known as a horror.
Within the film world and within society we (the audience) are given a role and are told what to do and we do it; this is what is described as a passive audience and this was noted by Kress during the 80's.


Kress believes in six main points and beliefs, these are:

• Genre correlates with its social background.
• Genres change and new genres are developed when situations and new situation begin to occur.
• Society is ever-changing therefore genre is ever-changing
• Kress is a contrast to Metz, as Kress argues you cannot have specific codes and conventions for genre.
• Every genre places the person and audience into a belief system where you and the audience assume situations.
• Essentially Kress believes texts are embedded with assumptions about the ideal reading including their attitudes towards subject matter and often their class, age, gender and ethnicity.

The main difference between Metz and Kress is that Metz believes genre adapts to society and Kress believes that society adapt to genre.


20.10.14 - REFLECTION OF KRESS AND HOW HE CORRELATES TO MY WORK:


I would like to use Kress' points that texts are embedded with assumptions about the ideal reading including their attitudes towards subject matter and often their class, age, gender and ethnicity. This will then allow any stereotypes made within my music video to have sound grounding as to why I have made the stereotypes. The ideal reading is making the text (in my case my video) appeal to my target audience through creating a text filled with stereotypes about the likes and dislikes of the genre audience.