Blog Post #7

According to Daniel Chandler, Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress define genres as “typical forms of texts which link kinds of producer, consumer, topic, medium, manner and occasion.” Genres are basically used to label and classify or even, “constrict”, pieces of text and media into different categories. We use these genres to somehow set expectations for what we are about to watch or read, it helps us determine, ’what is likely to be important (and what is not),’ ‘in order to follow a plot. Multimodality is the use of multiple modes to be able to efficiently rely a message to a specific audience. While not necessarily the same thing, genres and multimodality do relate very closely to one another. Part of the goals for each of them is to rely a message to the best of ones ability targeted to a specific audience. Genres use many specific modes as signatures to that genre, such as black and white for horror or old time feelings, animation and colorful details for children, etc. Basically, you wouldn’t use the same modes that you do to target children as you would the elderly, just like you wouldn’t classify a comedy under the genre of science fiction. In the end they both link the creator and the message to the audience. As Chandler sates, “some film genres tend to defined primarily by their subject matter (e.g. detective films), some by their setting (e.g. the Western) and others by their narrative form,” goes hand in hand with how certain modes put together are defined by the culture, generation, message, etc.