Chapter | ten
Genre: Waiter, There's a Comedy in My Thriller
Let's just get this out of the way: Yes, “genre” is a complete and utter marketing construct. We (and by “we” I mean “people who market films for a living”) divide movies into arbitrary categories based on how they make us feel: “This one made me laugh – comedy! This one was scary – horror! I fell asleep in this one – indie coming-of-age drama!” And so forth.
Of course there are films that defy genre, or play with it, or merge multiple genres into one entirely new creation. Genre is also culturally specific – in Asia, there's an entire movement of cheesy ghost story horror-comedies, sort of like if Beetlejuice had spawned a hundred imitators. But for the purposes of the screenwriter, ...
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