The Structural Development and Social Function of Popular Film Genres

This paper explains the form and social function of Hollywood film genres as contended by the Ritual School of film theory. Ritualists consider cinematic genres as formations of modern mythology, structurally-orientated around currently-irreconcilable cultural contradictions or sources of anxiety. A genre’s physical conventions provide a lexicon of metaphors for continual exploration and debate on an underlying source of social discord. This process is seen most clearly in the formation of new genres in response to periods of drastic social change. To illustrate, this paper refers to the classic Western, the 1950s Sci-fi film, and the post-9/11 Superhero genre