What is: Genre Theory

Rick Altman

Rick Altman's genre theory was based around the audience already knowing what was going to happen in the video due to the genre and the artist.
When thinking about this theory I drew comparisons to artists like Nicki Minaj, who makes videos that aren't necessarily similar but they always have similar styling and the audience always know what to expect, Nicki's quirky style and on screen persona molds to the term iconography, where specific visual features are associated with a specific artist or genre.

Both of these videos have many similarities because of the bright colours of the video. These videos are both very stereotypical of Nicki Minaj due to the dancing and costumes.

Another example however, which goes against Rick's theory is Miley Cyrus. Her change in persona and style in 2013 also caused a change in her music and their videos, although most would have expected her normal all American girl music videos, when she released We Cant Stop it was completely different to her usual work and started to appeal to a different demographic.

These two videos contrast very well with each other and audiences were not expecting the wacky strange release of We Cant Stop so this goes against Rick Altman's theory as some artists like to reinvent themselves and change their styling.

Steve Neale

Steve Neale's theory involves the use of repetition and difference. In his own words he stated 'Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre' . Steve Neale is saying that a music video and its genre are defined by two things:
a) How much it conforms with a genre's stereotypes and conventions. (He says that a film must 'conform to these conventions enough that it can still qualify and be identified as a film of that genre')
and
b) How much a film subverts the genre's stereotypes and conventions. (He says that a film must 'subvert these conventions enough that it is still viewed as a unique film. Not just a clone')

An example of this is the music video for 'This Is What You Came For' - Calvin Harris (feat. Rihanna)

This music video both conforms to and subverts Neale's theory about genre stereotypes and conventions. It conforms to the typical conventions of the music video for a pop song, with frequent focus on the singer Rihanna throughout and the use of bright strobe lighting and a 'studio' type setting which is an extremely common convention for a pop music video.

The music video also subverts conventions, through the use of a lack of live performance. Typically in a pop/dance music video there is footage of the DJ playing to a huge crowd however in this video there isn't.