Generic Element in The Exorcist

How do generic elements encourage the audience to anticipate events in the attic scene in The Exorcist?

• It is at night
• Dark
• Young-ish female, attractive victim
• Vulnerably dressed
• Lights don't work - lights a candle - throws shadow
• Noises in the attic
• Clutter - looks like a confined space
• The entrance to the attic - black
• No music - audience listens too
•  Tension drops when handy man enters - light/sound/company
• Bar shadows - suggests she's trapped

Importance of genre

Much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of the "difference in repetition"- I.e. recognition of familiar elements and in the way these elements might be orchestrated in an  unfamiliar fashion or in the way that unfamiliar elements might be introduced. - Steve Neale (1980)

Genre is constituted by "specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process." -Steve Neale

Typical Horror Films

For horror films, there are a lot of key features such as the setting, characters and the plot.

The typical settings for horror films are places that have a bad atmosphere such as abandoned places, isolated places, basements, dark alley ways, etc.

These are all generic settings because the characters can't get help and help can't get to them.

There are different types of characters used in horror films such as; young people; people who are alone; defenceless people and vulnerable victims. They use these kind of characters because it makes the viewer have connections with the characters because of how vulnerable and defenceless they are.

The victim is usually a young pretty female who is portrayed to look vulnerable whether it's what she's wearing or how she acts in the storyline. She would also be shown to look small to make her seem more venerable. The hero is usually a male because they males are known as the more dominant gender.

 There is a lot of typical plots in horrors, but the most typical is a family moves into a new house, the house is haunted and spooky paranormal activities start to happen and scares the residents and tries to hurt/kill them.



What's a genre?

A genre is a type/category that a book, film or movie goes into. These include horror, romance, science fiction and comedy.

You can tell that the film Terminator 2 is a science fiction film because of the features that are in it such as teleportation, robotic scan and the fact that he felt no pain.