Why are there film genres?

We just accept that like all drama, films fit into, or between, film genres. Thriller films, drama films, comedy films, action films, sci-fi films, romance. And hyphenates of these.

But why? Life has no genre. Some people’s lives are more dramatic or tragic or more thrilling than others, but more usually life is a blend of all of these, with comedy if we can manage to smile. But drama? It’s dramatic. Or thrilling. Or action. Or …

I think drama – in this case screenplays - is genre specific because we need it to be because we have expectations of it. We need to know what to expect when we go see an action-drama or an action-thriller or a romantic-comedy film. That tells us that we need drama – let’s call it fiction – we need fiction to give us what life never will: surprising predictability.

We don’t want to experience the disconnected shapelessness and randomness of life when we experience fiction as film or other. We need it to do what it says on the tin. Genre films usually do, though we might talk about whether big budget films do anything but lose film investor money anymore. But still, these turkeys try to be the kind of turkey we know we’re signing up for when we pay our 20 bucks and grab the popcorn. Whereas all we can expect of life is a good stuffing – unless we can outwit it like the heroes of our fictions.

So I think that’s why, like all fictions, feature films come in genres.

To give us the security of knowing broadly what to expect that life can never give us.

Happy screenwriting.