Week 46, AMA No.1: What is genre?

the first of the ask-me-anything series

This question comes from Andrea, a friend of a friend of mine who works as a book publisher. She wrote:

I'm curious about your perspective and thoughts on genre. Why do we use genre? How is it useful for librarians and readers? How do we define genre?  

I wrote my senior thesis on Holocaust fiction, which encompasses several overlapping genres including historical fiction, young adult fiction, and even the nonfiction novel. I plan to eventually write a graduate thesis on mystery and thriller fiction, so I obviously am very tempted by genre and how we categorize fiction.

What a phenomenal and fascinatingly difficult question. Before we can address the how and why of genre, we might ask “What is genre?” Loosely, a genre is a category of artistic composition, but that’s troublesome: what criteria comprise those categories? Stylistic conventions? Practical application of theory? A specific audience? Already we encounter how fraught this definition is. We might think of Impressionist paintings and post-Impressionist paintings as two genres of painting, but the criteria distinguishing the two are likely illegible to those unfamiliar with the cultural and practical shifts in the technique.

So too with understanding the difference between contemporary fiction and literary fiction, or fantasy and fairy tales. How would you characterize those at a passing glance? What must they have? What good is a genre if you cannot see its boundaries?

Are fairy tales necessarily folklore? I’ll have a better answer for that at the end of this term, after I complete my Folklore Archives course. Source: Giphy.

How do we define genre?

We might think of genre as a coalescing of expectations. I got into a big argument with the giant TV-watching group message of my sleepaway camp friends because I argued that the Netflix show Squid Game is horror as well as thriller.¹ Without spoiling the show, I argued that it relied on horror-driven narrative conventions, especially a focus on monstrosity and physical & mental gruesomeness. My friends pointed out that Squid Game lacks the gore that many people associate with pure horror. I retorted that the show ends much in the same way as one of the most famous horror films of all time, [redacted for spoilers], which itself is a psychological game.

Admittedly, Squid Game is horror and thriller—few stories of any media fall purely in one category or the other. Notice, however, that to make my case, I tied elements of the show to a horror viewer’s expectations (that there are monsters and there is gruesomeness).

Few artistic environments define genre and set those expectations as clearly as fanfiction writers on Archive of Our Own, a web archive that organizes fanfiction with folksonomic (folk-taxonomy) tags. These tags include:

• Required, structured categories that have definitive elements such as the fandom(s) the work belongs to (e.g. Percy Jackson, The Old Guard, Succession), ratings (general to explicit), content warnings, and languages;

• not-required but structured categories with malleable elements such as primary relationships (e.g. Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase, Joe/Nicky, Cousin Greg/A Foot In His Mouth), and popular tropes (e.g. there was only one bed!, alternate universes, etc.)

• and free-form, customizable tagging that expresses a fic author’s intention or commentary (e.g. “no beta we die like men” or “I have the courage to write what Rick Riordan was too scared to write”).

These latter two categories are maintained by tag wranglers, or human volunteers who are assigned portions of a fandom, read the tags associated with the fanfiction in those fandoms, and link those tags to existing umbrella categories. This means that tags phrased in different ways but with common signification will all appear under the same tag disambiguation.

For example, in fanfiction, a second reader or proofreader is often referred to as a “beta reader” (as in “beta user,” or one who tests a product before it goes live). Fanfiction that is not beta read is often tagged with phrases such as “no beta we die like men,” “unbeta,” and “beta what beta,” which are all grouped by human tag wranglers under the same umbrella term, “Not Beta Read.” Tag wrangling is a profoundly labor-intensive and metadata-conscientious means of establishing boundaries around singular ideas, recurring tropes, and whole genres.²

Why do we use genre?

I point to Archive of Our Own because tagging and tag wrangling demonstrate a very hands-on, material means of defining genre. This tag infrastructure has also supported and created many communities of readers who read fanfiction precisely because they like to know what they’re getting themselves into. Tags communicate expectations of all sorts, from warnings about graphic violence to fulfilment of certain romantic or tragic tropes. Many fanfiction readers express that they enjoy knowing exactly what they’re going to get, even/especially if authors dance a variation of that theme in the final product, and tags signal those expectations.

Tags are like the Soup Nazi: you know that if you go to the Soup Nazi, you will both receive soup and tongue lashing. What happens when you go to the Soup Nazi and you don’t receive soup? Expectations subverted! Again, I have never seen Seinfeld. Source: Tenor.

Genre can function in a similar way by setting criteria of what a reader might expect from a book. I am not an avid reader in any single genre—the popular American ones that come to mind are romance, science fiction, mystery, thriller, and horror—so it’s hard for me to articulate their associated criteria. (Also, it’s worth pointing out that those genres are mutable depending on the culture and language in which you are reading.) From my experience learning about romance novels, a basic expectation is a “happily ever after” ending (HEA), but there’s a lot of debate within the romance community of what that entails, especially as romance readers are also interested in the complicated mess of relationships, not just their thrilling beginnings.

If we use genre to set expectations, we also use it to subvert them. We’ve all seen the glowing reviews from early readers in the frontmatter or splashed on the back cover lauding a novel as “genre-bending.” It genre-bends! It bends our expectations for the genre! It refuses categorization! Or perhaps our adherence to rigidity limits our understanding of the ways stories are told.

Romance and fantasy writer Freya Marske discussed this quirk and constraint of genre on a recent episode of Fansplaining, where she shares that her first novel was rejected by a fantasy publisher because it lacked adequate worldbuilding to qualify as Fantasy (a criterion!). Marske felt that it didn’t make sense for her to crowd the romance story with worldbuilding, so the novel ended up in the Romance section, even as the romance publisher was hesitant because the fantasy elements felt too far afield from their readers’ interests. Such genre-bending novels are perhaps such a rarity because preconceptions of genre (i.e. what do people know? What do we know? What do we know will sell?) still maintain a strong hold on a publisher’s willingness to acquire a book, especially one from a new author. (Marske points out, however, that she had been writing long-form fanfiction for decades before she shopped her first book and had legions of dedicated readers. She was a more experienced first-time published author than many.)

In these cases, genre might be a restricting factor in seeing new kinds of stories emerge in traditional publishing. Conversely, in fanfiction, it’s not unusual to have alternative universe stories where the characters of Game of Thrones meet the characters of Percy Jackson in the land of Lord of the Rings. Some readers favor such crossover stories where the characters of many disjointed fandoms collide, and the author plays out what those characters would do in these new environments. There’s a lot more freedom to explore these genre-bending fantasies in fanfiction, because there’s a lot of intellectual freedom, no or low financial stakes, and no immediate copyright complications to contend with (a big, big asterisk on this last point, which would entail a separate newsletter issue and the entire legal subfield dedicated to copyright).³

A thought exercise: consider how difficult it was for Sony and Marvel to negotiate that third Tom Holland Spider-Man movie. Holland had to personally call House of Mouse CEO Robert Iger to broker the deal, and that’s because both companies had a stake in a single character. Now imagine a crossover universe in television, film, or text between Game of Thrones, the TV rights of which are owned by HBO & Warner Brothers; Percy Jackson, the TV rights of which are owned by Hulu and Disney; and Lord of the Rings, which are owned by (and I had to google this one) filmmaker Saul Zaentz and, tragically, Amazon. I actually feel ill thinking about the negotiations that would go into this.

That said, it would be a lot easier for a TV-crossover of the Mandalorian (Star Wars, owned by Disney), Percy Jackson (Hulu, owned by Disney), and, like, whatever Pixar film you’re into on a given day (Pixar Animation Studios…owned by Disney), because Disney is a behemoth black hole that keeps blocking creative entities from entering the public domain and gobbling up whatever properties it can in its quest for world domination. For the record, I don’t want any of these convoluted crossovers to happen, because I think it would be a giant mess and not nearly as good or funny or imaginative or irreverent as whatever fanfiction writer badjokesbyjeff comes up with. The last good crossover on television was That’s So Suite Life of Hannah Montana, devastatingly also owned by Disney. Raven would have beaten Thanos. I digress.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime event. No phones or forcefields in sight. Just vibes. Source: my childhood, also Giphy.

How is genre useful for librarians and readers?

If you’re a librarian, you might understand a genre’s conventions to help recommend new books to readers. If you’re a reader, you might use genre to communicate the kinds of stories you like to read (for example, romances with funky twists or thrillers with a romance element). What does this mean in an information space?

I return to Storygraph, which allows readers to mark the emotive or intellectual elements of reading a book (challenging, dark, emotional, inspiring, etc.). The site doesn’t necessarily ask you to mark whether a book is thriller or horror or mystery or scifi or romance or fantasy. It asks you how you felt as you read it. This is a powerful diversion from convention (taken here to mean structural elements like gore or a happy ending…or both) to affection, a very elusive realm of literary theory that many people have told me not to bother with. But Storygraph collects that affective data and uses it to signal to readers how they might feel as they work through a book.

A Storygraph review prompt that focuses on feeling and theme rather than conventions.

This affective approach is not entirely unlike the free-form tags on Archive of Our Own, which make space for things like “there was only one bed!,” a popular romance trope that places two characters, who are usually denying their feelings for one another, into a situation where they must. Share. A bed. (consensually). Or even broader terms like “Hurt/Comfort” and “Fluff/Angst,” which signal “one character will be HURT and the other one will COMFORT them and it will be both heart-wrenching, then heart-warming” (and, by the way, a lot of those conventions seep over into romance writing. They’re not exclusive to one writing platform or medium!)

Sometimes we search for things—music, film, television, or books—that guarantee a particular feeling. Illustratively, The New York Times wrote a whole article about how Avril 14th by Aphex Twin makes pretty much everyone who ever listens to it feel deeply nostalgic.

Personally, I watch the “Leap of Faith” scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, a soaring coming-of-age moment bested by none that invariably tugs my heartstrings.

These emotional or affective signifiers—tags on Archive of Our Own, moods on Storygraph—communicate what I think we seek when we seek genres. We’re looking to feel a certain way, whether that’s have our minds bent or probed or our hearts race or rest. I am less interested in what genre means in terms of bankable conventions than the feelings I am left with (and how those are or are not tied to the fulfillment of storytelling techniques).

What a great question. This was probably not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it was a fun read. Thanks for writing in, Andrea!

Housekeeping and birdseeking

house

• What I read this week: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

• What I’m currently reading: Burning The Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge by Richard Ovenden, the January pick for Bookish Book Club and Noor by Nnedi Okorafor, the January pick for Roxane Gay’s Book Club!

bird

• leaf bird origami. People can make anything out of anything!

More later.

1. I’m bold enough to admit that I didn’t watch Squid Game. This was argument for argument’s sake, because I am a menace.

2. I wrote about the concept of community-reader boundaries as expressed through tags in the second chapter of my master’s dissertation, “Making Meaning with Meta-analysis and Metadata: How Fanfiction Readers Maintain Community,” which you can read for free.

3. I mean here that fanfiction authors don’t have to worry about getting permission from all of the property owners to have Percy Jackson hang out with Kendall Roy and Ned Stark. Obviously there are copyright concerns with fanfiction, but for the sake of everyone’s time let’s just not spar with that history right now.