Mind Map of Genre

The term genre means type or sort and was used two thousand years ago in ancient Greece to put poetry and drama into certain categories. Film is still a relatively new concept of entertainment, and many genres have been invented over the past hundred years. Film genres can often branch out into subgenres, as in the case of a romantic film and a comedy, making a RomCom. Film genres can be combined to form hybrid genres, such as the melding of horror and science fiction in the ‘Aliens’ films.  Films are now highly established forms of art, and can make a huge amount of money, with millions of people around the world watching the ‘big’ films. The 20^th Century has brought phenomenal changes in popular entertainment, including the invention of short films, and the progress of genres and subgenres. Later, from about the 1960’s, film critics began using the word genre as a way of judging the quality of films in a similar way to literature. This was a big step for culture, as films were now compared to literature, yet everyone could watch a film, thus showing the massive progress of popular entertainment in the 20^th Century.