The homogenisation risk
Relying too heavily on genre formulas leads to repetitive, predictable output — and eventually to the audience fatigue that forced the 2010s authenticity turn.
Genre foundations
What is genre?
Before we can argue how a genre changes, we need to agree what a genre is — and what it is not.
- Strand
- Foundational
- Exam use
- Keeps your subject correct
A genre is not a fixed box you drop a show into. It is a living system of shared expectations: recognisable conventions, typical production choices, and the knowledge an audience brings. Genres repeat familiar features so we know what we're watching — and change them so we don't get bored.
Start here
How does the algorithm know what you want?
The illusion: it feels like the app reads your mind.
The reality: it is parsing millions of data points using a classification system more than two thousand years old.
The code: to understand the algorithm, you have to understand genre theory.
Genre comes to English from the French, and behind it the Latin genus — “kind” or “class”. Aristotle was sorting drama into kinds in the fourth century BCE. Every “because you watched…” row is that idea, automated.
Six things that are true about genre
- Genres are systems of shared expectations, conventions, production choices and audience knowledge.
- Genres are not fixed boxes — their boundaries are argued over.
- Genres repeat recognisable features and change them over time.
- A genre exists across three places at once: the text, the audience, and the industry.
- Genres help producers manage risk and help audiences choose what to watch.
- Genre labels can be contested — people disagree about where the lines fall.
The old view and the modern view
A compressed summary of two schools rather than a quotation from any one theorist: Neale supplies the process account, Chandler the warning about contested maps, and Swales the emphasis on shared purpose inside a community of users.
| Old school (Aristotle / Platonic) | Modern theory (Neale, Chandler, Swales) | |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Rigid rules of inclusion | Fuzzy, overlapping categories |
| Metaphor | Botanical taxonomy (genus / species) | Social networks and shared codes |
| Function | Sorting texts on a shelf | Creating expectations for an audience |
The takeaway
Genre is no longer treated as a strict set of rules. Neale's formulation is worth keeping exact: “genres are not systems: they are processes of systematisation” (Neale, 1980). That is precisely why AS 91251 asks you to argue about change rather than write a definition.
Family resemblance: why Alone still counts
No single text has all the defining features of a genre. Texts share overlapping traits, like members of a family. Some are prototypical — the standard case everyone pictures — while others sit fuzzily at the edge.
Alone shares almost none of Survivor's competition conventions: no vote, no host, no tribe, no other contestants. It is still unmistakably the same genre, because the resemblances that actually carry the category are environmental hardship, the authenticity claim and the edited arc.
Exam use: this defeats the objection “but it doesn't have X, so it isn't really the genre” — and then lets you argue about which resemblances are load-bearing.
Participating, not belonging
The law of genre
Jacques Derrida“Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text; there is always a genre and genres, yet such participation never amounts to belonging.”
You will often see this shortened to “a text cannot belong to a genre, only participate in one”. That shorthand loses two things Derrida insists on: participation is universal — there is no genreless text — and it is usually plural.
Belonging to a box
Asks “which category does this go in?” — a question with no defensible answer for any hybrid, which today means almost everything.
Participating in a code
Asks “what is this text inviting me to expect?” The mark of genre — a cowboy hat, a torch-snuffing, a wilderness aerial — is not the genre itself. It is an instruction to the audience about how to read what follows.
Outlast opens on wilderness aerials and a survival brief — marks that invite an endurance reading — then reveals a team rule that makes betrayal compulsory. It participates in two codes at once, and the friction between them is the product.
Genre vs product vs franchise vs platform
Genre
A system of conventions and expectations. Survival reality competition.
Product
A single media text. Outlast, or one season of Alone.
Franchise
A branded family of products. Survivor and all its international versions.
Platform
A distribution context. Netflix, broadcast TV — each carries many genres.
Why this matters in the exam
NZQA examiners repeatedly flag students who treat a franchise or product as if it were the genre. If your essay is really “about Survivor”, you've slipped from genre to product. Keep the genre as your subject and use the shows as evidence.
Examples and non-examples
Genre: Survival reality competition
A system of conventions + audience expectations + production choices.
Not a genre: Survivor
A product/franchise within the genre — not the genre itself.
Genre: The Western (film)
A recognised genre with shared conventions and expectations.
Not a genre: Netflix originals
A platform/brand category that contains many genres.
Genre: Dating reality TV
A genre/subgenre of reality television.
Not a genre: A surprise twist in episode 4
An episode event — not a genre feature.
Why the industry needs genre
Genre is a commercial feedback loop. Studios reduce risk by producing what has already worked; audiences reduce risk by choosing what they already know they like. Sets, costumes and tropes get reused; algorithms get a category to target.
This is why genre change is nearly always controlled innovation — difference has to be small enough to stay legible. Outlast changes one rule and keeps every other convention intact: the minimum viable difference that still sells the format as new.
The pleasure of genre: repetition and difference
The paradox at the centre of every genre: we want to know exactly what is going to happen, and we want to be surprised by how it happens.
- The sweet spot“Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre.” — Steve Neale, 1980. Without difference there is no pleasure; without repetition there is no genre.
Genre lives in three places
Whenever you analyse the genre, return to the triangle. A convention (text) exists because it gives an audience something, and because it serves the industry that makes the show. The strongest answers connect all three corners rather than describing one in isolation.
The limits of classification
Classification is useful, but never neutral. “There are no undisputed ‘maps’ of the system of genres within any medium” (Daniel Chandler) — one critic's sub-genre is another's main genre. Knowing the costs of the system is what lets you argue for a classification instead of assuming one.
The arbitrary box
Complex works get forced into simplistic marketing categories and lose what made them distinctive. Ask what a label hides, not just what it reveals.
The algorithm trap
When streaming services hyper-categorise viewers, they build echo chambers — feeding back only what already fits an established 'vibe'.