Narratives or stories fall into categories or genres that have been established in society for as long as cultures have been telling stories. I doubt when the first story tellers thought about it the way we do now but I’m pretty sure they could tell the difference in how some stories made their audience laugh and how other stories would make their listeners cry. Today with all of the education that has taken place over the last centuries we are lucky to have terms and definitions to antiquate everything in our lives.
Comedies have been written since the days of Aristotle and have often been used to make the common people laugh and act as a counter balance to the atrocities being committed by their previous leaders. The ancient greeks like comedy so much historians have identified three separate stages of ancient greek comedy, Old, Middle, and New. The earliest film comedies were release during the same time as world war one and I have to think that is no coincidence. All that news of the war in Europe and I imagine there was a need for a distraction and stories have always provided the audience with an escape from reality.
When people hear the word tragedy they often think of personal losses and of Shakespeare. Blame it on the educational system but through out a child’s mental growth of their high school years most english classes had a required reading of a lot of Shakespeare so most people are aware of his work. Tragedies capitalize on the audience ability to relate easily to human suffering. Every single human knows the feelings of suffering on at lest a minuscule level and normally on a very personal intimate relationship with memories of personal suffering.
One genre that is uniquely American is the Western. Made famous by iconic actors like Clint Eastwood the Western allowed the viewer to transport themselves to a time where the law of the gun was prevalent. The cowboy is a character that many men probably dreamed about but the short life expectancy probably deterred most. The Western films allowed the viewer to live vicariously through the actors and let themselves into the world the director created.
As much as Westerns and guns were for the men the romance genre was for the women. In the male dominated cultures the women often found themselves in the role of Eve from the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. omens role were inferior to mens and the story often depicts the woman as the reason for the problem the male has to fix. The romance genre allowed women to have an equal role to their male counterparts. A story of a man and a woman who fall in love puts the characters on an equal platform.
The story of Harry Potter is a recent story and crosses over many genres but its core it is a action adventure narrative with a good verse evil theme. Sure there are comedic moments and even some scenes with innocent romance as the characters got older but the story was far from a comedy or romance. Good verse evil action and adventure stories go back to the mythological greek gods of Aries and Zeus. These types of stories have been popular with audiences from the dawn of time because of the easily identifiable narrative structure that leads up to the climax where the audience is satisfied.
