Genre Conventions In 'The Wizard Of Oz'

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Genre theory is a break down of different types of films. It is a recipe that is put together to make it a whole. When you break down the type or category of your film, that will become a formula for your character types/conventions, settings, and visual imagery, which is called iconography (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2014). When this is used, it will help the viewers to understand the prediction of the movie they are watching. A lot of genres falls alongside with sub-genres, which have a more defined formula. One film example that will have a sub-genre is a fantasy film. This type of film usually overlaps or crossover with other genres, like science fiction, and sometimes historical dramas (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2014). While going forth with my paper on “The Wizard of Oz”, I will help the viewers understand …show more content…

Genre conventions are small parts of the genre such as character similarities and the same plots that allow us to determine between genres. A lot of genres have elements that the audience expects which have been used other times in previous films from both genre/sub-genre. The two genre conventions that I selected from The Wizard of Oz, is musical and horror. A Musical is a good example to show the crossover illustration of the genre film. Musical films usually focus on songs as a major element, in a realistic setting. The Wizard of Oz displayed several songs during that film, but to list one, it was when Dorothy and her friends became scared when they were in the woods, and they began to sing to express their emotions. This film also showed some horror. A horror film is usually designed to bring forth fear and shock. One scene that illustrated horror, was the dark forest, talking trees, and flying monkeys. Just as the article of “Wizard of Oz Universe-set Horror movie stated, “new line is in early development on a horror film in the iconic world of L. Frank Baum’s novel”, “The Wonderful Wizard of