Misused: Genre Busting

It appears the page for Genre-Busting needs help. It seems to be just loaded with things that either have a genre, or seem more like they would be non-music examples of Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly.

edited 16th Mar '13 4:30:42 PM by shoboni

The problem here is that genre limits are difficult to define, so the comparison between various genres is also going to be difficult if not YMMV.

True, bur there's some that actually list what genre(s) it is in the entry.

Generally, even if something is touted as a genre buster, you can still define it in terms of "this genre and this genre mixed together with some of that genre and presentation similar to this other genre". It's like how there are only three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), and all other colors, no matter how unique they seem, are just different hues or combinations of those colors.

I'm really not seeing the problem here. Could the original poster please give more specific examples of misuse either on this page or in the wicks?

There's some Fan Myopia where they don't realise that their show was not the first to do this, so there exists a genre for it, just not a widespread one. Firefly, for instance, is in the existing genre of the Space Western.

And if someone can't expand upon "Tokusatsu can do this" it needs to be removed with prejudice.

The underlying problem is that this is a meta-trope that depends on comparing a work with what is "normal", so by its nature it is subjective and hard to define. Still, we should be able to improve on it.

I could be wrong, but heres a few catching my eye

• Watchmen: a Film Noir Raygun Gothic Golden Age / Silver Age / Dark Age Sci-Fi Cyberpunk Political Alternate History Deconstruction of superheroes that invented half the tropes used by modern comics, and quite a few others besides. Phew.
• The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a Funny Animals comic book that follows all the conventions of the classic Epic — a truly modern epic.

• Casablanca is a classic example, proving that Tropes Are Not Bad. It's equal parts romance, Film Noir, spy thriller, and war drama, though the romance portion tends to be remembered the most.
• O Brother Where Art Thou is a musical Road Movie retelling the Odyssey... but it's set in The Great Depression(I've seen this one, it's not nearly as weird as the entry makes it sound as far as I remember)
• Fight Club is a social commentary/philosophical drama/black comedy/surreal-psychological mystery-thriller/crime action film in which the real fighting is only used as way to highlight the message of the film. It has to be seen at least two times to be fully enjoyed.
• Finding Nemo is a road movie/coming of age/thriller/animal comedy/prison escape/surf movie.
• Monsters, Inc. is a monster movie/kid flick/invasion movie/sci-fi/family drama/comedy.
• Toy Story is a philosophical comedy/drama/thriller/adventure/prison escape.

• Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog: A supervillain musical romantic comedy with a Downer Ending.
• The X-Files took archetypes and conspiracies from espionage shows and crime dramas, inserted them into plots about scifi and supernatural phenomena, and filmed it in horror/suspense style.

• The Beatles: at first their songs were typical love songs, but overtime, they did power ballads, hard rock, blues, psychedelic rock (and oh how much!), folk rock, and, uh, whatever the hell this is.(Yes their good, but i don't see how they fit here)

• There has been debate over whether the Super Smash Bros. games should be classified as a "true" Fighting Game series on par with Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, or a party game series with Fighting Game elements; the Smash series is based on environmental factors^note such as physics and stage elements and damage taken to the health meter equaling a weaker resistance to launching, while traditional fighters aren't very concerned with the environment (as all stages are linear) and damage directly makes the player closer to dying. While it is, by definition, a fighting game, whether it should be considered a true fighting game or a party game really depends on how it's being played; while the games were intended to be non-traditional party fighters^note hence the inclusion of items and casual stages (especially Brawl), the competitive community optimized the gameplay so that the games play more like actual fighting games rather than party games.

• For its first two chapters, Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog is a musical, superhero deconstruction, romantic comedy about a wannabe mad scientist supervillain and his attempts at gaining power (frequently detailed, of course, in his video blog). Then the last chapter ends with elements of classic tragedy, the only remotely sweet and sympathetic character dying in the most gut-wrenching, Whedon-specialty way possible. The montage that follows, however, still includes some brutally funny moments.(it got on the page twice)

• Recess: Comedy/drama/prison escape/satire
  • Recess: School's Out: Comedy/drama/satire/sci-fi/action/prison escape/coming of age
• Phineas and Ferb has a specific work in universe: "a twenty-eight volume science fiction swashbuckling historical romance tell-all potboiler mystery satire buddy cop adventure tragedy how-to action novel!"

I believe the way to fix this is to make the criteria for entry more strict. Specifically, it must be shown the work in question not only defies standard conventions, but also causes other works in the genre to defy those same conventions and as a result alter the perception of the genre.

Add "contemporary" in there too; what is unambiguously Genre-Busting a few decades ago may be a standardized genre today, after all.

You mean contemporary with the work, not contemporary as in today (I hope)?

Some of those are clearly shoehorning in as many terms as they can in order to sell it (regardless of whether those terms are actually genres - Raygun Gothic is a visual style, Deconstruction is a theme). Others belong better on... is it Genre Launcher?

(I disagree on O Brother Where Art Thou, though - from what I remember, it's weird enough to be almost a Random Events Plot. What's the genre of Ulysses?)

It may have been. but it wasn't near as weird as the entry says.

I can see a lot of problems with the trope, the two big problems is a name that may be accurate but open to interpretation and examples that desire to give as many labels ("drama/comedy/sci-fi/action/romance/guns/men/women/children/cats/dogs/kitchen sink") as possible. Thus we are getting a lot of examples that don't match the intended purpose of the trope. It also falls into the Tropes Are Not Good trap, people want their favorite show/movie to be considered wildly original.

The more simplified concept is already covered in X Meets Y, where a story merges together two ideas like The Western and Sci-Fi create a Space Western and/or Wagon Train to the Stars. The problem with making those examples as Genre-Busting should be obvious, mixing and matching genres tend to create their own genre and thus (at least in retrospect) ceases to be genre busting and instead a Genre Launch. Look at how many examples put down comedy and drama separate as though putting them together is a revolutionary idea.

But the major issue with the examples themselves is that just because a story integrates other ideas into its narrative doesn't mean it doesn't fit within one specific genre. The purest examples would be that the very premise itself defies easy classification. Buffy The Vampire Slayer is easily described as a supernatural teen drama. In comparison something like Field of Dreams doesn't quite fit the mold of anything before or after. O Brother, Where Art Thou? at its core is a Road Movie, while Frequency shifts gears every half-hour.

Basically this.

Maybe if it would help if the description pointed out the differences between Genre-Busting and Genre Roulette.

I think that Genre Roulette switches between genres at discrete points. As in, one book in a series is a mystery, another is an action thriller, another is a legal drama... to the point that there's no prevailing genre, or the prevailing genre is a frame for others (eg. it's clearly a fantasy series, but combines fantasy with a different genre in each book).

Genre Roulette has a lot of music examples, which makes me wonder if Neoclassical Whatever I'mNotTypingThat should be merged into Genre-Busting or Genre Roulette's music examples should be split off. That would keep examples of bands whose genre changes from album to album from being duplicated on Neoclassical Whatever and Genre Roulette.

The Overly Long Title is exclusivly for when a band's music/a song is several things at once, I think.

I think Genre Roulette is actually much more stable than Genre-Busting because it clarifies that at any given moment a story or episode can switch into a different genre, so typically it fits within one genre in general but allows itself to switch as needed. Like how in Star Trek the holodeck allows them to go from a western to film noir. In order to "bust" a genre that requires reaching someplace that defies easy classification.

In theory, but plenty of examples (or second bullet points on examples) read like "but this album was more like this genre..." which would make them a parallel to Genre Roulette rather than Genre-Busting, and they're hard to pick out because the page is, by definition, impossible to categorize.

Back to Genre-Busting in general, isn't it a bad sign that so many examples of works that "bust genres" are just 'X Genre + Y Genre' or 'X Genre... but with a twist'? Having six or seven genre 'elements' listed and thrown together in an example makes anything look like Genre-Busting. Maybe forcing examples to be written as a (semi)-formal explanation of how it busts genres instead of using this kind of shorthand could help cut down on the vagueness and exaggeration for the sake of fitting an example in.

The 'official' name for 'works which don't fit neatly into accepted genres' is Interstitial Arts.

Another problem here is that "genre" is kind of arbitrary, anyway.

No, you are wrong. Genres are tools just as tropes are tools. Tools for both creators (knowing what kind of fiction they want to make) and connoisseurs (knowing what kind of fiction they want to experience).

...what?

Pall is saying that genres are not subjective/arbitrary, which knowing you I believe you would agree with, but your comment was terse enough to be misunderstood. You mean that this trope is using 'genre' ambiguously?

I think we're uniquely ill-suited for labeling works as defying categorization because we categorize works so well.

Outside this site, it's perfectly acceptable to say "this is story is sci-fi, but it's noir in tone, and it takes place in Africa! What a genre-busting pioneer!" But we would reply to that by saying, "Um, it's Neo-Africa. That's already a thing."

"Genres" are just broad categories that people used to use because they didn't have TV Tropes to categorize stories more specifically.