…just another Action/Adventure…film

No one said it was. But it is AN Action/Adventure film. It’s not defined by its genre, but it is situated squarely within it.

I love your “author’s actual intent is totally irrelevant.” We hear that so much in analysis of culture nowadays, not just c crit lit.

I often think of this when I read discussions about literary criticism, which of course reaches its ultimate zenith in the school which tells us that the author’s actual intent is totally irrelevant. While that is a bit much even for most reasonably intellectual people, it’s funny to me how much the idea that every artistic work has to have deeper meaning has worked its way into the modern understanding. It’s a story. Read it. Enjoy it. If it makes you think, fine, but mostly I just wanted you to have fun.

Genre in the older sense told you primarily about the form of the work, with a bit of information about the content mixed in — whether it’s a romance (old sense), a novel (old sense), or poetry.

Genre in the modern sense tells you primarily about the content of the work. And the modern genres were almost all created by a story that broke the molds available at the time.

People read the genre-makers, and didn’t want to stop reading them when they hit the back covers. Writers were inspired to create more works with similar elements.

It’s fine to write within a genre.

It’s also fine to write outside the existing categories. If a story that fails to fit existing genres is sufficiently compelling, it might inspire a new one.

Thanks for the detailed breakdown of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just for fun, I have to poke a few holes

I can definitely find a few Romance Tropes (per http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanceNovelPlots). And in the end, Indy decides to sacrifice the Ark to the Nazis to free Marion.

And horror? Trapped in the well of souls had pure-horror sequences with snakes and mummies. The final supernatural destruction of the Nazis was straight-up horror.

Christian fiction? Well, Indy fights and loses when using only earthly powers. He doesn’t defeat the Nazis. God does, after Indy finally shows faith and believes and calls to Marion to “close her eyes, whatever happens” because he knows seeing the power of God will kill them.

If Raiders had been just another Action/Adventure treasure hunter film, it would have been forgotten, no matter how much fun it was. I think part of its enduring success stems from the fact that it refused to be only one “genre,” and in the process it invented a new one.

I think the same is true of all of the stories we remember most fondly.

• It has zip-all of the real tropes of Romance (Action/Adventure has a certain amount of Win The Girl Who Comes Along, which is not Romance);
• very little Horror (the only “horrific” scene is, well, one scene, and not interwoven through the whole thing like, say, in Poltergeist); further, Indy is not the Average Person In Over His Head (though he may be an Action Hero Supposedly In Over His Head);
• definitely not Christian Fiction, because while the MacGuffin is the Ark, the values espoused are not Christian, nor does Indy survive/win by praying to the Lord and trusting in faith.

It has Paranormal elements, but honestly, “Paranormal” as a genre… Well, it’s generally Paranormal Romance and/or Urban Fantasy. Urban Fantasy started a bit more broadly; what happens when you drop Magic into Modern Day, without alternate universes? The Lackey SERRAted Edge series would be one version. Early Laurell K. Hamilton would be another. Tanya Huff’s series with Henry the Vampire and the cop-turned-PI is yet another. These days, “Paranormal” seems to be a sub-set of fantasy that requires snarky, first-person narrators (often attractive and female), and frequently draws from Noir’s “mean streets” to some extent.

Thriller might be closer, in that there are Enemies Pursuing, but the tone of Lost Ark is not constant tension. There’s too much humor here and there. The focus is on the action, not on the Escaping/Foiling the Greater Threat. As I understand Thrillers to tend to have; they’re not a genre I’m fond of, so I am probably off on what their tropes are.

…you asked!

Genre is powerful. Genre is the collection of tropes with which readers can be expected to be familiar, and playing to, with, and against those tropes enhances the story for the “in-group” who are steeped in the genre or just simply resonate to it for unknown reasons. Genre sets expectations — which can be restricting, or freeing. (E.g., in children’s cartoons, you can put kid protagonists in horrible danger — but unlike the news, they will get out of it with a scare and a vow not to do that again. Depending on what story you want to tell, accepting the genre conventions can mean being able to say, “The kid doesn’t get eaten by a dragon because that can’t happen in this genre, and I don’t have to explain why the dragons didn’t see the kid. They just didn’t.”)

(And when you try to blend genres… Generally they will favor one or the other. Bujold’s first two Sharing Knife books, for instance, are trying to blend the tropes of Romance and Fantasy. A fair number of readers went, “…there’s too much romance in my fantasy,” while some others went, “…why is there all this worldbuilding in my romance?” It’s not that it can’t be done, but that people read for different reasons, and sometimes the intersections can be an acquired taste.)