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Steve Neale - Genre for Hinterland & The Bridge
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QUETSION: With reference to Steve Neale’s theory of genre, explore how the television industry uses genre to attract audiences.
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With reference to Steve Neale’s theory of genre, explore how the television industryuses genre to attract audiences.
The television industry uses genre to attract audiences by using conventions that the genre
is known for as well as implementing different elements unexpected of the genre. In this
way, not only can they attract audiences who enjoys the conventions but also interest
audiences by providing them something new. Steve Neale, a film theorist, proposes the idea
that whilst common elements of a genre, in this case, crime, offers audiences a pleasing
sense due to its familiarity, pleasure can also be gained from having our expectations
challenged.
First Point:
Being the first episodes, Hinterland’s ‘Devil’s Bridge’ and The Bridge’s first episode must
quickly latch the attention of audiences and the producers do so by introducing them to a
crime scene in the first few minutes, as that is what establishes a crime drama. To see
iconographies of policemen and police cars firstly, audiences would obviously be engaged
with both dramas as it indicates to them that what is occurring is a serious situation, which
they had sought out these particular dramas to experience the exact seriousness one would
experience in a real-life crime scene. This includes the thrill and horror of seeing a dead
body. Hinterland, through close-up shots, presents the audience with a crime scene
involving explicit details of blood in the bathtub and scattered upon the walls. The substantial
amount of blood in the bathroom, blended with the bath water too, implies to audiences that
the death of Helen Jenkins was a gruesome death executed by a relentless murderer. This
offers audiences a sense of enigma, as they ponder on the reason that caused the murderer
to feel such intense ill feelings towards Helen that actuated, presumably, him to force her
through so much pain. The use of blood will therefore attract audiences to the story, as it has
encouraged them to watch on to discover the ending. Neale has once stated that in media
there is ‘the pressure… to maximise the profitability of capital assets and to repeat the
formulae marking previous financial successes’. For Hinterland, this is especially the case as
it originates from a smaller, Welsh film industry compared to more popular film industries
such as the likes of Hollywood or European industries.
The Bridge, in attracting audiences, presents the body like any other conventional crime
dramas before revealing that the dead body is actually cut in half. This horrifies audiences as
the close-up shot displays full detail of the flesh that was cut off from the lower half, but may
also encourage audiences to consider why the body is cut in half when it was already
separated by the invisible line on the bridge connecting the two countries and the need to cut
the body when the victim could have just been killed through easier methods. The drama
therefore communicates to audiences that there are mysteries, an element often occurring in
crime dramas, that need to be unravelled in order to secure engagement.
Second Point:
For two dramas that utilise conventions to maximalise profit, they also distinguish
themselves from other conventional crime dramas, through the use of setting, in order to
provide audiences something new and interesting. This ultimately attracts more attention to
the dramas. Hinterland introduces their element of difference by setting their episodes in a
rural area of Wales. Establishing shots are used to present the expansive landscape and
cliffs where it leads to the ocean. Neale describes that ‘Genres may be dominated by
repetition, but are also marked by difference, variation, and change’, so whilst the premise of
the story may still be similar to other crime dramas, the simple fact that the setting is different
is enough to draw audiences’ attention. For audiences watching on BBC who have never
been in Wales or seen much of the country before, they may be interested in gaining an
insight into the landscape and how the culture works as well as how the culture will impact
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