Genre Bending in Fiction

How do genres grow, develop, and intersect?

Fiction is a genre defined by its incredible breadth. Such disparate works as The Odyssey, The Brady Bunch, and E.T. the Extraterrestrial all somehow fit under the vast umbrella of fiction. Of course, each of these stories are all wildly different from one another - both in content and in the medium by which they are told. The Odyssey is a classical-era epic poem, The Brady Bunch is an old-style family sitcom, and E.T. the Extraterrestrial is a science-fiction story about an alien. How can it be that an ancient poem, a 70’s sitcom, and a blockbuster about a friendly alien all fall under the same genre?

Well they don't. Not exactly, at least.

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What is Genre?

As is the case with nearly all components of narrative storytelling, the meaning of the word“genre” has shifted over time. While modern audiences associate genre with such categories as romance, horror, comedy, and action, the ability to categorize a story so specifically did not always exist. Greek dramas were placed in one of two genres, being either a comedy or a tragedy. Aristotle suggested four different genres: tragedy, epic, comedy, and parody. Many scholars use the term “literary genre” to refer to the category a piece of literature falls into (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama) regardless of its content.

While the history behind these shifts is rich and fascinating, today I’d like to focus on the modern approach to genre in storytelling, and a recent trend I’ve noticed - genre bending.

For our purposes, when I talk about genre I will be referring to what is sometimes called genre fiction, or “popular fiction.” Horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction all fall under this category. Because of its narrative breadth, fiction requires so many different categories under its wide umbrella to be able to classify and discuss stories with any real meaning.

Stories within the same genres are often wildly different from one another, resulting in further classification and categorization on the part of media-critics. These “sub-genres” develop as a result of creators exploring and pushing the limits of certain genres. This exploration and development can happen across several different mediums over the course of time. Let’s look at an example of how a genre grows and develops.

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Dystopia: A Case Study in Genre Development

The dystopian genre comes from the tradition of speculative fiction, and has seen a considerable amount of growth and change in its relatively short lifespan. Dystopia, the opposite of a utopia, explores a “what-if” scenario in which society has become utterly terrible, often as a result of a totalitarian government.

The dystopian genre was born out of the early 20th century. The most formative early dystopias - pieces such as Jack London’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984 - were written immediately following World Wars, economic recessions, and political unrest.

The genre is especially known for reflecting the fears of society at a given time. Throughout the century, we have seen the genre reflect many of society’s growing concerns - technological advancement, McCarthy-era fear of secret communist invaders, the dangers of totalitarian regimes, and environmental concerns appeared prominently in the genre.

However, as the genre developed, the narratives told within it began to diversify. No longer were people simply telling stories about what life was like under an oppressive regime - we began to see stark narrative distinction, even within the highly-specific genre of dystopia.

Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? took from both dystopia and science-fiction tropes, marrying the two to spawn the sub-genre of “cyberpunk.” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale also takes many tropes from the sci-fi genre, but focuses more on themes of religious extremism, gender roles, and climate change. Susanne Collins’ The Hunger Games is a dystopia that is written for the young-adult demographic, where it borrows many of the romantic tropes found in YA literature. As the genre grew, it began to broaden its reach - even overlapping with other genres.

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Genre Bending and The Current Fiction Landscape

Dystopia is just one example of how genres grow and develop. As new genres continue to develop and old genres grow, new opportunities for stories are always presented. The dominant movie genre right now is the superhero movie - itself, a sub-genre of action movies. Like any genre that’s around long enough, movies within this tradition have bled into other genres. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is both a superhero movie and a political drama. Guardians of the Galaxy is both a superhero movie and a space opera. Blade is both a superhero movie and a horror movie. There are countless examples of genre films that allow themselves to hybridize with other genres to produce a new film that occupies a unique place in the genre landscape.

This trend of genre bending is as popular as ever, and it exists across all forms of media. Shows like Stranger Things (which combines horror and sci-fi), Game of Thrones (which combines fantasy and drama), and Westworld (which combines the western genre with sci-fi) are all wildly popular results of this cross-pollination between genres.

While genres are a useful tool for media critics to categorize literature, television, and movies, it’s important to remember that using these categories to classify narratives is more of an art than a science. As long as creators continue to broaden their narrative horizons, the genre landscape will only grow more complex. Fortunately for us, this results in new and exciting avenues for storytelling. After all, if the aforementioned Westworld can give us anarchist cowboy robots, is anything off limits?