Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

In a long essay, Stephen Heath lays stress on the process of regulation, in the sense
of a certain independent mechanism, in the classical economy of film, more specifically
that of narrativisation:
Narrativization is then the term of a film’s entertaining: process and process
contained, the subject bound in that process and its directions of meaning. The
ideological operation lies in the balance, in the capture and regulation of energy;
film circulates – rhythms, spaces, surfaces, moments, multiple intensities of
signification – and narrativization entertains the subject – on screen in frame – in
exact turnings of difference and repetition, semiotic and suture, negativity and
negation; in short, the spectator is moved, and related as subject in the process and
images of that movement. (Heath 1981:62)
While anyone who has watched movies and reflected on the experience of
spectatorship would agree that, as a matter of simple fact, to watch is to be “moved” and
simultaneously to be held, in a coherence of meaning and vision, Heath then develops the
notion of “the spatial organization of film”, and the extent to which the Hollywood film
system has taught us to be attracted by the economy of “sameness” present in genres.
Moreover, the fact that filmmakers “organise” their productions around genres and/or film
categories helps the viewer and the whole industry in terms of consumption and marketing:
“the spectator is moved,” but above all he or she feels “related as subject in the process and
images of that movement.”
Some may say (as Heath does) that this “spatial organization of film” can be
achieved by the setting of the film. However, the location of the film might not always
determine the genre, as films can have the same setting (a war context, for example), and
yet portray different themes and moods. Moreover, genres cannot automatically be defined
as a form of film distinguished by subject matter, theme, or technique, for the same
reasons. In fact, there seems to be categories within categories of genre which overlap
(such as comedy-thrillers) but which are not mutually exclusive. Having posed the problem
in such apparently inexplicable terms, Edward Buscombe writes that:
(...) the problem is only another aspect of the wider philosophical problem of
universals. With regard to the cinema, we may state it thus: if we want to know
what a western is, we must look at certain kinds of films. But how do we know
which films to look at until we know what a western is? (Buscombe 2003:14)
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