“The audience may know what to expect, but are still excited by genre texts.” To what extent is this true? (June ‘05a)

Repertoire of elements (Neale) and the basic template of the slasher genre which keeps the audience excited by genre texts

·‘Final girl’ (Clover)
‘Scream’ (1996) subverts the ‘rule’ of sex = death.

·Masked, male killer
‘Friday the 13th’ (1980) subverts expectation and has a female killer, Jason’s mother

·ineffective authority figures

·Group of teens killed off one by one

·Set in a confined space
‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (1984) has 'novelty' (Pye, 1975) within the setting and is set in dreams and the subconscious.
‘Halloween’ (1978) moved away from the remote, isolated house and into the suburban area, reflecting the ‘white flight’.

·Set piece: ‘final girl’ Vs the killer
‘Scream’ has closure but still resulted in two more films
‘Halloween’ resulted in an open ending, subverting genre expectations, generating excitement and allowed there to be sequels.

Sequels = the decline of the genre. Audiences are no longer excited by genre texts.
The ‘Freddy’ and ‘Jason’ franchise failed to ‘excite’ the slasher audience. The audience become desensitized to the films and Kruger, with his one liners and dark humour, became a parody of himself.

Re-makes became overly violent. ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (2003) is more gruesome and shows more violence than the original film, this excites the “desensitized” audience. The overt violence in ‘Halloween’ proved to be popular to the young slasher watching audience. Furthermore, audiences begin to enjoy visceral pleasures rather than narrative pleasure.

Rick Altman’s (1999) ‘Before’ and ‘After’ theory
‘Before’, producers notice that ‘Freddy’ and ‘Jason’ are popular and continue to create sequels until the audience become desensitized and the films are no longer successful.‘After’ critics and theorists analyse films based on similar generic traits and in this case expectations.

Introduction
Audiences may know what to expect from a genre text but are still excited because of the “difference in repetition” (Neale) and also the use of something new and novelty within each text. ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (1984) set within teenagers dreams was a new and unique setting, however, after the many sequels the novelty of the film eventually failed to excite audience, thus already subverting the above statement.