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Genre ( /ˈʒɒnrə/ or /ˈdʒɒnrə/; from French, genre French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ʁ], "kind" or "sort", from Latin: genus (stem gener-), Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

History[link]

The concept of genre originated from the classification systems created by Aristotle and Plato. Plato divided literature into the three classic genres accepted in Ancient Greece: poetry, drama, and prose. Poetry is further subdivided into epic, lyric, and drama. The divisions are recognized as being set by Aristotle and Plato; however, they were not alone. Many genre theorists contributed to these universally accepted forms of poetry. Similarly many theorists continued to philosophize about genre and its uses, which caused genre as Plato and Aristotle knew it to evolve and further expand.

Classical and Romance genre theory[link]

The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Gérard Genette explains his interpretation of the history of genre in "The Architext". He described Plato as the creator of three imitational, mimetic genres distinguished by mode of imitation rather than content. These three imitational genres include dramatic dialogue, the drama; pure narrative, the dithyramb; and a mixture of the two, the epic. Plato excluded lyric poetry as a non-mimetic, imitational mode. Genette further discussed how Aristotle revised Plato's system by first eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode. He then uses two additional criteria to distinguish the system. The first of the criteria is the object to be imitated, whether superior or inferior. The second criterion is the medium of presentation: words, gestures, or verse. Essentially, the three categories of mode, object, and medium can be visualized along an XYZ axis. Excluding the criteria of medium, Aristotle's system distinguished four types of classical genres: tragedy, epic, comedy, and parody. Genette explained the integration of lyric poetry into the classical system by replacing the removed pure narrative mode. Lyric poetry, once considered non-mimetic, was deemed to imitate feelings, becoming the third "Architext," a term coined by Gennette, of a new long-enduring tripartite system: lyrical; epical, the mixed narrative; and dramatic, the dialogue. This new system that came to "dominate all the literary theory of German romanticism" (Genette 38) has seen numerous attempts at expansion and revision. Such attempts include Friedrich Schlegel's triad of subjective form, the lyric; objective form, the dramatic; and subjective-objective form, the epic. However, more ambitious efforts to expand the tripartite system resulted in new taxonomic systems of increasing complexity. Gennette reflected upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to most of those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings the whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse"

Rhetorical situation[link]

J. M. Barrie's works were notoriously hard to place in any single genre.

In 1968, Lloyd Bitzer claimed that discourse is determined by rhetorical situations in his article titled, "The Rhetorical Situation". A rhetorical situation refers to the fact that every situation has the potential for a rhetorical response. He looks to understand the nature behind the context that determines discourse. Bitzer states, "it is the situation which calls discourse into existence" (Bitzer 2). Thus, the situation controls what type of rhetorical response takes place. Each situation has an appropriate response in which the rhetor can either act upon or not act upon (Bitzer). He expresses the imperative nature of the situation in creating discourse, because discourse only comes into being as a response to a particular situation. Discourse varies depending upon the meaning-context that is created due to the situation, and because of this, it is "embedded in the situation" (Bitzer 4).

According to Bitzer, rhetorical situations come into existence, at which point, they can either mature and go away, or mature and continue to exist. Bitzer describes rhetorical situations as containing three components: exigence, audience, and constraints. Bitzer highlights six characteristics needed from a rhetorical situation that are detrimental to creating discourse. A situation calls a rhetor to create discourse, it invites a response to fit the situation, the response meets the necessary requirements of the situation, the exigence which creates the discourse is located in reality, rhetorical situations exhibit simple or complex structures, rhetorical situations after coming into creation either decline or persist. Bitzer's main argument is the concept that rhetoric is used to "effect valuable changes in reality" (Bitzer 14).

In 1984, Carolyn Miller examined genre in terms of rhetorical situations. She claimed that "situations are social constructs that are the result, not of 'perception,' but of 'definition'" (Miller 156). In other words, we essentially define our situations. Miller seems to build from Bitzer's argument regarding what makes something rhetorical, which is the ability of change to occur. Opposite of Bitzer's predestined and limited view of the creation of genres, Miller believes genres are created through social constructs. She agreed with Bitzer that past responses can indicate what is an appropriate response to the current situation, but Miller holds that, rhetorically, genre should be "centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish" (Miller 151). Since her view focuses on action, it cannot ignore that humans depend on the "context of the situation" as well as "motives" that drive them to this action (Miller 152). Essentially, "we create recurrence," or similar responses, through our "construal" of types (Miller 157). Miller defines "types" as "recognition of relevant similarities" (Miller 156-7). Types come about only after we have attempted to interpret the situation by way of social context, which causes us to stick to "tradition" (Miller 152). Miller does not want to deem recurrence as a constraint, but rather she views it as insight into the "human condition" (Miller 156). The way to bring about a new "type" (Miller 157), is to allow for past routines to evolve into new routines, thereby maintaining a cycle that is always open for change. Either way, Miller's view is in accordance with the fact that as humans, we are creatures of habit that tightly hold on to a certain "stock of knowledge" (Miller 157). However, change is considered innovation, and by creating new "types" (Miller 157) we can still keep "tradition" (Miller 152) and innovation at the same time.

Ecology of genre[link]

In 2001, Anis Bawarshi's "Ecology of Genre" argues for the teaching of genre as an ecosystem. He compares genre to an ecosystem in order to demonstrate how writing recreates genres as well as genre recreates writing. The genre itself serves as an ecosystem, defining our interpretation and creation of genre. Bawarshi uses the idea of a doctor's office as an ecosystem in order to demonstrate his point more clearly. He does this by defining the Patient Medical History Form as a genre. We recognize this genre; thus, expectations are set. Judging the pre-imposed expectations, we react accordingly within this genre. This genre consists of microenvironments, each consisting of the doctor, patient, and nurse, which form the ecosystem as a whole. As a result, Bawarshi states we are rhetorical beings that act within these ecosystems. We are shaped by the rhetoric surrounding us and we act accordingly. We gather our impressions from rhetoric presented to us, which shapes our actions and perceptions. He also introduces exigence, motive, and intention. Motive operates on the conceptual level and exigence shapes our actions. (Bawarshi)

Reciprocity of genre[link]

People often recognize genre based on the characteristics that the situation offers. Amy Devitt states this when she says, "A genre is named because of its formal markers" (Devitt 10). However she also says, "the formal markers can be defined because a genre has been named" (Devitt 10). When we label something as a certain genre, we also flag these same characteristics as contributing to what we already believe the genre to be. These two quotes show how reciprocity functions within genre. Devitt displays the reciprocal nature of genre and situation according to the individual by using an example of a grocery store list. A question posed by this example is, is something a grocery list because it lists groceries or is it a grocery list because one person says it is a grocery list and we thus recognize all the items on the list as groceries? Though each possible answer to this raised question contradict one another, they are both correct. Similarly, individuals recognize the characteristics of the recurring rhetorical situations in the same way as they see them as affirmation of what they already know about the preexisting genre. The rhetorical attributes of the genre act as both objects which define and are defined by genre. In other words, genre and rhetorical situations are reciprocals of one another. Devitt focused on activity system of genre and that the participants situation, contexts and text are all mutually created "no one aspect fully determines the other." (Devitt)

Antecedent genres[link]

Written in 1975, Kathleen Hall Jamieson's "Antecedent Genre as Rhetorical Constraint" declares that discourse is determined by the Rhetorical Situation, as well as antecedent genres. Antecedent genres are genres of the past that are used as a basis to shape and form current rhetorical responses. When placed in an unprecedented situation, a rhetor can draw on antecedent genres of similar situations in order to guide their response. However, caution should be taken when drawing on antecedent genres because sometimes antecedent genres are capable of imposing powerful constraints (Jamieson 414). The intent of antecedent genres are to guide the rhetor toward a response consistent with situational demands, and if the situational demands are not the same as when the antecedent genre was created, the response to the situation might be inappropriate (Jamieson 414).

Through three examples of discourse, the papal encyclical, the early State of the Union Address, and congressional replies, she demonstrates how traces of antecedent genres can be found within each. These examples clarify how a rhetor will tend to draw from past experiences that are similar to the present situation in order to guide them how to act or respond when they are placed in an unprecedented situation. Jamieson explains, by use of these three examples, that choices of antecedent genre may not always be appropriate to the present situation. She discusses how antecedent genres place powerful constraints on the rhetor and may cause them to become "bound by the manacles of the antecedent genre" (Jamieson 414). These "manacles," she says, may range in level of difficultly to escape. Jamieson urges one to be careful when drawing on the past to respond to the present, because of the consequences that may follow ones choice of antecedent genre. She reiterates the intended outcome through her statement of "choice of an appropriate antecedent genre guides the rhetor toward a response consonant with situational demands" (Jamieson 414).

Social construct[link]

Bitzer's definition of exigence as "an imperfection marked by urgency... something waiting to be done" (Bitzer 6) ties in with Miller's idea of social action as the next step after an exigency is realized. Miller also points towards the theory that genres recur, based on Jamieson's observation that antecedent genres finding their way into new genres. More importantly, Miller takes on the bigger picture of a rhetorical situation in which all of these steps happen. "Situations are social constructs that are the result, not of 'perception,' but of definition" (Miller 156). From this, it is understood that social constructs define situations and, therefore, exigence is also socially situated.

Genre, also, understood in terms of social contexts provides greater meaning to each recurring situation; it essentially allows for differentiation, though past genres have a role in present and new genres. Through this differentiation, genre is allowed to continue evolving, just as social contexts continue to change with time. Bawarshi describes the way in which this happens as "communicants and their social environments are constantly in the process of reproducing one another" (Bawarshi 69). Rhetoric essentially works the same way, as seen in the example of writing Bawarshi provides, "writing is not a social act simply because it takes place in some social context; it is social because it is at work in shaping the very context within which it functions" (Bawarshi 70). Therefore, through social constructs, one can shape rhetorical works, and in turn, the works can shape the social context: "we create our contexts as we create our texts" (Bawarshi 70).

Genre as social action[link]

The concept of genre is not limited to classifications and lists. People interact within genres daily. Genre is determined based "on the action it is used to accomplish" by the individuals using that particular genre (Miller 152). The distance between the text or action of genre and its users does not have to be vast. People respond to exigencies provided by genre every day. Exigence is "a set of particular social patterns and expectations that provides a socially objectified motive for addressing" the recurring situation of a particular genre (Miller 158). Seeing genre as a social action provides the "keys to understanding how to participate in the actions of a community" (Miller 165). Carolyn Miller argues that, "a rhetorical sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse, but on the action it is used to accomplish" (Miller 151).

The idea that rhetorical situations define genre means that participants in genre make decisions based on commonalities and repeat those instances. Genre is not only about the form of but also the mere repetitiveness of similarities. The classroom setting exemplifies this. When students wish to speak, they raise their hands to signify that desire. Raising a hand is the correct response to speaking in turn in that particular social setting. A person at lunch with a group of friends would not raise their hand to speak because the social situation is different. Miller concludes that social actions are the response to "understanding how to participate in the actions of a community" (Miller 156).

Carolyn Miller builds on arguments made by other scholars while also contradicting Bitzer's argument by giving her readers five features to understand genre (Miller 163). She believes that if something is rhetorical, then there will be action. Not only will there be action, but this action will also be repeated. The repetition of action creates a regularized form of discourse. Miller would add that the result has more to do with the action accomplished by the situation. Miller recognizes that a person chooses to take a certain social action within a defined set of rules - rules set in place by that user. Lastly, a situation cannot dictate a response. Miller ends her article with the thought that genres are partly rhetorical education through her statement, "as a recurrent, significant action, a genre embodies an aspect of cultural rationality" (Miller 165). Here, Miller unknowingly encapsulates a future ideology about genre: that genres are created by culture. According to Mnotho Dlamini genre is basically a deep information in a particular context.

Tyranny of genre[link]

The phrase "tyranny of genre" comes from genre theorist Richard Coe, who wrote that "the 'tyranny of genre' is normally taken to signify how generic structures constrain individual creativity" (Coe 188). If genre functions as a taxonomic classification system, it could constrain individual creativity, since "the presence of many of the conventional features of a genre will allow a strong genre identification; the presence of fewer features, or the presence of features of other genres, will result in a weak or ambiguous genre identification" (Schauber 403). Under the classification-system concept of genre, placing a text into a genre is vital, since "every text is read according to a genre which governs its interpretation" (Schauber 401). The classification-system concept results in a polarization of responses to texts that do not fit neatly into a genre or exhibit features of multiple genres: "The status of genres as discursive institutions does create constraints that may make a text that combines or mixes genres appear to be a cultural monstrosity. Such a text may be attacked or even made a scapegoat by some as well as be defended by others" (LaCapra 220).

Under the more modern understanding of the concept of genre as "social action" à la Miller (Miller 152), a more situational approach to genre is enabled. This situational approach frees genre from the classification system, genre's "tyranny of genre". Relying on the importance of the rhetorical situation in the concept of genre results in an exponential expansion of genre study, which benefits literary analysis. One literature professor writes, "The use of the contemporary, revised genre idea [as social action] is a breath of fresh air, and it has opened important doors in language and literature pedagogy" (Bleich 130). Instead of a codified classification as the pragmatic application of genre, the new genre idea insists that "human agents not only have the creative capacities to reproduce past action, such as action embedded in genres, but also can respond to changes in their environment, and in turn change that environment, to produce under-determined and possibly unprecedented action, such as by modifying genres" (Killoran 72).

Stabilization, homogenization and fixity[link]

Never is there total stabilization in a recognized genre, nor are there instances that indicate a complete lack of homogenization. However, because of the relative similarities between the terms "stabilization" and "homogenization", the amount of stabilization or homogenization a certain genre maintains is based on opinion. Necessary discourse is, obviously, always needed and is thus considered perfectly stabilized. In rhetorical situation or antecedent genres, that which is unprecedented mostly leads to stable and predictable responses. Outside the natural setting of a given form of discourse, one may respond inappropriately due to an unrecognized alternate. The unrecognized alternate is created by the lack of homogenization or differing expectations in the presented rhetorical situation. (Jamieson)

Fixity is uncontrolled by a given situation and is deliberately utilized by the affected before the rhetorical situation occurs. Fixity almost always directly effects stabilization, and has little to no bearing on homogenization. The choice of discourse will provide a certain value of fixity, dependent on the specific choice. If a situation calls for more mediated responses, the fixity of the situation is more prevalent, and therefore is attributed with a stable demand of expectations. Stability nor fixity can be directly affected by the subject at hand. The only option is affecting homogenization which in turn, can positively or negatively affect stability. Directly choosing a fixed arena within genre inversely alters the homogenization of said chooser constituting as a new genre accompanied with modified genre subsets and a newly desired urgency. The same ideological theory can be applied to how one serves different purposes, creating either separate genres or modernized micro-genres. (Fairclough)

Culture[link]

Genre is embedded in culture, but may clash with it at times. There are occasions in which a cultural group may not be inclined to keep within the set structures of a genre. Anthony Pare’s studied Inuit social workers in "Genre and Identity: Individuals, Institutions and Ideology". In this study, Pare described the conflict between the genre of Inuit social workers’ record keeping forms and the cultural values that prohibited them from fully being able to fulfill the expectations of this genre. Amy Devitt further expands on the concept of culture in her 2004 essay, "A Theory of Genre" by adding “culture defines what situations and genres are likely or possible” (Devitt 24).

Genre not only coexists with culture, but also defines its very components. Genres abound in daily life and people often work within them unconsciously; people often take for granted their prominence and ever present residence in society. Devitt touches on Miller’s idea of situation, but expands on it and adds that the relationship with genre and situation is reciprocal. An individual may find him- or herself shaping the rhetorical situations, which in turn affects the rhetorical responses that arise out of the situation. Because the social workers worked closely with different families, they did not want to disclose many of the details that are standard in the genre of record keeping related to this field. Giving out such information would violate close cultural ties with the members of their community.

Popular culture[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Outside of the academic field, genre regularly affects societal popular culture. The mass media uses genre to classify forms of art such as music, film, television, books, etc. Favoritism plays an important part of distinguishing one genre from another; fans of Horror look differently upon comedy than fans of romance do. Genre has also been used to shape differences in cultural aspects of these popular subjects. American comedies are distinctly different from French ones, as country music is noticeably unlike Irish folk music. Genres sort media efficiently, especially when following trends set by society. From walking in to the nearest movie rental store to searching for music via iTunes, genres are applicable in everyday life as organized classification systems. Even in places such as grocery stores or clothing stores, genres are utilized to form an ordered flow to determine the differences between smaller classes within one particular subject, pointing out the differences between fruit and dairy, and punk to mod. In modern culture, sub-genres often arise to prevent a feeling of homogenization and loss of identity. As the rate of global communication continues to increase, the creation of new pop-culture sub-genres per year does in near perfect tandem.

Audiences[link]

Although genres are not always precisely definable, genre considerations are one of the most important factors in determining what a person will see or read. The classification properties of genre can attract or repel potential users depending on the individual's understanding of a genre.

Genre creates an expectation in that expectation is met or not. Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites. Inversely, audiences may call out for change in a antecedent genre and create an entirely new genre.

The term may be used in categorizing web pages, like "newspage" and "fanpage", with both very different layout, audience, and intention (Rosso, 2008). Some search engines like Vivísimo try to group found web pages into automated categories in an attempt to show various genres the search hits might fit.

Visual arts[link]

Genre Painting

The term "genre" is much used in the history and criticism of visual art, but in art history has meanings that overlap rather confusingly. Genre painting is a term for paintings where the main subject features human figures to whom no specific identity attaches - in other words, figures are not portraits, characters from a story, or allegorical personifications. These are distinguished from staffage: incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting. Genre painting may also be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, and other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings.

The concept of the "hierarchy of genres" was a powerful one in artistic theory, especially between the 17th and 19th centuries. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a central role in academic art. The genres in hierarchical order are:

• History painting, including narrative religious mythological and allegorical subjects
• Portrait painting
• Genre painting or scenes of everyday life
• Landscape (landscapists were the "common footmen in the Army of Art" according to the Dutch theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten) and cityscape
• Animal painting
• Still life

Linguistics[link]

In philosophy of language, figuring very prominently in the works of philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin's basic observations were of "speech genres" (the idea of heteroglossia), modes of speaking or writing that people learn to mimic, weave together, and manipulate (such as "formal letter" and "grocery list", or "university lecture" and "personal anecdote"). In this sense genres are socially specified: recognized and defined (often informally) by a particular culture or community. The work of Georg Lukács also touches on the nature of literary genres, appearing separately but around the same time (1920s–1930s) as Bakhtin. Norman Fairclough has a similar concept of genre that emphasizes the social context of the text: Genres are "different ways of (inter)acting discoursally" (Fairclough, 2003: 26).

However, this is just one way of conceiving genre. Charaudeau & Maingueneau determine four different analytic conceptualizations of genre.
A text's genre may be determined by its:

1. Linguistic function.
2. Formal traits.
3. Textual organization.
4. Relation of communicative situation to formal and organizational traits of the text (Charaudeau & Maingueneau, 2002:278-280).

Literature[link]

In literature, genre has been known as an intangible taxonomy. This taxonomy implies a concept of containment or that an idea will be stable forever.The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Gérard Genette, a French literary theorist and author of The Architext, describes Plato as creating three imitational genres: dramatic dialogue, pure narrative and epic (a mixture of dialogue and narrative). Lyric poetry, the fourth and final type of Greek literature, was excluded by Plato as a non-mimetic mode. Aristotle later revised Plato's system by eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode and distinguishing by two additional criteria: the object to be imitated, as objects could be either superior or inferior, and the medium of presentation such as words, gestures or verse. Essentially, the three categories of mode, object, and medium can be visualized along an XYZ axis. Excluding the criteria of medium, Aristotle's system distinguished four types of classical genres: tragedy (superior-dramatic dialogue), epic (superior-mixed narrative), comedy (inferior-dramatic dialogue), and parody (inferior-mixed narrative). Genette continues by explaining the later integration of lyric poetry into the classical system during the romantic period, replacing the now removed pure narrative mode. Lyric poetry, once considered non-mimetic, was deemed to imitate feelings, becoming the third leg of a new tripartite system: lyrical, epical, and dramatic dialogue. This system, which came to "dominate all the literary theory of German romanticism (and therefore well beyond)…" (38), has seen numerous attempts at expansion or revision. However, more ambitious efforts to expand the tripartite system resulted in new taxonomic systems of increasing scope and complexity. Genette reflects upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to…those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings the whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse" (74). Taxonomy allows for a structured classification system of genre, as opposed to a more contemporary rhetorical model of genre.

References[link]

• Bawarshi, Anis. "The Ecology of Genre." Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches. Eds. Christian R. Weisser and Sydney I. Dobrin. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. 69-80.
• Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1:1 (1968): 1-14.
• Bleich, David. "The of Language and the Pedagogy of Exchange." Pedagogy 1.1 (2001): 117-141.
• Charaudeau, P.; Maingueneau, D. & Adam, J. Dictionnaire d'analyse du discours Seuil, 2002.
• Coe, Richard. "'An Arousing and Fulfillment of Desires': The Rhetoric of Genre in the Process Era - and Beyond." Genre and the New Rhetoric. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway. London: Taylor & Francis, 1994. 181-190.
• Devitt, Amy J. "A Theory of Genre." Writing Genres. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. 1-32.
• Fairclough, Norman. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research Routledge, 2003.
• Genette, Gérard. The Architext: An Introduction. 1979. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
• Jamieson, Kathleen M. "Antecedent Genre as Rhetorical Constraint." Quarterly Journal of Speech 61 (1975): 406‐415.
• Killoran, John B. "The Gnome In The Front Yard and Other Public Figurations: Genres of Self-Presentation on Personal Home Pages." Biography 26.1 (2003): 66-83.
• Коробова А.Г. Теория жанров в музыкальной науке: история и современность. Москва: Московская гос. консерватория, 2007
• LaCapra, Dominick. "History and Genre: Comment." New Literary History 17.2 (1986): 219-221.
• Miller, Carolyn. "Genre as Social Action." Quarterly Journal of Speech. 70 (1984): 151-67.
• Rosso, Mark. "User-based Identification of Web Genres." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59 (2008): 1053-1072.
• Schauber, Ellen, and Ellen Spolsky. "Stalking a Generative Poetics." New Literary History 12.3 (1981): 397-413.

Further reading[link]

• Pare, Anthony. "Genre and Identity." The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre: Strategies for Stability and Change. Eds. Richard M. Coe, Lorelei Lingard, and Tatiana Teslenko. Creskill, N.J. Hampton Press, 2002.
• Sullivan, Ceri (2007) 'Disposable elements? Indications of genre in early modern titles', Modern Language Review 102.3, pp. 641–53
• Swirski, Peter (2005). From Lowbrow to Nobrow. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University Press.

External links[link]

Look up genre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Development of the Genre Concept
• Genres of film at the Internet Movie Database
• Helping Children Understand Literary Genres
• Rhetorica Genre
• Museum of Broadcast Communications
• Dictionary.com

Don Hertzfeldt
Don Hertzfeldt at his animation desk, during production of "The Meaning of Life"
Born	(1976-08-01) August 1, 1976 (age 35) Fremont, California
Nationality	American
Field	Independent film, Animation
Training	University of California, Santa Barbara
Works	Billy's Balloon, Rejected, Everything Will Be OK
Influenced by	Stanley Kubrick, Monty Python, David Lynch, Edward Gorey, Buster Keaton
Awards	2001 Academy Award nominee 1998 Palme d'Or nominee: Cannes Film Festival 2007 Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking: Sundance Film Festival winner of over 150 other film festival awards

Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is the creator of many short animated films, including Everything Will Be OK and the Academy-Award nominated Rejected. His animated films have received over 150 awards and have been presented around the world. Before the age of thirty, his films were already the subject of several career retrospectives. He was the youngest director named in the "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They" list of "The 100 Important Animation Directors" of all time,^[1] and in 2010 he received the San Francisco International Film Festival's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 33.

In 2012, Hertzfeldt was ranked # 16 in an animation industry and historian survey of the "Top 100 Most Influential People in Animation." ^[2]

The popularity of Hertzfeldt's work is unprecedented in independent animation and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture.^[3] In 2009, the Sundance Film Festival noted, "If cinephiles think shorts don't generate the same sort of hype and fanbase as feature films, they obviously haven't heard of Don Hertzfeldt."^[4]

Hertzfeldt has recently begun a 30-city theatrical tour in support of his latest short film, the 23 minute It's Such a Beautiful Day, the third and final chapter to his 2006 film Everything Will Be OK. In 2008 and 2009, Hertzfeldt went on a similar 22-city theatrical tour in support of the second chapter in the series, I am so proud of you. "An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" presented a retrospective of his animated films followed by the regional premiere(s) of the new film and an onstage interview and audience chat with him.^[5]

Hertzfeldt lives in Austin, Texas. He spent many years in Santa Barbara, California after attending college there. He keeps a blog on his website that has been continually updated and archived since 1999.

Early life[link]

Hertzfeldt was born in Fremont, California where he attended local schools and drew homemade comic books. At 15, he began to teach himself animation with a small video camera.^[6] Two of Hertzfeldt's teenage VHS cartoons can be seen on the "Bitter Films: Volume 1" DVD collection.

From a 2001 interview, Don says: "I watched films relentlessly growing up, and was fascinated by visual effects. My family used to make outings to animation festivals in San Francisco every year, so credit my parents for that. I ended up seeing all of those classic [independent] cartoons throughout my teenage years. But animation production for me sort of just happened as a by-product. I've been drawing things and writing things all my life, and animating my stories was always cheaper to do and looked more interesting than low budget live action."^[7]

Hertzfeldt has never held any job other than creating his animated films, not even in his youth.^[8] His earliest video animations found film festival exposure, and in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara he was able to find international distribution for each of his 16mm student films.

Technique[link]

Hertzfeldt's work commonly features hand-drawn stick figures, in stories of black humor, surrealism, and tragicomedy. Some films contain deeper existential and philosophical themes while others are more straightforwardly slapstick and absurdist. His animation is created traditionally with pen and paper, often with minimal digital aid. Hertzfeldt uses antique 16mm or 35mm film cameras to photograph his drawings and very often employs old-fashioned special effect techniques such as multiple exposures, in-camera mattes, and experimental photography (significantly used in works such as Everything Will Be OK and I am so proud of you). While some of these techniques are as established as an occasional stop-motion animation sequence (as in Intermission in the Third Dimension) or a universe of moving stars created by back-lit pin holes (The Meaning of Life), other effects are new innovations on classical methods, as seen with the rippling and blurring paper landscapes of Rejected or the in-camera compositing of multiple, split-screen windows of action in the Everything Will Be OK films.^[9][10][11]

Since 1999, Hertzfeldt has photographed all his films on a 35mm Richardson animation camera stand, believed to be the same camera that photographed many of the early Peanuts cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s.^[12] Built in the late 1940s, it is reportedly one of the last remaining functioning cameras of its kind left in America (if not the world), and Hertzfeldt finds it to be a crucial element in the creation of his films and their unique visuals.^[13]

Discussing film and digital technology with The New York Times, Hertzfeldt noted:

I don't know why these things are always framed as a big dumb cage match: Hand-drawn versus computers, film versus digital. We have over 100 years now of amazing film technology to play with, I don't understand why any artists would want to throw any of their tools out of the box. Many people assume that because I shoot on film and animate on paper I must be doing things the hard way, when in fact my last four movies would have been visually impossible to produce digitally. The only thing that matters is what actually winds up on the big screen, not how you got it there. You could make a cartoon in crayons about a red square that falls in unrequited love with a blue circle, and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house if you know how to tell a story.^[14]

It's not unusual for Hertzfeldt to single-handedly write, direct, produce, animate, photograph, edit, perform voices, record and mix sound, and/or compose music for one of his films, at times requiring years to complete a single short. The animation alone for one of his films may often require tens of thousands of drawings.

Hertzfeldt frequently scores his pictures with classical music and opera. The music of Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Smetana, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and Wagner have all appeared in his films. On occasion, Hertzfeldt has also scored portions of his films himself, with a guitar or keyboard.

Popularity and influence[link]

A line around the block for An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt

Hertzfeldt's early films have been credited with being a prominent influence on surrealism and absurdism in animation in the 2000s, as well as influencing Adult Swim style animated comedy.^[15] In 2008, Comedy Central noted his work as having "influenced an entire generation of filmmakers."^[16]

His more recent films, such as The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, and I am so Proud of You, expanded upon his signature style of dark humor to explore deeper themes of existentialism and life and death philosophy. Critics have favorably compared these shorts to the work of Stanley Kubrick^[17] and David Lynch,^[18] respectively. Everything Will Be OK was described as "probably the best work he's done in his very incredible and consistently amazing young career."^[19]

Hertzfeldt's films are regularly found in film festivals around the world, touring animation programs like the Animation Show, and on DVD collections. The cartoons are also featured occasionally on television: MTV, Bravo, Via X, Sundance Channel, IFC, Showtime, and the Cartoon Network being a few channels that have carried his work internationally.

The popularity of Hertzfeldt's shorts has led to many Internet bootlegs, bringing his work to an audience of millions. Though he's unhappy with the poor quality most of these online videos offer (as well as the frequent re-editing of them), he says he is not interested in "harassing fans." In the FAQ of his website, Hertzfeldt simply notes that movies are not meant to be seen on the Internet: "If you've only seen a film downgraded on the Internet or some strange miniature device, in many ways you haven't really seen it yet. YouTube is great for home videos of your cat falling off the roof but it is not really the proper setting for "cinema"... Movies are meant to be seen in the dark, hopefully with an audience, and with your undivided attention - this last one is non-negotiable."^[20] Recently however, Hertzfeldt has allowed "official" versions of The Meaning of Life and Everything will be OK to appear online in high quality on sites like MUBI and YouTube. Wisdom Teeth also debuted online after being acquired by Showtime.

Hertzfeldt prefers to not sell any of his animation artwork. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his website Bitter Films annually auctioned off artwork instead to raise thousands of dollars for local Santa Barbara charities. Other original drawings have been occasionally given away through the Bitter Films online store through special promotions. Because Hertzfeldt also rarely does signings, his artwork is very rare for animation collectors or casual fans to own.

Student films, 1995-1998[link]

Hertzfeldt made four 16mm animated student films while majoring in film at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ah, L'Amour and Genre were produced at the ages of 18 and 19. Ah, L'Amour would win the HBO Comedy Arts Festival Grand Prize for "World's Funniest Cartoon." ^[21]

His first dialogue short, Lily and Jim, was released in 1997, and tells the story of a disastrous blind date, rife with awkward conversations. Its partially improvised vocal performances helped the short win twenty five awards, including the Grand Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival.^[22]

His last student cartoon, Billy's Balloon, is about an inexplicable attack on small children by malevolent balloons. It was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the1999 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Grand Jury Award at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival. In total it won thirty three awards.^[23]

The popularity of each student short at film and animation festivals - and eventually around the world from screening on MTV and other networks - helped fund the next one, and eventually financed the production of his first film after college.

Independent animation, 2000-2009[link]

[edit] Rejected

Soon after graduating from film school, Hertzfeldt purchased his own 35mm rostrum camera, and made his next animated short, Rejected. Released in theaters in 2000, the short won dozens of awards, was nominated for an Oscar, and is an enduring cult classic that is frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture.^[24] Fans of the cartoon have been known to wear costumes, re-enact their favorite scenes in fan films, and some have had tattoos made of their favorite characters.^[25] Public screenings of the short sometimes become a "Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque feedback loop" of fans reciting favorite lines back at the screen.^[26] The short's enduring popularity has led the film to be described as "this generation's A Hard Day's Night".^[27]

The film presents itself as a reel of rejected commercial work by a fictional version of Don Hertzfeldt. The commissioned animated vignettes grow more and more abstract and inappropriate as the animator suffers a mental breakdown, until they literally fall apart.

Although the film is of course fictional and Hertzfeldt has never done commercial work, he did receive many offers to do television commercials after Billy's Balloon garnered international attention and acclaim. Hertzfeldt is an artist with anti-corporate leanings and in appearances has often told the humorous story of how he was tempted to produce the worst possible cartoons he could come up with for the companies, make off with their money, and see if they would actually make it to air. Eventually this became the germ for Rejected's theme of a collection of cartoons so bad they were rejected by advertising agencies, leading to their creator's breakdown.

[edit] The Animation Show

In 2003, Hertzfeldt created The Animation Show with Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge. It was a biennial North American touring festival that brought independent animated short films to more movie theaters than any distributor in history. The programs were personally curated by Hertzfeldt and Judge. A second Animation Show edition toured throughout 2005, featuring Hertzfeldt's short film The Meaning of Life and new films by animators like Peter Cornwell and Georges Schwizgebel. The third season of The Animation Show began its nationwide release in January 2007, featuring new work by animators Joanna Quinn and Bill Plympton, as well as Hertzfeldt's own Everything Will Be OK.

A stated goal of The Animation Show was to regularly "free the work of these independent artists from the dungeons of Internet exhibition", and bring them into proper movie theaters where most of the short films were meant to be seen. The Animation Show has meanwhile launched a supplemental DVD series of animated short films, with content that often varies from the annual theatrical programs. These DVDs are distributed by MTV.

In a March 2008 entry in his blog, Hertzfeldt announced he had decided to leave The Animation Show, after having programmed (and contributing films to) three tours. A fourth season of the program was released in theaters in summer 2008, with no involvement from him.^[28]

[edit] The Meaning of Life

Almost four years in the making, Hertzfeldt's twelve minute The Meaning of Life premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and toured film and animation festivals in 2005-06. Though its abstract nature puzzled some critics, it received almost universally positive reviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the film "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey."^[29]

In the film, the evolution of the human race is traced from prehistory (mankind as blob forms), through today (mankind as teeming crowds of selfish, fighting, or lost individuals), to hundreds of millions of years into the future as our species evolves into countless new forms; all of them still behaving the same way. The film concludes in the extreme future, with two creatures (apparently an adult and child subspecies of future human), having a conversation about the meaning of life on a colorful shore.

In 2009, Hertzfeldt noted, "I don't often make the same sort of movie twice in a row. It's always been whatever's next in my head. From a commercial standpoint I guess I’ve made some pretty inscrutable decisions, like following up 'Rejected' with a sprawling abstract film about human evolution, but it's really just been whichever ideas won't go away at the time. There's always a lot of new things I’d like to try..."^[30]

[edit] The Everything will be OK films

Everything Will Be OK was released in 2006 and was Hertzfeldt's most critically successful piece to date, receiving his strongest reviews. The 17-minute animated short was based on his character "Bill" from his webcomic "Temporary Anesthetics".^[31] The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius."^[32] The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones. Variety film critic Robert Koehler named Everything Will Be OK one of the "Best Films of 2007." ^[33]

Everything will be OK is the first chapter of a three-part story about Bill, a young man whose daily routines, perceptions, and dreams are illustrated onscreen through multiple split-screen windows. Bill's seemingly mundane life, narrated in humorous and dramatic anecdotes, gradually grows dark as we learn he may be suffering from a possibly fatal mental disorder.

The film's scenes are often divided into multiple windows of action on the screen at once, against a background of pure black. Animated still photographs are also incorporated inside certain windows, as well as a handful of the colorful special effects and experimental film techniques that Hertzfeldt first utilized in The Meaning of Life. As with all his films, no computers were used in creating the picture; all of the multiple window effects were captured in-camera.

Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, the Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the London Animation Festival, and 34 other awards.

I am so proud of you, the second chapter in the story, was released in autumn 2008. Upon its release, Hertzfeldt traveled with I am so proud of you and a selection of his other films to 22 cities on a sold-out American tour (with two stops in the UK and three in Canada). I am so proud of you also played at film festivals throughout 2009 and has to date won 27 awards.^[34]

The third and final chapter, It's such a beautiful day, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Hertzfeldt is currently traveling with It's such a beautiful day on another American theatrical tour of his work.

Current work[link]

Chapter 3 of Everything Will Be OK, titled It's Such a Beautiful Day, has been recently completed and is now screening in select theaters and film festivals.

In October 2009, Hertzfeldt premiered an unannounced, new five minute comedy short entitled Wisdom Teeth at the "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival. It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, where it was awarded a Special Jury Mention.^[28] In 2010, it appeared as part of a series on the Showtime Network called 'Short Stories.'

According to his blog, Hertzfeldt has been developing a feature length animated project. He has also made references to working on a graphic novel.^[28]

Awards and honors[link]

Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival than any other filmmaker, with six: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I am so proud of you, Wisdom Teeth, and It's Such a Beautiful Day.

In 1999, at the age of 22, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Billy's Balloon, where he was the youngest director in competition. The same year Billy's Balloon won the Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury Award.

In 2000, at the age of 23, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for his fifth short film, Rejected.

In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch."

In 2007, Hertzfeldt's Everything Will Be OK won the Jury Award for Short Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival, a prize rarely given to an animated film.^[35]

In 2007, according to the animation industry website Cartoon Brew, Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but did not make the ultimate list of five nominees.

In 2007, Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the historically important original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work.

In 2009, Rejected was the only short film named one of the "Films of the Decade" by Salon.com.^[36] In 2010, it was noted as one of the five "most innovative animated films of the past ten years" by The Huffington Post.^[37]

In April 2010, at the age of 33, Hertzfeldt was the youngest filmmaker to ever receive the San Francisco International Film Festival's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award, "for his unique contributions to film and animation", and "for challenging the boundaries of his craft."^[38] Past recipients of the POV award include Errol Morris, Guy Maddin, Jan Švankmajer, and Faith Hubley.

In 2012, Hertzfeldt received the Ted M.Larson memorial award from the Fargo Film Festival, for his contributions to film culture.^[39]

DVD releases[link]

Hertzfeldt self-produces and self-distributes his own DVDs. With these sales, fans of his work are literally financing his next films, with no middle men in between.^[32]

An exhaustive DVD collection of all of Hertzfeldt's films from 1995 to 2005 was released in 2006. The short films were remastered and restored in high definition from the original film negatives. The DVD was made available only to fans via the Bitter Films website, with the first 750 pre-orderers receiving an "exclusive mystery gift" (either a 35mm clipping from Rejected that was autographed by Don, or a unique drawing by Don on a post-it note).

The DVD marked the first time his student films such as Genre and Lily and Jim were made widely available to the public - many of these works were only previously found on limited-release VHS collections of animated shorts, long out of print.

The special features for Bitter Films Volume One: 1995-2005 include:

• The documentary, Watching Grass Grow: Animating 'The Meaning of Life'
• The Animation Show Trilogy cartoons
• Lily and Jim deleted dialogues and outtakes
• Rejected trivia captions
• The Meaning of Life special effects audio commentary
• An extensive 140+ page "Archive" section, featuring rare footage from Hertzfeldt's earliest cartoons, original pencil tests, deleted sequences, abandoned footage, and sketch to scene comparisons
• Lily and Jim reunion commentary with the original voice actors
• Rejected audio commentary
• Preview of Everything Will Be OK
• The Animation Show interviews with Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt
• Ah, L'Amour bonus 2005 soundtrack
• 16 page retrospective booklet, featuring liner notes by Hertzfeldt
• Original animated menus and transitions

Bitter Films' first DVD release was a 2001 limited edition DVD "single" of the popular short Rejected. Everything Will Be OK was similarly released as a DVD "single" in 2007, and I am so proud of you in September, 2009.

View on commercialism[link]

Hertzfeldt has been offered numerous lucrative commercial deals, including ad campaigns for Cingular Wireless and United Airlines, which he has declined. He has made various comments over the years about his distaste for corporate America and promises his fans he will never be involved with the commercial world.^[20] He has said, "The goal isn’t to try and make as much money as I possibly can, the goal is to try and make good movies."

In a March 2009 blog entry, Hertzfeldt compared filmmaking to his love of hiking and exploring new places: something he does just because he "enjoys doing it and will probably always enjoy doing it." He compared doing commercials to being paid to not go explore the woods, but to walk around someone's house eight hours a day wearing a sandwich board with a picture of a product on it. "Money's not the reason I take walks. It doesn't really factor into it. I take walks because I enjoy doing it. It's something I'd do if I was rich and it's something I'd do if I were poor." ^[40]

Nevertheless, several international ad campaigns have borrowed heavily from his unique style and bear enough resemblance to Hertzfeldt's work as to be mistaken for it. The most well-known instance of this is a series of 2004–2009 television ads for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, which use black and white stick figures, "squiggly" animation, surreal humor, and even an occasional crumpling paper effect, all very similar to Hertzfeldt's style. Despite all these similarities, Hertzfeldt was not involved in any way.^[41] In Canada, the not-for-profit corporation Encorp has used a Hertzfeldt-like style of short animation clips on TV and the Internet to promote its "Don't Mess With Karma" campaign to encourage recycling.^[42] One of the latest ad campaigns to use an art style similar to Hertzfeldt's is Krystal fast food restaurant to promote their Blitz Energy Drink.^[43]

Filmography[link]

• Ah, L'Amour (1995)
• Genre (1996)
• Lily and Jim (1997)
• Billy's Balloon (1998)
• Rejected (2000)
• Welcome to the Show/Intermission in the Third Dimension/The End of the Show (2003) (cartoons created to book-end the first "Animation Show")
• The Meaning of Life (2005)
• Everything Will Be OK (2006)
• I am so proud of you (2008)
• Wisdom Teeth (2010)
• It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)

References[link]