TASK 2 Christian Metz's Theory

Christian Metz was a French film theorist who categorized stages of the development of film. He wrote that there are four stages in the film industry: Classical, Experimental, Parody and Deconstruction phases. This theory is easily applicable to mainly the horror genre

Classical is the first stage of his theory. This would be just around the start of Hollywood, where there was no real definition to genre, and if there was, there was very little. It was before any real conventions were set out, and people were just making films. However these classical films would in fact set the standards on conventions, some examples of this would range from the very earliest of horror films up to later films such as Psycho, films that defined the genre

Experimental was the phase where conventions were followed and slightly adapted to what audience wanted to see at the time, this phase ranges from around the time of the start of the slasher genre, with eventually became tired out, with countless sequels for nearly identical films, which made way for Parody.

Parody was taking the tied and worn conventions of horror, in this case, as audiences were tied of slashers, which in the time before dominated horror, Films such as Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, which took a more humoured twist on the genre. This could be consider a sort of break period in genres, a gap of which would leave a break, to leave room for new ideas to develop.

Deconstruction could be considered as the rebuilding of the conventions of a genre, and even the blending of them. In horror, it was clear that newer films re-imagined the genre for modern audiences, films such as Saw and even more recent films such as Signs.