The Genre Code of Realism: the recent development of the alien invasion movie
The Genre Code of Realism: the recent development of the alien invasion movie
This chapter addresses the genre code of realism, which brings with it a fundamentally different order of realism. Not one concerned so much with the real social-historical world but one which revolves instead around our expectations of a particular genre. Here the starting point lies within the realm of a fiction genre itself rather than in lived experience of the real world as rendered in the language of scripted fiction. The chapter shows that when words like 'real' and 'realism' are cited for, say, a science-fiction film, what is meant is more directly aligned to expectations of the science-fiction genre than to notions of the real world. It then looks at examples of science fiction, all of which belong to its alien invasion subgenre: District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009), Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010), and Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011).
Keywords: genre realism, realism, fiction genre, scripted fiction, science-fiction film, science-fiction genre, alien invasion, District 9, Monsters, Attack the Block
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
