the expectation that the good guys will wear white clothing and the bad guys will wear black clothing. It was not until the 1950's and 1960's that Hollywood films were discussed in terms of the director's personal vision, world view, and individual style.
With this transition from popular art to high art came much concern with concepts of iconography and visual conventions. Patterns of imagery came into use which closely identified with the particular genre as well as the specific style of the producer. Along with this increased sophistication came the economic necessity of packaging a standardized film product that could be marketed to the public as a recognizable particular genre. Thus, teams of stars, directors, and writers of particular studios became specifically geared toward a large scale industrial production resulting in an easily-recognized film type (Neale, 1980, p. 14). It is understood within genre theory that there may not be very much relationship between the particular genre and historical fact. That is, a western film does not describe exactly what happened in American history, although some elements of truth are contained in the western genre.
Andrew Tudor discusses film iconography in terms of archetypal elements which themselves are always in flux. Ritualistic gunfights and revenge themes are examples of such archetypes (p. 4). The audience fully understands the western film type and is able to respond to departures from it or adherences to it with humor. Such humor is not possible without such shared knowledge. This knowledge is cultural, and thus, moves the film form into the position of a cultural institution.
We cannot speak of an auteur breaking the rules of a genre unless we know what those rules might be. As the film creators and film-viewing public become increasingly more sophisticated, film genre is a term that must be seriously considered in relation to a body of knowledge and theory ab...