What Marketers can learn from cinematic generic conventions and their evolution.
I’m quite a big fan of mental models and have recently become slightly obsessed with Farnam Street’s volumes of mental models. They present the most prevalent mental models across general thinking concepts, physics, chemistry, and biology, and more recently, systems and mathematics. All of the models are related to real world examples demonstrating how these ways of thinking have broader applications beyond the realms that created them.
An area that I think offers an interesting mental model for thinking about brands and categories, is film genre evolution. This is the process of generic conventions being invented, established, refined, and then finally becoming pastiche. You may not necessarily be conscious of generic conventions, but you will absolutely recognise them when watching a film, and you will certainly be aware when they are played with to create something new or unexpected.
The French art historian Henri Focillon described how culture forms across four main stages. Firstly, the experimental stage where new conventions are created, secondly the classical stage where these conventions are accepted as ubiquitous, thirdly the refinement stage where established conventions are adapted with new purpose, and finally the baroque stage where established conventions are used in such an extreme manner, they are almost overpowering.
The film theorist Thomas Schatz applied these stages of cultural change to the evolution of film genres and demonstrated how genres like horror are established through the evolution of genre-specific filmmaking elements including iconography, narrative themes, framing, and character roles.
The conventions of the horror movie genre include the use of the colour red, which is obviously associated with blood in this context. There is also a strong use of vertical framing, which is often used to visually trap characters creating a sense of claustrophobia and tension on screen. From a character point of view, female characters are usually characterised as victims, with their sexuality often used as a justification for their deaths. The exception to this rule is the role of the ‘final girl’ who is characterised as savvy, capable, unconventional, and resourceful. As a genre, horror has always been deeply exploitative in its treatment of female characters. Looking at props, while we can assume there will be a variety of weapons (or teeth) used to murder our characters, the scene dressing is also a place where we see recurring themes. Mirrors are used to establish duality in characters and to show that there is something about them which we don’t know yet. And finally, in terms of setting, horror movies often use mazes to create the impression of characters being trapped or lost, unable to escape their pursuer. There are many other generic conventions of the genre, and I’m sure you could think of more, but I’ll list these five for now to show how films have used them at different stages of the genre evolution.
At the experimental stage, we see generic conventions being invented and used for the first time as a storytelling tool. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, we saw the introduction of mirrors being used to denote duality. The character of Marion is framed multiple times with mirrors in the opening of the film in order to dramatise her internal moral battles. When she arrives at the motel, Norman Bates is framed with her through a mirror. This development of Bates entering the mirror alongside her introduces his own duality, perhaps foreshadowing what happens next. With mirrors established as a generic convention in horror movies, Harrison Ford’s character in What Lies Beneath is often framed in a mirror, suggesting he is hiding something from the other characters and the audience. This is a more classical use of the convention. In Evil Dead 2, Bruce Campbell’s character quite literally battles his own reflection, which is spawned by a mirror. Here we can see how the established convention is being refined in order to create new meaning. And finally, at the baroque stage, Stanley Kubrick filled The Shining with mirror images, symmetry, and yes, mirrors. From the ghostly twin girls to Danny’s lipstick REDRUM writing on the bathroom mirror. At this final stage, the convention becomes deliberately over the top.
Looking at another example of how these conventions are created and then evolve, the concept of the ‘final girl’ character was introduced at the experimental stage of the genre cycle in the film Friday The 13th. While other female characters are characterised by their sexuality, the character of Adrienne King is shown to be repairing a cabin with a hammer. Her resourcefulness is suggesting that she will survive the film, which she does, albeit to be killed in the sequel, perhaps as a refinement of our expectations of her character. Wes Craven would later toy with our preconceptions of the final girl role in his film Scream. Drew Barrymore was cast in the lead role of Casey Becker, who the audience expected to survive the movie due to Drew being such a huge star at the time. However, she was killed in the opening act completely subverting our expectations and creating a new sense of horror from the unpredictability of the narrative.
Finally, the use of mazes is prevalent in horror settings. Whether it’s being lost in the woods in The Blair Witch Project or Dog Soldiers, or being trapped in a labyrinthian cave complex in The Descent, the sense of being lost or trapped is key to making viewers feel uneasy. The film It refines the use of mazes by making this sense of inescapable doom relative to the character’s proximity to Pennywise. The closer they are to him, the less control they have over their surroundings. This is a refinement of the maze convention. At the baroque end of the spectrum, Kubrick had the carpets of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining designed to be mazes, the layout of the hotel was itself a maze, and the climax of the film unfolded in an actual maze. Again, we can see how these conventions become expectations, which are then tools for filmmakers to rely on for continuity, or for them to twist, subvert, or even double down on in order to create new meaning or narrative tension. Drew Goddard’s Cabin In The Woods is a baroque horror movie as it quite consciously opens a dialogue with the viewer about the conventions of horror movies and almost systematically calls them out one by one throughout the film.
At this point, I’m sure you’re probably wondering, “what the hell has this got to do with brands?” Ok, that’s a fair question, but let’s return to the purpose of mental models. They aren’t guides, they’re useful reference tools that we can use in parallel fields to evoke differentiated thinking.
I think there are a number of ways generic conventions, and the evolution of conventions might be used by marketers. Firstly, they could be used to map your category.
What are the generic conventions of your category? Are there recurring themes? Are there recurring visuals? How might this affect your distinctive assets? Could you refine them or use them differently to subvert conventions or people’s expectations and draw attention?
Can you ask the same question beyond communications? What are the conventions around products, customer experience, or pricing?
Who is experimenting with or adding new conventions to the category? Who is refining the conventions?
You might look to map the category around the conventions and begin plotting yourself and your competitors along the four stages I outlined above.
From a practical point of view, this exercise could be a useful tool during your annual planning, or it could be something you introduce into a brand workshop during a brand refresh. Again, I’m not saying this will get you to an immediate answer. It is not a guide, nor is it a map. But what it could be is a different model for evoking new thinking. A different mental model from the methodologies you might typically use.
And let’s face it if you’re going to run an all-day brand strategy workshop, perhaps getting people to talk about their favourite movies might make the process a little more fun, or at least a little less dull?
