How to Survive the Creative Embarrassment of Working in Genre
A host of filmmakers, novelists, and comic book writers from around the globe weigh in about the value of genre storytelling and how these stories are still disrespected by many in the arts
I’ve worked on genre projects on three different continents now — in five different countries — and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard producers and even filmmakers mutter some version of, “This project has genre elements, but it’s not really genre.” When these snobby types do get around to realizing that they’re actually working on a genre film or TV series — gasp! — they still can’t just come out and say it. Instead, they’ll offer up something like, “Oh, but it’s very elevated,” as if genre, by definition, is exclusively for knuckle-draggers, pimply geeks, and other pathetic cultural cretins.
The same thing happens in publishing where “literary fiction” reigns supreme as the label everyone wants slapped onto their work. But if you write something “smart enough” for its readers that also possesses degrading aspects that could confuse it with (gasp!) science-fiction or horror or such, then you might get put in the mysterious “speculative fiction” box. Nobody has ever been able to explain to me what speculative fiction is, but it might also include “magical realism” — another label that might be given to literary fiction-adjacent work featuring fantastical elements. Don’t get me started on how critics respond to any of these “lesser” kinds of stories. It’s all too absurd, if you ask me. A labored, desperate dance by those with high opinions of themselves and what constitutes taste to avoid the embarrassment of being associated with tasteless genres like science fiction, horror, crime, fantasy, and so on and so forth and, well, you get it.
After years of being exhausted by this intellectually shallow bullshit, I decided to find out how other artists feel about it. Which is why this September, I asked eighteen other artists — filmmakers, authors, and comic book writers/artists — this specific question:
Let’s talk about genre, or rather how it’s discussed in the mediums in which we work, by readers, by critics, and by our peers and collaborators such as publishers and producers. For most of my life and career, I’ve found it’s a term that suggests something vaguely inferior, a handicap to somehow overcome. We then came up with labels to help the concept become more respectable, such as “speculative fiction” or “elevated genre” or, hell, we just slap the word “art” on it. Tell me, what does genre mean to you as an idea and a storytelling approach?
Below, you will find the responses I received. In addition to the variety of mediums these artists create in, they represent a diverse range of voices and cultural backgrounds from across the globe - including the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Canada. Hopefully, their perspectives and experiences will be of some help to you as you navigate your own creative journeys.
SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU (author, HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK)
I’ve lectured heavily on this subject, and it’s something that I think many writers/artists see as a great frustration. For those writing in what might be called “harder” genre (think space opera or high fantasy), there’s this lingering stigma from the pulp magazine era that these stories are, by default, less serious, less artistic, and less deserving of praise. Look at the history of any major award in any narrative medium and you’ll see glaring omissions thanks to genre stereotypes and how we view genre as a binary rigid category rather than as a spectrum. Of course, the labels aren’t entirely useless. They help the marketing and sales folks, for sure. And when we all start out in our respective mediums, understanding the traditions of genre can help us study craft and figure out where we might place ourselves even if that placement is in the great and misunderstood “in-between”. A lot of the stigma persists, I believe because we aren’t having those hard conversations about genre with the public…and these conversations need to start early on. Like in school. It’s perhaps too late when we’re all on a conference or convention panel where all the panelists are lamenting how there needs to be more dialogue between genre communities or how the public simply just doesn’t understand what good art is when they’ve been trained to think about art in binary ways. And these lessons aren’t just for students, but for teachers as well. There is a lot of snobbery and blanket judgments coming from institutions of higher learning where future critics and artists first begin thinking about their interactions with professional artistic spaces. I’m not necessarily saying “destroy the canon,” but I think we need to seriously re-evaluate why we think certain films or books or pieces of art are held up on a pedestal and why other works of art are almost never seen as viable to be placed on a syllabus.
As a writer, a lot of the above chaos about genre has certainly influenced my trajectory and how people view me. I have an MFA, I teach at a college, a lot of my first good publications were in well-regarded literary journals (even though I have published in popular genre publications like Lightspeed. And so I got pigeon-holed to some degree…even when I was at a “con” as a special guest, I was this weird literary outsider of sorts that nonetheless shared a lot of the same passions as many of the other writers and artists there. I was strategic about not including certain publications in my CV for tenure and promotion because I knew that they would be taken less seriously. But I’ve come to believe that a lot of genre perception is not just about the writing, but is just as much about the perception of who your people are…who are your writer friends? How did you break into the industry? It’s hard to break that first impression. It’s a very human thing for us to want to place people in neat little boxes, which is problematic because art doesn’t really behave this way.
Sequoia is a U.S.-based novelist and creative writing professor. You can read my artist-on-artist interview with him here.
ALEXANDRA ZAROWNY (screenwriter/co-executive producer, “WYNONNA EARP”)
I remember the first time something I watched blew open a neural pathway in my brain, ignited a new seed of excitement in my belly. It was that final moment in Rosemary’s Baby, when Rosemary’s parental instincts kick in and she can see beyond the Devil Spawn and into the child she bore. This whole movie is about the fear of motherhood, my brain screamed at me! And that’s when I realized how powerful a metaphor could be achieved through visceral storytelling that stimulates not only the mind but awakens that which lies in the belly of our personal beasts - fear. We all have our demons, burrowed deep in our amygdalic wombs, and when we expose them, prod them, poke them, we learn so much about ourselves, others and the world.
As a storyteller, I find myself having to consistently defend the horror genre, but I’ve gotten over feeling defensive. Whether it’s Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” or Richard Donner’s The Omen or Jordan Peele’s Get Out, horror picks away at the part of you that wants to stay hidden, and, let’s face it, most people don’t want to pick at something with the potential to expose their own ugliness, their dark tendencies, and wicked appetites. But the others, like you and me — as painful as it is — crave a peek at the peculiar underbellies of our psyches. From an anthropological and storytelling perspective, sure. But mostly, because I think we’re really fucking brave. And brave people tell great stories.
Alex is a Canada-based screenwriter.
CLAY KAYTIS (director, THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE)
Having worked in both animation and live-action, I love to talk about the mislabeling of animation as a genre. I don’t want to get too didactic here, but actually I do because education is clearly required to correct this all too common, and frankly insulting, mistake.
Animation is just one technique for creating the imagery that tells that story, but it is not a genre. Genre relates to the style of story (horror, thriller, detective, romance) and setting (Western, space epic, courtroom) of a film. An animated film could be any of those genre examples: horror, thriller, detective, romance, Western, space epic, courtroom. And there actually have been animated films that are all of those genres and more.
On that point of animation being a technique, saying animation is a genre would be like saying that black-and-white films are a genre. No one would lump thousands of black-and-white films together in the genre of “black-and-white” because it says nothing of the styles of stories or settings of the films, only the technology or technique of how it was made.
I find the mislabeling of animation as “genre” insulting because it shows no understanding of the history or the possibilities of what animated films can be. By calling animation a genre, the implication is that animation is all generally the same sort of story and setting, and that implication almost always translates to “for kids”. That is the quickest way to reveal how unimaginative and uninformed a person is about films as varied as Akira, Paprika, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, Coraline, Sausage Party, Loving Vincent, The Man Who Planted Trees, Spirited Away, The Triplets of Belleville, and Team America: World Police. Calling animation a genre, and implying it’s all kids stuff, limits the expectations of the types of stories can tell — and the more this is repeated, the more the general public and studios buy into it, and that is the biggest tragedy.
To fix this, first, studios have to open their minds (and wallets) to the more varied kinds of stories animation can tell. When those stories are told well, the public will follow. We’ve got a long way to go but we can look to Japan as a model, where there is real enthusiasm and support for all sorts of genre films being told through the technique of animation.
Clay is a U.S.-based filmmaker. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with him here; you should also subscribe to his Substack
.RACHEL YODER (author, NIGHTBITCH)
There’s a lot of anxiety around categorization these days. Where do we put you? To what group do you belong? Identify yourself.
What is this anxiety about? From what does it arise? It seems to me that, in an ideal world, the power of genre is found in its opposition to conventions. The mainstream insists on hierarchy and has historically amassed power by silencing or devaluing those who transgress the norms.
But today…something has shifted. I think that power is now invested in genre, in genre distinctions. Capitalism is anxious about where to put this art on a bookstore shelf or in a marketing campaign. “How can we categorize this thing so we can sell it?” is the question of commodity.
Should artists be concerned with genre? I don’t think it’s any of my business, frankly. I’m free to take anything I want from anywhere and fold it into what I’m doing, use it to make meaning. Maybe I need a werewolf to do that. Or maybe I need the most heightened form of realism. Or maybe I need a love story. So, that’s where I go. It’s not my job to categorize it. If anything, I think my job as an artist is to problematize genre, to make things that cannot be categorized. To me, that’s exciting, working outside of established categories, expanding category, or not paying attention to it to begin with. Perhaps the most urgent question in art-making is, “How do I make whatever I want to make?” How do I free myself from what’s already been in order to imagine what could be?
Rachel is a U.S.-based novelist.
MAX BORENSTEIN (screenwriter, GODZILLA)
I’ve always had an allergy to classification. My own tastes - and therefore “output” - are eclectic by any genre standard…ranging from straight “true life” drama to monster movie adventures to sports epics to whatever. The thing is, I don’t put them in those categories. Ever. Any of them. What hooks me on a project is always something more personal and more specific than “I’d like to write X genre.” In the past, it may have been some intellectual or thematic idea, like for Godzilla: “What would it feel like if we treated the arrival of a kaiju like a contemporary environmental catastrophe a la Katrina?” These days, I find my inspiration tends to be more personal, probably because I’ve lived more; so for “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”, it was - among other things - an urge to explore the pain and beauty of ambition; how much we devote to our worldly endeavors and why, when all they are is silly games like basketball (or writing movies), which pale in the face of actually important things like existential dread and/or enlightenment. Or that’s what I think it’s about. To everybody else, it was just basketball.
But therein, I think, is both the beauty and frustration of writing in a “genre”. It’s wonderful insofar as it can be a sugar-coating over highfalutin (okay, off-putting) ideas, as above, so people get to engage with my own existential twiddle-twaddle as much or little as they like, but when it’s tiring there’s “who wins the trophy” to fall back on…or “which kaiju’s gonna blast the nuclear lightning down which other’s throat?” That’s where genre is your savior, your best friend. Where its worst, for me, is when the writer lets it run the show - or sees it as enough. When the genre is the raison d’etre - the end-all, be-all of the movie: just hit the marks of what the genre asks for, limit your surprises to a rearrangement of the deck chairs, and go home. We have a word for product like that - and all it is is “product”. It’s called “generic”. As in, defined exclusively by and for the expectations of the genre.
Which is, admittedly, a helpful proposition for executives when giving notes. But god, its dull.
Max is a U.S.-based filmmaker.
JAVIER GRILLO-MARXAUCH (screenwriter/executive producer, “THE WITCHER”)
The word "elevated" is little more than a replacement for the older and equally offensive "grounded". What it really means – and it absolutely is executive dog whistle code – is "we don't trust you to not make it cheesy". I find it hilarious that the top ten movies of all time are about magical space knights, people in tights who can fly, blue humanoids on a planet that might as well have been dreamed up by Greenpeace on DMT, wizards living in verdant fantasy worlds, talking animated lions re-enacting Shakespeare, and reanimated dinosaurs. The only non-genre movie in the top ten of all time is a period bodice-ripper set on the Titanic - and that was directed by the same dude that gave us murderous cyborgs from the future and the eco-planet. Yet TV executives keep looking for some sort of "special sauce" that will make "genre" palatable to a mass audience.
So, let's get down to brass tacks - everything is genre. Law & Order is genre, it just so happens that it's the cop genre. That's a genre that is easily digestible because it takes place in our world and does not require a lot of additional information up top in order to enter and understand the setting and the stakes, why these characters are in it, and what they are doing. It also just so happens that it has been, historically, an impeccably well-written and well-executed series. I should know, I was the covering executive on the flagship Law & Order way back in its third season - that was Sam Waterston's first season on the show. Law & Order does exactly what all great TV should do - it brings you in, keeps you there, and lets you go satisfied. There's a reason why so many cop shows – including a number of spinoffs of Law & Order – fail to achieve the same level of success: they aren't as great at doing what they do.
In the aggregate, science-fiction, fantasy, and horror – even in their best execution – do require far more introduction of the audience into the world-building and mythology, and often require visual flights of fancy that strike some as juvenile. Which, I mean, whatever: let's say you don't watch many cop shows and have some weariness for that genre because of a few you were made to watch but didn't immediately get, well, I imagine, then Magnum P.I. might seem a little juvenile to you. Anyway, this has all has often relegated Sci-Fi to the little kids’ table.
The good news is that the ranks of writers and executives are slowly filling up with the children and the children of the children of Star Wars - those who spent their childhoods at the little kids’ table. That's why there's so much sci-fi around, and that's why there's going to be a lot more in the future, grounded, elevated or otherwise. The executives audience for whom sci-fi was not a widely accepted genre - because it is a newer genre and because it requires that the audience exercise different muscles than cowboys, doctors, cops, and lawyers - is slowly moving on. So, it's a generational change, and the incoming generation has had Star Wars, Star Trek, and Marvel as the oxygen they breathed since birth.
I look forward to the day when it is as stupid to ask for "elevated" genre as it would be to ask for an "elevated" doctor, lawyer, or cop show.
Javi is a U.S.-based screenwriter. His answer here is excerpted from my artist-on-artist conversation with him, which you can read here.