COMM 380: Media Criticism
Film as Genre, Genre as Film: The Founder Examined Through Genre Theory
by Lana Mason '20
Art History, B.A.
The 2016 biopic drama The Founder, directed by John Lee Hancock, charts the historical development of McDonald’s from its beginnings as a small-time yet booming California restaurant owned by the McDonald brothers through the perspective of a failing milkshake machine salesman, Ray Kroc (played by Michael Keaton). The film follows Kroc’s volatile relationship with the McDonald brothers, his feverish development of McDonald’s franchises in the Midwest, and his eventual total takeover of the McDonald’s empire.
As a biography, the film depicts real-life individuals and events and is set in a believable recreation of mid-century America. As a drama, the film draws the majority of its action from character interactions and clashing viewpoints, and engages viewers through shifting emotional reactions to the story.
A type of media theory known as genre theory examines the relationship between media genres and individual media works, as well as producers and consumers of media. This theory suggests that the essential elements of any given genre define the basic structures which media of that genre adhere to. The Founder represents a standard example of a biographic drama through its alignment with the basic structural elements of the drama genre and the biography sub-genre.
Genre theory suggests that this alignment between film and genre acts as a guideline for both production and reception—genre constructs the formal elements of the film’s structure and acts as a contract with the viewer (Altman, 1999, p. 14). The Founder, interpreted using genre theory, relies on its genre as a biographic drama to define its structure, as well as to serve as a contract with viewers who inherently seek out specific experiences from the film.
Genre at its most basic is simply a “recurring type or category of text, as defined by structural, thematic and/or functional criteria” (Duff, 2000, p. xiii). Film genres, then, are standardized typifications of different combinations of elements—including narratives, cinematography, music, set designs, and characters—that offer a structure for filmmakers, marketers, and audiences to adhere to. The Founder, like many films, may be categorized as both a genre—drama—and a sub-genre—biography. Like other films of this type, The Founder relies upon the overarching framework of the drama genre for its basic structure, and it's more specific nuances are the result of its adherence to the biography sub-genre. The drama genre generally has four key elements—it must be “serious, portray life, tell a story, and the characters have to have an inner conflict that brings out emotions at different times throughout the story” (Reich, 2017, p. 29). The biography sub-genre builds upon these elements through use of non-fictional events and individuals.
The Founder’s formal structure—most specifically its narrative elements and characters–all conform to the basic characteristics of both the drama genre and the biography sub-genre. As a drama, the tone of the film is generally serious and emphasizes a more complex exploration of life by depicting topics such as divorce, health issues, and the effects of greed upon Kroc’s psyche.
As a biography, the film intentionally portrays reality, and does so fairly truthfully in regards to historical and biographical details. For the sake of conforming to the drama genre’s demand for conflict, The Founder does take liberties with the truth of the story at times for the sake of promoting narrative coherency and emotional payoff (Hughes, 2017). This can be seen with particular events that are fundamentally inaccurate—such as Joan’s encouragement for Kroc to use powdered milkshake mix instead of real ice cream—as well as broader omissions, such as the entirety of Kroc’s second marriage between his divorce with Ethel and third marriage to Joan.
The story the film tells is fairly straightforward with no real narrative twists. But characteristically of the drama genre, the compelling element of The Founder’s story is not the plot itself but the characters’ interactions and internal struggles. The film explores the different facets of Kroc’s meteoric rise to success in the fast food industry in a way that elicits a variety of strong emotional reactions from viewers—pity at Kroc’s initial failures, happiness during the brief bonding moments between Kroc and the characters surrounding him, revulsion as he becomes predatory and malicious in his business ventures.
The Founder relies upon its genre as a dramatic biopic to act as a contract with viewers, structuring their expectations and then meeting them in a standardized way. Viewers of biopic dramas know what to expect from such films before they have even seen them. The genre of the biographic drama creates the expectation for a general adherence to the truth with creative alterations made—viewers understand that the film will generally be true to the major experiences of the real-life people featured, and that some elements may not be true-to-life for the sake of the narrative.
Broadly, genre acts as a means by which viewers anticipate a specific set of viewing experiences. Altman suggests that viewers, knowing that certain narrative elements are necessary for them to experience pleasure—named by Altman as “generic pleasure”—while viewing a film, specifically seek out films from genres which necessarily contain those elements (1999, p. 145). By its inherent structural elements as a biographic drama, The Founder not only assumes a certain reception by its viewers but is structured to offer satisfaction for those expectations.
As a biography, the film expects that viewers want a generally realistic depiction of the events the story contains, and conforms to that. The film also expects a desire for a dramatic narrative which stimulates a sense of emotional investment in the characters and events, and so explores Kroc’s personal struggles and highlights the contentious relationship between him and the McDonald brothers to cultivate the human tragedy of the story. The criteria by which both casual viewers and critics judge the film—for example, how realistic the characters’ behaviors are and how compelling the actors’ performances are—are derived specifically from these expectations for both a dramatic narrative and realism.
Genre theory offers the opportunity to view a film such as The Founder not as a standalone film but rather as the product of the complex relationships among media, psychology, and society. By utilizing recognizable and familiar structures that are repeated over and over by various media, genre fundamentally serves as a tool for effective communication. As seen with The Founder, genre serves as a logical structure for viewers to engage with that guides their perceptions, expectations, and reactions. The complexity of reality can, through the structures provided by genre, be effectively distilled into a two-hour-long film which audiences easily comprehend and derive pleasure from.
References
Altman, R. (1999). Film/genre. London: BFI Publishing.
Duff, D. (Ed.). (2000). Modern genre theory. New York: Routledge.
Hughes, K. (2017, January 19). ‘The Founder’ tells the wild story of McDonald’s. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/p/how-accurate-is-the-founder-the-true-facts-about-mcdonalds-will-surprise-you-30010
Reich, J. (2017). Exploring movie construction and production: what’s so exciting about movies? Geneseo, NY: Open SUNY Textbooks.