PRACTICING THE GENRE
Choosing Appropriate Criteria and Examples
To practice developing an evaluative argument based on appropriate criteria, get together with two or three other students and follow the guidelines below:
Part 1. Begin by choosing a film everyone in the group has seen fairly recently. It’s fine if you differ in your judgment of the film.
Next, discuss how you would classify the film in terms of genre (or type): comedy, romance, horror, or science fiction, for example. If you think it combines features of different genres, choose the genre you think best fits the film.
- As a group, agree on one criterion, or standard, all of you typically use to evaluate a film in this genre. (For example, we usually expect a comedy to be funny.)
- Individually, find an example (such as a scene, a bit of dialogue, or a character) and briefly explain why you think that example supports your judgment that the film either does or does not meet the criterion the group has chosen.
Part 2. As a group, discuss what you learned from this activity:
- Reflect on the process of classifying a film by genre and choosing a criterion you could all agree was appropriate for evaluating a film of that kind. What disagreements or difficulties did your group have?
- Imagine you had an opportunity to post your film review on the Internet or publish it in the school newspaper. Would the criterion you chose still be appropriate for that audience? Would you have to justify it or choose a different criterion that your audience would be more likely to accept?