Sobchacks Genre Theory

Thomas and Vivian Sobchack offered a useful taxonomy of film genres. They made basic distinction, on a level below that of fiction and non-fiction, between comedy and melodrama.

Sobchacks list the main genres of comedy as:

• Slapstick Comedy
• Romantic Comedy
• Musical Biography
• Fairytale

They list the main genres of melodrama as:

• Adventure
• Western
• Fantasy/Horror/Sci-Fi
• Crime Drama/Film Noir

While the Sobchacks offer an extremely useful outline of the textual features of film within these genres, part of the value of such taxonomies may be the way in which they tend to provoke immediate disgreement from readers.