 Action/Adventure: March 09, 2022 Issue [#11255] |
This week: Is Action a Standalone Genre? Edited by: Jayngle Bells  
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The action genre (particularly in film) became a hotly contested topic in the 1970s and has remained unsettled since. For those of us furiously turning the pages of our latest fast-paced novel or enjoying popcorn during an intense movie where the bad guys seem to appear from around every corner, we understand action to be, well, action.
Yet, among those smarter than I (or perhaps with more time on their hands), genres are a cultural study combining the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. They narrow down how genres use repetition and ideological values to create what we like to call “the trope”.
More specifically, to be a well-defined genre, a collection of the tropes must work as an identifier of the genre itself, in a way that is not only easily recognizable but also consistent. This is where action gets itself into trouble. There are very few clear instances of action in the purest sense of how a genre would stand on its own while still maintaining any sense of plot cohesion.
That was the extremely long-winded and boring way of saying action may be more of a style of storytelling that traverses through multiple genres, as opposed to a genre of its own.
Before you hammer on your keyboard to tell me how wrong I am, I’m the first one to admit there’s plenty of dissenting opinion. There are entire thesis dissertations on the matter. Even so, it’s no coincidence that action is often paired with its cousin, adventure. The genre lines become a little fuzzy once we introduce a plot to the action happening within it.
Not that modern writing isn’t one big genre-blender of fresh takes on old tropes, anyway. Westerns with science fiction. Adventure with dystopia. Fantasy and noir. You know what they all have in them? Yeah, that’s right. Action.
Action remains a perennial genre that pops up everywhere, piggybacking on some other genre’s plot device. I’m not arguing it isn’t pulling its own weight. It may, in fact, be propping up the narratives of the genres it’s working with. I wouldn’t even relegate it to ‘supporting actor’ status. When the impact of your plot is driven by the action—then ‘action’ is definitely one way to describe it. But when you describe your plot as a whole, does ‘action’ stand alone as the basis of the story?
If you take, for example, any of the following genres, it’s simply implied that action is going to fit in there somewhere; it’s almost an afterthought.
 Western
Adventure
Thriller/Crime/Mob
Horror
Science Fiction
Fantasy
It’s fairly easy to identify what sets those genres apart when you strip the action element out of them. But is the reverse true for action? If you strip the fantasy or thriller components out of action, what are you left with? A bunch of fight scenes does not a genre make.
When debating on whether action is a reasonable genre choice, it likely comes down to the amount of action present in the work. After all, if a collection of fight scenes without a plot doesn’t make a genre, then a single action scene in a story does not make the case for a genre label of ‘action’. If it did, it would have to be one epic action scene, that’s for sure.
Even if action cannot make the case to support itself, it is a fundamental piece of countless other genres. If action consumes much of your story, it is obviously valid to call it, at least in part, ‘action’. Audiences know what to expect when they see ‘action’ tied in with other genres and are pretty good at sussing out whether the action is going to be the primary driver of the story, or simply a function of the main genre’s requirements.
Since nobody wants to disappoint their audience, make sure you know where, and how, action fits into your story.
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