The Microgenre: A Quick Look at Small Culture
Document Type
Monograph
Publication Date
1-23-2020
Publisher
Bloomsbury
Publisher Location
New York, NY
Edition
1
First page number:
1
Last page number:
224
Abstract
Everybody knows, and maybe even loves, a microgenre. Plague romances and mommy memoirs. Nudie-cutie movies, Nazi zombies, and dinosaur erotica. Baby burlesks, Minecraft fiction, grindcore, premature ejaculation poetry...microgenres come in all varieties and turn up in every form of media under the sun, tailor-made for enthusiasts of all walks of life. Coming into use in the last decade or so, the term "microgenre" classifies increasingly niche-marketed worlds in popular music, fiction, television, and the Internet. Netflix has recently highlighted our fascination with the ultra-niche genre with hilariously specific classifications -- “independent supernatural dramedy featuring a strong female lead” – that can sometimes hit a little too close to home. Each contribution in this collection introduces readers to a different microgenre, drawn from a range of historical periods and from a variety of media. The Microgenre presents a previously untreated point of cultural curiosity, revealing the profound truth that humanity's desire to classify is often only matched by the unsustainability of the obscure and hyper-specific. It also affirms, in colorful detail, what most people suspect but have trouble fathoming in an increasingly homogenized and commercial West: that imaginative projects are just that, imaginative, diverse, and sometimes completely and hilariously inexplicable.
Keywords
Microgenre; Small culture; Cultural curiosity; Media variety
Disciplines
American Popular Culture | American Studies | Arts and Humanities
Language
English
Repository Citation
Stevens, A. H.,
O'Donnell, M. C.
(2020).
The Microgenre: A Quick Look at Small Culture.
1-224.
New York, NY: Bloomsbury.