Working With Geners

Till date when one hears of war movies or war stories an assumption of getting to see action and hearing bloody stories is what comes to mind, but after reading Spin, The man I Killed, The Things They Carried, and Good Form any one can say that war genres aren't just action packed flicks or bloody stories. A war movie probably does mainly focus on the action part of the movie but at the same time you get to see all these other genres coming out of the movie. When these men are out in the war, they leave behind loved ones, this is where the genre of romance comes in to play, men keep themselves away from the pain by cracking jokes, therefor bring in the comedy genre. When a movie is made and or a book is written there is automatically a tag placed on it stating the genre of the book or movie. Just because a majority of the story is based on one style doesn't mean there is nothing else to the story. As stated by Hartley that giving a book or movie a tag of one genre limits what that book or movie is all about because this will make the viewers and readers limit what the meaning of the genre is and or what the movie or book was trying to put across.
In his work The Things They Carried O'Brien talks of the different personalities that enter the war and how each person has something they bring along with them. Whether it is the pictures of families, food, or medicines, each one of these people carry the things that makes them them and that separates them form others. There is love stories, family stories, problems with fulfilling ones duty, this one movie had all theses mixtures in it then why say its just another war movie? We as readers and movie audiences need to learn not to categorize movies by just one genre. In the article by Chandler it says that "genre is a principal factor in the directing of audience choice and of audience expectations.." Which means that audiences who are aware of the movie genre ahead of time will know what to exactly expect from the movie. The scenes or trailers we see of the movie automatically builds images in our heads of what genre to put the movie in. In Chandler's article he say "the two year old become upset when their favorite television personalities leave the screen.." this is saying that children are using images to differnate between genres, they can tell apart a cartoon from a soap opera and or a news channel. The same way we even at this age are using images to set genres for us. We see shootings and assume that it is a war movie, there could be a lot more to that movie than just war.
When reading Spin, I learned all the different events that take place in a soldiers head when he is out in that war, he isn't just out there to fight or win battles, he is living every second of his life in horror of dying, he going through a daily life of hell. The Man I Killed, was a lot more interesting because it talks about both sides of the war and the fighters. There lies a young guy dead, killed by the American soldiers. The story tells of the boys life and his young age, leaving behind his family and his studies to fight for his nation because that is what is meant to be a good citizen. "defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilege." This is the reason why many men join wars, they want to protect their land, they feel it is their right is to save their land. Watching Platoon you can see that O'Brien's writings aren't based on such movies because in that clip you don't get what he says in his writing's. His writings are based on what are the different things soldiers go through in the war and in the clip of Platoon we see alot of war and right in the beginning there is a killing of one of the guys due to mistrust. War according to O'Brien is about trusting each other that is why in The Things They carried, the one guy feels guilty for losing a fellow soldier because he was too lost in his lovers thoughts. So after reading all theses writings by O'Brien i have learned in his writings he talks of the things that not many expect happen in war times. No one expects that a soldiers feels bad for killing an enemy, no one expects that a soldier takes tranquilizers, no one expects that a soldier remembers all the pain and horrific scenes and is always in his mind to tell stories to those who never get to experience it.