Buffy The Vampire Slayer

“13 Ways of Looking at Blackbirds” (poet, Wallace Stevens), “7 Types of Ambiguity” (lit crit, Louis Simpson), 6 Blind Men Look at Elephant” (Indian folk tale & poem by John Godfrey Saxe, 1868-1887), - and now, however many we are, here we go, looking at Deep Genre.

My perspective is an attempt to describe how ‘deep genre’ and ‘genre,’ differ. This perspective applies equally to any publishing category: romance, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, mysteries, horror. Genre

Genre is one of the repetitive, derivative arts, one of expectations fulfilled, not thwarted. A genre work’s appeal is that of safe return to what we already know.

At the start of a story, a man and a woman meet, they hate each other - they will be romantically united at the end. Bad things done to a hero provide the hero license to wreak exuberant havoc on his enemies and innocent bystanders alike without consequence to body or soul. The heroine will be left standing at the end, and will be happy.

Genre is comforting because we can depend upon it to stand and deliver what we come to it for, allowing us to relax. We don’t need re-examination or re-education, for its categorical tropes are reliable signposts along the way, providing the information we need to follow the story and the characters to what we know will be the expected conclusion - our principal characters, those with whom we identify, will win.

We understand our genres so well that we can build entire communities around them: conventions, conferences, award ceremonies, fanfic, websites, reading clubs.

Deep Genre

Deep genre is innovative, imaginative, original fiction organized around an individual vision. Deep genre employs the tropes of its genre to re-examine the genre itself. It does not assume without question. Such a work deepens and builds upon the classical foundation elements that genre fiction is built upon, whether fantasy, science fiction, mysteries, romances, horror or westerns. It surprises us, while we also respond with a gasp, “Of course!” A deep genre work shows us a place we’ve been before but the light on the lake has changed, allowing us to see the lake is deeper than we thought and the shoreline not where it used to be.

Deep genre shakes us out of repetition. We cannot count on what has happened before to be what will happen now. Its pattern is tightly woven out of story, theme, character and voice. When new patterns in the deep genre’s story appear, they are organic in the weave. In a deep genre tale, one lover may kill the other, and this affects the killer’s soul forever. The audience pays attention, brings something of itself to the entertainment, in collaboration with the tale teller.

Though it may be provided, comfort is not deep genre’s purpose.

To contrast ‘deep genre’ with ‘genre’ does not necessarily mean judging one as superior. What is intended by that is one is a ‘begetting work,’ while the other is a consolidation work, deriving from a deep genre work. For instance I would classify Ann Rice’s Lestat and Buffy The Vampire Slayer as deep genre. They employed all the accumulated, classical tropes of gothic/dark fantasy vampire tales, but located them in new landscapes, new times, with new motivation and new consequences, and particularly, new attitude, new narrative and character voice. Other creators followed, such as Laurell K. Hamilton, in her Anita Blake series: “Laurell K. Hamilton began what was to become her vampire franchise, a kind of fast food version of Anne Rice, but with more mouthwatering ingredients.”

The elements of deep genre and genre, the primary, and the new, enthusiastically cross-pollinate. Deep genre re-vitalizes genre, which is why as writers we always re-visit the primary works, just as a prima ballerina will always go back to basic ballet class. Miscegenation is the means by which the genre categories propagate themselves, weaving their seductions, enthralling us with their glamours.