Navigating Genres

Genres are annoying

While I understand that the term “genre” has an extremely general meaning since it can fit into a variety of things I for some reason find it very annoying to group them as such. The author does happen to describe it very easily though, stating how different types of writing such as responses made via social media are included as their own types of genres. It’s interesting but nevertheless I still find it very annoying to think about as a whole but its still apart of our daily lives as we categorize movies, books, and even different styles of art into genres. I do appreciate it in the fact that I can properly organize and label things I like to do so that it is easier for people to understand and connect to. That’s where I feel like genres are important, especially with art because with certain people you have to let them know exactly what style of art they are looking at otherwise they wont understand it. I know this from experience, especially with photography as most people don’t consider or even relate it to being a form of art. By telling people beforehand that my photographs are to be considered abstract and surreal before they look at them they’ll be more likely to understand what the photo is and even why I took it. I only bring this up because this is something that has happened to me this past weekend as I had recently visited my family and shown them some of my work. Because most of them correlate photography as being commercial they were very confused and did not understand what they were looking at. Despite how annoying genres are to talk about they’re still very important and without them it would be very hard for some people to understand how to approach things.