An Introduction to Christian Metz

Christian Metz was a French theorist.
Metz had the belief that that genres go through a cycle of changed through their lifetime.

1. Experimental Stage
   This is the first phase. The genre's foundation are created here along with its codes and conventions. 
2. Classic Stage
   The codes and conventions of the genre becomes recognized. Iconography becomes 'the guidelines' to creating the genre.
3. Parody Stage
   The audience has accepted the codes and conventions. Now a parodies are able to be made and mock the codes and conventions. To make the parody the audience would have to understand the codes and conventions from the Classic Stage.
4. Deconstruction Stage
   The chosen genre can evolve and merge with another genre to make a sub-genre. It becomes less 'clear cut' and the 'rules' can be broken.

To demonstrate Metz's theory, I'll show you through Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'.

The video the 'Thriller' was considered one of the first music videos ever made, especially of this genre. This is the experimental stage for the horror genre. Stretching to almost 14 minutes, we can see where romance was tried out. Nowadays this wouldn't be a conventional horror factor, but it was an experiment to figure out what works for this genre and what doesn't.

Stage Two is the Classic Stage. So now we have recognized the codes and conventions. As you can see above, horror usually has an element of the supernatural, like werewolves and zombies. From knowing the typical codes and conventions we can follow the 'rules' like super-naturalism, or darkness to create something else of the horror genre with these inclusions.

Having watched videos like 'Thriller' we are able to identify a mock of it. For example, comedian Lenny Henry made a parody of 'Thriller'. But we would not be able to see that this is a parody without accepting the Classic Stage. This would not be seen as a parody, if the original had not been watched.

In pop-star Rihanna's 'Disturbia' music video, it still follows the codes and conventions of horror. As the name 'Disturbia' connotes mental illness, it's fair to say that the genre of this is psychological horror. The above photos show supernatural, scary/uncomfortable and psychological features. By bringing in real life horrors such as spiders and captivity, this breaks the rule of there not being anything paranormal.


Met'z theory helps to understand what can become of a music video. Seeing how film can be subverted from a music video, to a short film is incredibly fascinating. I like how different media can interlink and make a longer narrative.
Personally, I want myself and Helen's video to be unique and have it's individual meaning. I do however like the idea of using stereotypes in the video, as we will be connecting with a stereotypical audience; age ranging from around 15-25.