Applying Lawrence Grossberg's genre theories to screwball comedy

1. "A genre is defined by a shared set of conventions such as conventions about narrative, characters, location, styles." (Coursekit, 31)
   The screwball comedy for example is defined by the male character and the female character struggling to find love in certain events that take place that show how these odd characters make every encounter comic and strange. This kind of film often ends in marriage or remarriage of the odd couple.

2. "The underlying structure of values that the genre puts into play." (Coursekit, 31)
   The screwball comedy is often about sexuality and romance and the conflicts between the sexes followed by images of luxury and the rich.

3. "Genres can be seen as articulation of texts that define a particular set of intertextual relations. In this sense, genres tell us how to read a particular text by placing it into more familiar structures of meaning." (Coursekit, 31) The screwball comedy is often double-coded and can be understood either as comedy or as a romantic comedy.

Sanaz Gharavi