Between Dreams and Reality: Genre Personae, Brand Elm Street, and Repackaging the American Teen Slasher Film
2012
Abstract
This essay introduces the concept of genre personae, using the case of New Line Cinema's mid-to-late-1980s handling of its Elm Street property to reveal the extent to which highly misleading critical discourse is appropriated strategically in the repackaging of cultural products so as to exaggerate product differentiation - a phenomenon which has exerted a profound and distorting influence on critical and historical undertsandings of genres both inside and outside the academy.