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Genre theory refers to the use of familiar themes and ideas as a way of signaling to the audience what to expect from a work of fiction. Genre theory can be used in various types of fiction and is often discussed when talking about both literature and movies. Genre theory can provide a good springboard for analysis of a particular work, because works can exemplify genres, deviate from genres, or even flip genres completely upside down. As fictional works have developed, genres have become more specific. Genres were initially very broad, both in literature and movies. Poetry or prose are probably the two most overarching genres in literature and tragedy and comedy the two biggest ones in plays. Today, genres have become very niche, not just consisting of a category but subcategories of subcategories.
The movie Harriet is a biopic, telling the real-life story of Harriet Tubman. Of the genres, biopics may have the least conventions and attributes because they can vary wildly depending on the person being featured and the approach that the filmmaker or writer takes. They can be primarily first-person driven, with the person giving their own account of their lives or be told from friendly or hostile points-of-view. What is consistent is that they portray real-life events from a person’s life, but they may do so in ways that are fictionalized, consolidated, or otherwise changed in order to improve the narrative structure. When someone has multiple similar events in their life, such as Tubman had when helping slaves escape to freedom, it is not uncommon to feature highlights from several different distinct events as occurring at one time in order to get all of those events into the movie.
However, Harriet is not only a biopic, but it is also what is commonly known as a slave narrative. In order to understand the importance of slave narratives as a genre, one must have knowledge of how extensive pro-slavery propaganda was in the American South, even long after the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The idea of loving and kind masters and slaves who were too ignorant or animal-like to care for themselves was propagated by people who romanticized the antebellum South and the institution of slavery, as well as wanted to continue the traditions of racism that supported slavery. Slave narratives, which were honest renditions of slavery by people who had either witness or experienced it, challenged these romanticized stories of slavery by honestly depicting the brutality of living conditions for slaves, the slaves’ desire for freedom, and the humanity and intelligence of those who had been enslaved. In Harriet, where we see a former slave willing to risk her life and her freedom, over and over again, for people who are willing to risk death in order to get liberty, we see a stellar example of the slave narrative.
