The Diversity Of Artistic Genres

There is no single possible human experience, even if a given person has or will not experience the full spectrum of logically possible experiences such as the various emotions, physical conditions of the body, moral dilemmas, sensory perceptions, and personal trials--and the full spectrum of how they might overlap.  Even a much longer lifetime than modern medicine affords would not necessarily give a person enough time to think of, observe, or directly experience every psychological or physical situation someone could find himself or herself in.  Without any expectation or probability of getting the chance to taste this variety and complexity, people can still find examples of them in the numerous fictional stories that have been created.  This is perhaps why entertainment is so popular.  It provides people the chance to indirectly feel, see, and dwell on scenarios that might be far removed from any point in their life.

There are genres and subgenres of everything from paintings to cinema to gaming to literature and more that reflect these different experiences.  For every emotion and every philosophical truth that transcends experiences and entertainment itself, there is a genre or the possibility for a work of art to tackle that very thing--drama, horror, romance, action, comedy, erotica, and beyond, each with their own subgenres or ways to overlap with other genres.  Just as humans can have multi-faceted experiences, art can blend multiple genres, as horror, comedy, and more do not logically exclude each other, though genres can be layered in tonally inconsistent ways.  Artistic quality and the philosophical themes of a given work could be very focused on specific possibilities for human experiences, or they could cast a wider net and tackle multiple issues at once.  This can be done and it can be done well.  Artists just have to be careful to not allow one aspect of their work, especially in media like film that involves multiple senses, to suffocate or conflict with another one.

Horror, as one of many examples, can stand on its own, but it can be paired with action (Resident Evil 4), science fiction (Alien), comedy (Ready or Not), or existentialist drama as with cosmic horror (The Call of Cthulhu).  There are more thematically, narratively precise versions of these subgenres, such as erotic cosmic horror (Lust for Darkness).  This is all for one genre and its subcategories, and there are still more ways horror can branch out into narrower or more complicated subgenres!  The diversity of artistic genres is indeed massive.  Since art is created to entertain, inspire, or stir up thought or emotion of some kind, each combination of stories and themes touches upon the human capacity to experience different things.  Intertwining genres and subgenres only testify to the potential for people to have broad, complicated experiences that, while they all share metaphysical similarities (they must all be logically possible, they can only be experienced through consciousness, and so on), can differ enough that some of them seem shocking, bizarre, overwhelming, or intriguing.

Logical truths and worldviews, the latter of which is valid only to the extent it aligns with the former, are of course more important than the emotional and sensory experiences of entertainment, yet art can touch upon all of these things at once, with some mediums offering higher levels of psychological and sensory engagement than others and thus different potential for specific genres.  Music and literature only engage one of the senses on their own, while movies engage more senses and still retaining the same intellectual potential and much of the same stimulation for imagination, and video games in turn engage more of a person than films thanks to interactivity.  This puts each artistic medium and genre within that medium in a special position to address something about conscious experience (though the deepest aspects of reality, logical truths, do not depend on experiences).  Art cannot escape its connection to things that are not fiction.  Because there is no single aspect to human existence, the art we create inevitably mirrors this.