The Potential Of Every Genre

The potential of every genre for ideological and artistic quality might be denied from time to time when a particular genre or subgenre takes over the entertainment world, angering those who are not participating, or when someone's subjective preferences gravitate away from certain types of storytelling.  Horror, action, comedy, and superhero stories (though the last of these can be entries in other genres that happen to feature such characters) can be neglected or slandered on these grounds, and it often takes concrete examples of quality projects to silence certain detractors although they could have already known their errors from reason alone--it does not follow from belonging to a certain genre that a work is awful.

Sometimes a more sustained trend helps a storytelling category be taken more seriously as it merits.  In recent years, a great deal of horror content with a more explicit philosophical bent has been created, from Saw films to The VVitch to Get Out to Alien: Covenant to Us.  Some of these films have been assigned the phrase "elevated horror," referring to a category that is about artistic excellence and thematic depth as much as or more than it is about base horror.  Of course, horror, like every other genre, can be executed in philosophically weighty or trivial ways, and there are far older horror tales that aim at existential and epistemological issues, like the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.  It would not surprise a rational person that horror is not devoid of potential for addressing reality.

They would not even have to rely on these examples to prompt them to realize this.  For now, a renaissance of horror, in cinema particularly, has produced more examples of philosophical horror that reach for more than just cheap jumpscares or a profitable opening weekend.  Other genres are also sometimes misunderstood as being incapable of artistic excellence and the metaphysical or epistemological elements that are overt in the best of entertainment.  In spite of such fallacious criticism, being an action, superhero, or visual effects-heavy work does not exclude a strong story, deep characterization, and exploration of grand philosophical issues.  Any genre can be executed well or poorly and on all levels.

Terribly constructed, thematically shallow, and greed-motivated entertainment does not make it logically impossible for any particular overarching genre to be utilized in a way that honors or at least tries to align with something more foundational and significant than hollowness and monetary success.  It is possible for there to be superb and abysmal action films (or games, and so on).  It is possible for there to be deep stories about superheroes and pathetically inept tales across mediums about the same type of characters.  Like with drama, horror, and more, the execution determines if a given work is of high or low quality (or mediocre), and even terrible or lackluster execution does not mean a storytelling concept is itself the problem.