Talk:Q483394

Is a genre really a class ?

Hi,

Is a genre really a class ? For example, "cyberpunk" is a genre, but nothing can be "a cyberpunk" (instance of (P31)), only be "a film whose genre is cyberpunk" (genre (P136)). I understand that something can be "a novel", or "a crime fiction", and that "novel" and "crime fiction" are genres, but that's because some languages use sometimes the same word to refer to both the genre and a work inside the genre. But sometimes it's not the case, like "cyberpunk", "vampire literature", etc.

More, one cannot say that a book is of the genre "vampire literature" (genre (P136)), but only that the book "belongs to the vampire literature" (part of (P361)). We are using things of very different natures, and include all these things into the concept of genre. Shouldn't we clarify the concept of genre ?

CaLéValab (talk) 17:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

It's a difficult question, but regarding the cases listed, I'm more inclined to believe that both cyberpunk and vampire are more of a theme than a genre, at least in a specific areas of art. Solidest (talk) 14:25, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

@CaLéValab@Solidest

It’s entirely possible to consider that « cyberpunk » is a class of artworks who talks about/take place into a futuristic universe where technology plays an important part of life and so on. In that case, « cyberpunk » is a subclass of artworks. We could totally use instance of (P31) or subclass of (P279) on artworks with cyberpunk as values, viewed like that. And themes, forms, could be ways to classify artworks. This would make theme and forms metaclass of artworks. author  TomT0m / talk page 16:08, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi @TomT0m: when A is a class, and B an instance of A, we say "B is a A". The issue I had was that we could not say "this book is a cyberpunk" nor "this book is a vampire literature". Instead we say "this books belongs to the cyberpunk genre" and "this books belongs to the vampire literature". So to me, "cyberpunk" and "vampire literature" could not be classes. The problem is that they are instances of "genre", which is a metaclass. On the other hand, other genres could be used as classes, like "novel" : we can say "this book is a novel". So I think we are mixing thinks too different to be mixed in the vague concept of genre. Like Solidest said above, maybe "cyberpunk" and "vampire literature" are not genres after all. CaLéValab (talk) 16:24, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

We commonly says « it’s a thriller » or « it’s a sitcom ». So the (linguistic) distinction is not necessarily totally relevant to qualify something as a class. If an organism is a quadrupeds, we can also express this as « it’s a four member animal ». author  TomT0m / talk page 10:22, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@TomT0m. Yeah, artstyle is probably more appropriate here. But cyberpunk itself is primarily a science fiction genre. Which then spawned what could be called "cyberpunk style" which doesn't overlap between the different spheres of creativity where it's applied. I mean compare cyberpunk literature and cyberpunk music and cyberpunk film. These works have different stylistic characteristics (setting vs synths vs visuals), but they are all based on the sci-fi genre 'cyberpunk'. This affects whether we can call it a single artstyle (probably?), "theme" (probably should be the same item as artstyle?), genre (i don't think so), form (no). I don't like using it as p31. There should probably be a separate property for style, but as a temporary measure this could be put in p279 or "has quality". Solidest (talk) 16:26, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

This can be a class AND an artstyle actually. Ask yourself, what is an artstyle ? author  TomT0m / talk page 10:19, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Merging with Q97223590

This item should be merged with Q97223590, as la:Genus (ars) is exactly the same as en:Genre. I've tried using the merge gadget, unfortunately an error keeps occurring. Pápiliunculus (talk) 06:31, 28 April 2022 (UTC)