Essay Example on Green Mile Genre

A prison movie is a sub-genre of film that conveys a certain stereotypical overview. The qualities in most prison films are usually the same of similar. For example, common characters will include ‘the hero’, ‘the best friend’, ‘the hard man’, ‘the sadistic guard’ and of course ‘the governor’. As reoccurring as these characters may be there tends to be another feature that does not really occur in prison movies, which is the heroin. However The Green Mile could be seen as an exception with the role of Paul Edgcombe’s (Tom Hanks) wife.

Other common features include the locations within the prison movie. These include a cell, a prison yard, a courtroom, a punishment cell, a dining room, a governor’s office and a work place. The Green Mile though, only shows three of these common locations; the cell, the punishment cell and the governor’s office. This also illustrates how this film is subverting the conventions of narrative and genre.

General expectations of a prison movie are usually concocted through the title of the genre ‘prison films’.

From this and previous prison genres we have seen, we expect The Green Mile to obviously be in a prison setting, have a nice prisoner in corrupt surroundings, some form of labouring work, a nice friend and a vaguely happy ending, perhaps with an escape of some sort. The narrative is nearly always told through the eyes of a prisoner and it all tends to follow quite a chronological order. The narrative is usually very false and is not trying to recreate life.

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It reconstructs a false world for the audience because in reality we really don’t know what it’s like.

Lastly we tend to see a sub-genre incorporated which is mystery. There is always an element of suspense throughout the film, which leaves the audience thinking about if they will escape, or not. The Green Mile barely conforms to any of the above as we are introduced to this massive figure of a man: John Coffey, whom at first glace does not match up to your average ‘nice prisoner’. How ever the audience soon warm to him and he does make a friend – Dell and Mr. Jingles. Are sympathies are with Coffey when he mentions that he is “afraid of the dark” and he does, in the audiences minds, become a sympathetic prisoner.