Genre constrains the possible ways in which a text is interpreted. . . .
The setting itself is not, in my view, enough to constitute a genre or story type. We'll need to do substantially better than this if we are going to understand genre and whether in lawyer films a genre has been created. Genres hold the world in place, establishing and enforcing a sense of propriety, of proper boundaries which demarcate appropriate thought, feeling, and behavior and which provide frames, codes, and signs for constructing a shared social reality. Each area is a locus of conventionally determined behavior. . . . Film genres participate in this process by sorting out the different values and ideals a social order requires to be internalized if it is to survive.