Types of Types

There are three main types of types. These are:

ARCHETYPES
These are cultural character types handed down from generation to generation: the knight in shining armour, the damsel in distress, villain, the hero etc. Remember, though, these are not just fictional types: media texts can cast real people as archetypes too!

GENERIC TYPES
These are media generated character types that belong to particular genres. For example, you always get the same types of characters in Romantic Comedies: the ditzy girl who's never going to get a good boyfriend, but then ends up with the misunderstood hunk who is more than meets the eyes. In action movies there's the retired cop/soldier dragged out of retirement for one last case, the rookie officer whose enthusiasm and optimism gets him or her into trouble...and in horror there's the crazed killer who will stop at nothing to commit elaborate and gruesome murders, opposed by the Final Girl, often an isolated female who fights back with ferocity and cunning and usually escapes...
Remember here that, in this postmodern age of genre hybridity, generic types from one genre can all too easily appear in different genres. Voldemort, for example, fits a generic type from the horror genre, but appears in a children's action film.

STEREOTYPES
These are socially generated types that media texts use to enable audiences easily to identify certain features and behaviours in stock characters. For example, when a stereotyped teenager appears, audiences are comfortable with the hoodie-wearing, anti-social behaviour and defiance that this entails, even though this may not reflect the reality of what teenagers are actually like. Media texts can also play with this, however - after establishing a character as a stereotype, it is often interesting to develop them away from this idea. A good example of this is found in Misfits.