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    It is a commonality to say that "parody" means a genre is in decline
and there IS a certain truth to that.  Except that genre parody has been
with the cinema almost since the start of genre and cinema!  Two films
called GO WEST, one by Buster Keaton and a later one by the Marx. Bros.
certainly parodied the Western, but the Western didn't die until well after
that!  (It's still dying, in fact.)  Some of Keaton, and of Laurel and
Hardy, a lot of The Three Stooges, most of the Marx Bros., were genre
parodies which did little, if anything, to kill the genres they parodied.
The "spy thriller" was a popular subject for parody in the hey-day of James
Bond films of the 60's, but it is still with us in "serious" form.  In
other words, genres arise due to complex factors and once arisen, like
Frankenstein's monster, are hard to kill.
 
DD
 
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David Desser,UIUC Cinema Studies
2109 FLB/707 S. Mathews, Urbana, IL  61801
217/244-2705