When people say that something is a deconstruction of its genre, what does that mean?
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Every genre has certain unrealistic aspects to it. But within those movies/books/tv shows, those unrealistic parts are ignored. That’s just how things work in that kind of story. For example, in a romantic comedy, the guy might make some big grand gesture to win the girl back (he rides into the church on a horse to interrupt her wedding to the jerk guy). And this wins her heart and she rides off with the hero. In real life this sort of thing might get you arrested, or hit with a restraining order, or even shot by the girl’s dad. But in a romantic comedy, the grand crazy gesture works.
In a horror movie, your car might not start, even though it’s been very reliable before. A group of teenagers might split up when they hear a bunch of scary noises out in the dark, instead of sticking together. These are normal events in horror movies that are taken for granted.
“Deconstructing” a genre involves pointing out the stuff that wouldn’t work in real life. Often it’s done for comedy, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it’s done to make a subject much darker than it would be otherwise. Basically you criticize the genre, by making a movie/book/tv show that is sort of set in the genre, but none of the standard storytelling assumptions work anymore. This dramatically changes the tone of the story. Sometimes you explicitly point out that these things don’t work (“What, you think you can barge into my daughter’s wedding like some character from a romantic comedy? Think again…”), and sometimes you don’t. And then sometimes the storytelling tropes will work, but you took extra special care to justify them and point out why they’re in place (the killer reveals he sabotaged the car so you can’t get away).
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