Tag Gallagher wrote:

>So we can date "genre" to the time of HATARI in both languages. Now:
>how far back can we date it in either language? As applied to movies.
>
"With regard to the genre, I am of the opinion that an English audience
will not relish it so well as a more characteristic kind of comedy."
- C.
Jenner, 1770:

"It is a genre little interesting when the works of the great Italian
artists are at hand."
- A.
Young, 1790

These are the first two citations for the word "genre" in the sense we
are using it here in the 1987 supplement to the First Edition of the OED.

Some college students on this list may have free access to the online
in-progress third edition, which, outrageously, is $500 a year for
individuals, and may wish to see if there are earlier or additional
citations of interest. Warning: if I learn who you are, I may email you
very occasionally for a current set of definitions and citations for a word.

Tag, sometimes your opposition to fixed ideas can itself seem like a
fixed idea. There's a pretty long history of artists in all fields
making works in response to, and under the influence of, other artists.
Bach literally based many composition on works by others. One of the
biggest trends in contemporary art has to do with artists commenting on,
or trying to "humanize," the forms of minimalism in a variety of ways.
There's a hilarious video called "Bouncing in the Corner #36DDD" that's
a takeoff on Bruce Nauman's hour long repetitive body movement videos,
such as one of the same title (and which are really good, by the way,
even if tedious in the extreme), by Dara Greenwald, in which by doing
the same thing Nauman did with a similarly bare chest she injects her,
um, bouncing breasts into the picture, thus disrupting the monotony. But
this is only one of many, many examples -- growing plants arranged in a
grid, for example. Part of the meaning of such things is offering
commentary on other art. And it happens in film all the time too.

Cezanne is supposed to have said that he was oriented to the
intelligence of God -- but he also said that he wanted to "make of
impressionism" something as lasting as the art of museums, and mentioned
Poussin in particular. Yeats began his great last poem, "Under Ben
Bulben," in angry response to Rilke's thoughts about death. And I
thought Hawks was pretty clear in interviews that he made "Rio Bravo" in
part in response to "High Noon." There are many, many films that take
other films as their starting point, Ken Jacobs's "Tom, Tom, the Piper's
Son" for one.

Just keep repeating, there are no rules in art. An art work can be made
primarily in response to another, partly, or not at all. And this is one
reason that I share your dubiousness about synoptic theories of film,
and art. But you're making one in denying the possibility that a film
may be responding to a set of conventions that have accrued over the
decades in films with similar subjects, or perhaps even commenting on
those conventions.

- Fred