Genres depend on receptive audiences who are willing to grant credibility to the conventions of the genre to the extent that those conventions become invisible. Once that is accomplished the generic illusion can assume the character of verisimilitude. It no longer seems to be constituted through the manipulation of coded formulae. A certain occlusion of rhetoric and convention, therefore, is crucial to the successful transmission of ideological beliefs to the audience. What this means, however, is that once the generic conventions are foregrounded, the genre can no longer operate successfully as a purveyor of ideology.
All genres create a tradition that can become an object to be cited, an occasion for reflexivity.
The eclipse of the western was thus fostered both by the subversion of its generic conventions and by its exhaustion as a mode of ideological legitimization. One might also see something of the film noir genre in lawyer films. Dialog is frequently abrasive, and the style is usually characterized by night shooting, dark shadows, sharp lighting contrasts, askew camera angles, symbolic environments and convoluted narratives. . . . Indeed, the noir world is characterized by crossed boundaries. The contemporary noir revivals can be said to pertain .