ABSTRACT
This chapter, informed by genre theory and in particular Rick Altman, Janet Staiger, Timothy Shary and Steve Neale, discusses Easy A as a both an example of the demise of what I refer to as the high-school teen comedy subgenre and as a palimpsest that hides underneath it traces from several different genre films. In addition, this chapter unpacks the complexities of generic labels and discusses the particularities of contemporary mainstream filmmaking, predominantly characterized by palimpsestic and intertextual practices, especially in the time of Web 2.0. Finally, I discuss the sociocultural and industrial reasons that prove why Easy A marks the end or the paucity of the popular high-school teen comedy in the 2010s
