When analyzing some piece of art for merit such as a story or a movie the first inclination is to find order, to dispel entropy and in so doing to organize the data of the piece into a category. People laugh at a stage show and see how the antics of the characters are ridiculous and exaggerated, they call this a comedy. However in the growing complexity of modern days when these categories have been delineated by critics for many decades and in some cases centuries. There appear these subdivisions of categories and inevitably the line begins to blur between genres.
Take the comedy example so if these antics are slapstick that is harmless enough but what if the jokes are organized around a political event? The Three Stooges never meet Hitler but that might have been funny. Can this simply be called comedy? It now has social commentary about relevant historical material that is not funny. OR take the example of Itchy & Scratchy on the Simpsons where the humor comes from violence, a confrontation with mortality. Of course if you can’t laugh at death what’s the point? This is something that society is getting better at. This is the very root of what makes something a dark comedy; that is the subject matter deals with serious issues of life and death.
Taking the dark comedy as a spring board is it not much of a leap to then arrive at drama through the connection between comedy and tragedy? Some say comedy is tragedy plus time but in this ever accelerating world the two quite often appear as one and the same. So if we can create something that is both comedy and tragedy the fundamental elements of catharsis, the two poles on the spectrum of artistic expression then it seems reasonable to assert that genre is a moot term.
What does this do for the artist? Well, with no easy categories with which to place a product, that product can be immediately validated as “art” or it can be dismissed as “crap” and forsaken into the void of entropy. Here is where the socio-political hand waving is most critical. In the former case of justification of a product as “art” there must not only be discourse but agreement there must be a rhetoric about the piece. This might be a “pitch” to use Hollywood terms. Now this effort of justification will thrive in the hands of a critical community with accredited critics (for whatever that means) but like in modern media, which stories get told is a political and practical decision since every story simply cannot be given such consideration.
Now it is the task of the artist not only to create from the ether, to arrive at some kind of product from the chaos, but also to justify this creation to explain something in terms of overlapping categories without betraying the creation through overly convoluted exegesis. If the product is worth much this convolution will follow and become something other people will do that will make it more than it was through critical and fan (the reason to do it) discourse. This I think is what makes something art and this I think is what makes good stuff dynamic beyond its inception and creation, giving it a longevity of entertainment beyond that of the creator. Hence the immortality thing.