Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
In which case "genre revisionism" would probably be a better word, although it still carries the unfortunate connotation that genre conventions are rigid, inviolable rules that all films in said genre must obey--and thus, for example, a western ending with the hero's defeat is automatically a profound critique of the genre.
The linked essay uses 'transformation' to describe how "Chinatown" compares against classic hard-boiled detective stories, but then falls into the trap you describe.

Then again, maybe Stu is using "deconstruction" in the non-colloquial, Derridean sense of a critique of the logocentrism inherent in genre classifications, which do not refer to actual phenomena (the science fiction genre in itself) but are mere words which only gain meaning through their difference (différance) from other genres which are themselves no more real. (Il n'y a pas de hors-genre.)
This is clever, starting with Stu and ending with the slight twist of il n'y a pas de hors-genre. I laughed, but then felt sheepish for laughing. TBH, I'd kinda like to come across that kind of discussion in the wild, outside an academic context. But in ~20 odd years on the internet, I've only seen it once.