I would chalk the problem up as something more post-modern: the inability of many of today's society to see the past and/or any serious expression as anything other than a subject of mockery. I do independent films, and I just got shown another one that a friend's kid worked on. It was like a spoof of something, or everything all at once, and it had the typical Family Guy constant riffs on everything in the film, from character, to editing techniques, to effects - but to my age-encrusted eyes at least, there was nothing to it other than one joke after another whose sole "joke" was a reference to supposedly inept earlier efforts at telling a story - any story. The film was the best example of what I'm seeing in most of the younger guys working in film I know: nobody wants to tell a straight story of any kind, it's almost always parodies or satires of another genre, rather than trying to set out and tell a story of their own.

I like satire and parody as much as the next guy, when it's done well - but it's become like a crutch for people, a safe bet rather than trying to make something their own. In every filmaking college class I've taken (and this was in the 90's), the teachers had to enforce a no-parody policy, because they found that most students would try to do a parody of something else if left to their own devices.