A
parody (; also called
send-up or
spoof), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous,
satiric or
ironic imitation. As the literary theorist
Linda Hutcheon (2000: 7) puts it, "parody … is imitation with a critical difference, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith (2000: 9), defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively
polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice." Often, the most satisfying element of a good parody is seeing others mistake it for the genuine article.
Parody may be found in art or culture, including
literature,
music (although "parody" in music has a rather wider meaning than for other art forms), and
cinema. Parodies are sometimes colloquially referred to as spoofs or lampoons.
Origins
According to
Aristotle (
Poetics, ii. 5),
Hegemon of Thasos was the inventor of a kind of parody; by slightly altering the wording in well-known poems he transformed the sublime into the ridiculous. In ancient
Greek literature, a
parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of
epics "but treating light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects" (Denith, 10). Indeed, the apparent Greek roots of the word are
para- (which can mean
beside,
counter, or
against) and
-ody (
song, as in an ode). Thus, the original Greek word
parodia has sometimes been taken to mean
counter-song, an imitation that is set against the original. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, defines parody as imitation "turned as to produce a ridiculous effect" (quoted in Hutcheon, 32). Because
par- also has the non-antagonistic meaning of
beside, "there is nothing in
parodia to necessitate the inclusion of a concept of ridicule" (Hutcheon, 32).
Roman writers explained parody as an imitation of one poet by another for humorous effect. In
French Neoclassical literature,
parody was also a type of poem where one work imitates the style of another for humorous effect.
Music
In
classical music,
parody means a reworking of one kind of composition into another (e.g., a
motet into a keyboard work as
Girolamo Cavazzoni,
Antonio de Cabezón, and
Alonso Mudarra all did to
Josquin des Prez motets.) More commonly, a
parody mass (
missa parodia) or an
oratorio used extensive quotation from other vocal works such as motets or
cantatas;
Victoria,
Palestrina,
Lassus, and other notable composers of the 16th century used this technique;
Bach also used existing cantatas for his
Christmas Oratorio. In fact, the musical use of the word parody is wider than its general use - and while much
musical parody does have humorous, even satirical intent, some simply recycles musical ideas.
English term
The first usage of the word
parody in English cited in the
Oxford English Dictionary is in
Ben Jonson, in
Every Man in His Humour in 1598: "A Parodie, a parodie! to make it absurder than it was." The next notable citation comes from
John Dryden in 1693, who also appended an explanation, suggesting that the word was in common use, it means to make fun of or re-create what you doing.
Modernist and post-modernist parody
In the broader sense of Greek
parodia, parody can occur when whole elements of one work are lifted out of their context and reused, not necessarily to be ridiculed. Hutcheon argues that this sense of parody has again become prevalent in the
twentieth century, as artists have sought to connect with the past while registering differences brought by
modernity. Major modernist examples of this recontextualizing parody include
James Joyce's
Ulysses, which incorporates elements of
Homer's
Odyssey in a
twentieth-century Irish context, and
T. S. Eliot's
The Waste Land, which incorporates and recontextualizes elements of a vast range of prior texts, including
Dante's
The Inferno.
Blank parody, in which an artist takes the skeletal form of an art work and places it in a new context without ridiculing it, is common.
Pastiche is a closely related
genre, and parody can also occur when characters or settings belonging to one work are used in a humorous or ironic way in another, such as the transformation of minor characters
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from
Shakespeare's drama
Hamlet into the principal characters in a comedic perspective on the same events in the play (and film)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. In
Flann O'Brien's novel
At Swim-Two-Birds, for example, mad
King Sweeney,
Finn MacCool, a
pookah, and an assortment of
cowboys all assemble in an inn in
Dublin: the mixture of mythic characters, characters from
genre fiction, and a quotidian setting combine for a humor that is not directed at any of the characters or their authors. This combination of established and identifiable characters in a new setting is not the same as the post-modernist habit of using historical characters in fiction out of context to provide a metaphoric element.
Reputation
Sometimes the reputation of a parody outlasts the reputation of what is being parodied. For example,
Don Quixote, which mocks the traditional
knight errant tales, is much better known than the novel that inspired it,
Amadis de Gaula (although Amadis is mentioned in the book). Another notable case is the
novel Shamela by
Henry Fielding (1742), which was a parody of the gloomy
epistolary novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) by
Samuel Richardson. Many of
Lewis Carroll's parodies of Victorian didactic verse for children, such as "
You Are Old, Father William", are much better known than the (largely forgotten) originals.
Stella Gibbons's comic novel
Cold Comfort Farm has eclipsed the pastoral novels of
Mary Webb which largely inspired it.
In more recent times, the television sitcom
'Allo 'Allo! is perhaps better known than the drama
Secret Army of which it is a parody (although a full appreciation of the humour largely depends on a knowledge of the earlier work).
Some artists carve out careers by making parodies. One of the best-known examples is that of
"Weird Al" Yankovic. His career of parodying other musical acts and their songs has outlasted many of the artists or bands he has parodied. Although he is not required under law to get permission to parody, as a personal rule, however, he does seek permission to parody a person's song before recording it.
In the US legal system the point that in most cases a parody of a work constitutes fair use was upheld in the case of
Rick Dees, who decided to use 29 seconds of the music from the song
When Sonny Gets Blue to parody
Johnny Mathis' singing style even after being refused permission. An appeals court upheld the trial court's decision that this type of parody represents fair use.
Fisher v. Dees 794 F.2d 432 (9th Cir. 1986)
Film parodies
Some
genre theorists, following
Bakhtin, see parody as a natural development in the life cycle of any
genre; this idea has proven especially fruitful for genre film theorists. Such theorists note that
Western movies, for example, after the classic stage defined the conventions of the genre, underwent a parody stage, in which those same conventions were ridiculed and critiqued. Because audiences had seen these classic Westerns, they had expectations for any new Westerns, and when these expectations were inverted, the audience laughed.
Perhaps the earliest parody was the
1922 Mud and Sand, a Stan Laurel film that made fun of Rudolph Valentino's movie
Blood and Sand. Laurel specialized in parodies in the mid-20s, writing and acting in a number of them. Some were send-ups of popular films, such as
Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (
1920)--parodied in the comic
Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride (
1926). Others were spoofs of Broadway plays, such as
No, No, Nanette (
1925), parodied as
Yes, Yes, Nanette (1925). In
1940 Charlie Chaplin created a satirical comedy about
Adolf Hitler:
The Great Dictator, which followed the first-ever Hollywood parody of the Nazis, the
Three Stooges' short subject
You Nazty Spy! .
About 20 years later
Mel Brooks started his career with a Hitler parody as well. After
The Producers (
1968) Brooks became one of the most famous film parodists and did spoofs on any kind of movie genre.
Blazing Saddles (
1974) is one of his most popular parodies, and
Spaceballs (
1987) is still presumed to be the best
science fiction spoof ever.
The famous British comedy group
Monty Python is also famous for its parodies, e.g. the
King Arthur spoof
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (
1974) or the
Jesus satire
Life of Brian (
1979). In the
1980s there came another team of parodists including
David Zucker,
Jim Abrahams and
Jerry Zucker. Their most popular movies are the
Hot Shots! and the
Naked Gun movies.
Nowadays parodies have taken on whole movie genres at once. One famous film parody is the
Scary Movie franchise. Other notable genre parodies include
Not Another Teen Movie,
Date Movie,
Epic Movie,
Meet the Spartans, and
Disaster Movie.
Furthermore
Daffy Duck has a talent for film parody-appearing as
Stupor Duck (
Superman);
Robin Hood Daffy (Errol Flynn's classic
The Adventures of Robin Hood);
Duck Dodgers (
Buck Rogers); and Sam in
Carrotblanca.
Self-parody
A subset of parody is
self-parody in which artists parody their own work (as in
Ricky Gervais's
Extras) or notable distinctions of their work (such as
Antonio Banderas's
Puss in Boots in
Shrek 2), or an artist or genre repeats elements of earlier works to the point that originality is lost.
Another notable example of this is episode 100 of "
Family Guy" in which the writer and producer,
Seth MacFarlane, spent the entirety of the episode asking questions to other actors which always received a negative response, such as:
and,
Copyright issues
Although a parody can be considered a
derivative work under
United States Copyright Law, it can be protected from claims by the copyright owner of the original work under the
fair use doctrine, which is codified in . The
Supreme Court of the United States stated that parody "is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works." That commentary function provides some justification for use of the older work. See
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.In 2001, the
United States Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit, in
Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin, upheld the right of
Alice Randall to publish a parody of
Gone with the Wind called
The Wind Done Gone, which told the same story from the point of view of
Scarlett O'Hara's slaves, who were glad to be rid of her.
Under Canadian law, although there is protection for Fair Dealing, there is no explicit protection for parody and satire. In
Canwest v. Horizon, the publisher of Vancouver Sun launched a lawsuit against a group which had published a pro-Palestinian parody of the paper. Alan Donaldson, the judge in the case, ruled that parody is not a defense to a copyright claim.
Social and political uses
right|thumb|Satirical political cartoon that appeared in [[Puck (magazine)|Puck magazine, October 9, 1915. Caption "I did not raise my girl to be a voter" parodies the anti-
World War I song "
I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier". A chorus of disreputable men support a lone anti-suffrage woman.]]
Parody is a frequent ingredient in
satire and is often used to make social and political points. Examples include
Swift's
A Modest Proposal, which satirizes English neglect of Ireland by parodying emotionally disengaged political tracts, and, in contemporary culture,
The Daily Show and
The Colbert Report, which parody a news broadcast and a talk show, respectively, to satirize political and social trends and events. Some events, such as a national tragedy, can be difficult to handle. A
9/11 update of
George Orwell's novella
Animal Farm—
Snowball's Chance by U.S. author
John Reed—raised the ire of the George Orwell estate, and critics such as
Christopher Hitchens. Chet Clem, Editorial Manager of the news parody publication
The Onion, told
Wikinews in an interview the questions that are raised when addressing difficult topics:
Parody is by no means necessarily satirical, and may sometimes be done with respect and appreciation of the subject involved, while not being a heedless sarcastic attack.
Parody has also been used to facilitate dialogue between cultures or subcultures. Sociolinguist
Mary Louise Pratt identifies parody as one of the "arts of the contact zone," through which marginalized or oppressed groups "selectively appropriate," or imitate and take over, aspects of more empowered cultures.
Shakespeare often uses a series of parodies to convey his meaning. In the social context of his era, an example can be seen in
King Lear where the
fool is introduced with his
coxcomb to be a parody of the king.
See also
Examples
Historic examples
- Mozart's A Musical Joke (Ein musikalischer Spaß), K.522 (1787) - parody of incompetent contemporaries of Mozart, as assumed by some theorists
