Parody

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Parodied
)

A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of

original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can also be about a real-life person (e.g. a politician), event, or movement (e.g. the French Revolution or 1960s counterculture). Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice".[1] The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon
said "parody ... is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music, theater, television and film, animation, and gaming. Some parody is practiced in theater.

The writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies, that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche ("a composition in another artist's manner, without satirical intent") and burlesque (which "fools around with the material of high literature and adapts it to low ends").[2] Meanwhile, the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot distinguishes between the parody and the burlesque, "A good parody is a fine amusement, capable of amusing and instructing the most sensible and polished minds; the burlesque is a miserable buffoonery which can only please the populace."[3] Historically, when a formula grows tired, as in the case of the moralistic melodramas in the 1910s, it retains value only as a parody, as demonstrated by the Buster Keaton shorts that mocked that genre.[4]

Terminology

A parody may also be known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature.

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".[5] Indeed, the components of the Greek word are παρά para "beside, counter, against" and ᾠδή oide "song". Thus, the original Greek word παρῳδία 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".[6] Because par- also has the non-antagonistic meaning of beside, "there is nothing in parodia to necessitate the inclusion of a concept of ridicule."[7]

In Greek

satyrs
.

Parody was used in early Greek philosophical texts to make philosophical points. Such texts are known as

Silloi by Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius which parodied philosophers living and dead. The style was a rhetorical mainstay of the Cynics and was the most common tone of the works made by Menippus and Meleager of Gadara.[8]

In the 2nd century CE,

True History Lucian delivers a story which exaggerates the hyperbole and improbable claims of those stories. Sometimes described as the first science fiction, the characters travel to the Moon, engage in interplanetary war with the help of aliens they meet there, and then return to Earth to experience civilization inside a 200-mile-long creature generally interpreted as being a whale. This is a parody of Ctesias' claims that India has a one-legged race of humans with a single foot so huge it can be used as an umbrella, Homer
's stories of one-eyed giants, and so on.

Related terms

Parody exists in the following related genres: satire, travesty, pastiche, skit, burlesque.

Satire

Satires and parodies are both derivative works that exaggerate their source material(s) in humorous ways.[9][10][11] However, a satire is meant to make fun of the real world, whereas a parody is a derivative of a specific work ("specific parody") or a general genre ("general parody" or "spoof"). Furthermore, satires are provocative and critical as they point to a specific vice associated with an individual or a group of people to mock them into correction or as a form of punishment.[11][12] In contrast, parodies are more focused on producing playful humor and do not always attack or criticize its targeted work and/or genre.[11][13] Of course, it is possible for a parody to maintain satiric elements without crossing into satire itself, as long as its "light verse with modest aspirations" ultimately dominates the work.[11]

Travesty

A travesty imitates and transforms a work, but focuses more on the satirization of it. Because satire is meant to attack someone or something,[11] the harmless playfulness of parody is lost.[13]

Pastiche

A pastiche imitates a work as a parody does, but unlike a parody, pastiche is neither transformative of the original work, nor is it humorous.[13][14] Literary critic Fredric Jameson has referred to the pastiche as a "blank parody", or "parody that has lost its sense of humor".[14]

Skit

Skits imitate works "in a satirical regime". But unlike travesties, skits do not transform the source material.[13]

Burlesque

The burlesque primarily targets heroic poems and theater to degrade popular heroes and gods, as well as mock the common tropes within the genre.[11] Simon Dentith has described this type of parody as "parodic anti-heroic drama".[13]

Spoof

A parody imitates and mocks a specific, recognizable work (e.g. a book, movie, etc.) or the characteristic style of a particular author. A spoof mocks an entire genre by exaggerating its conventions and cliches for humorous effect.[13]

Music

In

Lassus, and other composers of the 16th century used this technique. The term is also sometimes applied to procedures common in the Baroque period, such as when Bach reworks music from cantatas in his Christmas Oratorio
.

The musicological definition of the term parody has now generally been supplanted by a more general meaning of the word. In its more contemporary usage, musical parody usually has humorous, even satirical intent, in which familiar musical ideas or lyrics are lifted into a different, often incongruous, context.[16] Musical parodies may imitate or refer to the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music. For example, "The Ritz Roll and Rock", a song and dance number performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Silk Stockings, parodies the rock and roll genre. Conversely, while the best-known work of "Weird Al" Yankovic is based on particular popular songs, it also often utilises wildly incongruous elements of pop culture for comedic effect.

English term

Allegory of the Tulip omania [de], persiflage on the tulip mania, by Jan Brueghel the Younger (1640s)

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 citation comes from John Dryden in 1693, who also appended an explanation, suggesting that the word was in common use, meaning to make fun of or re-create what you are doing.

Modernist and post-modernist parody

Since the 20th century, parody has been heightened as the central and most representative artistic device, the catalysing agent of artistic creation and innovation.[17][18] This most prominently happened in the second half of the century with postmodernism, but earlier modernism and Russian formalism had anticipated this perspective.[17][19] For the Russian formalists, parody was a way of liberation from the background text that enables to produce new and autonomous artistic forms.[20][21]

Historian Christopher Rea[22] writes that "In the 1910s and 1920s, writers in China's entertainment market parodied anything and everything.... They parodied speeches, advertisements, confessions, petitions, orders, handbills, notices, policies, regulations, resolutions, discourses, explications, sutras, memorials to the throne, and conference minutes. We have an exchange of letters between the Queue and the Beard and Eyebrows. We have a eulogy for a chamber pot. We have 'Research on Why Men Have Beards and Women Don't,' 'A Telegram from the Thunder God to His Mother Resigning His Post,' and 'A Public Notice from the King of Whoring Prohibiting Playboys from Skipping Debts.'"[23][24]

Dante's The Inferno.[citation needed] The work of Andy Warhol is another prominent example of the modern "recontextualizing" parody.[29] According to French literary theorist Gérard Genette, the most rigorous and elegant form of parody is also the most economical, that is a minimal parody, the one that literally reprises a known text and gives it a new meaning.[32][33]

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.

post-modernist trope of using historical characters in fiction out of context to provide a metaphoric element.[citation needed
]

Reputation

Sometimes the reputation of a parody outlasts the reputation of what is being parodied. For example,

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 which it parodies.

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. Yankovic 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. Several artists, such as rapper Chamillionaire and Seattle-based grunge band Nirvana stated that Yankovic's parodies of their respective songs were excellent, and many artists have considered being parodied by him to be a badge of honor.[35][36]

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

794 F.2d 432
(9th Cir. 1986)

Film parodies

Some

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.

An early parody film was the 1922 movie

Three Stooges' short subject You Nazty Spy!
.

About 20 years later

Robin Hood Men in Tights (1993) is Brooks' take on the classic Robin Hood tale, and his spoofs in the horror, sci-fi and adventure genres include Young Frankenstein (1974), and Spaceballs (1987, a Star Wars
spoof).

The British comedy group

Jerry Zucker parodied well-established genres such as disaster, war and police movies with the Airplane!, Hot Shots! and Naked Gun series respectively. There is a 1989 film parody from Spain of the TV series The A-Team
called El equipo Aahhgg directed by José Truchado.

More recently, parodies have taken on whole film genres at once. One of the first was

]

Copyright

Many parody films have as their target out-of-copyright or non-copyrighted subjects (such as Frankenstein or Robin Hood) whilst others settle for imitation which does not infringe copyright, but is clearly aimed at a popular (and usually lucrative) subject. The spy film craze of the 1960s, fuelled by the popularity of James Bond is such an example. In this genre a rare, and possibly unique, example of a parody film taking aim at a non-comedic subject over which it actually holds copyright is the 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale. In this case, producer Charles K. Feldman initially intended to make a serious film, but decided that it would not be able to compete with the established series of Bond films. Hence, he decided to parody the series.[38]

Poetic parodies

Kenneth Baker considered poetic parody to take five main forms.[39]

  1. The first was to use parody to attack the author parodied, as in
    Wordsworth, "Two voices are there: one is of the deep....And one is of an old half-witted sheep."[40]
  2. The second was to pastiche the author's style, as with Henry Reed's parody of T. S. Eliot, Chard Whitlow: "As we get older we do not get any younger...."[41]
  3. The third type reversed (and so undercut) the sentiments of the poem parodied, as with Monty Python's All Things Dull and Ugly.
  4. A fourth approach was to use the target poem as a matrix for inserting unrelated (generally humorous) material – "To have it out or not? That is the question....Thus dentists do make cowards of us all."[42]
  5. Finally, parody may be used to attack contemporary/topical targets by utilizing the format of a well-known piece of verse: "O Rushdie, Rushdie, it's a vile world" (Cat Stevens).[43]

A further, more constructive form of poetic parody is one that links the contemporary poet with past forms and past masters through affectionate parodying – thus sharing poetic codes while avoiding some of the anxiety of influence.[44]

More aggressive in tone are playground poetry parodies, often attacking authority, values and culture itself in a carnivalesque rebellion:[45] "Twinkle, Twinkle little star,/ Who the hell do you think you are?"[46]

Self-parody

A subset of parody is self-parody in which artists parody their own work (as in Ricky Gervais's Extras).

Copyright issues and other legal issues

Although a parody can be considered a derivative work of a pre-existing, copyrighted work, some countries have ruled that parodies can fall under copyright limitations such as fair dealing, or otherwise have fair dealing laws that include parody in their scope.

United States

Parodies are protected under the

United States copyright law
, but the defense is more successful if the usage of an existing copyrighted work is transformative in nature, such as being a critique or commentary upon it.

In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that a rap parody of "Oh, Pretty Woman" by 2 Live Crew was fair use, as the parody was a distinctive, transformative work designed to ridicule the original song, and that "even if 2 Live Crew's copying of the original's first line of lyrics and characteristic opening bass riff may be said to go to the original's 'heart,' that heart is what most readily conjures up the song for parody, and it is the heart at which parody takes aim."

In 2001, the

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.

In 2007, the

O.J. Simpson murder trial and parody of The Cat in the Hat had infringed upon the children's book because it did not provide a commentary function upon that work.[47][48]

Canada

Under

As of the implementation of the Copyright Modernization Act 2012, "Fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody or satire does not infringe copyright."[50]

United Kingdom

In 2006 the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property recommended that the UK should "create an exception to copyright for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche by 2008".[51] Following the first stage of a two-part public consultation, the Intellectual Property Office reported that the information received "was not sufficient to persuade us that the advantages of a new parody exception were sufficient to override the disadvantages to the creators and owners of the underlying work. There is therefore no proposal to change the current approach to parody, caricature and pastiche in the UK."[52]

However, following the Hargreaves Review in May 2011 (which made similar proposals to the Gowers Review) the Government broadly accepted these proposals. The current law (effective from 1 October 2014), namely Section 30A[53] of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, now provides an exception to infringement where there is fair dealing of the original work for the purpose of parody (or alternatively for the purpose of caricature or pastiche). The legislation does not define what is meant by "parody", but the UK IPO – the Intellectual Property Office (United Kingdom) – suggests[54] that a "parody" is something that imitates a work for humorous or satirical effect. See also Fair dealing in United Kingdom law.

Jail

Some countries do not like parodies and the parodies can be considered insulting. The person who makes the parody can be fined or even jailed. For instance in the UAE[55] and North Korea,[56] this is not allowed.

Internet culture

Parody is a prominent genre in online culture, thanks in part to the ease with which digital texts may be altered, appropriated, and shared. Japanese

e'gao are emblematic of the importance of parody in online cultures in Asia. Video mash-ups and other parodic memes, such as humorously altered Chinese characters, have been particularly popular as a tool for political protest in the People's Republic of China, the government of which maintains an extensive censorship apparatus.[57] Chinese internet slang makes extensive use of puns and parodies on how Chinese characters are pronounced or written, as illustrated in the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon
.

Computer-generated parodies

style
of a technical paper or a particular writer. They are also called travesty generators and random text generators.

Their purpose is often satirical, intending to show that there is little difference between the generated text and real examples.

Many work by using techniques such as Markov chains to reprocess real text examples; alternatively, they may be hand-coded. Generated texts can vary from essay length to paragraphs and tweets. (The term "quote generator" can also be used for software that randomly selects real quotations.)

Social and political uses

I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier
". A chorus of disreputable men support a lone anti-suffrage woman.
Reggie Brown, a voice actor and Barack Obama impersonator

Parody is often used to make a social or political statement. Examples include Swift's "A Modest Proposal", which satirized English neglect of Ireland by parodying emotionally disengaged political tracts; and, recently, The Daily Show, The Larry Sanders Show and The Colbert Report, which parody a news broadcast and a talk show to satirize political and social trends and events.

On the other hand, the writer and frequent parodist Vladimir Nabokov made a distinction: "Satire is a lesson, parody is a game."[58]

Some events, such as a national tragedy, can be difficult to handle. 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:

I know the September 11 issue was an obviously very large challenge to approach. Do we even put out an issue? What is funny at this time in American history? Where are the jokes? Do people want jokes right now? Is the nation ready to laugh again? Who knows. There will always be some level of division in the back room. It's also what keeps us on our toes.[59]

Parody is by no means necessarily satirical, and may sometimes be done with respect and appreciation of the subject involved, without 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.[60]

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.

Examples

Historic examples

Internet examples

Modern television examples

Anime and manga

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Dentith (2000) p.9
  2. ^ J.M.W. Thompson (May 2010). "Close to the Bone". Standpoint magazine. Archived from the original on 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2011-02-26. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. . Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  4. . Retrieved 3 October 2018 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ (Denith, 10)
  6. ^ Quoted in Hutcheon, 32.
  7. ^ (Hutcheon, 32)
  8. ^ Fain 2010, p. 201.
  9. ^ Davis, Evan R.; Nace, Nicholas D. (2019). "Introduction". Teaching Modern British and American Satire. New York: Modern Language Association of America. pp. 1–34.
  10. ^ Stevens, Anne H. (2019). "Parody". Teaching Modern British and American Satire. Edited by Evan R. Davis and Nicholas D. Nace. New York: Modern Language Association of America. pp. 44–49.
  11. ^ .
  12. .
  13. ^ .
  14. ^ a b c Jameson, Fredric (1983). "Postmodernism and Consumer Society". The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Edited by Hal Foster. Bay Press. pp. 111–125.
  15. ^ Tilmouth, Michael and Richard Sherr. "Parody (i)"' Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 19 February 2012 (subscription required)
  16. ^ Burkholder, J. Peter. "Borrowing", Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 19 February. 2012 (subscription required)
  17. ^ a b Sheinberg (2000) pp.141, 150
  18. ^ Stavans (1997) p.37
  19. ^ Bradbury, Malcolm No, not Bloomsbury p.53, quoting Boris Eikhenbaum:

    Nearly all periods of artistic innovation have had a strong parodic impulse, advancing generic change. As the Russian formalist Boris Eichenbaum once put it: "In the evolution of each genre, there are times when its use for entirely serious or elevated objectives degenerates and produces a comic or parodic form....And thus is produced the regeneration of the genre: it finds new possibilities and new forms."

  20. ^ Hutcheon (1985) pp.28, 35
  21. ^ Boris Eikhenbaum Theory of the "Formal Method" (1925) and O. Henry and the Theory of the Short Story (1925)
  22. ^ "Christopher Rea". Department of Asian Studies, The University of British Columbia. Archived from the original on Aug 3, 2019.
  23. ^ Rea, Christopher (2 March 2016). "From the Year of the Ape to the Year of the Monkey". The China Story. Archived from the original on 2020-04-11. Retrieved 2019-02-17.
  24. ^ Christopher Rea, The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015), pp. 52, 53.
  25. ^ Stavans (1997) p.31
  26. ^ Elizabeth Bellalouna, Michael L. LaBlanc, Ira Mark Milne (2000) Literature of Developing Nations for Students: L-Z p.50
  27. ^ a b Elices (2004) p.90 quotation:

    From these words, it can be inferred that Genette's conceptualisation does not diverge from Hutcheon's, in the sense that he does not mention the component of ridicule that is suggested by the prefix paros. Genette alludes to the re-interpretative capacity of parodists in order to confer an artistic autonomy to their works.

  28. ^ a b Hutcheon (1985) p.50
  29. ^ a b c Hutcheon (1985) p.52
  30. ^ Yunck 1963
  31. ^ Hutcheon (1985)
  32. ^ Gérard Genette (1982) Palimpsests: literature in the second degree p.16
  33. ^ Sangsue (2006) p.72 quotation:

    Genette individua la forma "piú rigorosa" di parodia nella "parodia minimale", consistente nella ripresa letterale di un testo conosciuto e nella sua applicazione a un nuovo contesto, come nella citazione deviata dal suo senso

  34. ^ Willett, Bec (17 December 2017). "Trapped in the Netflix at iO". Performink. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  35. ^ Ayers, Mike (24 July 2014). "'Weird Al' Yankovic Explains His Secret Formula for Going Viral and Hitting No. 1". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
  36. ^ Hamersly, Michael. ""Weird Al" Yankovic brings his masterful musical parody to South Florida". Miami Herald. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
  37. ^ "The Producers (1967)". imdb.com. 10 November 1968. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  38. ^ K. Baker ed., Unauthorized Versions (London 1990) Introduction p. xx–xxii
  39. ^ K. Baker ed., Unauthorized Versions (London 1990) p. 429
  40. ^ K. Baker ed., Unauthorized Versions (London 1990) p. 107
  41. ^ K. Baker ed., Unauthorized Versions (London 1990) p. 319
  42. ^ K. Baker ed., Unauthorized Versions (London 1990) p. 355
  43. ^ S. Cushman ed., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton 2012) p. 1003
  44. ^ J. Thomas, Poetry's Playground (2007) p. 45-52
  45. ^ Quoted in S. Burt ed., The Cambridge History of American Poetry (Cambridge 2014)
  46. ^ Richard Stim (4 April 2013). "Summaries of Fair Use Cases". Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
  47. ^ "Google Scholar". google.com.
  48. ^ "The Tyee – Canwest Suit May Test Limits of Free Speech". The Tyee. 11 December 2008.
  49. ^ Branch, Legislative Services (2019-11-15). "Consolidated federal laws of canada, Copyright Modernization Act". laws-lois.justice.gc.ca. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
  50. ^ The Stationery Office. (2006) Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. [Online]. Available at official-documents.gov.uk (Accessed: 22 February 2011).
  51. ^ UK Intellectual Property Office. (2009) Taking Forward the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property: Second Stage Consultation on Copyright Exceptions. [Online]. Available at ipo.gov.uk Archived 2011-05-17 at the Wayback Machine (Accessed: 22 February 2011).
  52. ^ "The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Quotation and Parody) Regulations 2014". Legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  53. ^ "Exceptions to copyright : Guidance for creators and copyright owners" (PDF). Gov.uk. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  54. ^ "American begins one-year prison sentence in UAE for satirical video". the Guardian. 2013-12-23. Retrieved 2023-01-11.
  55. ^ "North Korea Furious Over Kim Jong Un Parody Dance Video". www.nbcnews.com. 2014-07-23. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  56. ^ Christopher Rea, "Spoofing (e’gao) Culture on the Chinese Internet.” In Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times. Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey, eds. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013, pp. 149–172
  57. JSTOR 1207097
    . Retrieved 28 Dec 2013.
  58. ^ An interview with The Onion, David Shankbone, Wikinews, November 25, 2007.
  59. ^ Pratt (1991)

References

Further reading

External links

Media related to Parody at Wikimedia Commons

The dictionary definition of parody at Wiktionary