Parody

For the Colombian politician, see Gina Parody.
Comedian Charlie Chaplin impersonating Hitler for comic effect in the satirical film The Great Dictator (1940)

A parody (/ˈpærədi/; also called spoof, send-up, take-off or lampoon), in use, is a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, "parody … is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice."[1] Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music (although "parody" in music has an earlier, somewhat different meaning than for other art forms), animation, gaming and film.

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]

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] Old Comedy contained parody, even the gods could be made fun of. The Frogs portrays the hero-turned-god Heracles as a Glutton and the God of Drama Dionysus as cowardly and unintelligent. The traditional trip to the Underworld story is parodied as Dionysus dresses as Heracles to go to the Underworld, in an attempt to bring back a Poet to save Athens.

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 to produce a humorous effect. The Ancient Greeks created satyr plays which parodied tragic plays, often with performers dressed like satyrs.

Music

Main article: Parody music

In classical music, as a technical term, parody refers to a reworking of one kind of composition into another (for example, a motet into a keyboard work as Girolamo Cavazzoni, Antonio de Cabezón, and Alonso Mudarra all did to Josquin des Prez motets).[8] 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. 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.[9] 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

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, meaning to make fun of or re-create what you are doing. A parody (pronounced /ˈpærədiː/; 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.

Modernist and post-modernist parody

In the 20th century, parody has been heightened as the central and most representative artistic device, the catalysing agent of artistic creation and innovation.[10][11] This most prominently happened in the second half of the century with postmodernism, but earlier modernism and Russian formalism had anticipated this perspective.[10][12] For the Russian formalists, parody was a way of liberation from the background text that enables to produce new and autonomous artistic forms.[13][14]

Jorge Luis Borges's (1939) short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", is often regarded as predicting postmodernism and conceiving the ideal of the ultimate parody.[15][16] 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.[17] Traditional definitions of parody usually only discuss parody in the stricter sense of something intended to ridicule the text it parodies. There is also a broader, extended sense of parody that may not include ridicule, and may be based on many other uses and intentions.[17][18] The broader sense of parody, parody done with intent other than ridicule, has become prevalent in the modern parody of the 20th century.[18] In the extended sense, the modern parody does not target the parodied text, but instead uses it as a weapon to target something else.[19][20] The reason for the prevalence of the extended, recontextualizing type of parody in the 20th century is that artists have sought to connect with the past while registering differences brought by modernity.[21] Major modernist examples of this recontextualizing parody include James Joyce's Ulysses, which incorporates elements of Homer's Odyssey in a 20th-century Irish context, and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land,[19] which incorporates and recontextualizes elements of a vast range of prior texts, including Dante's The Inferno. The work of Andy Warhol is another prominent example of the modern "recontextualizing" parody.[19] 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.[22][23]

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 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.[24][25]

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

Screenshot of a scene in Jurassic Park (1993) featuring a Tyrannosaurus rex (left), parodied by Rex the Dinosaur in Toy Story 2 (1999).

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 film Blood and Sand. Laurel specialized in parodies in the mid-1920s, writing and acting in a number of them. Some were send-ups of popular films, such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—parodied in the comic Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (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 with the film The Great Dictator, following 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 film genre. Blazing Saddles (1974) is a parody of western films, Spaceballs (1987) is a Star Wars spoof, and Robin Hood Men in Tights (1993) Mel's take on the classic Robin Hood tale.

The British comedy group Monty Python is also famous for its parodies, for example, the King Arthur spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974), and 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 films are the Airplane!, Hot Shots! and Naked Gun series. 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 the Scary Movie franchise. Other recent genre parodies include Not Another Teen Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie, and Vampires Suck, all of which have been critically panned.

Self-parody

Main article: 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 the Shrek sequels) or an artist or genre repeats elements of earlier works to the point that originality is lost.

Copyright issues

See also: Plagiarism

United States

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 17 U.S.C. § 107. 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.

In 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a fair use defense in the Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. Penguin Books case. Citing the Campbell v. Acuff-Rose decision, they found that a satire of 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.[26][27]

Canada

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 the 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 defence to a copyright claim.[28]

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".[29] 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."[30]

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[31] 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[32] that a "parody" is something that imitates a work for humorous or satirical effect. See also Fair dealing in United Kingdom law.

Social and political uses

Satirical political cartoon that appeared in 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.
Reggie Brown, a voice actor and Barack Obama impersonator

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 satirized English neglect of Ireland by parodying emotionally disengaged political tracts; and, recently, The Daily 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."[33]

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.[34] ”

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.[35]

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

Modern television examples

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Dentith (2000) p.9
  2. ↑ J.M.W. Thompson (May 2010). "Close to the Bone". Standpoint magazine.
  3. ↑ "Parody". The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Colt Brazill Segrest. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2007. Web. [1 Apr. 2015]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.811>. Trans. of "Parodie", Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 12. Paris, 1765.
  4. ↑ Balducci, Anthony (2011) The Funny Parts: A History of Film Comedy Routines and Gags p.231
  5. ↑ (Denith, 10)
  6. ↑ Quoted in Hutcheon, 32.
  7. ↑ (Hutcheon, 32)
  8. ↑ Tilmouth, Michael and Richard Sherr. "Parody (i)"' Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 19 February 2012 (subscription required)
  9. ↑ Burkholder, J. Peter. "Borrowing", Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 19 February. 2012 (subscription required)
  10. 1 2 Sheinberg (2000) pp.141, 150
  11. ↑ Stavans (1997) p.37
  12. ↑ 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."
  13. ↑ Hutcheon (1985) pp.28, 35
  14. ↑ Boris Eikhenbaum Theory of the "Formal Method" (1925) and O. Henry and the Theory of the Short Story (1925)
  15. ↑ Stavans (1997) p.31
  16. ↑ Elizabeth Bellalouna, Michael L. LaBlanc, Ira Mark Milne (2000) Literature of Developing Nations for Students: L-Z p.50
  17. 1 2 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.
  18. 1 2 Hutcheon (1985) p.50
  19. 1 2 3 Hutcheon (1985) p.52
  20. ↑ Yunck 1963
  21. ↑ Hutcheon (1985)
  22. ↑ Gérard Genette (1982) Palimpsests: literature in the second degree p.16
  23. ↑ 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
  24. ↑ 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.
  25. ↑ Hamersly, Michael. ""Weird Al" Yankovic brings his masterful musical parody to South Florida". Miami Herald. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
  26. ↑ Richard Stim. "Summaries of Fair Use Cases". Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
  27. ↑ "Google Scholar". google.com.
  28. ↑ "The Tyee – Canwest Suit May Test Limits of Free Speech". The Tyee. 11 December 2008.
  29. ↑ The Stationery Office. (2006) Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. [Online]. Available at official-documents.gov.uk (Accessed: 22 February 2011).
  30. ↑ 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 (Accessed: 22 February 2011).
  31. ↑ http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2356/regulation/5/made
  32. ↑ https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/359250/Exceptions_to_copyright_-_Guidance_for_creators_and_copyright_owners.pdf
  33. ↑ Appel, Alfred, Jr.; Nabokov, Vladimir (1967). "An Interview with Vladimir Nabokov". Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature VIII (2): 127–152. Retrieved 28 Dec 2013.
  34. ↑ An interview with The Onion, David Shankbone, Wikinews, November 25, 2007.
  35. ↑ Pratt (1991)

References

Further reading

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Parody.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Parody.

The dictionary definition of parody at Wiktionary

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