Parody

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In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. It can also be used to poke affectionate fun at the work in question. Parody exists in all art media, including literature, music, and cinema. Cultural movements can also be parodied. Such works are also sometimes colloquially referred to as spoofs.

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Western origin

In ancient Greek literature, a parody was a type of poem that imitated another poem's style. Indeed, the Greek roots of the word parody are par- ("beside" or "subsidiary") and -ody ("song", as in ode). Thus, the original Greek meant, roughly, "mock poem".

Roman writers explained parody as an imitation of one poet by another for humorous effect. In French Neo-classical literature, "parody" was also a type of poem where one work imitates the style of another for humorous effect.

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Use in classical music

In reference to 15th- to 18th-century music, "parody" means a reworking of one kind of composition into another - for example, a motet into a keyboard work; Girolamo Cavazzoni, Antonio de Cabezón, and Alonso Mudarra all created keyboard parodies of Josquin motets. More commonly, a parody mass (missa parodia) used extensive quotation from other vocal works such as motets; Victoria, Palestrina, Lassus, and other notable composers of the 16th century used this technique, also called marichu chollu. Song parodies can be filled with mishearings known as mondegreens.

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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 not in common use. In his "Preface to the Satires", he says: "We may find, that they were Satryrique Poems, full of Parodies; that is, of Verses patch'd up from great Poets, and turn'd into another Sence than their Author intended them."

Dryden's definition is therefore a departure from previous usage (as he implies satire), and Dryden adapts what was still a foreign term (parody) to apply to a recent literary subgenre that had no name: the mock-heroic.

In "MacFlecknoe", Dryden created an entire poem designed to ridicule by parody. Dryden imitates Virgil's Aeneid, but the poem is about Thomas Shadwell, a minor dramatist. The implicit contrast between the heroic style from Virgil and the poor quality of the hero, Shadwell, makes Shadwell seem even worse. When dressed in Aeneas's clothes, Shadwell looks all the more ridiculous.

Other parodies of the Restoration and early 18th century were similar to Dryden's: they employed an imitation of something serious and revered to ridicule a low or foolish person or habit. This is generally referred to as the mock-heroic, a genre generally credited to Samuel Butler and his poem Hudibras. When conscious, the contrast of very serious or exalted style with very frivolous or worthless subject is parody. When the combination is unconscious, it is bathos (derived from Alexander Pope's parody of Longinus, "Peri Bathos").

Jonathan Swift is the first English author to apply the word parody to narrative prose, and it is perhaps because of a misunderstanding of Swift's own definition of parody that the term has since come to refer to any stylistic imitation that is intended to belittle. In "The Apology for the &c.", which is one of the prefaces to his A Tale of a Tub, Swift says that a parody is the imitation of an author one wishes to expose. In essence, this makes parody very little different from mockery and burlesque, and, given Swift's attention to language, it is likely that he knew this. In fact, Swift's definition of parody might well be a parody of Dryden's presumed habit of explaining the obvious or using loan words.

After Jonathan Swift, the term parody was used almost exclusively to refer to mockery, particularly in narrative.

The word spoof finds its origin in a game involving trickery and nonsense. The game was invented by Arthur Roberts, an English comedian.

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Alternate meaning

In the older sense of the word, parody can occur when whole elements of one work are lifted out of their context and reused. Pastiche is a form of parody, and parody can also occur when characters or settings belonging to one work are used in a humorous 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. However, in the postmodern sensibility, blank parody is common where an artist takes the skeletal form of another art work and places it in a new context with new content.

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Film parodying film

Some genre film theorists see parody as a natural development in the life cycle of any genre, especially in film. Western movies, for example, after the classic stage defined the conventions of the genre, underwent a parody stage, in which those same conventions were lampooned. Because audiences had seen these classic Westerns, they had expectations for any new Westerns, and when these expectations were inverted, the audience laughed.

Sometimes the reputation of a parody outlasts the reputation of what is being parodied. A notable case is the novel Joseph Andrews 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, such as "You Are Old, Father William", are much better known than the originals.

A subset of parody is self-parody in which artists satirize themselves (such as in Ricky Gervais's Extras) or 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.

One good example of film parody can be found in the line of "Scary Movie" films. The films poke fun at familiar elements from recent horror and other mainstream movies. (For example, Scary Movie 3 incorporates the storylines of The Ring and Signs.)

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Copyright issues

Although a parody can be considered a derivative work under United States Copyright Law it can be protected under the fair use of 17 USC § 107. In 2001, the Federal Court of Appeals, 11th District 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.

See also the Supreme Court of the United States case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. regarding the song Oh, Pretty Woman.

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See also

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Examples

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Historical examples

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Contemporary examples

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