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Parody

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File:WTTF1.jpg
Parody of 'Back to the Future'

In contemporary usage, a parody is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. As 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."

Parody exists in all art media, including literature, music, and cinema. Cultural movements can also be parodied. Light, playful parodies are sometimes colloquially referred to as spoofs. The act of such a parody is often called lampooning.

Western origin

In ancient Greek literature, a parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of epics "but treat[ing] light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects" (Denith, 10). Indeed, the apparent Greek roots of the word are par- (which can mean "beside" or "counter, against") and -ody ("song", as in ode). Thus, the original Greek word has been sometimes been taken to mean "counter-song," an imitation "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). But 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 Neo-classical literature, "parody" was also a type of poem where one work imitates the style of another for humorous effect.

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. See also the main article on musical parody.

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 [sic] 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.

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.

In the postmodern sensibility, blank parody, in which an artist takes the skeletal form of another 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 more well-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, such as "You Are Old, Father William", are much better known than the originals.

Film parodies film

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.

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 series. 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.)

Although a parody can be considered a derivative work under United States Copyright Law, it can be protected under the fair use doctrine, which is codified in 17 USC § 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.

Social and political uses

Parody is closely related to satire and is often used in conjunction with it to make social and political points. Examples include Swift's 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.

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. [1] Similarly, Henry Louis Gates and Gene Caponi regard parody as an important technique of signifyin', the African-American rhetoric of indirect criticism and semantic innovation.

Educational aspects

Parody is an important element of student writing, David Bartholomae argues, because students imitate and alter academic forms in an attempt to master those forms.

Also, parody arguably sometimes makes canonical works accessible to larger audiences by presenting them humorously; see, for example, parodies of Poe's "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" on The Simpsons.

See also

Examples

Historical examples

Contemporary examples

Visual example

File:Marcel Duchamp Mona Lisa LHOOQ.jpg
Duchamp's parody of the Mona Lisa adds a goatee and moustache.
Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Original painting from circa 1503 – 1507. Oil on poplar.

Marcel Duchamp's Dadaist painting LHOOQ parodies DaVinci's Mona Lisa by marring it with a goatee and moustache. In keeping with his Dadist practices, which called artistic conventions and aesthetic assumptions into question, DuChamps paired his visual parody with a low pun; in French, "L.H.O.O.Q." sounds like an idiom describing women who sexually tease men: "elle a chaud au cul," or "she is hot in the ass."

References

Look up parody in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
  • Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981. ISBN 0-292-71527-7.
  • Caponi, Gena Dagel (1999). Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-183-X.
  • Dentith, Simon. Parody (The New Critical Idiom). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-18221-2.
  • Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (1988) The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503463-5.
  • Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms' (1985). New York: Methuen. ISBN 0-252-06938-2.
  • Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone"
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