Parody

In practice

A parody copies the style of a particular work, writer or genre closely enough that the audience recognizes the source, then exaggerates it until the copy becomes funny. Airplane! borrows the plot, the dialogue and even the stiff acting of 1950s disaster movies, and the joke is how faithfully it does so while everything goes wrong.

Parody needs a target the audience already knows. A parody of a film nobody has seen is just a strange film. That is why parodies aim at famous works and at genres with strong habits: the western, the horror movie, the spy thriller, the superhero origin story. The more fixed the habits, the easier they are to bend.

For a screenwriter, a parody is still a story. The best ones, such as Young Frankenstein or Galaxy Quest, have characters the audience cares about and a plot that would work without the jokes. The imitation gives the comedy its shape, but the story keeps people watching after the first few laughs.

A parody that plays the genre straight

Every line is a cliché of the disaster movie: the flashing lights, the grim captain, the brave promise not to lie. Nobody winks at the camera. The parody comes from playing the genre's habits with total seriousness and then letting one more disaster pile on top, which is how Airplane! cast dramatic actors and had them deliver absurd lines straight.

What a parody is

A parody is a work that imitates the style, form or content of another work, author or genre in order to mock it, comment on it or simply have fun with it. The word comes from the Greek paroidia, a "song sung beside" another one: a mocking counter-song. The imitation is the method, and exaggeration is what turns it into comedy.

Parody can target a single work, as Weird Al Yankovic's songs target particular hits, or a whole genre, as Blazing Saddles targets the western. It can be gentle or savage. What every parody shares is that the audience must recognize the original. The pleasure lies in seeing the familiar thing and the distortion at the same time.

A spoof is a broad, light parody whose aim is mostly laughs, such as Scary Movie or Spaceballs. A mockumentary such as This Is Spinal Tap parodies the documentary form itself. A sketch that copies a TV commercial is a parody too. The form can be a novel, a film, a song, a poem or a two-minute video.

Parody vs. pastiche and homage

A pastiche imitates a style without mocking it. A new Sherlock Holmes story written in Arthur Conan Doyle's manner, or a film shot to look like a 1970s thriller, is a pastiche: the copy is a tribute, and the audience is not invited to laugh at the source. A parody exaggerates the same features so that they look ridiculous.

An homage is a smaller gesture of respect, such as a shot that repeats a famous shot from an older film. Many films mix all three. Shaun of the Dead pays homage to George Romero's zombie films, borrows their look and also parodies their conventions, so its tone moves between affection and mockery from scene to scene.

Parody and satire are often confused. Parody imitates a work or a style; satire attacks a target in the real world, such as a politician, an institution or a habit of thought. A parody can carry satire, and a satire can use parody as its weapon, but a parody of romance novels is not necessarily criticizing anything beyond romance novels.

Parody examples in literature and film

Parody is as old as comedy. In Aristophanes' The Frogs, from 405 BC, the god Dionysus judges a contest between the tragic playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides, and each mocks the other's verse. Miguel de Cervantes began Don Quixote as a parody of the chivalric romances of his time, and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey parodies the Gothic novel.

On screen, Mel Brooks made parody a genre of its own: Blazing Saddles takes on the western, Young Frankenstein the Universal horror films of the 1930s, and Spaceballs the Star Wars films. Airplane! remade the 1957 disaster film Zero Hour! almost scene by scene. Galaxy Quest parodies Star Trek and its fans, but it also loves them.

Television runs on parody too. Sketch shows such as Saturday Night Live parody films, ads and news broadcasts every week, and series such as Documentary Now! parody the style of famous documentaries one episode at a time. Online, a parody video can appear within hours of a trailer, because the audience has just seen the original.

Is parody legal?

In the United States, parody can count as fair use under copyright law. In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, decided in 1994, the Supreme Court held that 2 Live Crew's commercial parody of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" could be fair use, because a parody has to borrow from the original in order to comment on it.

That protection is not automatic. Courts look at how much of the original was taken, whether the new work comments on the source rather than simply using it, and whether it competes with the original in the market. A work that borrows a famous song only to sell something else is weaker ground than one that mocks the song itself.

Other countries handle parody differently, and trademark and publicity rights raise their own questions. A writer planning a parody of a living work for commercial release should get advice from an entertainment lawyer, especially if the script reuses lyrics, characters or long stretches of dialogue.

How to write a parody

Study the source until you can list its habits: the stock characters, the lines everyone quotes, the camera moves, the plot turns that always arrive on time. A parody is only as sharp as that list. Pick the habits the audience will recognize fastest and decide how each one can be pushed one step past sense.

Play it straight. The characters in a parody should believe they are in the real genre, with real stakes, and the actors should not signal the joke. Airplane! works because Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack deliver ridiculous lines with complete conviction. The moment a character seems to know they are in a comedy, the tension that powers the jokes drains away.

Give the parody a story of its own. A string of references wears thin within a few minutes, and references date fast. Build a main character with a want and an obstacle, and let the parody shape how that story is told. The scenes that last are the ones that are funny even for a viewer who has never seen the original.