A parody is a creative work that copies, comments on, or makes fun of something else using humor or satire. It often copies parts of another work, such as its theme, style, or author, but it can also copy real people, events, or movements, like a political figure or the French Revolution. Professor Simon Dentith, a literary scholar, explains that parody is a cultural practice that imitates another cultural work in a way that is somewhat controversial or critical. Linda Hutcheon, a literary theorist, notes that parody is imitation, but it does not always mock the original work it copies. Parody appears in many forms of art and culture, such as books, music, plays, movies, cartoons, and video games.
John Gross, a writer and critic, wrote in The Oxford Book of Parodies that parody is similar to pastiche, which is copying another artist's style without humor, and burlesque, which uses serious literary ideas in a silly or lowbrow way. The Encyclopédie by Denis Diderot explains that parody is a clever and enjoyable form of imitation that can both entertain and teach people, while burlesque is a simple, foolish imitation that only appeals to people who enjoy humor that is not refined. In history, when a creative style becomes old or tired, like the moralistic stories of the 1910s, it can still be valuable as a parody. For example, the short films of Buster Keaton made fun of this outdated genre.
Terminology
A parody is sometimes called a spoof, satire, send-up, take-off, lampoon, play on (something), or caricature.
Origins
Aristotle wrote that Hegemon of Thasos created a type of parody. He changed words in famous poems to turn serious ideas into silly ones. In ancient Greek writing, a parodia was a poem that copied the style and rhythm of serious epic poems but told humorous, funny, or silly stories. The Greek word "parodia" comes from "para," meaning "beside" or "against," and "ode," meaning "song." This suggests that a parodia was a kind of "counter-song" that imitated another song but changed it. The Oxford English Dictionary says parody is imitation used to create a funny or silly effect. The word "para" can also mean "beside," so parody does not always have to involve making fun of something.
In ancient Greek comedy, even gods were made fun of. For example, in the play The Frogs, the hero Heracles is shown as greedy, and the god Dionysus is portrayed as scared and not smart. The story of a journey to the Underworld is changed into a funny version where Dionysus pretends to be Heracles to go to the Underworld and bring back a poet to help Athens. Ancient Greeks also created satyr plays, which were short plays that imitated serious tragedies but used humor. These plays often had actors dressed as satyrs, mythical creatures.
Parody was used in early Greek philosophy to make points about ideas. These writings were called spoudaiogeloion, which means "serious and funny" at the same time. One example is The Silloi by Timon of Phlius, a philosopher who made fun of both living and dead philosophers. This style of writing was often used by Cynic philosophers and by writers like Menippus and Meleager of Gadara.
In the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata wrote a parody of travel stories like Indica and The Odyssey. He joked that the authors of these stories were lying and had never actually traveled. In his book True History, Lucian told a story that exaggerated the wild claims of other stories. The story describes people traveling to the Moon, fighting wars with aliens, and returning to Earth to find a 200-mile-long creature (likely a whale) that contains a whole civilization. This was a parody of stories like Ctesias’ description of a one-legged people in India and Homer’s tales of one-eyed giants.
Related terms
Parody is found in several related genres: satire, travesty, pastiche, skit, and burlesque.
Satires and parodies are both works that copy and exaggerate other works for humor. However, satire criticizes real-world issues or people, while parody copies a specific work (like a book or movie) or a general genre (like comedy or horror). Satire is meant to point out problems or criticize behavior, often to encourage change or highlight wrongdoing. Parody, on the other hand, focuses more on creating fun and playful humor. It does not always criticize the work or genre it copies. A parody can include satiric elements, but if the humor and light-hearted tone are the main focus, it remains a parody.
A travesty copies and changes a work, but it focuses on mocking or criticizing it. Unlike parody, which is playful, travesty loses the harmless fun and instead emphasizes satire.
A pastiche copies a work in a way similar to parody, but it does not change the original work or use humor. Literary critic Fredric Jameson called pastiche a "blank parody," meaning it imitates without the humor.
A skit copies a work in a satirical way, but unlike travesty, it does not change the original material.
Burlesque mainly targets heroic poems and plays. It mocks famous heroes, gods, and common ideas in those genres. Simon Dentith described this type of parody as "parodic anti-heroic drama."
Parody copies and mocks a specific, well-known work (such as a book or movie) or the style of a particular author. A spoof, which is a type of parody, mocks an entire genre by exaggerating its typical features for humor.
Music
In classical music, the word "parody" is a technical term that means changing one type of musical piece into another. For example, composers like Girolamo Cavazzoni, Antonio de Cabezón, and Alonso Mudarra changed motets (a type of sacred vocal music) into keyboard works. Later, composers often used parts of other vocal music, such as motets or cantatas, to create parody masses (called missa parodia) or oratorios. Composers like Victoria, Palestrina, and Lassus in the 16th century used this method. The term was also used during the Baroque period, such as when Bach reused music from his cantatas in his Christmas Oratorio.
Today, the word "parody" in music usually means something different. It often refers to humorous or satirical music that uses familiar melodies or lyrics in a new, unexpected way. These parodies might copy the style of a specific composer or artist, or they might use elements from popular culture in a funny or strange way. For example, the song "The Ritz Roll and Rock," performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Silk Stockings, makes fun of the rock and roll genre. Similarly, "Weird Al" Yankovic creates parodies by changing lyrics of popular songs and adding unexpected, humorous elements from pop culture.
English term
The first recorded use of the word "parody" in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, appears in a play by Ben Jonson titled Every Man in His Humour from 1598. Jonson wrote, "A Parodie, a parodie! to make it absurder than it was." The next example is from John Dryden in 1693. Dryden added an explanation, showing that the word was already widely used to describe making fun of or copying something in a humorous way.
Modernist and post-modernist parody
Since the 20th century, parody has become a key artistic tool, helping to create new art and ideas. This was especially true during the second half of the century with postmodernism, but earlier movements like modernism and Russian formalism also used parody in similar ways. Russian formalists believed parody helped artists break free from old styles to create new, independent works.
Historian Christopher Rea wrote that in the 1910s and 1920s, Chinese writers often used parody in their stories. They imitated many types of texts, such as speeches, advertisements, and official documents. Examples include a letter between the Queue and the Beard and Eyebrows, a speech honoring a chamber pot, and a study about why men have beards but women do not.
Jorge Luis Borges’s short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (1939) is often seen as an early example of postmodernism. In the broader sense of the word, parody can mean taking parts of one work and using them in a new way, not always to mock the original. Traditional definitions of parody usually focus on works meant to ridicule the text they copy. However, there is also a broader type of parody that uses copied material for other purposes, such as making a point about something else. This type became more common in the 20th century. In this form, the parody does not target the original work but uses it to comment on other ideas. This happened because artists wanted to connect with the past while showing how modern life was different.
Examples of this type of parody include James Joyce’s Ulysses, which uses elements from Homer’s Odyssey in a modern Irish setting, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which mixes parts of many old texts. Andy Warhol’s art is another example of this style. French literary theorist Gérard Genette said the most effective parody is the simplest one, where a known text is reused to create a new meaning.
Blank parody happens when an artist takes the basic structure of a work and places it in a new setting without mocking it. Pastiche is a similar style. Parody can also occur when characters or settings from one work are used humorously in another, such as in the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which makes minor characters from Hamlet the main focus. Mishu Hilmy’s Trapped in the Netflix uses parody to comment on modern shows like Mad Men by featuring characters like Don Draper. In Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, characters from myths and stories meet in a real-world setting, creating humor without mocking the original sources. This is different from postmodernism’s use of historical figures in fiction to represent abstract ideas.
Reputation
Sometimes, a parody becomes more famous than the work it copies. For example, Don Quixote, a book that mocks old stories about knights, is better known today than the book that inspired it, Amadis de Gaula (though Amadis is mentioned in Don Quixote). Another example is Shamela by Henry Fielding (1742), which parodied Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) by Samuel Richardson. Many of Lewis Carroll’s parodies of serious poems written for children, like “You Are Old, Father William,” are better known than the original poems, which are mostly forgotten today. Stella Gibbons’ humorous book Cold Comfort Farm has become more famous than the pastoral novels by Mary Webb that inspired it.
In more recent years, the television show 'Allo 'Allo! is better known than the drama Secret Army, which it parodied.
Some artists focus their careers on creating parodies. A well-known example is "Weird Al" Yankovic. His career of parodying songs by other musicians has lasted longer than the careers of many artists he has copied. Yankovic is not legally required to ask for permission to parody a song, but he usually does so. Some artists, like rapper Chamillionaire and the band Nirvana, said Yankovic’s parodies of their songs were excellent. Many artists view being parodied by Yankovic as a sign of respect.
In the United States, the legal system has ruled that parodies of works are often considered fair use. This was shown in the case of Rick Dees, who used 29 seconds of music from the song “When Sonny Gets Blue” to parody Johnny Mathis’s singing style, even though he was not allowed to use the music. A court agreed that this type of parody was fair use. The case is called Fisher v. Dees, 794 F.2d 432 (9th Cir. 1986).
Film parodies
Some film experts, following the ideas of a writer named Bakhtin, believe that parody is a natural part of how film genres develop over time. This idea has been especially helpful for experts who study film genres. These experts point out that Western movies, for example, went through a stage after the classic Westerns set the rules for the genre. During this stage, the same rules were mocked and criticized in parodies. Because audiences had seen the classic Westerns, they had certain expectations for new Westerns. When these expectations were turned upside down, the audience found the films funny.
An early parody film was Mud and Sand (1922), a film by Stan Laurel that made fun of Rudolph Valentino’s Blood and Sand. Laurel made many parodies in the mid-1920s, writing and acting in several of them. Some of these parodies were humorous versions of popular films, such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which became Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (1926). Others were spoofs of Broadway plays, like No, No, Nanette (1925), which became Yes, Yes, Nanette (1925). In 1940, Charlie Chaplin made a satirical comedy about Adolf Hitler called The Great Dictator, following a short film by the Three Stooges called You Nazty Spy! (1939), which was the first Hollywood parody of the Nazis.
About 20 years later, Mel Brooks began his career with a parody of Hitler. After his 1967 film The Producers won awards for its screenplay, Brooks became a well-known film parodist. He created spoofs in many genres, such as Blazing Saddles (1974), a parody of Western films; History of the World, Part I (1981), a parody of historical events; and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), a parody of the classic Robin Hood story. His other parodies include Young Frankenstein (1974), a horror film parody, and Spaceballs (1987), a parody of Star Wars.
The British comedy group Monty Python is also known for its parodies, such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974), a humorous version of the King Arthur legend, and Life of Brian (1979), a parody of religious stories. In the 1980s, a team of filmmakers named David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker made parodies of popular genres, such as disaster films (Airplane!), war films (Hot Shots!), and police films (Naked Gun). A 1989 Spanish film called El equipo Aahhgg parodied the TV show The A-Team.
More recently, some parodies have targeted entire film genres at once. One of the first was Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996) and the Scary Movie series. Other recent examples include Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th, Not Another Teen Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, and The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It. These films have received poor reviews from critics.
Many parody films focus on subjects that are no longer protected by copyright, such as Frankenstein or Robin Hood. Other parodies copy popular films without breaking copyright laws but clearly aim to imitate well-known works. The popularity of James Bond films in the 1960s is an example of this trend. A rare example of a parody film that targets a serious subject and holds the rights to it is Casino Royale (1967), a parody of the James Bond series. The film’s producer, Charles K. Feldman, originally planned to make a serious movie but decided to create a parody instead because it would be hard to compete with the popular Bond films.
Poetic parodies
Kenneth Baker identified five main types of poetic parody.
One type of poetic parody connects modern poets with older poetic styles and famous poets in a respectful way. This form helps poets share similar techniques and ideas while reducing the pressure to be completely original.
A more direct and humorous type of parody mocks authority, traditions, and cultural ideas in a playful way. For example, a parody might change the well-known poem "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to say, "Twinkle, Twinkle, little star, / Who the hell do you think you are?"
Self-parody
A type of parody is self-parody. In self-parody, artists parody their own work, such as in Ricky Gervais's Extras.
Copyright issues and other legal issues
Although a parody is based on a copyrighted work, some countries allow it to be protected under rules called "fair dealing" or include parody in these rules. In the United States, parodies are protected under the "fair use" rules of copyright law. However, the protection is stronger if the parody changes the original work in a new way, such as by offering a critique or commentary about it.
In the case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a rap parody of the song "Oh, Pretty Woman" by 2 Live Crew was fair use. The court said the parody was a unique, new work meant to mock the original song. Even though the parody used parts of the original lyrics and music, the court noted that these parts were the most recognizable parts of the song and were the best parts for parody.
In 2001, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin that Alice Randall had the right to publish a parody of Gone with the Wind called The Wind Done Gone. This parody told the same story but from the perspective of the slaves in the original book.
In 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a fair use defense in Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. Penguin Books. The court said that a satire of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and a parody of The Cat in the Hat did not qualify as fair use because it did not offer a meaningful commentary on the original work.
In Canada, although "fair dealing" is protected, there is no specific rule that protects parody or satire. In the case of Canwest v. Horizon, a court ruled that a pro-Palestinian parody of a newspaper article did not protect the group that created it from a copyright claim.
After the Copyright Modernization Act of 2012 was passed in Canada, "fair dealing" for purposes such as research, private study, education, parody, or satire no longer violates copyright.
In the UK, a 2006 report called the Gowers Review suggested that the country should create a rule to protect parody, caricature, and pastiche by 2008. However, after reviewing public feedback, the UK government decided not to change its copyright laws for these purposes. In 2011, a report called the Hargreaves Review made similar suggestions, and the UK government agreed. As of October 2014, UK law now includes an exception to copyright infringement for "fair dealing" in parody, caricature, or pastiche. The law does not define "parody," but the UK Intellectual Property Office says a parody is a work that imitates another work for humorous or satirical purposes.
In some countries, parodies are not allowed and may be considered offensive. People who create parodies in these places may face fines or even jail time. For example, in the UAE and North Korea, parodies are not permitted.
Internet culture
Parody is a common type of online content because digital texts are easy to change, use in new ways, and share. In Asia, examples like Japanese kuso and Chinese e'gao show how important parody is in online culture. In China, video mash-ups and other humorous changes to text, such as altered Chinese characters, have been widely used for political protest. The government of the People's Republic of China has a large system for controlling online content. Chinese internet slang often uses wordplay and changes in how Chinese characters are spoken or written, as seen in the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon.
Parody generators are computer programs that create text that follows grammar rules but usually has no real meaning. They often copy the style of technical papers or famous writers. These tools are also called travesty generators or random text generators. Their goal is often to show how similar fake text can look to real examples.
Many generators use methods like Markov chains to copy patterns from real text examples. Others are created manually. The generated text can be as long as an essay, a paragraph, or even a tweet. (The term "quote generator" is also used for software that randomly picks real quotes.)
Social and political uses
Parody is a way to express ideas about society or politics. Examples include Swift's "A Modest Proposal," which mocked how England ignored problems in Ireland by copying the style of serious political writings. More recently, shows like The Daily Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and The Colbert Report use humor to copy news broadcasts and talk shows, helping people think about political and social issues.
Vladimir Nabokov, a writer who often used parody, said, "Satire is a lesson, parody is a game."
Shows like Saturday Night Live (SNL) use parody to change how people see politicians and the media. SNL often exaggerates the traits of politicians, making jokes that help viewers compare the real people to the characters on TV. This type of humor can make audiences focus more on the jokes and less on serious political problems. Parody also helps viewers notice details in political communication that they might not have noticed before.
When dealing with serious events, like national tragedies, it can be hard to decide how to use humor. Chet Clem, who manages a news parody called The Onion, explained to Wikinews that questions often arise when trying to address difficult topics. He said, "After September 11, we wondered if we should even publish a new issue. What is funny during such a time? Do people want to laugh again? We don’t always know. There are always disagreements, but this keeps us thinking carefully."
Parody is not always meant to mock. It can sometimes show respect or admiration for the subject, without being careless or harsh.
Parody has also helped people from different cultures or groups talk to each other. A sociolinguist named Mary Louise Pratt says parody is one of the "arts of the contact zone," where groups that feel powerless copy parts of more powerful cultures to share their ideas.
Shakespeare used parody to help explain his ideas. In King Lear, for example, the king’s fool wears a funny hat called a coxcomb, which is a parody of the king himself. This helped audiences understand the relationship between the king and his fool in the story.