Comedy Analysis: Parody

Parody is one of the oldest forms of humour and can be traced back to the poetry and literature from Hegemon of Thasos, who lived around 420 B.C. He slightly altered existing poetry's wording to transform sublime poetry into ridiculousness. Ever since parody has been around in different shapes and sizes and it's only becoming more popular. Especially with the rise of the Internet and television series like Family Guy, parody has become more and more mainstream.

Aristophanes

Classic parody

Aristophanes wrote a play titled The Frogs around 405 B.C. This featured parody and ridicule of even the gods, describing as a Glutton and the God of Drama Dionysus as cowardly and unintelligent. It parodies the traditional journey to the underworld, as Dionysus travels to the underworld, disguised as Heracles in order to bring back the poet Euripides back from the dead to save Athens. A storyline like this could even today be found in a parody film or play, with many aspects of contemporary parody already present in this classic play.

Don Quixote Book Cover

Later parody

Parody continued to be written throughout the ages. Sometimes a parody actually far outlives its original. A prominent example of this is the story of Don Quixote, about a deranged wannabe-knight trying to fight windmills, believing them to be giants. This story is still well-known today, whereas the novel it was based on, Amadis de Gaula, is known by hardly anyone today.

Modern and Post-modern parody

During the 20th century parody developed itself to one of the most prominent forms of art around. Re-contextualizing became a more common form of parody, where an existing story or characters were put in a new context for comic effect. A prominent example of this is T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land which follows the storyline of the legend of the Holy Grail, but incorporates texts like Dante's Inferno and a Sanskrit mantra.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights

Parody in modern media

In today's media parody has a prominent presence. It can be found in film, music and – of course – on the Internet. Some prominent parody films include: Dracula: Dead and Loving it; Young Frankenstein; Robin Hood: Men in tights; Scary Movie and Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde. In most cases it is obvious from the title which film, story or genre it seeks to ridicule.

Humor in Music

In music parody is increasingly common, with some artists gaining most (or all) of their fame from parody. Possibly the most famous parody musician is “Weird Al” Yankovic, who parodies mainly contemporary hit songs, sometimes including a link or reference to the original artist, sometimes incorporating links to films or other music, or sometimes just writing a comedy song to the music of an existing song.

With the rise of the Internet an abundance of parody films and songs have come into existence. The easy access to popular music and the fast and easy sharing of content have inspired many people to make parodies. Youtube channels like How It Should Have Ended parody well-known films, often pointing out inconsistencies and weird plotlines. The Key of Awesome is a comedy ensemble active on the Youtube-channel Barely Political that creates parody songs and music videos and the Epic Rap Battles of History often parody characters from history or fiction by having them face each other in a rap battle.

Parody is as alive as ever and it's definitely more than just poking fun at an original work. Most countries have some exception in copyright law to allow for parody work to be created, which indicates it is generally recognized as a legitimate art form. Check out some of the works mentioned if you haven't seen them yet, it's worth your while.