Parody: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Copy ‘Em (For the Most Part)

Think back to a situation where something hilarious happened. You’re bent over in laughter, your sides pinching with tension and you’re just barely able to catch your breath. Now, you’re having to explain the funny situation to a stranger. Most of the time, you’ll be lucky to get a giggle out of them. This lack of laughter is usually because explaining something funny is not nearly as entertaining as being in the funny situation itself. 

So as you read through this guide to the humorous, creative work known as parody, remember that experiencing it for yourself first hand might be the best way to understand its full humor. Fortunately, there is a high chance you’ve already come in contact with parody in your daily life. Whether you’ve tried to write a comedy sketch, stayed up late watching Saturday Night Live or scrolled through some viral internet content, you’ve definitely encountered parodies at some point. 

By definition, parody is a creative work or composition that imitates a person, place, event or  genre with deliberate exaggeration in order to produce a humorous effect. On Saturday Night Live, their actors have famously depicted celebrities and political figures like Sarah Palin and made parodies of well known movies. 

Writers will usually use narrative technique, character or plot to mimic aspects of other well known people or stories in order to create parody. Humor is one of the ways humans connect to one another so most parodies play off something that many people can relate to, have experienced or know about. 

Satire is similar to parody in that they both work to call attention to something. Satire differs from parody because it uses exaggeration as well as irony and understatement to specifically criticize something. It is often used to ridicule, expose or call out a negative aspect of humanity. 

For example, Goodnight iPad is the famous children’s book Goodnight Moon parodied. It imitates the exact idea of the book while making a few specific changes. Instead of saying goodnight to things inside of a child’s room like a little toy house and a young mouse, the author says goodnight to Facebook requests and thumbs tapping texts. 

This is a parody because it mimics a famous children’s book in a humorous way. Some might also view it as satire if they find these technology-based replacements as a negative addition to society. Satire is usually a completely original work to criticize well-known aspects of society or culture. 

You might be searching for parody examples because you want to know how to achieve humor in fiction or you’re in the middle of learning how to write a comedy sketch. Either way, parody is a powerful tool that can help generate humor and point to an aspect of society that a large group of people can relate to. 

One of the most famous parody movies is Scary Movie, which pokes fun at the modern day horror genre. Tropes like jump scares, clowns and naive groups of adolescents walking down the basement stairs to investigate a strange noise are all exaggerated for a comic effect in the movie.

Other examples include Teen Beach Movie, Johnny English and Vampires Suck. 

When YouTube first started gaining popularity, parody songs were all the rage. Even before then, creators like Weird Al Yankovic got famous for songs like “Eat It,” which came out in 1984 after Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Today, you can find parody versions of songs like “Shape of You” and parodies based on collective cultural experienced like “Workin’ from Home.” 

Since parody can intertwine with other literary devices, there are many parody examples in literature. There are entire books mimicking other works like with Goodnight iPad, but you can also see this with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Nightlight. These authors stayed in line with the tone, voice and style of famous stories while making their own changes to the plot and characters. 

Reading through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you might wonder how the author didn’t get in trouble for essentially copying the same idea Jane Austen had back in 1813. In the United States, parody is protected under the first amendment to a certain extent. This is because Americans are allowed to use original works for “purposes such as criticism [or] comment.”

As stated in section 107 of the Copyright Act, “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” Any parodies would fall under the criticism or comment section and thus can be republished in their own right. 

Because of section 107 in the Copyright Act, all parodies of original works are considered fair use. However, each case is evaluated on an individual basis, which means that you still have to be careful with what you’re producing. 

In 2022, Netflix sued and then dismissed a pair of content creators who made musical versions of their show Bridgerton. Originally, Netflix supported the parodied content the content creators were making on TikTok. Then, the two began making Bridgerton merchandising and selling tickets to an in-person show and for this Netflix felt they crossed the line. 

If you’re creating your own parody content make sure to do your own research and be careful about creating any content that you’re making to financially profit from. 

Parody is all around us. The next time you come across it you might be flipping through a book or searching for a movie online. If you really want to become an expert at creating parody in your own fiction work, the first step is learning to identify it. This week, try adding a few parody songs to your playlist or watching a parody film and see what about it makes you laugh. Within a few months, you’ll be an expert at creating parody of your own.