Parody

Parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. Parodies exists in all art media, including literature, music and cinema.

Some genre film theorists see parody as a natural development in the life cycle of any genre, especially in film. Westerns, for example, after the classic stage defined the conventions of the genre, underwent a parody stage, in which those same conventions were lampooned. Because audiences had seen these classic Westerns, they had expectations for any new Westerns, and when these expectations were inverted, the audience laughed.

Sometimes the reputation of a parody outlasts the reputation of what is being parodied. A notable case is the novel Joseph Andrews 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.

Although a parody can be considered a derivative work[?] under United States Copyright Law it is has been protected under the fair use of 17 USC § 107. In 2001, the federal Court of Appeals, 11th District 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. See also the Supreme Court of the United States case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music regarding the song Pretty Woman.

See literary technique.

Examples

• MAD Magazine - parody of all things in American popular culture
• The Rutles - parody of The Beatles
• The Onion - parody of newspaper and magazine journalism
• Chris Morris's The Day Today and Brass Eye - parodies of TV news[?] programmes
• Mozart's Musical Joke K.522 (1787) - parody of Joseph Haydn
• Blazing Saddles movie by Mel Brooks - parody of American westerns
• The Three Amigos movie with Steve Martin - another parody of American westerns
• Bored of the Rings a parody of Lord of the Rings
• Weird Al Yankovic innumerable song parodies
• Parodies of several major hit films in the French & Saunders comedy series (including Titanic, Misery[?], Braveheart, Thelma and Louise, Lord of the Rings)