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PARODY_PARADOX

                                             November 12, 2017


Some paradoxes of parody
                                                        SATIRE
(1) parody is about revealing a hidden
    absurdity, typically through
    exaggeration, but exaggerating
    everything that is bad about the        On the plus side, it
    original may not work: you can end      sends a clear "this is
    up with something too bad to be         not serious" signal,
    believed, or worse too bad to be        which many people may need.
    funny, perhaps too bad to stand.


(2) parody presumes a familiarity with
    the original, but actually a large
    portion of the audience may not be      To this day, there are
    that familiar: they may be learning     many movies I know of
    about the original from the parody.     only from reading the
                                            Mad Magazine version.
    It's best if there's something
    there that works even to someone
    who does not know the original,         As a young teenager, I liked
    even if only a vague sense of           Shaw's Pygmalion quite a bit,
    absurdity.                              but had no idea it was
                                            intended as a social satire.



(3) The parodist works by creating a mutated
    version of an original, by identifying motifs
    and varying them, changing certain elements--
    but this is very similar to the process of
    creation of an "original" genre work, where
    creativity often follows an evolutionary path.
    The difference is entirely a matter of
    attitudes, an intention to treat the material
    seriously or sarcastically and the audience may
    very well be blind to these intentions.  The
    attempt at creating a "light-hearted" parody
    may just soften the edges of the original,
    creating something treated as perhaps idealized       (cf. "The Avengers")
    or romanticized but still taken seriously.
                                                           AVENGING_RAND


  Parody is an act of criticism,
  an attempt at standing above.

  The question might be asked,
  "what are you standing *on*?"


        If there is something in the world deserving of parody,
        is there something else that doesn't?  What is it?
        Why aren't you working on that?



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