Parody

No One Is Safe from the Parodist (Part 4) by Barbara Ardinger

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Just imagine it! See it now! You can learn the secrets of the New Alchemy and make your life free from all outside... more Just imagine it! See it now! You can learn the secrets of the New Alchemy and make your life free from all outside government interference! Tornado or hurricane in the neighborhood? Don’t call FEMA. Take care of it yourself! Finances unstable where you live? Listen to Old-Phashioned Phinancial Philosophers and print more money yourself! Plague or pandemic in town? Don’t call the AMA. Heal yourself. (And your family.) Terror attack or plane crash? Don’t call the TSA. Get out your gun and get those bad guys before they get you. Study the age-old secrets of the New Alchemy and learn what Do It Yourself really means. Become wholly independent by joining the Holy Independent Order (Reconstructed).

No One Is Safe from the Parodist (Part 3) by Barbara Ardinger

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Vader has lost the helmet and is now old and fat and speaks in a tenor voice. He’s obviously the smartest guy in the... more Vader has lost the helmet and is now old and fat and speaks in a tenor voice. He’s obviously the smartest guy in the room.

I am not the first to mess with Shakespeare. In 1680, a hack named Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear to give it a happy ending (Cordelia marries Edgar and they assume the throne), and in 1699, Colley Cibber “adapted” Richard III. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Shakespeare’s plays were operacized, balletized, and Broadwayized (The Boys from Syracuse, West Side Story) In 1868, French operatic composer Ambroise Thomas wrote a Hamlet in which Ophelia sings a long aria and dies. After wild applause, she gets up and sings some more. I’ve seen this opera.

No One Is Safe from the Parodist (Part 1) by Barbara Ardinger

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Now, with only a minimum purchase, you can save your loved ones—your friends—your neighbors—your business... more Now, with only a minimum purchase, you can save your loved ones—your friends—your neighbors—your business associates—from eternities of suffering and torment. Our new Multi-Level Marketing company guarantees Eternal Salvation for you and your entire downline.

Hip Hop Parody as Veiled Critique

by Chris Taylor

*draft*

Trademark parody and Freedom of expression – Shall we dance? (full version)

by Anna Balatska

Master Thesis,  Examensarbete för masterexamen (Två år)

Parody in Trademarks and Copyright: Has Humour Gone Too Far?

by Ana Ramalho

Narcissisme et parodie du Je par le documentaire

by René Lemieux

Critique du film POM Wonderful presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold de Morgan Spurlock, publié dans le blog Trahir, février 2012.

Contesting the Mark of Criminality: Race, Place, and the Prerogative of Violence in N.W.A.'s *Straight Outta Compton*"

by Bryan McCann

Published in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Forthcoming.

This essay reads rap group N.W.A.’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton as a parodic enactment of the racialized... more This essay reads rap group N.W.A.’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton as a parodic enactment of the racialized discourses of law and order during the late 1980s, or what I am calling the mark of criminality. Its release constituted a watershed moment in black popular culture that coincided with the devastating consequences of surveillance, containment, and spectacular scapegoating associated with Reagan-era crime control policies and rhetoric. I argue that the album and its reception by the law enforcement community of the late 1980s functioned as a confrontation over the meanings of race, place, and crime in the twentieth century. In addition to revealing the contingent meanings of criminality in popular and political culture, the legacy of Straight Outta Compton provides insights into the role of criminality in processes of social transformation.

Metafiction and Architextual Translation: from Macbeth to Scotland PA

by Oana Gheorghiu

This paper deals with a filmic production having little to do with the Shakespearean text of Macbeth, which... more This paper deals with a filmic production having little to do with the Shakespearean text of Macbeth, which constitutes, more or less, only a starting point for bringing contemporary issues at the table. The film analysed is an independent production, low-budgeted and lesser (or not at all) interested in the postmodern shortcoming of society that is consumerism, although, looking superficially at Scotland PA, a ‘Macbeth at MacDonald’s’, one can be driven to this conclusion. The revision is an original piece of adaptation which brings forth the known issues of Macbeth, ambition, equivocation, gender power, good and evil, and punishment of the wrong-doer in unexpected manners, relying on Shakespeare only as much as to produce a coherent storyline.
Key words: adaptation, architextuality, parody, metafiction

Fescennia; Catieno; Taliarco; Dramma; Anathematica; Comico; Palinodia; Parodia

by Giuseppe Aricò

in Orazio. Enciclopedia oraziana I, Roma 1996, pp. 461-462 (Fescennia); p. 674 (Catieno); pp. 908-909 (Taliarco); II, Roma 1997, pp. 37-42 (Dramma); pp. 665-667 (Anathematica); pp. 675-678 (Comico); pp. 716-718 (Palinodia); pp. 721-724 (Parodia).

Parody and genre in sagas of Icelanders

by Kendra Willson

Willson, Kendra. 2009. Parody and genre in sagas of Icelanders. In: Á austrvega. Saga and East Scandinavia. Preprint Papers of The 14th International Saga Conference Uppsala, 9th – 15th August 2009. Agneta Ney, Henrik Williams and Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, eds. Papers from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences 14. Gävle: Gävle University Press. pp. 1039-1046.

Cindy Sherman: Her “History Portrait” Series as Post-Modern Parody

by Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard

Published online at: Bread and Circus Online Magazine, 7/2009 http://breadandcircusnetwork.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/cindy-sherman-her-“history-portrait”-series-as-post-modern-parody/

Much ink has been spilled over the work of American photographer Cindy Sherman. Her “History Portrait” series of... more Much ink has been spilled over the work of American photographer Cindy Sherman. Her “History Portrait” series of thirty-five photographs is particularly interesting for its blend of Post-Modern consciousness with timeless masterpieces of European masters. Most art historians like to discuss Cindy Sherman’s photos in terms of a Feminist critique. In part, Sherman explores the changing face of women’s roles in history. In doing research on her “History Portrait” series, however, I became inspired to follow a new tack. It makes more sense to characterize her innovative use of past imagery as a critique of contemporary events in the art world, making the past relevant to the present, and provoking many inner explorations by the viewer.

La parodia de los misterios en el fr. 17 (K.-A.) de Filetero

by Marco Antonio Santamaría Álvarez

Almela Lumbreras, Mª. Ángeles-González Castro, J. F.-Siles Ruiz, J.-de la Villa Polo, J.-Hinojo Andrés, G.-Cañizares Ferriz, P. (eds.), Perfiles de Grecia y Roma. Actas del XII Congreso Español de Estudios Clásicos. Valencia, 22-26 de octubre de 2007, Madrid, 2011, 693-700.

El fragmento 17 K.-A. de Filetero consiste en la parodia de las fórmulas de bendición o makarismoí que auguraban... more
El fragmento 17 K.-A. de Filetero consiste en la parodia de las fórmulas de bendición o makarismoí que auguraban felicidad en el otro mundo a los iniciados en los misterios. El autor efectúa una transposición cómica de estas creencias y considera dichosos a los que mueren oyendo el aulós y desgraciados a los que carecen de gusto musical. Se analiza cómo Filetero reelabora pasajes de Sófocles (fr. 837 R.) y de Aristófanes (Ra. 454-459, 354-357, 151-154) y se burla de motivos órficos, como las recompensas y los castigos en el Más Allá. 

Philetaerus' fr. 17 K.-A. is a parody of the set expressions of blessing (makarismoí) which promised happiness in the afterlife to the initiates in the mysteries. The author makes a comic transposition of these beliefs and considers fortunate those who die listening to the aulós and wretched those who lack musical taste. This paper analyses how Philetaerus reworks passages by Sophocles (fr. 837 R.) and Aristophanes (Ra. 454-459, 354-357, 151-154) and mocks some Orphic motifs, such as the rewards and the punishments in the Netherworld.

An Essay on" An Essay on Criticism": Derision as Inspiration

by Cameron Butt

undergraduate writing exercise published in The Albatross, 2011.

This paper gives a lighthearted satirical response to Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism (1711). I emphasize... more This paper gives a lighthearted satirical response to Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism (1711). I emphasize my opposition to Pope's critical authority by mimicking Pope's rhymed criticism, a now outmoded form of scholarship. To show how Pope's derision may have inspired better poetry from his contemporaries, my speaker's attitude shifts from intimidation to creative defiance.

Kinds of Parody from the Medieval to the Postmodern (2011)

by Laurence Raw

A review of a history of parody in literature from medieval times to the present day.

Originally published in INTERACTTIONS 20, no. 2 (2011): 179-80. Originally published in INTERACTTIONS 20, no. 2 (2011): 179-80.

77. Revenants et sauveurs. Le Ménexène de Platon et la comedie attique, in M. Neamțu & B. Tătaru Cazaban, edd., Memory, Humanity, and Meaning, Selected Essays in Honor of Andrei Pleșu’s Sixtieth Anniversary, Zeta Books, București 2009, pp. 155-168.

by Zoe Petre

Plato's Menexenus plays with parody and pastiche, not only of the Funeral Orations of Pericles/Thucydides or Lysias,... more Plato's Menexenus plays with parody and pastiche, not only of the Funeral Orations of Pericles/Thucydides or Lysias, but also with Athenian comedy. The anachronism of the dramatic date of the Menexenus, around 387 BC, when both Aspasia, who allegedly composed the funeral oration which is the core of the dialogue, and Socrates, who presents it, were dead, is an essential feature of the text. Imagined as a message from the dead, the Menexenus may be explained in relation to the dramatic theatre of the fifth century BC, where revenants - from Aeschylus’ Darius to Aristophanes’ Aeschylus - play an important role as saviours of their people. We may confront the Menexenus with Eupolis’ Demoi, where Pericles is called from the underworld to save the city. In Plato’s dialogue, which stands against Pericles’ Funeral Oration as reported by Thucydides – Pericles is disqualified, and it is Socrates, the spiritual leader of the ideal city, who comes back to life to deliver the moral lesson which may save Athens from corruption and death.

Happy Festivus! Parody as playful consumer resistance

by Ilona Mikkonen

Accepted for publication in Consumption Markets and Culture.
Please do not cite without permission.

Drawing upon literary theory, play and consumer resistance literature, we
conceptualize consumer parodic... more Drawing upon literary theory, play and consumer resistance literature, we
conceptualize consumer parodic resistance, a resistant form of play that
critically refunctions dominant consumption discourses and marketplace
ideologies. We explore parodic resistance empirically by analyzing
Festivus, a parody of Christmas. Festivus is found to be primarily
constructed as a playful rejection of the established grand narratives and
conventions of Christmas. In contrast to dominant Christmas ideology,
Festivus promotes a grand narrative of 'meaningful nothingness', wherein
Festivus celebration is presented a viable means of circumventing the
oppressiveness of Christmas (i.e., 'meaningful') through erasing the
higher goals and conventions if Christmas (i.e., 'nothingness'). Our
contribution is three-fold: 1) we demonstrate the role of parody in
consumer resistance, 2) we outline the subversively playful nature of
parodic consumer resistance, 3) we empirically demonstrate how parodic
holiday celebration unsettles dominant discourses and conventions.

The Ominousness of Chekhovian Idyll: The Role of Intertextuality in Stoppard’s "The Coast of Utopia."

by Nina Wieda

Published in _Ot “Igrokov” do “Dostoevsky-trip”: intertekstual’nost’ v russkoi dramaturgii XIX – XX vv_. Izdatel’stvo MGU: Moskva, 2006. 59 – 68.

‘New Readings in Joseph Perl’s Sefer Bohen Zaddik’, Tarbiz 76 (2008), pp. 557-590 (Hebrew)

by Jonatan Meir

'מדרש שמות בספר בוחן צדיק ליוסף פרל', תרביץ עו (תשס"ז), עמ' 590-557.

Joseph Perl's Bohen Zaddik is one of the most complex satires of Hasidism written in the first half of the nineteenth... more Joseph Perl's Bohen Zaddik is one of the most complex satires of Hasidism written in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is the sequel to the main anti-Hasidic work he had composed earlier, Sefer Megale Temirin, published in 1819, a work that critiques the social context of the Hasidism of his day. In Bohen Zaddik he widens his scope to attack the rabbinate of Galicia and Jewish society in general. The work underwent various revisions from the first draft, composed in the 1820s, through its printing in 1838. Previous scholarship regarding this book has focused on literary and linguistic analysis, overlooking much of the historical substratum. The article concentrates on identifying the figures mentioned in the work, particularly the rabbis of Galicia, who are the apparent object of the author's polemic, rather than the Hasidim, as presumed earlier. By deciphering the allusions to names and places in the work, and by comparing the printed version of the text to the earlier recension found only in manuscript, a new layer of the work is uncovered, challenging a number of central scholarly assumptions and reorienting the reader to a richer appreciation of the writings of Joseph Perl.

"Beat Your Parodies into Swords, and Your Parodied Books into Spears: A New Paradigm for Parody in the Hebrew Bible," Biblical Interpretation 19 (2011): 276–310

by Will Kynes

While previous works on parody in the Hebrew Bible have addressed the literary technique ad hoc in the service of the... more While previous works on parody in the Hebrew Bible have addressed the literary technique ad hoc in the service of the interpretation of specific texts, this article approaches the topic more broadly, attempting to understand the nature of the technique itself. Drawing on literary criticism, particularly the work of Linda Hutcheon, the commonly accepted definition of parody as a text which “ridicules” its “target” is questioned, and a broader definition of parody as “antithetical allusion,” in which the earlier text may act as a “weapon” instead of a “target,” and subversion and humor are only secondary features, is presented. This redefinition of the term grounds a new paradigm for parody that divides parody into four types: ridiculing, rejecting, respecting, and reaffirming. This paradigm is then applied to a series of exemplary parodies in the Hebrew Bible (Song 7:1-10, Psalm 29, Jonah, Job 7:17-18, Joel 4:10) that demonstrate the versatility of parody and the necessity of reading parodies in their wider context to determine their meaning.